The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein (16 page)

The only explanation I could come up with as we drove downtown in Whit’s unmarked police cruiser was that the collector committed suicide and wanted to make it look like I had killed him.

You’re probably wondering why he would do that insofar as he didn’t know me and had no reason to shuffle off this mortal coil in such a fashion as to land me in prison. I was wondering the same thing and with much greater urgency. The best answer I could come up with was life insurance. Maybe he had a big policy and wanted his kids to get the proceeds. Life insurance, for obvious reasons, doesn’t pay when the death is self-inflicted. So by making it look like I killed him, he would make sure the insurance paid off.

But that theory had two flaws. First, what sort of person would want his last act on earth to bring grievous harm to an utter stranger? And second, his heirs would get a million dollars worth of pots, not to mention the house and whatever else he owned, so the lack of a life insurance payoff would hardly be a calamity.

Somehow I never mind talking to Whit and telling him things I shouldn’t tell a cop who’s arresting me. I guess I figure he knows I’m innocent and can help me even though he never says that. But once we arrived at the police station and he turned me over to other people, I did the wise thing and clammed up.

It took almost three hours for them to search me, fill out forms, fingerprint me, and photograph me. The only thing that didn’t take long was the questioning session because I told them I wouldn’t answer any questions unless my lawyer was present. They let me call him, and then they put me in a cell.

Fortunately, there was only one other occupant, a tall skinny guy who needed about five thousand dollars worth of cosmetic dentistry but didn’t look like he could afford so much as a toothbrush. Or would use it if he could. At one point in his life he must have had enough money for a tattoo The letters h-e-l-l were on the back of the first joints of the fingers of his left hand and the letters b-e-n-t were on the right. If he held his hands out in front of him palms down, he could read “hell bent.” But as I looked at his hand, I saw “tneb lleh.”

Around noon my jailers asked me if I wanted lunch. I declined.

One of Layton Kent’s paralegals finally showed up around one with legal paperwork, perhaps a writ of some sort or maybe bail. I didn’t care. I just wanted out. The process to let me out took almost as long as the one to put me in. I haven’t stayed in many hotels because I don’t like to travel, but I think the Albuquerque Jail could definitely streamline their check-in/check-out process with a little advice from the folks at Hilton.

The paralegal, an attractive young lady with perfect posture and a pleasing smile, drove me to Layton’s club in his Rolls Royce. As you may have heard me explain, Layton has an office somewhere, but he seldom uses it. He spends most of his day at his table that overlooks the 18
^th
green at his club. He doesn’t play golf or take any other form of exercise, and he looks like a man who spends a great deal of time at a dining table. He must weigh close to three hundred pounds, but he doesn’t look fat. He looks big, of course, but he doesn’t seem blubbery. His face is large and its transition to his neck ill-defined, but the whole area is without wrinkles. His hair is precisely cut, his nails perfectly manicured, his clothes stylish. The word that comes to mind is sleek. Not sleek like a cheetah, sleek like a whale. Very large but still sleek, the only bulge – and I’m just guessing here – being his wallet, which must be enormous.

He is widely considered to be the most influential man in Albuquerque. He knows everyone who is anyone, and quite a few people like me who are no one. His lovely wife, Mariella, is the Grande Dame of Albuquerque society. She isn’t just
on
the A list – she draws it up. She is reputed to be a descendent of the Duke who gave our fair city its unusual name. This seems unlikely in light of the fact that the Duke never set foot in the New World. Royalty didn’t travel overseas in those days. Considering what it must have been like to cross the Atlantic in a wooden ship about eighty feet long, who could blame them?

Layton’s practice centers on creating legal ways for rich people to get richer and avoid paying taxes on their riches. His client list includes most wealthy Albuquerqueans and a lot of other lawyers. They like to use him because he is not seen as a competitor. He runs his practice with a bevy of paralegals and secretaries but no other attorneys. And he doesn’t practice corporate law and only rarely stoops to criminal law when a current client requires it.  

I seem to require it more than any of his other clients, and I’m sure he would have dropped me from his list the first time I was accused of murder had it not been for Mariella. She is a collector of rare Native American pottery, and I am her personal dealer.

Layton was wearing a white linen suit, a pair of tan and white saddle oxfords, a silk shirt the color of the fine tan leather on the saddle of the shoes, and a sage-colored knit tie. He could have passed for Sydney Greenstreet playing in a movie written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

He laced his manicured fingers on the table and sat motionless as I told him the whole story, starting with the blindfolded ride, backtracking to the three visits of Segundo Cantú and the reappearance of Carl Wilkes, then all the shenanigans on Titanium Trail, and ending with the events at the jail.

“You left out an important detail,” he said after I finished.

“I have heard your explanation of why the client has to tell the lawyer everything,” I replied, “and that’s what I did.”

“And the name of the person you are charged with murdering?”

“I have no idea.”

His eyebrows rose without his brow furrowing. I don’t know how that’s possible. Maybe he’s had plastic surgery and the skin is so taut on his face that the upward motion of the lifting brows is transferred all the way over his head. Every time he does that trick I want to walk around behind him and see if the back of his neck is wrinkled.

He didn’t say anything, so I did. “Remember I told you about Whit making me go to the morgue to identify a corpse? I knew who it was – the collector – but I didn’t know his name.”

“I understand that you didn’t know it then. But surely they must have told you the name when you were arrested.”

I shook my head.

Layton raised one hand and the attractive paralegal came to the table with her briefcase.

“Our copy of Mr. Schuze’s arrest warrant, Jenny.”

