“Ah, Lily, you look as bad as ever! ¿Que pasa?” was my fond greeting when I found Regina Baca, sitting in the back courtyard dining room of Rancho de Chimayó.
“And you’re the smart-ass little sister I never had, you know,” I fired back, giving her a big grin.
“It’s my gift to you! Ee, we started already,” she said, gesturing at a girl at her side. “Michele had to eat, right? She’s going to go play with her cousins, right, mija?” She affectionately pushed the teenager’s dark bangs away from her face, and Michele smiled shyly at me, got up, and took her plate with her.
Regina turned to me and exclaimed, “Hey, girl!” and gave me a hearty hug despite her small stature. Her dark hair hung down her back in a single braid, contrasting with a hot pink blouse belted into a slender waist.
We started to look at the menu, but Regina Baca took over, as usual, and I just let her order as I enjoyed the fall afternoon in the courtyard. Large cottonwoods overhead gave off welcoming shade and comfort, and I could smell roasting green chiles and carne adovada.
Our meals came quickly and we ate in satisfied silence, interspersed with bits of small talk that could be blurted out between bites. Shredded beef enchiladas, Christmas—red and green chile—satisfied my hunger, and Regina inhaled a large smothered beef burrito, two chile rellenos, two tacos, refried beans, and Spanish rice. The petite woman could eat.
Over the sopapillas and honey, Regina asked, “So whatcha been up to, Lily? Getting into trouble? Down here visiting amigas?”
“Well, yes and no. Regina, I don’t know how to ask you this … but I heard about Tomás Baca, and, well, is he a relative of yours?”
The light in her face went out. “Mi sobrino.” Her eyes turned wary and aggressive. “How did you know? Why are you asking? What do you know?” We were friends, and yet she became instantly suspicious.
“I’m so sorry, Regina. Your nephew! I’m really sorry. I just learned about Tomás this morning, up at Ghost Ranch. From Conchita.”
“Conchita? Conchita was talking to you, a gringa? Someone she doesn’t know?” Pthith. Regina Baca turned her head and sent a mock spit sound into the air. “She knows better than that.”
“No, really, I’d asked her about a friend of mine, and she just mentioned that Tomás had known her. That’s all.”
“And that he’d been murdered!” she said, her angry voice trembling.
“Yes, and that he’d been murdered. I’m sorry. Can you tell me about Tomás?”
“Ah, Dios mio, Lily!” she sighed. As she searched my face, her expression softened a bit, and she looked more like Regina than the hard-eyed stranger I’d seen moments before, as if she recognized who I was, and could start to loosen her reflexive distrust of a gringa. “Why do you want to know?” she still demanded.
“Please, Regina, I’m looking for some information about a friend who might have known him. Can you tell me a little about Tomás? Maybe I can learn a little more about my friend, too. Come on, you know me. We’ve known each other for a long time.”
Regina Baca held my gaze with her dark brown eyes, and then sighed again and looked around the courtyard, now emptying out after the lunch rush. She reached for a tall red plastic water glass on the table, took a long sip before putting it down, and starting Tomás’s sad tale.
He’d always been a sweet, gangly boy who wanted to please. He lived with Regina for a few years, as Conchita had said, after his mother was sent to federal prison for drug dealing and attempted murder. His father was unknown. Regina Baca and her other sisters worked hard to keep him from the gangs that roamed the valley, but he was easily influenced, and gang violence was hard to avoid as a poverty-level Hispanic youth in Española. But Regina was adamant that Tomás was not involved with drug dealing. He supported himself working at an estate for an Anglo family, and Regina said they were shocked by his death, too.
“Lily, he didn’t do no drugs! I would have known, right? He had no money, no flashy anything. No bling. His friends didn’t deal. He didn’t have the smarts for it. He was just him. He was a little kid, Lily! He didn’t change. I raised him, and I would know.” Her sisters had agreed, so they were horrified when his body was discovered at Santa Cruz Lake, mutilated in a way that marked it as a warning by the area’s ruthless drug gang, Los Reyes. But Regina Baca and her sisters didn’t believe the police story.
