The Lies that Bind (2 page)

The Kid jumped out of bed, climbed into his jeans and T-shirt and shook his curls into place. I put the telephone back on the hook, staggered into and out of the shower, dressed in some boring lawyer's clothes and combed my hair. No time for breakfast sopapillas or Red Zinger tea.

He waited in the living room for me. I kissed him good-bye, opened the door, stepped into La Vista's hallway and found myself staring down at ninety pounds of disapproving mother.

The
sun had crept in through an open archway and was picking out the stains on the indoor/outdoor carpet and highlighting the cracks in the peeling stucco. The woman stood in front of my door with a finger poised in preparation for pressing the bell. About five feet two, she balanced carefully on her high-heeled shoes. Her purse was suspended from a gold chain, and she clutched it to her side with a pointed elbow. Her sprayed-in-place hairdo was the color of a hard frost. She wore a powder-blue suit with gold buttons and navy-blue trim. Her eyes, a critical blue, implied that good grooming and designer clothes gave her the right to decide who was right and who wrong. I hadn't even left my apartment yet, but I was already among the wrong. While she'd been drinking her morning tea, the Kid and I had been getting laid. Our just-had-sex aura gave us away. She knew we'd been doing it. We knew that she knew, and she knew that we knew. She looked at us; we looked back. Disapproval was thick as the dust in La Vista's hallway.

“Are you Neil Hamel?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“The … attorney?” An attorney, her tone implied, didn't have sex in the morning, or at any time of day or night with someone who is younger, darker and better-looking. Unless, of course, the attorney was a man.

“My office is on Lead,” I replied. I was prepared to add, But don't bother coming because wills are not my cup of tea and neither are you, only she spoke first.

She took a deep breath, aligned her vertebrae, clutched her purse, cleared her throat. “I've been accused of killing Justine Virga,” she said.

2

S
HE'D GOTTEN MY
attention. The phone started ringing inside my apartment, telling me I was late for my appointment. I already knew that, so I let it ring. I don't do wills, but I do do murder cases when I can get them, and she looked like the rare suspect who could afford to pay. “Tell me about it,” I said.

She looked around La Vista's hallway, at the cracks in the stucco and the closed doors that might be concealing eavesdroppers. Her eyes lingered suspiciously on the Kid as if he was a street dog who'd been trying to get into her trash. While she scrutinized him from top to bottom—his uncombed mop of hair, his T-shirt and jeans—she tightened her grip on her purse. My lover and my hallway did not please her, but if she thought I was going to invite her into my apartment and let her disapprove of that too, she was wrong.

The Kid got her message. “I go now, Chiquita,” he said, his grammar clunkier and his accent thicker than it had been in recent memory.

“
Bueno
.” I kissed him again. “See you tonight?”

“Sure.
Hasta luego
,” he said to me. To the woman he added with exaggerated Mexican politeness, “
Buenos días. Mucho gusto
.” There's a fine line between politeness and insult, and Mexicans know how to walk it. Actually, the Kid's Spanish wasn't Mexican, or New Mexican either. It was South American, but the subtleties were wasted on the woman, and so was the gusto. She didn't bother to answer the Kid, and he didn't waste his time waiting. He tossed his head and walked down the hallway. I watched his long legs turn the corner and listened to the phone ringing. It had become obvious I wasn't going to answer it or ask my visitor in, but just in case she had any doubts, I inserted my key into the dead bolt and snapped it shut. The woman hesitated, and then she said, “Could you give me a ride home? We can talk there.”

“Where's your car?” I asked.

“The police took it.”

It had the sound of vehicular homicide, a common enough form of murder in New Mexico, where a car is a loaded weapon too.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“Taxi.”

“Why didn't you ask the driver to wait?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you.”

“
All right,” I said, “I'll take you home, but first I need to know who you are and why you came to me.”

“I am Martha Conover.”

It had a familiar ring, but I couldn't place her.

