The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras (9 page)

“Still worried about Kaylee?”

“No,” I said and then told her everything that had happened that day.

“Wow. Gravelly is dead?”

“Guvelly,” I corrected.

“Yeah, him. I’ve never known anyone who was murdered, Hubie. I mean you hear about it on the news all the time, but I’ve never actually known a murder victim. Of course, I didn’t actually know Gubelly, but I know you and you knew him, and I guess that’s like what, two degrees of separation?”

“I don’t understand that ‘degree of separation’ thing. But I know what you mean, and that’s what bothers me. If someone you know is murdered, then the murderer might also be someone you know, like you’ve fallen into the wrong crowd.”

“You didn’t fall into Gubelly, Hubert; he came to you.”

“Guvelly,” I said. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Know the victim; know the perp.”

“Isn’t that a line from Law and Order?”

“I don’t know. Did Dostoevsky write that?”

“It’s a TV show, Hubert.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Here’s what worries me. Obviously they know I was on the eleventh floor because of the camera by the elevator. And maybe they know I was at his door because I might have left fingerprints. O.K., that’s just bad luck on my part. But Fletcher said, ‘We got a little piece of evidence that times you and also ties you in real tight.’ What do you think that might be?”

Susannah drained her glass and thought about it. I signaled to Angie for two more and held the chip bowl aloft to indicate we needed a refill on those as well.

After we were reprovisioned, Susannah said, “Maybe someone looked through the peephole when you knocked and saw you there.”

I liked the initial sound of it and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. Then I saw the flaw in it.

“That would only implicate me if the person who saw me through the peephole did so at or near the time of the murder.”

“Right.”

“So who would be in the room at the time of the murder?”

“The murderer and the victim,” she said. “Oh, I see what you mean. The victim can’t report seeing you because he’s dead, and the murderer can’t report seeing you without implicating himself.”

“But the peephole theory could still work,” I said.

“You mean if someone in another room looked out?”

“Exactly. I knocked twice, and rather loudly the second time. So if someone across the hall heard the noise and looked out, they might have seen me.”

“So what good does it do knowing that?”

Her question finally jostled my brain into gear, and I felt optimistic for the first time since Fletcher’s visit to my shop. “If someone else saw me in the hall, then they would also see that I didn’t go into the room. That’s exactly what I need to clear myself.”

“But how can you find out what room and who it was?”

“Maybe I can get Fletcher to tell me.”

“He’s a cop, Hubie. Why would he help the suspect?”

“It’s Whit Fletcher, Suze.”

“Oh, of course—money.”

“Exactly.”

I took another gulp of my drink, and I sort of forgot about the Dom Perignon I’d had at lunch, and then there was another round, and ...

16

And eventually I walked somewhat unsteadily back to my shop, let myself in the front door, heard the bong, made a silly joke to myself about a bong in a pot shop—well, I had been drinking—locked the front door behind me, used a different key to unlock the door to my workshop directly behind the store, relocked that, and then unlocked the next door in the series, the one into my living quarters. At least that’s what I thought I did.

People who visit me often remark that my lifestyle seems Spartan, but I actually consider it sumptuous. I have a sturdy pine table with four comfortable chairs, a chaise made of bent willow, and a large chifferobe and chest of drawers for my clothes.

My bed is a single, beautiful in the simplicity of its design and dressed, as you already know, with five-hundred thread-count sheets of Egyptian long-staple cotton, and after four margaritas and a supper of only chips and salsa, it was between those sheets that I longed to be. As tempting as it was simply to remove my shoes and crawl in, I forced myself to take a hot shower, two aspirins, and a large glass of water. When finally my body slid between those millions of tiny threads, I was asleep in an instant.

