The Cinco de Mayo Murder Read online

  She was in the large lobby talking to a woman sitting in a wheelchair when I arrived. Her face lit up as she saw me, and she struggled to her feet as I approached. I had not seen her stand or walk the previous week. Obviously, her stroke had left her with a disability, but she asked for no assistance. She introduced me to the woman next to her and we shook hands. Then Mrs. Gruner and I walked slowly to the door.

  “Where would you like to go?” I asked when we had left Hillside Village behind.

  “I would like to go to the cemetery.”

  “Can you direct me?”

  “Yes. But we should buy some flowers first.”

  “I have them in the backseat,” I told her. When I saw her startled face, I added, “I thought you'd like to go. You said it was a long time since you'd been there.”

  “You are a remarkable woman, Chris.”

  “Just someone who listens. Tell me where to go.”

  We were there in twenty minutes. Once inside the gate, we needed directions, which turned out to be easy to follow. Mrs. Gruner held the map in her hand with the route marked in red. Two minutes later I parked the car and helped her out.

  The two stones were side by side with room for a third. From the two dates of death, I could see that Heinz's father hadn't lived very long after his son's death—about a year. We divided the flowers between the graves and I stepped back, not wanting to intrude on this profoundly sad experience. I walked among the graves, taking note of the names and the length of the lives, the capsule descriptions: HUSBAND AND FATHER; BELOVED MOTHER; DEAREST CHILD. I glanced back and saw Mrs. Gruner leaning over one of the stones, the cane firmly in one hand, the other on the stone.

  A few minutes later when I turned around, she was facing me, and I went back to walk her to the car.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I feel better now. If you still have time—”

  “I have lots of time.”

  “Perhaps we could drive to the sound. I like to look at the water.”

  The house my family lives in is quite close to the Long Island Sound. In fact, many of the homeowners, including us, own the rights to a cove within walking distance of our house. A sandy beach runs along the edge and the water washes in in gentle waves. It's a place that I love, a place where one can walk in solitude in summer and winter—and of course where one can swim.

  I drove Mrs. Gruner there and we got out and walked on the sand. She held my arm and planted the three-pronged cane firmly with every step.

  “This is a wonderful place,” she said. “I can smell the salt in the air.”

  “I have a folding chair in the trunk. Would you like to sit?”

  “I have been sitting my life away. Today I like to walk.”

  We walked to the edge where the water lapped at the sand. She seemed transfixed, taking deep breaths as though she could hoard the air for the future.

  “My husband was a swimmer,” she said. “He would have loved this place. My son was a hiker.”

  “And you?”

  “I was the wife and mother. In Germany I taught school, but here my English was never good enough. When my husband died, I had nothing.”

  “You had yourself,” I said.

  “What was left of me.”

  A large wave crested and flowed toward the shore. We moved backward as the water covered the spot where we had stood. To my surprise, Mrs. Gruner laughed.

  She turned to me, her face happy for the first time since we had met. “How nice that is. When I was a child, we vacationed on the Nordsee, the North Sea. We would stand just like this, without our shoes, and feel the water on our feet. A nice memory.”

  “You had a happy childhood.”

  “Very happy, all the cousins together, the aunts and uncles. The air was so clean.”

  “Are you able to get away from Hillside Village very often?”

  She looked at me as though I had asked a ridiculous question. “This is my first time in more than a year.”

  “There are volunteers who—” “Yes, yes. But I do not like to bother people. I read, I think. The time passes.”

  We stood on the beach for several minutes as she savored the air and the view. Finally she turned, and we started back to the car. “What I think about is my son.”

  “Yes.”

  “You see, it is hard for me to believe that he fell by accident, although what you said about the heat and needing water makes sense to me. The police called it an accident. They said if it wasn't an accident—”

  “I understand.”

  “My son did not kill himself.”

