Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

I made a left when those walls turned and entered the grove of trees I’d admired as I’d parked the Ford. As soon as I did, I spotted Jose standing near the trunk of the tallest oak. With him was a young woman who, for looks and coloring, might have been his sister. Might have been, except for the way he was holding her, which was tightly enough to knock her bright red shawl off her bare shoulders.

I altered course toward the setting sun to give the couple back a little of their privacy. As I did, Jose nodded to me, nervously. The woman just stared me down, imperious, though all of eighteen.

The Lost Mine Cantina had a room ready and waiting for me, having been forewarned by Jose, who had actually flashed the proprietor Torrance Beaumont’s telegram. My host’s name was Reyes, and he pumped me for information about Beaumont and other Hollywood lights while I sat at the cantina’s bar. I was content to be pumped, since Reyes’s beer was ice cold and I was waiting for a long-distance call to Ella to go through on the Lost Mine’s — and Agujero’s — only telephone. Besides which, Reyes was pushing fifty, and the stars he asked about were the ones I was fondest of, the ones who’d been big when I’d first hit Hollywood in the thirties.

In exchange for my gossip, Reyes, who was a short man with grizzled hair around his ears and none elsewhere on his scalp, told me the history of his cantina, how it had prospered back when the local silver mine had been worked and how he hoped it would prosper again. Those hopes rested on the Atomic Energy Commission, which was buying up a lot of land nearby, and on Gladys Glenn Racine, who had told Reyes of her plan to found an artists’ colony. While he talked, I examined the blackened tree trunks that served as the room’s ceiling beams and ran a finger along the rough scrollwork carved into the varnished boards of the bar. And I thought that the Lost Mine would be a hopping joint if the physicists and the flower painters showed up on the same night.

Reyes excused himself after drawing my second beer. I passed the time by working out what I’d tell Ella, not that I had much to tell. Toward the end of the beer, I got around to noticing that the cantina was filling up. That is to say, a dozen people, some of them genuinely elderly, had wandered in. It was my stomach that first alerted me to the change. A woman was ferrying platters of food between a back room and a long table set up in front of a modest bandstand. The food’s spicy fragrance was singing a siren song that overcame the empty space between the buffet and my lonely end of the bar.

I looked over my shoulder, willing the long-distance operator to ring the office phone before the party started and I ended up on some grandmother’s dance card. When I gave it up and looked back, Reyes was on the bandstand, calling the proceedings to order.

“Friends,” he said. “I’ve asked you here tonight to share some happy news. Some very happy news. I am to be married. Hector and Esperanza Baerga have consented to give me the hand of their lovely daughter Maria.”

Under the cover of more murmuring than applause, Reyes motioned for the Baergas to join him onstage. A man who ate no fat climbed up, followed, after an awkward interval, by the wife who ate no lean. She had the reluctant bride-to-be in tow. I’d missed the girl’s entrance, probably while I’d been willing the phone to boil. Now I recognized the young beauty of the red shawl, whom I’d seen in Jose’s arms less than an hour earlier.

I retrieved my hat from the stool beside me and slipped it on, tugging the brim down low. Maybe there’d be something to tell Ella after all, I thought.

4

A little before eight I walked the short distance to Racine’s house under more stars than MGM had bragged of in its glory days. I’d only packed the lightest of topcoats, having forgotten how the high desert bleeds its heat away at sunset. I drew the coat tight and set a healthy pace and still found myself knocking on the old wooden gate with some urgency when I finally reached it.

A less chipper Jose answered my knock. I understood his change of mood, so I didn’t ask him about it. We again entered the house through the bus-station living room, where the apprentice took my coat and hat. Then he led me through a connecting doorway whose height forced us both to duck our heads.

On the other side was the dining room, where a mesquite fire burned in a tiny hearth. The narrow table was custom built of plywood. It was painted white, as were the mismatched chairs. Above the table hung a Japanese paper lantern of white and red.