The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe (13 page)

32

W
e continued kicking it around as we parked the Bronco and walked to the check-in table lit by generator-powered floodlights because it was still dark.

The MP—not either of the ones we encountered during our first visit—checked our IDs against the list of registrants and then looked through our backpacks.

He lofted the faux Tompiro I'd made so as not to arouse suspicion when I departed with the real one. No one would notice it wasn't the same pot.

“Why are you bringing a clay pot?”

“My energy bars are in it.”

“Most people use Ziploc bags.”

“It's my good-luck charm. I've never walked twenty-six miles before. I figure I need all the help I can get.”

He dumped out the granola bars—homemade by Sharice with pearled barley, pomegranate syrup, sesame seeds and coconut flakes.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, before I tasted them.

He peered into the empty pot, put the bars back in it, handed it to me and said, “Whatever.”

Susannah was right about the twenty-sixers being hardcore, especially the ones at the front of the throng. I speculated that the officials were placing people based on how they finished in the New York Marathon or their metabolism rate or body mass index or something. I didn't care because I didn't want to be near the front.

When the starting gun was fired, hundreds of people with not enough sense to be at home and asleep sprinted away. Those boxed in behind jogged on the heels of those ahead, biding their time until a lane for passing opened up.

Thirty minutes later, Susannah and I had managed to fall far enough behind the twenty-sixers that they wouldn't notice us if we left the trail. Which would have been true even had we been only a single stride behind, because no one was looking back.

We were not far in front of the leaders of the fourteeners. They could see us clearly if we left the trail. But when we rounded the next curve, they couldn't and we did.

Or rather I did. Susannah stayed by the side of the trail to make sure no one saw me and—if they did—to warn me with a whistle if they decided to head in my direction. After a couple of minutes, I was out of earshot, so she no longer had to worry about whistling and could read the Bernie Rhodenbarr book she brought along. At least she could when it got lighter out.

It would've been perfect had the arroyo I scooted into been the one where I buried the Tompiro. But real life is seldom perfect.

The topo map had the triangulation marks I'd made when I buried the pot. The sun was still below the horizon, but there was enough light to see the profiles of the peaks. One look at the compass told me I was too far south. How far south I didn't know. I was using a handheld compass, not professional surveying tools.

I walked north, checking the angle every five hundred yards or so. When it appeared I was close to the correct angle, I began checking the hill to the west. The closer I got, the slower I went because I had to check more often, and I had to check all three points. I'd just checked the two peaks for about the twentieth time and turned to the hill. I cradled the compass in my hand and looked up to locate the peak just as the sun rose over the Oscura Mountains.

Those two famous musical notes—
ta
and
da
—played in my head. I was standing next to the dune where I buried the pot. Sometimes real life is perfect. I pulled the fake out of my backpack in preparation for making the exchange.

An hour and a half later, I found Susannah where I'd left her. There were still people scattered along the route as far as I could see in both directions, but they were in small clumps or alone. Some were the stragglers of the fourteeners, some were the twenty-sixers making their second pass at that part of the trail, and some were probably just lost.

A few people were within earshot, so I didn't say anything. I took the pot out of my pack, held it in my hand and started walking.

Susannah fell in next to me and said, sotto voce, “Wow, I knew you were good at copies, but this is beyond amazing. Even though you made it from memory, the real one looks
exactly
like your copy.”

“There's a reason for that,” I said, and heard the emotional pain in my voice. “This
is
the copy.”

She stopped. “I thought the plan was to leave the fake here. How are you going to explain arriving with one pot and leaving with two?”

“I'm not leaving with two. This is the fake, and it's the only pot I have. The real one is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah. Gone. As in not there.”

“Not there?”

“Right. As in dug up and carried away.”

“You must have dug in the wrong place.”

“Impossible. First, I had the triangulation points from our previous visit, and they all lined up. Second, I recognized the spot. And finally, my rebar was there. Someone stole the pot.”

“Yeah—you.”

I was too depressed to argue the pot-thief issue. “Someone stole it from the dune after I stole it from the cliff dwelling.”