  “It seems unlikely,” I said. I wished I could have said something with more power behind it. A shy person myself, I had not known him well. In the two afternoons I had spent with his mother, we had exchanged more conversation than I ever had with Heinz.

  “To us he seemed a happy person. He worked hard in school. He read books. He had a friend that he liked and they talked on the telephone at night.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Donald. I don't remember his last name. He went away to college and never came back. But after Heinz died, I thought about many things. Maybe he seemed too foreign for the children in school. He was born here and he spoke two languages perfectly. But his name was foreign. Maybe we should have called him Harry or Henry instead of giving him such an unusual name as Heinz. In Germany it is not so unusual. Here—” She shrugged. “Maybe the children laughed.”

  They had laughed. I remembered. They made the obvious jokes about his name. I had heard it happen more than once but although I felt sorry for him, I was too shy to intercede, too shy even to say something nice to him. I pretended I had not heard.

  “Children laugh at many things,” I said. I looked up at the sky. “Look at the birds.”

  A flock of seabirds flew over us, turned, and went back over the sound.

  “Ah. They are lovely.”

  “Would you like to come to my house and have a cup of tea?”

  “Do you live near here?”

  “Quite close.”

  “That would be very nice.”

  We walked back to the car and I drove the short distance home. The answering machine was beeping annoyingly and I shut it off to keep it quiet. Mrs. Gruner walked with me through the house and into our large family room, the addition we had built after we married.

  “What a wonderful fireplace,” she said.

  “We enjoy a fire at night. It's cozy and warm.”

  “Yes. You must have a happy life.”

  “We do. Sit where you're comfortable and I'll make the tea.”

  We sipped and talked for half an hour. Finally I said, “Mrs. Gruner, I am visiting Arizona in May. I will be quite near the place where Heinz's accident happened.” I let her think about it.

  “Near the mountain where he hiked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it possible—would you have the time—and the interest—to find out about Heinz's accident? If you don't want to—”

  “I would like to. My husband is a police officer in New York. He may be able to put me in touch with the right people.”

  “This is very good of you, Chris.”

  “I hope I can learn something useful.”

  I drove her back to Hillside Village. She had some color in her cheeks from the out-of-doors, and she seemed in a good mood. She had asked me to do something important for her and I would do it.

  I picked up Eddie and drove home.

  “How would you be able to tell the difference between someone falling accidentally and jumping to his death from a trail in the mountains?” I asked Jack when we were together in the family room, a fire burning and coffee in our cups.

  “Hard to tell. You want to find proof that this kid you knew didn't kill himself?”

  “Mrs. Gruner wants to know what happened. If he did kill himself, I wouldn't tell her. She's been sitting for years thinking about what she did wrong that might have prompted him to take his life. And finding reasons w
hy he didn't.”

  “Why's she in that home?”

  “She had a stroke. She needs a cane to get around, but she's very independent. She doesn't want help if she can do without it. I assume she's not able to live by herself, and I understand her anguish over her son's death.”

  The phone rang just then and Maddie said, “I found out where Heinz died.”

  I grabbed a pencil. “I'm listening.”

  “It's called Picacho Peak. It's somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix. I called the local paper this morning and they researched it for me. I bet you could get a map from the AAA and find it.”

  “I will do that,” I said. I told Maddie I had visited Mrs. Gruner and what we'd talked about.

  “They did taunt him,” Maddie said. “It was hateful, but it's what teenagers do.”

  I thanked her for her research and went back to the family room, where Jack had covered my cup with the saucer to keep my coffee warm.

  “Sounds like that was Maddie.”

  “She found out where Heinz died.” I showed him the name on the slip of paper.

  Jack took it from me. “Tell you what I'll do. I'll find out what town this is and get in touch with the police department or the sheriff's department. See if they can fax me the file. Don't expect this to happen in the next twenty-four hours. With a case this old, they'll have to dig up the file, but they'll have it somewhere.”

  “You're good,” I said.

