The 27-Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery

  “I guess you know the sheriff will be furious.”

  “Let him be.” Juanita set to work with her mop again, but then looked up at Mrs. Potter. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Can you sit down to do it?”

  Juanita propped the mop against a wall and sat down with Mrs. Potter at the kitchen table. She seemed eerily calm, as if her frantic labor had drained emotion from her, as if there weren’t three dead men in the room with them. Mrs. Potter had a much harder time displaying a tranquil face to match Juanita’s.

  “I have to tell somebody, señora. It’s my fault, whatever has happened to my granddaughter. I set her to checking up on Ricardo. I made her follow him around for the last couple of weeks, because I thought he was behaving strangely. Maybe it was the thought of retiring, I don’t know. But he was upset about something and he wouldn’t talk to me about it, he seemed angry sometimes and depressed some other times. I screamed at him, I said, ‘What’s wrong with you, tell me what’s wrong with you!’ But he wouldn’t. He said something that didn’t make sense, he said that he didn’t want to hear what I’d have to say. He said that if he told me, then I’d tell him what he didn’t want to hear, and then he might have to do what he didn’t want to do. What kind of answer is that?”

  Her brown eyes pleaded with Mrs. Potter, who had no answer to give.

  “It was getting so he was gone at odd times, when he should have been here. So I wanted to know what was going on with him. If he wouldn’t tell me, I had to find out what he was doing and where he was going. So I told Linda to follow her grandfather.” Juanita’s face was suddenly expressive of pain. “She’s a good girl, she did as her grandmother wanted. Her stupid grandmother,” she said bitterly. “Linda said that man was spending his time driving around the valley! That’s all! Up one country road and down another, staring at cows, if you can believe it, and following tractors and looking at hay piles.” The stern brown face grimaced with distress. “So that’s why he was talking about retirement, because that man knew he was getting senile. I didn’t want to tell you, señora. He knew he was losing it. But so fast, so soon! And to lose him, to lose him like this, so fast, so soon …”

  Juanita bowed her head, but didn’t weep.

  In a moment, she looked up again.

  “So on Saturday he called you, because he was crazy, and he called all those other people for a nonsensical meeting, because he was going nuts. I don’t know why he did it, he didn’t know why he did it. And the next morning, he got up for no reason to climb to the top of a mountain he would never have climbed if he was in his right mind. And because I told her to do it, our granddaughter followed him, and now she’s been washed away by the storms.… ”

  “They didn’t find her—”

  Juanita waved that comfort away. “They will, I’m sure. I accept responsibility. I killed my own granddaughter, just as much as if I’d held a gun to her head and fired it. I may as well have put the gun to my daughter’s head as well, and I wish I could put it to my own. Perhaps Francesca and Les will kill me; I deserve to die. I hope they want to kill me.”

  “Oh, Juanita, my dear …”

  Mrs. Potter looked over at the three bodies on the cots, and then gazed around the now-immaculate apartment. Cleaning it, she thought, must have felt to Juanita like crawling on bare, bloody knees up to the cathedral door to beg for forgiveness, for expiation of what felt to her like the most awful, most terrible sin.

  Juanita saw her looking around, and said, “I didn’t clean up just for Bandy. I did it for you, too, Genia.”

  Mrs. Potter looked up at her, surprised.

  “It was your chili they were eating that made them sick.”

  Mrs. Potter reached out her hand for the support of the tabletop. There was a roaring in her ears and she suddenly felt so ill herself that she thought she might faint. She barely heard Juanita’s next words.

  “But there’s no reason for anybody but you and me to know now that I’ve got it all cleaned up.”

  “What? What did you say? My chili?” With horror, Mrs. Potter thought of all her neighbors who had been to supper at her house last night and of all the little plastic tubs of leftover chili they had taken home with them to eat for lunch today. Juanita didn’t know about that. Juanita was wrong; this could not be a secret to be forever kept between them.

  Mrs. Potter practically ran back down the stairs, clinging to the banister.

  “Angela! Stella!” she called out as she burst into the house.

  The daughters rushed in at her summons.

  “You found Mama?”

