Flamenco, Flan, and Fatalities (A Happy Hoofers Mystery) Read online

  “Perfect,” Javier said.

  “Perhaps you would like a nice dry wine, a Ribeiro with the monkfish?” Enrique asked.

  “Muy bien, Enrique. A couple of bottles, por favor.”

  The dining room was about half full. As we walked to our table, we could hear people talking and laughing, but the noise level was low. No raucous music or loud voices assaulted us. The whole atmosphere was relaxing.

  When we were seated at a table near the window, Javier asked, “What do you think of our country?”

  “Except for a murder now and then, it’s really beautiful,” I said. I couldn’t help bringing up the subject on all our minds. I know, what else is new? “Who do you think killed Shambless, Inspector?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about that, as you well know, Gini.” He lit a cigarette. “But as long as you brought it up, who do you think is the murderer?”

  I started talking faster and faster as all the thoughts in my mind tumbled out disconnected, random, not at all logical, but I couldn’t stop.

  “Well, the most likely person seems to me to be the bartender because Shambless threatened to have him fired. Or it could have been somebody at the restaurant last night. Shambless was so rude.” I tried to slow down, but it was no use. “Maybe it was that blonde who was with him. I heard them quarreling about something personal—it wasn’t about the documentary. Then there’s Denise who thinks her son was bullied because Shambless was anti-gay. Oh, and those two gay guys who own the restaurant—they hate him too. I almost forgot, there’s Sylvia who worked for him until he fired her for no reason, or . . .”

  “Or it could be you,” the inspector said with a small smile. “Several people heard you say you’d like to kill him.”

  “Listen, Inspector,” I said, “the only shooting I do is with a camera. And I have no idea how to get poison to put in someone’s food.”

  “Gini talks like that all the time,” Janice said, pulling her chair closer to the inspector’s. “So far, she’s never killed anybody. Anyway, she was with us every minute. We would have noticed if she said, ‘Excuse me, I have to go kill Shambless. I’ll be right back.’ ”

  “Javier,” the inspector said. “Please call me Javier.”

  He started to say something else to her, when the waiter brought us the monkfish Enrique had promised us. From the first bite, we were transported. The freshness of this dish, the exquisite taste of the creamy brown sauce that accompanied it, all fulfilled Enrique’s description of this lunch. For a few minutes we couldn’t talk. We just enjoyed every mouthful of this feast.

  Javier looked around the table, pleased to see us devouring the meal with so much enthusiasm. He put down his fork, and said to Janice, “Let’s talk about something else besides murder, señora. Let’s talk about you.”

  The rest of us might as well have been eating lunch back on the train. The inspector concentrated his full attention on Janice. “Tell me about your life in the United States,” he said. “Are you married?”

  “Not anymore,” she said. She seemed undecided as to whether to continue or not. Janice has never been one to hide her past, though, so I knew what was coming.

  “I was married and divorced three times, Javier,” she said. I could tell she said that to test him.

  The inspector’s expression didn’t change. If Janice had expected him to leap out of his seat and shout “Wicked woman!” at her, she was disappointed.

  Janice kept on going. It was as if she were driven to speak, determined to make her feelings clear. “Each of those marriages was a mistake,” she said. “That’s how I learned that it’s important to live my own life and not to depend on a man to make me happy.”

  “What kind of man are you looking for?” the inspector asked, pulling his chair even closer to hers.

  “I want a man who understands that I have a life of my own outside of loving him,” Janice said, speaking passionately. “I don’t want to live through him. I want someone who is as excited about my interests as I am about his. He has to understand that I love acting, that I’m most alive when I’m bringing a character in a play to life. I need someone who wants me to fulfill that part of myself as well as the part that loves him.”

  “Do you think you will ever find a man like that?” the inspector asked, looking directly into her eyes, which were a kind of blue-green this morning. They changed according to what she was wearing or the lighting in a room. She had on deep blue lapis earrings.

  “I don’t know, Inspector. Javier. Do you think I will?” she asked, her voice gentler than before.

  “Perhaps I can help you find him,” the inspector said, unable to take his eyes off her. It was clear he couldn’t have cared less whether she had been married ten times.

  A small sound from Enrique made him turn his attention to the restaurant owner.

  “Try this Ribeiro, Inspector. See what you think.”

  Javier took a sip of the wine. “Perfect, Enrique,” he said.

  The inspector looked away from Janice reluctantly, as if he were suddenly aware that there were other people at the table too.

  “Did you visit the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela before you got on the train?” he asked us.

  “We did,” Mary Louise said. “And we made a wish on that pillar—the one that has a shape of a hand that you wish on.”

  “What did you wish for?” Mike asked her.

  “That my children would have happy lives,” she said.

  “No one gets through this life without trouble,” Mike said. “But it has its moments.” He looked at Mary Louise and smiled. “Like this one.”

  “I can’t imagine how it could be finer,” Javier said. “What did you wish for, señora?” he asked me.

  “Well,” I said. “I’m still hoping to adopt a little girl in India I met when I was filming a documentary about orphanages there.”