  “Yeah, I'm the best.” He gave me the grin that I loved. “I guess I'm glad you save your sympathy for people. I'm not sure I could take it if you picked up stray dogs and cats.”

  I laughed. “Now, there's an idea.”

  “Let's just keep it an idea.”

  It was two weeks before Jack called to say the file had been faxed to him. I had nearly forgotten his promise. He brought it home with him in a thin file folder. Thin meant there weren't any questions. A homicide file is thick and heavy with copies of interviews and all the evidence vouchers, forensics reports, photos, and much more. All that was here were some photographs and the results of the autopsy. The parents had objected to that, but they had been informed it was the law.

  Nothing in the autopsy set off any alarms. The ME ruled Heinz's death an accident. He suffered several broken bones, trauma, and concussion. A handwritten letter from the sheriff accompanied the pages. He had no personal knowledge of the accident, as a deputy had been the first on the scene after the call came in that a body had been found. The deputy's first impression was that an unfortunate accident had occurred, and nothing afterward had changed his opinion.

  I left the photos for last, not wanting to look at them but feeling I had to. They were black and white. The young man lying in the scrub was the person I remembered. In one of the pictures I could see his glasses lying nearby. I had never seen his face without glasses. I tried to think whether he would have taken them off before jumping if he had taken his life. Although I knew there were similarities among suicides, no one could say that all of them were the same.

  “He's not wearing a backpack,” I said.

  “Do you know he had one?”

  “I would think he would. If he had water or food with him, he wouldn't hold them in his hand.”

  I kept looking at pictures. Finally I saw a few, not of the body, but of the trail Heinz had been walking before he fell. On the path were a shirt and a small backpack. “Look at this.”

  Jack took the picture. “He left them on the trail.”

  “Maybe he was going to eat something when he slipped and fell.”

  Jack didn't answer. The other possibility was just as likely: that he had put these things down before jumping to his death.

  “Nothing is conclusive,” I said.

  “In a case like this, nothing ever is.”

  “You have the name of that deputy?”

  “Right here.”

  “Maybe I'll talk to him.”

  “Here's the address and phone number of the sheriff's office.”

  I thought that maybe he would take Joseph and me up to the accident scene. “Thanks, honey.”

  He handed me the file. It was now officially my business.

  Joseph and I flew to Phoenix together. I had told her a few weeks earlier of the death of Heinz Gruner, and she had said she would enjoy walking trails at Picacho Peak Park, whether we found any answers to my questions or not. We left on a cool Saturday morning in New York and arrived at Sky Harbor on a warm Saturday afternoon. A three-hour difference in time gave us a bonus of a few more hours of daylight.

  The car Joseph had reserved was waiting for us, and the car rental company provided a map to get us to our hotel. I had additional maps of Arizona, Phoenix, and Tucson, with routes marked to take us to a variety of destinations.

  I also had an appointment with Deputy Sheriff Warren Gonzales. We had spoken one afternoon a couple of weeks before, and he'd told me that the place where Heinz Gruner had died was just off the highway from Phoenix to Tucson. If I called him as we left Phoenix, he would know when to meet us at the park. The trail that Heinz had taken was neither a beginner's nor an experienced hiker's path, but something in between. If we were in reasonably good shape, we would have no trouble managing the climb. Just bring extra water and wear a hat, he said.

  “Water” was a word I heard often in the Southwest. We were constantly cautioned to drink before we became thirsty, something I'd never done before. I had brought summer clothes with me, but Joseph's habit was somewhat heavy for hot weather, and hot it was. When we awoke on Sunday morning for mass, the forecast was for ninety.

  We had lunch in a restaurant that served southwestern food, and I enjoyed the spicy tang. Jack would have loved it. Joseph was hesitant, but smiled as she ate. We walked around after lunch, stopping frequently to drink our water. Joseph's meeting was scheduled for late in the afternoon, so this was the last time we would be together for a few days.