“You know my daughter,” she continued. “Cynthia Reid.”

That was it. Cindy and I went to high school together in Ithaca, New York. Martha Conover had been widowed and was the rare single mother back then, I remembered. It gave her full responsibility for Cindy, and she took it seriously. She had Cindy late in life and was older than the other mothers—older than mine anyway—and conspicuous by her presence in her daughter's life. She was into real estate investment and seemed to have a need in those days that only real estate could fill. When Cindy got knocked up by Emilio Velásquez, a Spanish exchange student, Martha wouldn't let her marry him. Cindy had the baby. Emilio joined the army and went to Vietnam. A few years later Cindy married Whitney J. Reid III, a man Martha approved of, who was about ten years older and whose political views, even back then, were to the right of Attila the Hun. Whit took on Cindy's child, and people thought she was lucky to get him. I wondered if she still thought that, if she'd
ever
thought that. Last I'd heard, they were living in Phoenix. She'd written me once to tell me her mother had moved to Albuquerque and to suggest I look her up, but I didn't. Martha hadn't approved of me when I was in high school—I was Cindy's hippie friend—which made me wonder what she was doing at my doorstep now. Did she think a license to practice law had made me respectable?

I led the way across the parking lot to my yellow Nissan, which was loaded with bumper stickers from the previous owner, stickers I'd been meaning to scrape off but hadn't yet. McDonald's recycled brown bags decomposed slowly in the compost heap the floor on the passenger side had become. The files from the Chávez case were sitting on the seat. I put the files in the trunk, picked the litter off the floor, took it to the Dumpster and dumped it in. I got in my side, Martha Conover got in the other. She straightened her back, placed her purse square in her lap and fastened her seat belt with a metallic click.

This wasn't exactly my living room, but it was as close as she was going to get. Here I was ready to talk, and before we went any further there were some things I wanted to know, like when, where, how and who. “When did this supposed homicide take place?” I asked.

“Last night around ten-fifteen, the police say.” Martha peered around her as if the other cars had ears. I continued my line of questioning.

“Where?”

“In the road at Los Cerros, the apartment complex I own and live in.”

She was doing all right with her investments; Los Cerros was one of the largest apartment complexes in town. “How?”

“
The police say I ran her over.”

“What do you say?”

“I hit a speed bump. I was going too fast, and I hit a speed bump.” Her blue eyes flashed at me. She spun a diamond and sapphire ring around on her finger.

“Did you see anyone when you were driving up the road or entering your apartment?”

“I don't have an apartment. I have a town house.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No.”

“Did the APD indicate that they had witnesses?”

“They knocked on some doors, looking for the owner of my car, but my neighbors were asleep and hadn't seen or heard anything, except for the one who found the body in the road and called the police.”

“They had to have some reason to impound your car.”

“There were dents in the bumper and the hood.”

Was there any blood on the car, I wondered, hair or fibers that hadn't washed off in the rain? The DA's office would have that information sooner or later, but they were unlikely to give it to me, not unless Martha got indicted. There was one other question that always needs to be asked when motor vehicles are involved. “Were you drinking?”

“I had two martinis at the Albuquerque Women's Club meeting,” she replied, folding her hands in her lap.

“Did the police take a Breathalyzer?” I asked.

“I wouldn't let them.” Her eyes were defiant and proud of it.

“They did tell you that refusing to take a Breathalyzer means an automatic suspension of your license for a year, didn't they?”

“Yes.”

“You're lucky they didn't put you in jail,” I said. She shrugged as if to imply she wasn't the kind of woman who got sent to jail. “Did the police read you your rights?”

“Yes.”

“You should have called me last night before you said anything to them.”

“I wanted to discuss it with Whit and Cynthia before I called anybody.”

I had a few more questions. “Who was Justine Virga?”

“She was once my grandson Michael's girlfriend,” Martha Conover said.

“You knew her?” When the accused knows the victim (and they do 86 percent of the time), it puts a different spin on things.

