The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (29 page)

“Did you take her flowers?”
she asked.

“A stem of yucca blossoms.”

“Did she strip them into a bowl like she did at your place?”

“Yes, into a bowl I made for her.”

“That’s a rather extravagant gift for a second date.”

“She thought so too. She wanted me to take it back to the shop and sell it, but I told her she’d have to keep it because I couldn’t sell it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was inscribed ‘
To Sharice
’.”

“You really like her.”

“So much so
it’s scary.”

“Be careful, Hubie.”

“Thanks.”

“What did she serve?”

“A
salad
of
frisee, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados and fiddleheads
.”

“Fiddleheads are a food?”

“It’s a fern that grows in Canada. It reminded me just slightly o
f
artichokes. The dressing had m
aple syrup
in it
.
”

“
And for the main course?”

“The salad was the main course.”

She lau
ghed. “So that’s how she stays s
o slim.”

“Maybe it’s how she justified the dessert, a saskatoon pie in a buttery crust.”

“
A Canadian-
themed meal.
And after de
s
sert?”

“We played Scrabble.”

“Scrabble is not ‘chic’, Hubie
.
”

“
It is when the board is revealed by removing the tablecloth
,
and
the players are sipping Gruet rosé.”

“And after
Scrabble
?”

“We smooched.”

“Saying ‘smooched’ is so not ‘chic’. Did it lead anywhere?”

“That’s sort of a personal question, Suze.”

“In other word
s
, no.”

We both laughed at that. “She said to me, ‘Keep your cast on, Cowboy’.”

“I guess it would be awkward with a cast.”

“I don’t think I’m likely to find out
. But things are going great. May
be after the cast is off…”

“
Thing
s
are looking good for you, Hubie.”

I sighed. “Only in the romance department. The rest of my life is falling apart.” I crunched a chip. “I’m beginning to wonder if there really is something to th
at
King Tut Curse.”

“You had nothing to do with King Tut.”

I shook my head. “It’s a generic term. Anyone who digs in a grave can get it.”

“Good thing mosquito
e
s are rare in the desert,” she joked.

“Dying from a mosquito bite is only one example. Curses can take any form.”

“And what sort of curse are you suffering?”

“Think about it. Immediately after I dug in that grave, someone st
ole
my Bronco. You say
t
here are no coincidences,
and I’m beginning to believe you. Then
a coyote showed up dragging a chain. Doesn’t that sound like some sort of macabre symbol?”

She was twisting a lock of hair around her fingers. “It is bizarre, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a symbol.”

“Then
I drop
ped
my canteen and sp
r
ain
ed
my ankle
, leaving me immobilized in the desert with no water, a potentially fatal
situation
.”

“But you didn’t die. You were rescued by a doctor even though you were in the middle of nowhere. That’s the opposite of a curse. It’s more like a miracle
.”

“Another way to look at it,” I said, “is that it was just the curse keeping me alive so the next
pestilence could be visited on me. Like in the Old T
estament. The only reason
they didn’t die of thirst during the drought was they had to be alive when the swarms of locusts arrived.”

“Well, no locusts have shown up, and nothing bad has happened since you got back.”

“
Wrong.
I got two bad phone calls
today
. The first was from a supercilious young woman at my bank saying they couldn’t grant me a second mortgage.”

stify">“You’ve been paying on that place for over twenty years. You must have tons of equity.”

“Equity is not the problem. I don’t qualify for a loan because I have a low credit score.”

“You don’t pay your bills?”

“
I don’t have any to pay.
The only bill I
have is my mortgage, but they’
re the ones considering the loan so they don’t count. What they want is a credit score based on how I’ve paid other people.”

“What about your credit card?”

“I rarely use it. And when I do, I pay it off when the statement arrives.”

“That should help raise your credit score.”

“No. It lowers it.”

She plu
nked her glass down on the table. “Paying off your credit card
lowers
your credit score?”

I nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but if you pay the whole balance, then you really d
on’t have a loan
from the credit card company. They were just a sort of payment agent for you. But if you make installment payments a
n
d have a rotating balance, then your credit score goes up because you are handling the loan responsibly.”

“No you’re not. The responsible thing is to pay it and avoid interest.”

“Yea
h
,” I agreed, “if you want to be responsible to yourself. But the bank can’t make money that way.”

“So they reward you for paying them interest by giving you a higher
credit
score so
you can qualify for a loan and then… wait, pay them more interest. I guess it does make sense – for the banks. And I suppose this system was inve
n
ted by the
s
ame crooks who ran the banking system off the cliff then got a government bail-out.”

gn="just
“You got it. And then used some of our money to give themselves huge bonuses.”

“This is making me mad. Let’s change the subject and go to the second bad call. Maybe it will be better.”

“Huh?”

“But first,” she said, “let’s get another round.”

I agreed we had earned it by breaking the code to our evil banking empire even though there was nothing we could do about it, so I signaled Angie for replenishments.

After they arrived, I told Susannah
what
Whit Fletcher
told me
.

“
He said
he’d
poked around, and there is no missing person who’s a likely candidate to be our friend from the cliff dwelling.”

“How would he know that?”

“
He called his connections with the sheriff’s offices in
each
of
the
counties closest to the site. They told him the people they h
ave on their missing list are
people they suspect have relocated of their own volition, people running out on child support or skipping bail
, thinks like that
. Then there are
a few m
issing children. There is no adult they are actively looking for.”

She mulled it over. “I guess it was worth a try, but it doesn’t tell us much. The dead guy could have been
a drifter, an illegal immigrant
or some other type who would
n’t
be on any record.”

“Like a prehistoric person
,” I said
.
“
They didn’t record deaths in the t
en
th cinotype"entury.”

“It’s not a mummy, Hubert. Someone mo
ved it
,
re
member? You agreed that mea
ns it was probably a murder vic
tim. You got too clo
se
to
the
evidence, so the killer relocated the body.”

“I did think that made sense, but there
’
s another possibility.
Maybe a
treasure hunter found the body and took it.
”

“Why?”

“
To sell, of course. Human remains bring big bucks on the black market.
“

“God, that is so sick.”

31

The pot went into the kiln the next morning.

I was happy with
what came out that afternoon.
I
t
wasn’t exactly like the shard, but it was close enough to fool the average buyer.

Not that I de
liberately set out to deceive
buyer
s
, average or
otherwise
.

If someone is conceited enough to think he knows a genuine w
o
rk when he sees it, being hoodwinked is j
ust rewards. But when a buyer asks me if a pot is genuine
, I
tell the truth.

After it had cooled, I took
the pot
to the shop and placed in on a shelf. I
looked
at it trying to decide on a price. Then I glanced at the partial pot Alvar Nu
ñ
ez had brought
,
and lightning struck.