  “I can see why everything is air-conditioned,” Joseph said. “It must be eighty out.”

  A few minutes later, we came across an outdoor thermometer. “Look at that,” I said, pointing.

  “Ninety! I can't believe it. At home I'm sweltering at ninety. There must be something to this dry weather after all.”

  We stopped at several shops and looked at Navajo and Zuni pottery and jewelry. The stones were colorful, the blue of the turquoise and the bright red of the coral. A pendant of green malachite caught my eye. One could wear fabulous jewelry and never even miss precious stones.

  “I think my niece may benefit from this trip,” Joseph said. “She's a lovely girl and I bet she'd be thrilled to wear something so beautiful. Maybe I'll commission you to find something for her during your solo excursions in the next couple of days.”

  “That would be fun. I've never been much of a shopper, but these things are really different. I'm getting a kick out of just looking.”

  We continued for a couple of hours, then returned to the hotel. Joseph's meeting was beginning with a get-together in late afternoon, followed by a dinner. I would be on my own. After she left, I called home.

  Eddie answered. “Mommy,” he said excitedly, “Grandma made roast chicken and those little potatoes with bugs on them and green peas with onions. I even ate the onions, they were so good.” The “bugs” were probably rosemary, one of my mother-in-law's specialties. “And she brought a cake with her.” Not a word about missing his mother. Oh well, better than tears and recriminations.

  “Sounds like you're having a great time.”

  “I am. Are you having a good time, too?” I had heard a little prompting in the background.

  I laughed. “I'm enjoying myself a lot. Let me talk to Daddy now.”

  After our conversation, I talked to Jack's mother, who promised she would leave lots of good food for when I came home. Obviously, there were great advantages to having a mother-in-law in the catering business. I wondered what I would leave for my own future daughter-inlaw besides my good wishes in the
years to come.

  I joined Joseph for mass on Monday morning, then said good-bye. I had a map to Scottsdale, a place I had been advised to visit. After breakfast, I looked at the directions and went to the parking lot with my maps and a bottle of water.

  I don't spend many days the way I spent that one. Mel had given me the names of a couple of stores that I could not miss, and Joseph had authorized me to find a gift for her niece. In Scottsdale the shopping district was lined with shops, more than I had ever seen in one place. There were galleries that I sauntered through, looking at paintings and blown glass and sculptures. I saw more jewelry than I knew existed. After an hour of wandering, I felt almost giddy. Seeing so much made it harder than I had anticipated to make a decision.

  Finally I took Mel's advice and drove across Goldwater Boulevard to the small store she had recommended most. I pressed the doorbell and was given entrance. The interior was small, the owner and his wife friendly and welcoming, as I had found many people to be in this part of the country. When I mentioned Mel's name, they recognized it immediately. She had called several months before to buy some gifts. Suddenly I was treated like nobility.

  I was ushered into the vault, where I found the turquoise pendant that would become a gift for Joseph's niece. I also bought a silver belt buckle for Jack, hoping it wasn't too southwestern for him to wear in the city.

  “What did my friend Melanie order?” I asked finally.

  Husband and wife discussed it. “A card case,” the wife said. “I don't have anything exactly like it, but it looked a little like this.” She took out a shiny silver case with a turquoise on the front. It was beautiful.

  “My mother-in-law is a caterer,” I said. “I think she'd love this for her business cards.” I set it down on the counter and looked at it. I am the penny-pincher in the family, as everyone knows, and I have to think about what I consider unnecessary or extravagant expenditures. Eileen was having a birthday soon. She was attractive and loved fine things. She was also responsible for some of our best eating. “I'll take it,” I said, feeling somewhat breathless. I knew Jack would be pleased when he saw it. I took my credit card out of my bag and laid it on the counter, once again grateful to my husband for getting it for me at a time that I would never have considered carrying one— assuming incorrectly that I would instantly become a spendthrift.