  “Yes, she’ll be here in a little while. But listen to me, please, you have to help me. I’m going to give you a list of names and you have to call every single one of them and keep on trying until you get all of them. Tell them not to eat the leftover chili I gave them last night! Tell them it may have killed Bandy and two other men, tell them it may be spoiled, they might get ptomaine poisoning!”

  Quickly, Mrs. Potter grabbed one of the yellow pads that Juanita kept for her even at the Ortegas’ house and she scribbled on it every name she could recall, terrified that she might forget somebody. She thrust the list at Stella. “Call every one of them. I’m going to drive to their houses myself to collect that chili to make absolutely sure that nobody else gets sick from it!”

  But even as she started her car, Mrs. Potter was having doubts about the real urgency of her mission. She’d used only fresh ingredients. She hadn’t left anything out to cool so long that it might get spoiled. Her utensils, her pots and dishes, even the plastic tubs, were sparkling clean. It wasn’t possible that her chili had developed a bacterium that was virulent enough to kill people.

  But just in case it was possible …

  Mrs. Potter stepped harder on the Subaru’s gas pedal.

  CHAPTER 23

  As she sped from neighbor to neighbor, collecting little yellow tubs, Mrs. Potter thought about Juanita’s words. Could Ricardo’s wife be right? Was it all a mirage created by a man whose faculties were failing him? Were there no suspects, no suspicions; was there no murder, was Linda’s body really going to show up washed farther downstream? Maybe it was true that a hunter’s shot had caused Patches to do a houlihan, and that Ricardo had been bucked off down the mountain. And maybe Linda, in attempting to go to her grandfather’s rescue, had been caught by a rushing torrent of water.…

  But then Mrs. Potter remembered Ricardo’s strong, sure voice on the telephone. That was no feeble old man who’d called her. She recalled the undertone of satisfied amusement in his voice, as if he’d figured out something important and he was feeling just a tad smug about the whole thing. Ricardo, senile? Not the Ricardo she’d talked to on Saturday!

  That man knew exactly what he was doing.

  She thought of what had happened to him not twenty-four hours later, however, and wondered, “My friend, were you finally too smart for your own good?”

  * * *

  The headquarters of Highlands Ranch sat on a ridge above the valley. From the valley floor, one could see the outcropping of rock well enough, but not any of the buildings that perched there. For a visitor, the only visible structure was the guardhouse at the front gate. It was impressive enough, containing a fortress’ worth of communications and television-monitoring equipment, which was visible from the road in front of the electrically locked gate. The gate itself rose ten feet high, and on the rare occasions when it was opened, swung wide by electric command when one of the men in the guardhouse pushed a button.

  No one gained entrance to Highlands except by that gate, not even Mrs. Potter with her message of emergency.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Mr. and Mrs. McHenry are not available to visitors today,” said the burly young man who walked out from the guardhouse to greet her. He was uniformed, though subtly so, in navy-blue trousers and short-sleeved matching shirt and cap that might have passed for normal street clothes were it not for the discreet embroidered ranch lo
go on the flap of his breast pocket and above the bill of his cap. The holstered gun at his waist would have aroused comment on the street, too, even an Arizona street. Mrs. Potter guessed it was a .45 caliber, for no other reason than that it looked awfully big, and she had a vague notion that .45’s were huge compared to, say, .38’s. But then she’d never had any interest in guns or their nomenclature. It was enough for her to notice that he had one and that it was a “great big one” and that his right hand rested oh-so-casually on the butt of it all the while he chatted so courteously with her as she peered up at him from the driver’s seat of her car.

  “Are they out on the search party at my place, do you know?”

  “I couldn’t say, Mrs. Potter, ma’am.”

  That was undoubtedly true, she thought: he couldn’t say, or he might be dismissed from his job.

  “You will get the message to them, though, won’t you?” she insisted. “It’s so important, lives could depend on it. Do they have a cook who ought to be told, perhaps?”