“
Years ago.”

“Virga is an unusual name. How do you spell it?” Verga, I knew, means the male organ in Spanish. Virga means precipitation that evaporates before it reaches the ground.

“V-i-r-g-a. It's not Spanish, is it?”

“No.”

“I think she gave herself an English name when she came here from Argentina. Can we go now?”

I turned the key in the ignition and backed the Nissan out of its space. “Los Cerros is on—” Martha began.

“I know where Los Cerros is.” In the Heights. Those who have money in Albuquerque escape to the Rio Grande Valley or the higher elevations, while the rest of us get stuck in the middle.

Martha kept her silence, and I thought about what I had to work with: a woman who'd been drinking and refused to take a Breathalyzer, a dent in a car, a dead girlfriend. It made me wish I'd kept my nine o'clock.

I found my way to Los Cerros, turned in and let Martha Conover direct me through a maze of two-story Mediterranean-style stucco buildings with tile roofs and grounds that were carefully landscaped and automatically watered. The speed bumps kept me to a boring five mph. A couple of Hispanic guys were trimming the shrubs. The lower part of the complex had ramps leading into the buildings, indicating the handicapped lived there, which could well have been a condition for getting a building permit. The middle section allowed children, and a couple of them raced their toy cars down the sidewalk, screaming. We drove past a swimming pool, a putting green and an empty tennis court. The road climbed sharply, the apartment buildings turned into town houses and the children disappeared. This was where the more desirable tenants—singles, childless couples and old ladies—lived. A couple of them were hanging around a bank of mailboxes (which also had a tile roof), because they needed their social security checks or because they liked the mailman. The older you get, the bigger role the mailman plays in your life.

“Go faster here,” Martha ordered. “I want to show you what happened.” I don't usually obey orders, but I was curious to see how she'd present her case and no one else was in the road, so I put the pedal to the floor. The speed bump, painted yellow, was about six inches high and hard as a wall. I'd reached only fifteen by the time we hit it, but that was fast enough. Every bone in my body rattled. The frame on the Nissan shook. A piece of muffler fell off.

“See,” said Martha Conover.

“See what?” I replied.

“A body wouldn't feel hard like that,” she said. “What I hit was that speed bump.” She may have convinced herself, but she hadn't convinced me. “Over five miles an hour, anything you hit feels hard,” I replied.

“
I was driving a Buick,” she said.

“Um,” said I. “Is it possible, given the darkness and the rain, that you didn't see her?”

“No. My high beams were on, and there is nothing wrong with my long-distance vision either. I only need glasses for reading.”

She directed me to her place, at the very top of Los Cerros. It had a hundred-mile view, the kind of view that makes you want to think the big thoughts or earn the big bucks it takes to pay for it. We walked down the sidewalk that led from Martha's parking space to her town house. The grounds were impeccable, the walls of the town houses freshly stuccoed, and there were no cobwebs in the corners. Martha, I figured, didn't do that kind of work herself, but whoever did took pride in it. She turned the key in her lock and let me in. Her town house smelled of Lemon Pledge and was the kind of neat that made me long for La Vista. The carpet was pink pile and didn't have a hair on it. The polished furniture had spindly little legs. The sofa was upholstered in flowered chintz. Ivy in a brass pot sat on the coffee table. The drapes were drawn to keep out the long and dusty view. It was the kind of living room they do well back East where the view is limited to a lawn and the trees at the end of it, ladylike and formal, expensive but comfortable. Martha seemed to be one of those people who take the East with them wherever they go. She offered me a cup of tea.

“Do you have any Red Zinger?” I asked.

“What's that?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Can I use your phone?”

“Yes.”

While she made her tea, I called the office to tell my secretary, Anna, what she already knew, that I'd missed my nine o'clock.

Martha brought the teapot into the living room, sat on the sofa and poured the tea into a china cup translucent enough to see her fingers through. She took one spoon of sugar, one slice of lemon.