“¡Estupidos! The cops know nothing! His car was up there like he supposedly drove it there for a deal? Ha! Los Reyes are Mexicans.” Pthith. “We are Spanish, right? We don’t mix. He wasn’t that stupid! He never would have gone up to Santa Cruz to meet Mexicans, not by himself. Everybody knows what happens there. Drugs! ¡Muerte! If you’re stupid enough to be there when it goes down, right? If those lazy cops had thought about it, they would have seen that all of it was a set up, but no! They had their theory, and it was an easy out to blame it on a drug deal gone bad in the Valley.” Pthith. This time she did spit.
No suspects had been identified. It was so common I imagined it didn’t even warrant much copy space in the news. The case went cold. It was familiar and heart breaking, and I reached over for her hand. We sat together in silence for a while and let the breeze flow over us. There wasn’t much for either one of us to say.
After a while Regina turned to me and asked, “So, my friend, you were looking for something? You said you were talking to Conchita about?” She watched the waitress finish clearing our plates, and then asked her how her kids were doing. By the short conversation, it seemed that Regina Baca was related to her, too.
When they finished and the waitress had left, I answered, “Yes, Shannon Parkhurst. Did you know her? Conchita said Tomás knew her.”
“Ee, Tomás always liked the girls,” Regina smiled sadly. “Eh … Shannon? Shannon … oh, hey, was she that blonde chica who taught him how to ride horses up there at Ghost Ranch?”
“Yeah, maybe so—”
“He said she was nice to him. Ee, teaching him on her own time, after all the gringos went home for the day. He worked in the kitchen, but he’d sneak out to go see his cousin Conchita, and of course, to see his blonde princessa. That’s what he called her, right? He’d hang out there all day if they’d let him. He loved the horses, too.”
“Did you ever meet her, talk to her?”
“Tomás was always trying to drag me up there for staff family days. Ee, I was working two jobs then, didn’t have much time, right? But one time, couple of years ago, I did go up for a cookout, because Tomás wanted to introduce me to a new friend.” She smiled, but then looked down at her lap and fiddled with her napkin. When she looked up, her eyes were shiny with tears, but she shook her head and continued.
“I remember she said she was from Colorado, and now I remember her name was Shannon. We talked for a little while out in front of the dining hall. I ‘specially remember that she was going to work for Andrea Brubaker,” Regina snorted. “Ee, that bruja—I remember because it was that bruja.”
Andrea Brubaker. I knew the name yet I couldn’t bring to mind why Regina Baca would harbor such resentment. I raised my eyebrows at Regina.
“You remember, mija. I told you about my tío. You know, it was after we both had quit at Stedmans, remember? About how he tried to bid on part of the tourista contract, and that bitch Andrea Brubaker fixed it for those Stedmans whores, right? You know, by refusing to advertise her business if they switched from her pals at Stedmans, and my tío got the contract instead. She threatened to pull millions in her ad money, that greedy mutant of a bitch. And those assholes were too afraid to stand up to her and her threats. Ee, one look from that puta and men go sterile.” Pthith.
Ah yes, Andrea Brubaker of Brubaker Distinctive Properties, the most exclusive real estate firm in northern New Mexico. I remembered seeing her waltz past Regina and I through the back of Stedmans with her best friend, senior account director and our hated boss, Chloë Austin. They acted as if they were holding their breaths just to get through the room. Boss Chloë always sent a glare m
y way that implied I was doing something wrong; Andrea looked as if we smelled of carrion. I could see how Regina Baca’s uncle wouldn’t stand much of a chance to break up that duo.
“You know that mother of a whore’s bitch got kickbacks from Chloë at Stedmans!” Regina said. “They all scratch each other’s asses.”
