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On the way home, I stopped by the Bird Cage and asked Chamomile and Janey if they remembered who had come in for lunch on Friday.
“Just the regulars and a bunch of tourists,” said Chamomile.
I knew who all the regulars were. I’m a regular.
“What about Jimmy Throckmorton, Crystal Vance, or Duke Dundee?” I asked.
Chamomile and Janey both pleaded ignorance as to the identities of Jimmy and Duke, and Janey thought she might have seen Crystal eating with Blake, but she wasn’t sure.
I thanked them for trying and went into the kitchen, where Juanita was standing over the hot stove stirring a pot of chicken broth and asked her the same question.
Juanita thought for a minute before she answered, “I’m not completely certain, but I think Crystal and Blake were sitting in the corner at Hank’s usual table.”
Hank often eats lunch at the Bird Cage, but he generally comes in well after the lunch rush and sits in the corner where he smokes a cigar and tips the ashes into an overturned no-smoking sign in open defiance to the over-reach of the powers that be. It may have never occurred to Hank that the proprietress of the Bird Cage also hates his cigars, or maybe he simply does not care. Juanita invariably just mumbles under her breath and cracks open a couple of windows.
The Bird Cage Café has been in existence for so long that there used to be a sanctioned smoking section where Hank habitually sits, and I think Juanita doesn’t have the heart to break it to him that cultural norms—and federal regulations—no longer smile upon subjecting one’s fellow diners to cigar smoke.
“Was Hank sitting with Crystal and Blake?” I asked Juanita.
“No, Hank came in right as Crystal and Blake were leaving and sat down before the table was bussed.”
“Did Hank come in alone?” I asked.
“Phyliss was with him.”
Whoever had swiped Crystal’s purse, providing it had been taken at the Bird Cage, it couldn’t be either Hank or Phyliss. Even if Hank was feeling larcenous—not that he was the type to lift ladies’ handbags—Phyliss would never have let such behavior pass. Had Crystal left her purse behind at the table, Phyliss would have taken the handbag straight up to the hostess stand near the entrance.
I dialed Phyliss right from the kitchen of the Bird Cage.
“Did you happen to find a purse at your table at the Bird Cage on Friday?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask,” said Phyliss. “I did.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I took it up to that little counter near the front door. I was about to stick it underneath where they keep the lost and found when a man came up to me and said it belonged to his wife.”
“What did that man look like?” I asked.
“He was in his mid-thirties, tall, blond, blue eyes and a beard. Nice face. I’ve seen him around before.”
Based on the pictures I’d seen of Blake when I’d visited the Vance’s, it sounded an awful lot like Blake had retrieved his wife’s purse.
“Did you see this man leave with the purse?” I asked.
“That was the odd part about it,” said Phyliss. “He took the purse, but instead of leaving, he opened up the billfold and took out the cash. Then he went to stick it back under the counter. Just as he was about to drop it into lost and found, somebody came through the door and ran into him. The purse fell to the floor, and everything inside scattered. After he’d picked up all the stuff that fell out, he stuck the purse back behind the counter.”
“Who was it who ran into him and knocked the purse out of his hand?”
“I don’t know if he was from around here,” said Phyliss. “I don’t remember seeing him before, but then I don’t know everybody yet.”
Unfortunately, Phyliss is not an old-timer in Amatista. Even though she and Hank had been together for ages, they’d usually spent time up at her place in Santa Fe until she’d sold out and tied the knot with Hank.
“What did the second man look like?” I asked Phyliss.
“He was a tall, skinny, dark-haired man wearing a cowboy hat and boots. Late thirties or early forties, maybe?”
“Did he have a limp?”
Phyliss said she hadn’t noticed one, but she couldn’t be sure.
“There was something else odd about the whole thing,” said Phyliss. “It kind of seemed to me that the two men knew each other, but they didn’t exchange pleasantries.”
If one discounts the tourists, practically everyone inside the Bird Cage at lunchtime knows each other.
“What made you think the men knew each other?” I asked.
“I can’t quite put my finger on it,” said Phyliss. “It’s just the feeling I got. I don’t think they said a single word to each other.”
“That is a trifle odd. Normally, whether they know each other or not, when two people bump into each other, they’ll apologize.”
“By the looks on their faces, it seemed more likely they’d start trading punches,” said Phyliss, “but just accidentally knocking a purse out of somebody's hand didn’t seem to merit that kind of hostility.”
“Do you have the list for takeout orders from last Friday?” I asked Juanita after I’d thanked Phyliss and hung up.
Juanita told me it was under the counter in the hostess stand, and I went to take a look. The takeout orders are always written down in an old spiral-bound notebook. I ran my finger down the list for the previous Friday.
Duke Dundee, it said, plain as day. Beef fajitas with a side of beans and rice. Paid cash. Pickup time 2:00.
I wanted to call up Crystal and ask if she could think of any reason her husband might have taken money out of her misplaced purse and subsequently shoved it back into lost and found, but I’d burned that bridge, so instead of asking Crystal, I called Reba.
“Someone may have seen Blake with Crystal’s purse at the Bird Cage, but then it seems he stuck it back in lost and found after taking some cash out. Can you think of any explanation for such bizarre behavior?”
Reba started laughing. “There’s a reason for it. Crystal is always misplacing her stuff. She’s constantly leaving her purse or her keys or her phone somewhere. Crystal told me a couple of weeks back that Blake swore he wasn’t going to try and keep track of her things any longer, and it was her responsibility.”
“So, you think it’s possible that Blake took money out of Crystal’s purse to pay the bill, then stuck the purse back in lost and found to teach her some sort of lesson for misplacing it?”
Reba said she thought it very likely.
“Well, it doesn’t sound to me like he’s come clean with his wife about why her purse disappeared,” I asked.
“I doubt he wants her to know he’s the reason she nearly got charged with attempted murder.”
Reba seemed very sanguine about Crystal’s prospects for complete exoneration, although I was far from sure Crystal was off the hook for attacking Reba.
There was no way to prove Crystal hadn’t retrieved her purse from lost and found before heading off to the vet clinic to bean her best friend in the back of the head. Phyliss seeing Blake with Crystal’s purse lent credibility to her story, but it also opened up another troubling line of reasoning.
Was it possible that Blake might attempt to frame his own wife for his ex-wife’s murder, then when that didn’t work, plant the evidence at Duke’s? I supposed it might be, but I couldn’t imagine what motive Blake would have for doing so. It seemed to me that all the evidence was pointing at Duke as the one who’d attacked Reba.
At any rate, whoever had attacked Reba hadn’t actually succeeded in giving her more than a mild concussion and a goose egg on the back of her skull.