  “I’ll let them know at the house,” was as much as she could get out of him. She had to be satisfied with that and his polite smile as she backed out of the drive again. She was annoyed at the whole encounter, which hadn’t been the first of such run-ins she’d had over the past few years since the McHenrys had moved into the valley. They were her neighbors, for heaven’s sake! Who did they think she was, a Russian spy? Even that wasn’t the threat it used to be. What was the matter with those people, she wondered, and what were they hiding in their fort on the hill?

  “I will,” Mrs. Potter declared to the world, “find out at dinner tonight.”

  Compared to Highlands, it was easy to get onto the C Lazy U dude ranch owned by Che Thomas. It had a “guardhouse,” too, but that was only a cute little cabin built to mimic an early Arizona sod house, and it was staffed by a pert young woman in a Western skirt, blouse, fringed vest, cowboy boots, and a smile bigger than her skirt.

  “Howdy! My name’s Megan!” she shouted out with cheerleader vigor. If this child were paid by the decibel, Mrs. Potter thought, she’d be rich by the end of the tourist season. Or perhaps she’d been instructed to shout at all of the many older guests who might be hard of hearing. Mrs. Potter was not flattered by the notion that she might appear to this child to be of an age that required younger persons to raise their voices. “Y’all can just go on up the road, if you like, although I’ll have to sign you in, if y’all don’t mind telling me your-all’s name. Do y’all need a map of the ranch?”

  “No, thank you, Megan. Where are you from, dear?”

  “Atlantic City! I don’t know how everybody can tell so easily.”

  Mrs. Potter thought about explaining that it wasn’t only Megan’s accent, but also her incorrect use of the colloquialism “y’all,” that gave her away. (It was always plural, never singular.) She decided that it wasn’t worth the effort and that the girl was perfectly charming just as she was. Loud, but charming.

  “Is Mrs. Thomas up there?”

  By “up there,” Mrs. Potter meant the complex of guest houses, stables, recreation/dining hall and main lodge where Che entertained hundreds of paying guests every year.

  “Oh, y’all here to see Ms. Thomas personally? Well, I can save you the trip! She’s gone out with a bunch of folks to look for that poor girl got lost over at that other ranch, y’all know about that?”

  “Yes, I do.” As she carefully formulated her next question, Mrs. Potter felt her face grow warm. “Megan, would you happen to know if a guest by the name of Mr. Jedders H. White is in? Or has he gone out too?”

  The young woman brightened even more. “The handsome one, looks like a movie star?”

  Mrs. Potters was quite taken aback by that. “Well, I don’t know. He’s tall and slender, with dark hair that’s turning silver, and—”

  “Sure, he looks like that actor, you know, that old guy …”

  Mrs. Potter knew she didn’t dare speak, for fear she’d sputter. Old guy?

  “Oh, you know, what’s his name, I see him all the time on the old-time movie station, Gary or Cary or Dick or something. Anyway, Mr. White looks just like him and I even told him so. Yeah, he’s gone. Took one of the ranch Jeeps and left, I don’t know, maybe an hour ago. He’s all the time going off by himself, doesn’t hardly ever do any of the regular guest stuff. First night he gets here, he drops off his bags, borrows a Jeep, and he’s gone. Then he’s out early the next morning, even before the sun’s up, I couldn’t believe it. Said he was bird watching. Heck, I figure there’s no bird worth getting up to see at four o’clock in the morning, except maybe if it was a flock of eagles on a really big stack of silver dollars.” Megan smiled, and then hooted with laughter at her own joke. This was clearly a child of the Atlantic City casinos, Mrs. Potter thought. “Then he’s out with the Jeep most of the next day. And every time he says he’s bird watching. How many birds can you see at night, huh? I figure he’s got himself a bird of a different sort, don’t you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You know, how they used to talk back in the sixties? How they called women birds? Dumb clucks, I guess they meant!” Megan laughed, or rather, hooted. “Boy, people used to be so backward, you know?”

  “Megan, how in the world do you know when Jed—Mr. White—took all those Jeep trips? Do you sleep here? Do you staff this guardhouse twenty-four hours a day?”