  “What a great thing to do,” Mike said. “What are your chances? I know it’s difficult in India.”

  I started to tell him about the obstacles in my way when Javier’s phone made a noise. He glanced briefly at the text message.

  “I am so sorry,” Javier said, standing up. “But we have to return to the train immediately. There’s a new development in the death of Señor Shambless. I’m afraid we’ll have to go without one of Enrique’s superb desserts.”

  We said our hurried thanks to our host and followed the inspector back to the boat.

  Gini’s photography tip: High noon is not a

  good time to take pictures outdoors. Try early

  morning or late afternoon for best lighting.

  Chapter 7

  The Plot Thickens

  When we got back to the train, the platform was crowded with reporters and cameramen who surrounded our car. Javier struggled to open the door. When he pushed his way out, he couldn’t move because of the reporters crowding him, hemming him in. Questions bombarded him from all directions, mostly in English and Spanish. It hit us again how famous Shambless was in our own country and, it seemed, in Spain too.

  “Inspector, can you tell us what happened to Dick Shambless? Did somebody on the train kill him? Do you know who did it? Who was the girl he was traveling with? ”

  “We have no information at this time,” Javier said. “We are waiting for reports from the medical examiner. I will be glad to answer your questions then.”

  He pushed his way through the crowd of reporters to get back on the train. We were still fighting to get aboard.

  “Are you part of the train crew? What do you know about Shambless? Was he traveling with you?” Questions flew at us from all directions.

  Mike cleared a path through the crowd for Mary Louise, Janice, and me. We just made it onto the train before the police slammed the door closed. We could hear shouts and noise still coming from the reporters as we reached the lounge car.

  Eduardo had gathered all the passengers there. “Inspector Cruz will explain what is happening in a few minutes,” he was saying
as we entered the car. “Again, my apologies for this inconvenience and interruption in your trip. There will be no charge for drinks today.”

  My friends and I joined Pat and Tina at the bar where the free drinks were offered. Juan was pouring cavas, white wines and red wines, cosmos, margaritas, gin and tonics, and beer, efficiently and quickly.

  “How was lunch?” Tina asked.

  “Sssh,” I said. “The inspector sort of spirited us out of here. He wasn’t supposed to, but he couldn’t resist the chance to be with Janice. The rest of us were just tagalongs. Great food. Monkfish with some kind of heavenly sauce. You and Pat should have come with us.”

  “I just couldn’t face one more huge meal,” Tina said. “I had a long talk with Peter. He was ready to get on the next plane when I told him about Shambless’s murder. Somehow he hadn’t realized it happened on the train we were on. He knew Shambless had been killed, but he didn’t know where. He said, ‘I should have known you and your gang would be involved somehow. I’m coming there. Next plane.’ I managed to talk him out of it, but he wasn’t happy about it.”

  “Why don’t you just get it over with and marry him,” I said.

  “I’m thinking about it, Gini. Don’t rush me. Much as I loved Bill, I’m enjoying the freedom of doing what I want when I want.”

  “How did the lunch with the inspector go?” Pat asked. “Did he fall madly in love with Janice?”

  “Of course,” I said. “What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know why I bother to ask,” she said. “Hi, Denise. Come join us.” She beckoned to her friend who had just come into the car.

  Denise joined us and ordered a Kir from Juan.

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “No one will tell me anything.”

  “There’s some new development in Shambless’s death,” I said. “The inspector is going to tell us what it is.”

  “A new development?” Denise said, pushing back a strand of her hair. “What do you mean?”

  “We won’t know until he tells us,” I said. She seemed nervous, distracted.

  I wasn’t sure whether to ask her or not. Then again, when have you ever known me not to?

  “Denise,” I said. I couldn’t go on. It seemed rude to continue.

  “Gini?”

  “Listen, Denise,” I said. “Is there any chance you were in that little church in Ribadeo this morning?”

  “Church, what church?” She was stammering. Not her usual calm, cool, collected self.

  “I must be wrong,” I said. “I thought I saw you. Obviously it had to be someone else.” I was lying. I was even surer that Denise had been in that church after her reaction.

  “You must be wrong,” she said, pushing her glass over to Juan for another Kir. “Anyway, how could you have been in church today? Nobody was allowed to leave the train.”

  “We sort of sneaked in there,” I said.

  “Well, I wasn’t there,” Denise said, and moved away from me to talk to Pat.

  Dora came up beside me, and said to Juan, “Do you have any tea?”

  “Certainly, señora,” he said, pouring her a cup of mint tea.

  “Isn’t it terrible about Mr. Shambless?” Dora said to me. “He was such a wonderful man. His voice will be missed. I don’t know what the country will do without him. Oh, it’s so sad.”

  Tina gave me one of her looks, but it didn’t do any good. Once again, I couldn’t stop myself.

  “The country will be a lot better off without him,” I said. “He was a loud, narrow-minded, dangerous, raving idiot.”

  “You must be one of those pinko liberals he was always talking about,” Dora said, raising her voice, her face getting redder. “He was a saint. He spoke rationally while the liberal media raved on about gays and women’s rights and the government paying for birth control. I used to watch him every day. I thank God that he came on this trip so I could meet him and get his autograph.”