I awoke many hours later refreshed and famished, thankful for the two benefactors of humankind who invented the margarita and the aspirin. I set the oven on warm and placed a plate inside with two corn tortillas. On top of the stove, I broke two eggs into the frying pan and cooked them over-medium with a pinch each of salt, pepper, and cumin. I placed the eggs over the tortillas, poured some Old El Paso green enchilada sauce over it all, sprinkled queso fresco on top and returned the plate to the oven. While the cheese melted, I extracted a bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir champagne from the fridge and filled a flute. Why not? Hair of the dog. I then sat at my kitchen table and enjoyed my favorite breakfast: huevos rancheros verde and champagne. Halfway through I recharged my champagne flute. After all, the dog had bitten four times, so I needed four small locks of his hair. I sipped to make sure the second glass was as good as the first. It was.

While I ate, I was reading another article from the anthology about Pythagoras. I wondered what Pythagoras would make of my living space that has no right angles. Everything is slightly off, the walls akilter, the floors atilt. Pythagoras was evidently a man of precision. He and his cult worshipped numbers. The number one was God—perfect unity. Two was the duality of reality—man and woman, hot and cold, wet and dry, etc. He’s even credited with discovering that harmony between plucked strings is a function of their length, so music is also a matter of numbers. I extrapolated on Pythagoras’ thinking and decided my height had a certain harmony to it was well—exactly halfway between five and six feet tall. I don’t think I’m overly sensitive about my height, but I enjoy a little reassurance now and then.

Despite all the precision of his famous theorem and his fixation with numbers, Pythagoras also has a mystical side. He taught that when you arise from sleep, you should smooth out the sheets lest someone use the imprint you left to harm you—sort of the early Greek root of the voodoo theory that you can injure someone by sticking a pin in their likeness. I glanced to my bed and saw my imprint, and in a fanciful mood, I stepped over and smoothed it out. It was then that I heard someone moving about in my store. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was just after nine, my normal opening time.

I opened the door into my workshop and heard someone calling my name from inside the shop. Reassured by the familiar voice, I unlocked the door from the workshop to the store and said good morning to Reggie West from next door. He sells gelato, which so far as I can tell is ice cream. It’s even harder to sell during the off-season than pots because it faces the added challenge of being a summertime treat. Reggie has been trying to diversify into chocolates, piñon nut candies and jalapeño lollipops. They’re better than they sound. Even with these exotic additions, I think he’s struggling. Of course the alimony may also be a factor. Did I mention he pays it to two former wives? It’s sad to see a former Marine laid low by family court.

“I noticed your lights were off even though it’s past opening time, so I tried the door and it was unlocked. I thought you might be making pots, so I was just headed back to tell you to turn on the lights and put out the open sign.”

“I thought I locked the door when I came in last night.”

“Had you and Susannah been at Dos Hermanas?”

“Yes, but I didn’t think I was tipsy enough to leave the door unlocked.”

“Well, I had my key to your shop in my hand, but the knob turned when I took hold of it, so I just walked in. Maybe it didn’t quite catch when you turned the key last night.”

I asked him to stay while I looked around to see if anything was missing. I have about a quarter of a million dollars of inventory, retail value, in my shop. Two thirds of it is in display cases or on shelves, and none of that was missing. The rest of the merchandise is in locked cabinets behind my counter and below eye level under the shelves. I checked the cabinet doors, and they were all locked. However, a few of the hinges were slightly loose, and I was afraid someone had opened the cabinets by unscrewing the hinges. I took my key ring out of my pocket and unlocked each cabinet. Nothing was missing.

“Everything O.K.?” asked Reggie. He has a square face, a prominent chin, and a smile that is so wide and bright it seems almost practiced.

“Seems to be. You mind keeping an eye out? In the unlikely case that a customer comes along and wants to see something, just tell them I’ll be back later.”

After washing up the breakfast dishes, I showered, shaved and dressed, and headed out to find Tristan. He’s not actually my nephew; he’s the grandson of my Aunt Beatrice, my mother’s sister. I think that makes Tristan my second cousin once removed. Or maybe it’s my first cousin twice removed. I’ve never been certain about that terminology and neither has Tristan, so I just call him my nephew and he calls me his uncle.

