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

“Yes. As old as she is, she still thinks she could have Jose if I were gone. But moving me from her house wasn’t enough. So she got me engaged to a fat old man no girl would look at twice. She would do anything to keep Jose and me apart. If it meant losing Jose herself forever, she would do it, just to deny me.”

Shortly after that pronouncement Maria left us, carrying herself like anything but a peon. Gentry watched her go, shook it off, and said, “Guess it’s time we spoke to the local celebrity.”

By then we were armed with a search warrant. Gentry took along a deputy to do the actual poking around. As the three of us made the hike to Racine’s, the sheriff asked me again about my business with the artist.

He listened carefully to my rundown, and then asked, “If the painting really is hers, could she have wanted it back enough to steal it? Or if it really was painted by this other woman, the one who beat Racine’s time with her patron back in the twenties, could Racine have stolen it as a way of striking back?”

“At a dead woman? And speaking of dead, if this is all about the painting, how did Reyes get killed?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Elliott. Maybe we’re going at this backwards, trying to find who had it in for Reyes. Maybe he just wandered into trouble. He caught Racine walking out with the painting, and she killed him.”

With a knife that couldn’t fail to be identified as her property? Why was she carrying it in the first place? In case I was a light sleeper? And why did she leave it behind?

Before I could voice any of those objections, Gentry was shaking the idea out of his head. “The target had to be Reyes,” he said, almost to himself. “It had to be Reyes.”

8

Racine came out to her gate to greet us. So she could get a jump on berating us, it turned out.

“How dare you come here to persecute that boy?” she demanded of Gentry. I was ignored and content to be. The artist was back in her paint-stained fatigues, but no less commanding for that. “Jose had nothing to do with the death of Paul Reyes.”

“How about the theft of the rose painting?” the unfazed Gentry asked. “I have a warrant here empowering me to search for it. While my deputy is doing that, perhaps we could talk.”

Racine received us in her courtyard, not wanting us to sully her house. It was an empty gesture, as we could hear Gentry’s deputy sullying each of the surrounding rooms in turn as we chatted. The ruckus didn’t rattle Racine any more than the exterior setting bothered Gentry. Or me, the day being warm and still.

Racine sat on the edge of an old well. In addition to the artist, the rounded lip held a collection of animal skulls and horns, each waiting patiently to be immortalized in oils.

The preliminaries regarded the knife. Racine admitted that its description matched one she owned. And that her knife was missing, something she’d determined the moment Jose had returned from his questioning. The silver was kept in an unlocked cabinet in the unlocked kitchen, crime being previously unknown in Agujero.

When we got around to discussing human beings, things heated up. “I was happy to help arrange the match between Paul Reyes and Maria,” Racine said in response to Gentry’s least friendly question to date. “It was very advantageous to her family, who frankly are quite poor. I’ve felt bad about them since I had to let Maria go.”

“Why did that happen?” the sheriff asked.

“I’d rather not say.”

“We’ve been told that it was because you were jealous of the girl and Jose. That true?”

“She told you that. Maria.”

“She also said you’d do anything to keep her and Jose apart. Even if it meant losing him yourself.”

Racine’s only reply was to grin her cat’s grin. It wasn’t a smart move, Gentry being largely canine.

“Are you in love with this Jose Fernandez?” he demanded. “Did he tell you he was leaving town with the Baerga girl? Is that why you framed him for murder with a knife you knew would be tied to this house?”

Gentry had found his link between Racine and the murder in Maria’s tale of the artist’s all-or-nothing jealousy. The theory explained why the gaudy knife had been used and why it had been left behind. I was impressed.

So was Racine. Her grin was deader than any of the trophies on the well’s edge. Her “You’re joking” came out as a whisper.

The deputy entered then, his timing as deft as his searching had been clumsy. Clumsy but effective. He carried Beaumont’s painting before him, like the front half of a very small sandwich board.

“Found it in the sitting room. Behind another painting. A big painting.”

“You got greedy, didn’t you?” Gentry said to the artist. “Had to ruin the boy and get that painting out of circulation, too.

“Show me where you found it, Chapman. Elliott, watch her till we get back.”

9

Gentry and his man were crunching off across the courtyard’s pebbles before Racine launched her belated defense. “Mr. Elliott, you don’t think—”

I cut her off. “We don’t have much time. Tell me about Mabel Tuohy.”

“Why? What has she to do with this?”