  I felt Tina’s hand on my arm, but I had already simmered down. I realized there was no way I could argue politics with this woman. I did want to find out more about her, though.

  “Do you live alone?” I asked.

  “I do now. My husband and I—we are no longer together. We had a daughter, but she died.”

  “I’m so sorry. What happened to her?”

  “She was born with cystic fibrosis. She only lived until she was ten.”

  I tried to put a sympathetic hand on her arm, but she backed away.

  “What kind of work do you do?” I asked. For some reason this woman fascinated me. I didn’t know why. Something to do with my need to understand how people can have beliefs so different from mine, I guess. It’s why I sometimes watched Shambless. A few minutes of him was enough and I changed the channel to something else, but I tried to understand.

  “I worked as a secretary for a while,” she said, “but now I’m retired. I spend a lot of time in my garden. You should see it. It’s beautiful. I have azaleas and tulips, roses and rhododendrons. Just everything. It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy it.”

  “It must be lovely. Where do you live?”

  “In Florida. On Anna Maria Island. Mostly old people there, but it’s comfortable and warm. I don’t have to bother with people much.”

  “You don’t like people?”

  “Most of them are busybodies. Always butting into other people’s business.”

  I looked at this thin little woman, talking too fast, her face twitching, her hands moving as she talked, pulling at her dress, fussing with her hair. I felt sorry for her. She was one of those people who was missing out on life, on all the miracles big and small that happen every day. She lived in a narrow little world weeding her garden and watching Dick Shambless. Now she couldn’t even do that anymore.

  Javier came back into the car. Everyone stopped talking.

  “Señores and señoras,” he said. “There is a new development in the death of Señor Shambless. The medical examiner has identified the poison that killed him. It was an extract from the oleander flower, which is extremely dangerous when consumed.”

  My mind flashed back to the vivid red oleanders around the restaurant we went to last night. I could picture them against the white wall. Somebody who worked there or ate there could easily have ground up some of their seeds or chopped up the leaves as a garnish on Shambless’s salad. Who would ever know?

  I assumed the investigation would shift to the staff at El Gusto del Mar and we wouldn’t have to stay on the train anymore.

  “Are we free to leave the train then, Inspector?” I asked him.

  “I’m afraid not, señora,” Javier said. “I still have a lot of questions to ask.”

  “How long will we be confined?” Geoffrey asked him.

  “It’s hard to say. Until we figure out who murdered him, I’m afraid.”

  “That could take forever. So many people disliked him.”

  “Including you, señor?”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t like him, but if I killed all the people I didn’t like, the world would be a lot emptier—and a lot better.”

  There was a burst of laughter. It was a relief. A tension breaker. We needed that. Danielle gave her husband an appreciative glance.

  “It has to be someone in that restaurant, Javier,” I said. “There were oleanders all over the place. He made a total nuisance of himself throughout the dinner. Someone who worked there must have picked some oleanders and mashed them up in his food.”

  “I appreciate your suggestion, señora,” Javier said. “I have already notified the owners to retain their staff for questioning.”

  “You should start with the chef,” I said. “Shambless asked him if his steak was horsemeat. The chef was not pleased.”

  “You have a very strange idea about restaurants in my country, señora, if you think the chefs poison every customer who is rude,” Javier said. “It’s not a good way to get people to come back.”

  “He went beyond rude,” I said.


  “Thank you, señora,” Javier said. I could see that he wanted me to shut up, so for once, I did.

  “Señor Bergman,” the inspector said to Steve, who was standing near him. “I would like to see what you filmed last night in the restaurant. Do you have your camera with you?”

  “Afraid not, Inspector. After you questioned me this morning, my camera was stolen. All the footage I filmed on this trip is gone.”

  The inspector spoke to one of his officers, “Domingo, search the train for Señor Bergman’s camera.”

  Dora approached the inspector and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Yes, señora?”

  “Inspector, I heard her say that she wanted to kill him because he was responsible for her son being bullied at school,” Dora said, pointing to Denise.

  There was an audible gasp from the passengers near her.

  “And when exactly did you hear her say that?” the inspector asked.

  “After you were here this morning, asking us questions.”

  “And you heard Señora—” He turned to Denise. She sat down quickly on the nearest chair. She looked very pale, as if she was going to faint.

  “Are you all right, señora?” the inspector asked.

  “Yes, Inspector,” she said.

  He turned back to Dora. “You heard Señora Morgan say that she wanted to kill Señor Shambless?

  “Yes.”

  “Because of her son?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did she say that to you?”

  “No, she was talking to those two dancers.” She pointed to Tina and me. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them killed him either. They were always making nasty remarks to him and glaring at him while the poor man was trying to eat his dinner.”

  “You heard this woman, Señora Morgan, say that Señor Shambless was responsible for a problem with her son?” the inspector asked.

  “I did. And she can’t deny it. I was standing right next to her.”

  Javier looked at Denise.

  “May I have a word with you in the next car please, Señora Morgan?”