He was asleep of course — it being prior to noon and he being under twenty-five. I took along the only alarm clock that works, a steaming cup of aromatic coffee and a bag of pungent breakfast tacos from Chato’s Diner. During other hours of the day and most of the night, you can reach Tristan on his blueberry? raspberry? … anyway, it’s what you get when you graduate from a cell phone. You can do almost anything on it—listen to music, play games, swamp the internet, and even have old-fashioned phone conversations. You can. Tristan can. I can’t. I couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on.

I let myself into his apartment with my key and held the coffee and tacos under his nose until he came to. He stared up at me. “Uncle Hubert?”

“Who were you expecting?” I stuck the food even closer to him.

“What time is it?” he asked groggily.

“It’s time for breakfast.”

He wrapped the blanket around himself like a cape, stood up and stretched. Then he flopped back into bed. At least he was sitting when he landed.

I handed him the coffee and he took a few tentative sips. Then he started in on the tacos, and once the chile and egg combo hit his taste buds, he was awake.

After he finished off the entire bag of tacos, he wiped his mouth on the sheet and reached for what was left of the coffee.

“I could have gotten you a napkin,” I said.

He shrugged. “I’m planning to wash the sheets today.”

“I guess that means you have a date tonight.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I might even dust and vacuum.”

“You don’t own a vacuum.”

“I have a little hand-held one in the car.”

“That one plugs into the cigarette lighter; will the cord stretch all the way in here?”

“No, I rigged up a transformer. Then all I had to do was split the…”

“Tristan?”

“Oh, right. Not interested in technical things.”

“Not usually, but I do have a technical question for you.”

He smiled that big dopey smile the girls all love and said, “You didn’t come over just to bring me breakfast?”

“Well, that too. And also just to visit.” I really like the kid. He’s sort of lost in space sometimes, but he’s honest, smart, unassuming, and really good with older people, and I don’t mean me; I mean really old people. Of course the young girls also like him. With his vestigial layer of baby fat, smooth olive skin, black hair that hangs down in ringlets around his neck, and those bedroom eyes, they find him irresistible.

“Thanks, Uncle Hubert. What’s the question?”

“It’s about the laser device on my shop door.”

“It’s basically harmless, but you shouldn’t look directly into it. That’s why it’s mounted only three feet off the floor. If it were at shoulder height and you just happened to look to your right as you entered, it could contact your eyes and could cause a problem. Also, it’s not a good idea for it to pass real close to a pacemaker.”

“I’ll post a sign outside saying ‘Midgets with pacemakers please call ahead for special entry requirements.’ Why three feet high, by the way, instead of even lower?”

“It’s hard for the average person to step over something three feet tall, so no one can enter undetected.”

“Interesting, but not what I want to know. Can it keep a record, like how many customers come in and when?”

“It not only can, it does. It’s designed to hook into your business computer so you can track exactly how many customers are in the store at different times of the day and make staffing decisions and things like that. Of course you don’t have a business computer, so the only feature you use is the sound that lets you know when someone enters or leaves.”

“And the only staffing decisions I make are whether to open for business or not. So I couldn’t find out how many people came in yesterday?”

“Sure you can. You don’t use that function, but it’s still in there. All you have to do is hook a computer to it and read the record off the memory chip.”

“All I have to do?” I replied. “I can’t understand what you said, much less do it.”

I asked him to take that reading for me, and he said he would.

Before I left, I asked Tristan if he needed money, and he said he was O.K., so I gave him a fifty. When he says he’s broke, I give him a hundred. When he says he’s fine, I don’t know what I give him because he is always either broke or just O.K.

17

Susannah’s idea about the peephole had me thinking I might work out something with Whit Fletcher, so when I got back from Tristan’s, I called and he agreed to come over.

“You decide to confess, Hubert?”

“Good afternoon, Detective. Nice to see you, too.”

“Got any coffee?” he said.

I keep coffee brewed and it’s free for customers. Whit didn’t qualify, but I gave him a cup anyway. I’ve tried different brands and blends, but the cheap ones don’t taste any worse than the expensive ones, so I buy whatever is on sale.

“It’s just plain coffee,” I told him. “If you want something fancy, there’s Columbia Coffee Company across the street and a Starbuck’s in the Hyatt.”