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

Gentry ate a good breakfast, but it didn’t keep him from quizzing me steadily. I didn’t let that ruin my meal. I was a stranger in town. I’d met Reyes. I’d been in the cantina when the murder had taken place. I’d had access to Racine’s knife, at least in theory. And I’d reported a stolen painting. Those were too many interesting bits for the sheriff to ignore, though he was having a hard time fitting them together. During our second cup of coffee, he gave up trying.

“Do you know a Jose Fernandez?” Gentry asked me.

“Racine’s assistant?” I asked back, all innocence. Jose was the reason I’d been hesitant to identify the knife. Jose, whose neck I saw as stuck out a mile. Martha had resolved that moral dilemma, but she’d also given the sheriff an earful of gossip.

“Jose Fernandez is in love with the dead man’s intended, a Maria Baerga,” Gentry confided. “Seems the match was her parents’ idea, with the Racine woman acting as matchmaker. Maria’s opinion wasn’t asked, which made it that much harder for Fernandez to take. The engagement was announced yesterday. Today Reyes is dead.”

“Where does the painting fit in?”

“Dunno. A stack of search warrants is on its way up from Española. Given Miss Racine’s reputation, I figured I’d need a few. In the meantime, I’ve sent for Fernandez. You’re welcome to sit in if you want to.”

I’d related a little of Hollywood Security’s history to Gentry by way of establishing myself as one of the good guys. Too much, maybe, if the sheriff now saw me as an asset. Even so, I took him up on the offer.

Jose came in nervous and got steadily worse. Yes, he knew the knife. No, he didn’t know how it had gotten out of its velvet box and into Reyes. He glanced my way contemptuously when Gentry asked him about Maria. “I love her,” he said. “And she loves me. I don’t care who knows it.” That was all he would say on the subject.

When Gentry ran out of questions, I stepped in. “Been in the service?”

Jose treated it as a silly question, there being few men of draft age who avoided the service in these interesting times. “Of course. The army. Got out six months ago and came here.”

“For Maria Baerga?” Gentry asked.

“No. For a chance to work with Glad — I mean Miss Racine. I met Maria at her house.” He remembered then that he wasn’t talking about Maria and shut up.

Gentry let him go for the moment, there being no place in Agujero to lock him up and no reason to improvise one. A desert town served by a single road was jail enough.

“What’s his military service got to do with this?” the sheriff asked when Jose had gone.

“Were you army?”

“Damn right. Scenic Italy.”

“How’d they teach you to stick a man with a knife?”

Gentry grasped an imaginary bayonet and thrust it upward. “Get in under the rib cage,” he said.

“Reyes’s killer didn’t know to do that.”

“He didn’t have to, with that razor of a knife. Besides, you forget things when you’re in a fit of passion.”

I didn’t like that “fit of passion.” It made it sound like Gentry was already rehearsing for his press conference. “Does a guy in a fit of passion get shorter?”

“Huh?” the sheriff said.

“Jose’s my height. Reyes carried a lot of his height horizontally.”

“Meaning what?”

“If I’d wanted to hit that spot in his chest, I’d have had to strike downward. So would Jose. There’s no sign of a downward blow.”

Gentry took up his make-believe weapon again and practiced a straight thrust from the shoulder. “Someone his height,” he said.

“Or less.”

7

We killed what remained of the morning with a few more interviews. The most interesting was that of Maria Baerga, and not just because she was all shining hair and flashing eyes. She was without her red shawl for once, which left her with only a simple white dress. The color was inappropriate for an almost widow. But Maria denied being one.

“The betrothal was my parents’ doing, not mine. I wanted no part of that. I decided to go away.”

“Alone?”

“Not alone,” she said defiantly. “With Jose Fernandez. We were going to go to California. So there was no reason for Jose to hurt that old man.”

I wondered how serious the plan was, since Jose hadn’t mentioned it in his own defense. But then, he’d gotten touchy on the subject of Maria pretty quickly. I asked, “How did Jose feel about giving up his job with Miss Racine?”

“Job?” Maria all but spat back. “Jose is not her assistant. Not her student even. He is her pet. He knows if he does not want to become more than a pet — worse than a pet — he must leave Agujero too.”

Gentry settled back in his chair, signaling me to carry on now that I’d gotten her dander up. “Why was Gladys Racine involved in your engagement to Reyes?” I asked.

“Because she is an old busybody. Because she sees herself as the great lady and the rest of us as her peons. Because she was jealous of Jose and me.”

“Is that why she fired you?”