She retrieved it from the briefcase and handed it to him. Layton smiled. “You probably think I retain you as a client because Mariella is fond of you.”

I nodded.

“That is a factor. But there is another. You are the most incompetent client in the annals of jurisprudence, and I enjoy the challenge of representing you.”

I wanted to tell His Pompousness that I didn’t give a damn about being a competent client, but discretion required me to remain silent.

“You have been arrested and processed without even knowing whom you are accused of killing. It is not, as you surmised, the anonymous pot collector. It is another player in the narrative you gave me – Segundo Cantú.”

I felt like I was in freefall. I grabbed the table and took deep breaths. After the spinning sensation subsided, I started thinking, and I remembered Whit’s exact words from that morning.

“It can’t be Cantú,” I told Layton. “After Whit read me my rights, he said, ‘I had a hunch you knew that stiff you said you couldn’t identify. What I never suspected was that you killed him’. So it has to be the collector.”

Layton thought for a few seconds. “There are only two possible explanations. One is that Detective Fletcher made a mistake. I reject that possibility
prima facie
. Fletcher is a Philistine, but he is by no means incompetent. Thus, we must accept the second possibility.”

“And that is?”

“The collector was also named Segundo Cantú.”

“So Segundo Cantú...” Susannah started. Then she hesitated and evidently decided she needed to clarify. “The young one,” she said, “the one you didn’t kill—”

“I didn’t kill the older one either,” I pointed out.

“I know that, Hubie, but for now we have to go with the police’s version. Anyway, I was going to say that the young one must be Segundo Cantú, Junior. So that makes him ‘Second the Second’!”

“Maybe he’s not a junior,” I ventured. “Maybe they just happened to have the same name.”

“Right. Two guys named Segundo Cantú, and one of them just happens to ask the other one – who lives on the same street by the way – to deliver his pots down to Spirits in Clay because there’s a guy down there in Old Town named Segundo Schuze who can copy them.”

“Except I’m not named Segundo.”

“It wouldn’t be any weirder if you were. They have to be father and son. And that should help us figure out who did it.”

She was in her element, a real live murder mystery. She loved it. I 
was also in the murder mystery. Unfortunately, I was the suspect, and I hated it.

I have a tendency to drink too much when I’m under pressure, so I was nursing my margarita to avoid that pitfall. Susannah kept glancing at my glass because she was ready for a second – or maybe I should say a
segundo
– and we always order refills simultaneously.

“A girl could die of thirst waiting for you to finish that thing,” she finally said and then added, “You drink. I’ll talk. They have a good case against you, Hubie. First, you admitted going to his house. Second, your prints are on the murder weapon—”

“A glass isn’t a mur—”

“You drink. I’ll talk. Your prints are on the glass that had the poison that killed him. I’d say that’s a murder weapon. Third, you lied to Whit at the morgue—“

“I didn’t—”

“You drink. I’ll talk. You didn’t tell a lie, but you also didn’t tell him 
you had seen the guy, something an innocent person would have done. 
Fourth—”

“I am innocent and...” I saw her eyes narrow and held up a palm. “I know, I know. I’ll drink, you talk.”

“Where was I? Oh, right, number four. Fourth, you have a motive – he swiped your pay for the appraisal. Face it, Hubert – it looks bad. The only way to get you out of this fix is for us to find the real murderer. And that should be easy.”

I took a small sip.

“Well?” she said.

“I’m drinking, you’re talking.”

“Take another sip, then you can talk.”

I did. I asked her why she thought it would be easy to find the real murderer.

“Because,” she explained, “you already know so much about the case. The son brought copies to you. You broke into his house—”

“I didn’t—”

“I know you say it’s not breaking in when you don’t steal anything, but the police don’t look at it that way. Keep drinking. You saw his house. You stole his car—”

“You hotwired it.”

“Right, but you’re the one who drove it away. And you kept it, which turns out to be a good thing because maybe there’s a clue in it. And you saw the collection and discovered your copies in it. You saw that house when you did the appraisal and again when you broke in and stole the copies.”

“They were
my
copies,” I said in exasperation.

“No,” she countered, “they were
his
copies because
he
paid for them. And finally, you know someone is trying to frame you because of the lengths Cantú Senior went to get your prints on the glass.”

I finally finished my drink, and Susannah signaled the long-limbed Angie for another round. Angie has a triangular face with a wide mouth and the shiniest dark brown eyes I’ve ever seen. If they were stars, they’d rate at least a magnitude five on Ptolemy’s luminosity scale.

I took a very small sip of my second margarita to make sure it was as good as the first. It was better.

“The fingerprint thing really confuses me,” I admitted. I told her about my life insurance theory, but she dismissed that as ridiculous, and I can’t say I disagreed with her.

She said, “I think it’s safe to assume the murderer didn’t say to Cantú Senior, ‘I’m planning to poison you, so make sure to get Schuze’s prints on one of your glasses so I can blame it on him.’ But Cantú did make sure to get your prints, so the only explanation that makes sense is that the murderer convinced Cantú to get your prints for some other reason.”

“I don’t know, Hubie. When we figure out who the murderer is, we can ask him.”

“O.K., who’s the murderer?”

“Primero Cantú,” she said without hesitation.

“Huh?”

“If there’s a Segundo, there must be a Primero. And the oldest child inherits, so he killed his father to get the pots.”

“And how do we prove he did it? And before we do that, how do we find him?”

“Do I have to do all the work?”

We kicked it around for the rest of the evening, and she did end up doing all the work because I had nothing to offer. All I knew was I didn’t kill Cantú and I had no clue who did.