  “Oh, that’s funny! No, see, we keep a log of who goes in and out, specially if it’s a guest with one of the ranch vehicles. And I get pretty bored sitting here sometimes; I mean, you can only read so many romance novels, you know? So I always look over the log when I come in. That way I can see who’s out and who I should be expecting back during my shift. I like to know they’re coming, so I can call them by name. I think that’s kind of a nice thing to do, makes people feel welcome, you know?”

  A nice child, Mrs. Potter thought, and she said, “Yes, I do. May I take a look at your log, Megan?”

  She was amazed at her own temerity. Why in the world should the girl let her see it? On the other hand, as she had tried to drill into her children as they were growing up, a person had nothing to lose by asking, as long as the request was politely put. Perhaps Megan was still young enough to be intimidated by any grown-up asking for something.

  “Sure,” Megan said, shrugging, not seeming the least curious at the odd request. Mrs. Potter realized then that the young woman had such a trusting nature that it simply hadn’t occurred to her to say no. Mrs. Potter felt a bit guilty about that, but it didn’t keep her from taking the logbook from Megan’s hands and putting it down on her own lap. She flipped back to the early morning of the day that Ricardo died, to see if any hunting trips had departed from this gate. Evidently one had, just as Che had told her, judging by the fact that three vehicles, carrying what looked like six guests and two employees, had passed through. The initials beside the entries looked like Che’s, so Mrs. Potter thought she could safely assume that the C Lazy U hostess had accompanied her guests that morning. That was a detail Che hadn’t mentioned.

  She passed the book back through the window to Megan.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “You’re welcome. Y’all come back!”

  “I’m going to go on up to the main lodge anyway, Megan, because I need to have a word with Mrs. Thomas’s kitchen staff. When Mr. White returns, will you please tell him that I’ll come back for him about noon, and that we’ll go to lunch?”

  Megan’s eyes grew wide, and she grinned. “You bet!”

  Mrs. Potter felt as if she should fess up by saying, “Yes, dear, I’m the ‘bird.’ ” Instead, she merely waved, and smiled back. She followed the neatly paved road, which was lined with artfully planted cacti and yucca. Perhaps Jed could take comfort from the fact that his young admirer might have meant either Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, or Dick Powell, she thought with some amusement. A resemblance to any one of them was enough to flatter any man’s ego. Megan had only omitted
Alan Ladd and Ronald Colman to complete the list of the most handsome stars of Mrs. Potter’s youth.

  Old guys, indeed!

  Mrs. Potter drove into Charlie Watt’s front yard just as Charlie was getting out of his pickup truck. He saw her, stopped in his tracks, and came over to her driver’s window. She peered up into his tanned face and thought she could see the lines of sorrow that his wife’s death had etched in this past year.

  “Good morning, Genia. Any news?”

  “Not about Linda. Did you get a call from my ranch, Charlie? From one of the Ortega girls?”

  “No, I just this minute got back to the house, Genia, as you can see. I’ve been out checking on a fence line where one of your bulls got through last night, I hate to tell you.”

  “Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry.” She was distracted from her immediate errand by this fresh piece of bad news. “It wasn’t our Charolais, was it? He’s such a big, feisty old thing. He didn’t get in with your heifers, did he? What kind of damage am I going to owe you for this?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Genia, it wasn’t that big white monster. It was one of your littler fellows, and it was a bunch of my older cows who are already pregnant anyway, so I don’t think he could do any damage. You can pay for my new stretch of barb wire, and a couple of posts if you want to—”

  “I do, you just let me know how much.”

  “But, hell, even if he did sire himself a couple of young’uns, I ought to pay you for his services. He’s a lot better bull than any that I got. I was tempted to keep him on my side of the fence!”

  “You’re kind to say so, Charlie. Lord, what am I going to do, with Ricardo gone? If he were here, you’d have called him, wouldn’t you? And he’d have come right over to help you, and instead, you had to manage all the work by yourself—”

  “Oh, hell, Genia, it can’t be helped.”

  “I’ll have to hire somebody quickly, I guess.”

  “That ain’t no decision to make lightly. I’ll help where I can, you know I will, and there’s a bunch here in the valley who’ll pitch in every chance they get. Meantime, you get that Ken to cut down on his work for all them other folks, and help you out more. You thinkin’ of giving him Ricardo’s job?”