We were silent while an elderly couple passed us. They wore big floppy hats and matching T-shirts that read
FIT AS A FIDDLE AND JUST AS STRINGY
.

Susannah started walking again, so I trailed along beside her. After a few seconds she said, “Carl Wilkes.”

“You think Carl followed us out here?”

“It would explain how the collector got the pot Thelma said she saw.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And it would explain why Thelma was so sure Carl paid you for the pot. Because he had it. She just didn't realize he got it himself rather than from you.”

“Okay, I agree it all fits. But somehow I can't see Carl double-crossing me like that.”

“You've always refused to see his dark side.”

“Thank you, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Did you tell Carl you were coming out here to look for the pot when they had the Trinity Site visitation event?”

“I did.” I felt like an idiot.

“I think that cinches it. He came out here, went to the Trinity Site and hid out behind the crowd. He probably spotted me alone and knew that meant you were off looking for a pot. Remember I told you I was one of the last cars to leave, and I stopped and let people pass until there was no one behind me? One of those people who passed must have been Carl. He made a mental note of where I was. Then he came back and dug up the pot.”

“How did he get back in?”

“He was in the Corps of Engineers. Maybe he has connections with someone at the range.”

“I don't know, Suze. It all sounds so bizarre.”

“You have another theory?”

“Maybe it was that MP. He also saw where we were stopped, and it would be easy for him to go back and dig up the pot since he lives right here on the range.”

“And he would go back and dig around because … what? He figured anyone who pees on his pants is probably a pot thief?”

“It was water.”

“So you claimed. But you have to agree there was no reason for him to think you'd buried a pot. Or anything else for that matter.”

I nodded and we started walking again.

When I'd told Fletcher that Carl hadn't told me the name of the collector, he'd responded, “'Course not. Probably afraid you might cut out the middleman.” Carl was the middleman at that point. As the first man, my job was to find a pot. As the third man—make that third woman—Regina's job was to buy the pot. And as the middleman, Carl's job was to make a bundle by moving the pot from me to Regina and making sure Regina and I never met.

But by stealing the pot from the dune, Carl had cut me out. And now he was dead. My first thought was there had to be a connection. My second thought was that my first thought was from hanging around so much with Susannah.

Then I remembered that when I told Whit to be careful because Regina might be the murderer, Whit said, “You'd make a lousy cop, Hubert. If the buyer was gonna kill Wilkes, he would've done it
after
he got the pot.”

Actually, I didn't tell Whit that Regina might be the killer. I didn't even know her as Regina at that point.

But regardless of the name, it made sense that the collector did exactly what Whit said: killed Carl after he delivered the pot.

33

T
here were four MPs checking people on the way out, but the lines were short because most participants stayed for the closing ceremonies, during which awards and citations were given out for things like first place in the marathon, oldest participant, most years of consecutive attendance and so on.

There was no award for most disappointed participants, so we skipped the ceremony in order to get an early start back to Albuquerque.

I chose the line with the MP who had checked me in. He looked into my pot and said, “Your energy bars are still in there.”

“That must explain how tired I feel.”

He returned the pot and my other belongings.

Susannah drove the Bronco on the grounds I was so depressed I might run off the road.

It was past ten when I let myself into my residence. I placed the fake pot on the kitchen table. Geronimo was happy to see me. He must have sensed my mood because instead of begging for food, he plopped down at my feet and stared up at me with those sad eyes.

I opened the bottle of Gruet I'd planned to drink in celebration. I didn't feel like cooking, so I reached into the pot and pulled out one of Sharice's energy bars. It didn't energize me, but it went great with the champagne. I gave an energy bar to Geronimo. He liked it too. I filled his water bowl and my champagne flute. Even in the bottomless pit of depression, I don't drink Gruet from the bottle.

When the alcohol began to kick in, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started wondering how I was going to avoid foreclosure. I reached for another energy bar, but the pot was empty.

The pot! That's it. Sell the fake. Pass it off as real and get $50,000. Like Susannah had said about
The Maltese Falcon
, although I couldn't remember exactly how that was similar.

I congratulated myself for having maintained my craftsmanship even when fabricating a fake I had planned to leave buried in the sand dune. The fake had returned home with me, the plan it was created for having been thwarted by the disappearance of the real pot it was supposed to replace. But the fake was good enough to pass off as the real thing to anyone except a trained expert. And while the buyer I had in mind probably knew more about pots than the average citizen, I didn't figure him for a true expert.

It's against my code of ethics to lie about a fake pot. If someone offers to buy one of my replicas at the price penned on the discreet little tented card in front of it, I see no reason to broach the issue of authenticity. If they ask me whether a pot is genuine, I say, “Of course.”

Well, it's a genuine
pot
, isn't it?

But if they ask me whether it's old, I tell the truth.

Would Jack Haggard ask? I doubted it. He knew that Carl—his
associate
—had sent me on a mission to find a genuine Tompiro. If I placed the pot in front of him, he would assume I had succeeded.

34

I
woke up in my chair. Never a good start to the day.

I glanced down without moving my head. An empty bottle of Gruet was on the floor next to Geronimo. He likes champagne, but my hangover told me he was not the one who had drained the bottle.

I nudged him with a foot. He opened one eye.

“Get me some coffee,” I said.

“Arf,” he replied. He stood up and walked over to a kitchen cabinet. It was not the one with the coffee. It was the one with the dog food.

There was a knock and then Glad's voice asking through the door if I was home. I told him to come in. When he did so, I asked him, without getting up or even turning my head, to make me some coffee and feed Geronimo. In that order.

“Had a bad night, did we?”

“After a bad day. Hope yours was better.”

“It wasn't. I was almost struck whilst walking on the verge.”

“On the verge of what?”

“I think you Yanks call it the shoulder. Strange phrase. Anyway, a lorry almost struck me and didn't even stop to see if I was all right.”

“If she didn't stop, how do you know she was a Laurie and not a Jane or a Mary?”

“Not Laurie—lorry, a truck.”

“Ah.”

While the coffee brewed, I told him about my second trip to the missile range and the pot being stolen.

“Must have been Wilkes,” he said.

“That's what Susannah thinks.”

“Aced her O-levels, I should think. I told you Carl was dodgy. So now what?”

“How about you pay me five years' worth of lease payments in advance?”

He laughed. “If I don't get the shop started soon, I'll be making the payments in arrears, if at all. Are things really so bad?”

I nodded. “I need money and I need it now. The problem is a high-end pot store is not like a pharmacy or gas station. I don't have a steady stream of income. It's either feast or famine.”

“And you're currently in a famine.”

“Of biblical proportions.”

“All right then. Here's what you do. Have a markdown sale.”

I probably wrinkled my nose. I don't like to sell my pots even at the inflated prices I have on the tented cards. The idea of marking them down like last fall's fashions is disgusting.

He evidently read my mind. “I know what you're thinking. Tiffany's doesn't mark down diamonds. But instead of
not
selling one pot for thirty thousand, how about
actually
selling two for fifteen thousand each?” He handed me a cup of coffee and opened a can of food for Geronimo.

He poured himself some coffee. “A big markdown. Just this one time. To meet an emergency.”

When he put it like that, it was a bit less distasteful. “I'm not sure a markdown sale would work for me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, suppose a basic BMW sells for fifty thousand. If I advertise I have them marked down to twenty-five thousand, people will line up to buy them. But selling pots is not like selling cars. There's no Blue Book for ancient Indian pottery. So if I say this pot, previously listed at thirty thousand, is now available for only fifteen, most people will just say it was overpriced at thirty and—who knows—maybe still is at fifteen.”

“You won't know if you don't try.”

His enthusiasm was bolstering. But I was still uncomfortable with selling any pot at a discount. I've spent most of my adult life collecting my inventory, fighting back acrophobia to climb into places I'd rather not be, digging holes with my bare hands, sleeping rough in the desert.

“I have another plan to get some money,” I told him. “If it doesn't work, I'll consider your sale idea.”