I nodded, knowing that was how it seemed to work, but I didn’t want to talk about Chloë Austin. “So, then, how did Shannon start at Brubaker’s? I mean, how did she start in real estate after working at Ghost Ranch all summer? She was so young and inexperienced, and an exclusive firm like that—”
“I sort of remember her saying she met that bitch of a whore at one of the seminars. Yeah, Tomás said Shannon quit working at the stables, and that he saw her with Andrea down at the classrooms. I guess Her Royal Bitchiness was at Ghost Ranch a lot that summer with her do-goody work.”
“Do you remember what that was?”
“Nope, Tomás was only interested in la chica.”
We’d been talking so much about Tomás that I’d almost forgotten I hadn’t told Regina about Shannon. She was shocked, saddened by yet another young person needlessly dying too young. I told her the police had thought it was suicide, but that I felt differently. I asked her if she thought the two deaths may be connected, since the two knew each other and each had died a suspicious death.
“I don’t know,” she said, “Maybe, but it doesn’t make much sense.”
“But, do you?” I persisted, respecting Regina Baca’s sharp sense of people and how they behaved.
“Well, I don’t know … when they died, they weren’t in the same place, or knew the same people, or did the same thing, or—” She was thinking hard. “Ee, I don’t know.”
“Conchita said Tomás told her he and Shannon dated. Did they? Did she and Tomás have any mutual friends?”
“No, you dumbshit! I just told you that. They didn’t hang with nobody the same. And Tomás sure didn’t date her; he always talked bigger than he did. Like niños do!” Regina said with a smile on her face, her humor returning.
“I gotta go find Michele,” she said, standing up. I stood up with her, stiff after sitting too long in the chair.
“Hey? Meet me out on the portal and I’ll walk you to your car,” she continued. “I’ve got the check.”
I looked surprised. She laughed. “Yeah, me pickin’ up a check? Surprised me, too! Well, the owners will give me a deal, right? They’re my cousins, remember?” she admitted with a sly grin.
As I sat on the portal admiring the golden flecks of straw in the rough adobe work, I sent a text to Hannah Huckleston to ask her mother to specifically check on Andrea Brubaker Distinctive Properties in her mission with her newspaper colleague. Also to check on any philanthropic work Brubaker may have been involved in. I sent it to Hannah knowing that Betty wouldn’t even realize that a text came to her phone, and I knew Hannah would get the message to her mother.
Regina returned with her cousin Michele in tow, and we walked out into the dirt parking lot. We were saying our good byes when I spotted a file folder on the front seat of my car, and that helped me remember something. “Did Shannon date anyone here?” I asked.
“Mija, how many times do I have to tell you? She didn’t run with Tomás’s crowd. I don’t know who she hung with. I only talked to her that once.”
From the folder, I pulled out a printout of Barry Correda’s info page from the Binder Enterprises website. On it was a professionally photographed picture of Barry, looking very successful and self-satisfied. I showed it to Regina. “Do you know him?”
She looked and said, “Nope.” She could tell I was disappointed so she looked again. Her cousin Michele looked over her shoulder, and said something in Spanish. Regina shook her head and they both laughed. Michele leaned over and pointed a blue-painted fingernail at something on the picture, and as Regina squinted at it, she responded, “Ee, he looks too good, mija!”
To me she said, “It looks like someone we know, but he … he don’t look like this!” Regina said something to Michele in Spanish, and they both laughed again. “I don’t know—it could be—but shit! Did they clean him up!”
“You know Barry Correda? He used to live around here?”
“Correda? I don’t know no Barry Correda. This looks like a really good Momo on a really good day. Shit, he never looked this good!” She saw my confusion. “Momo Morgan, ee. Used to run with Paco Duran? That stupid asshole. Momo, he’s not too smart, right? Full of himself, though! Haven’t seen him for quite a while, right, mija?” She looked at her cousin who nodded. Then, as if it was of no importance she said, “There’s some people lookin’ for him, know what I mean? Still see his cousin around, though. Momo’s the spitting image of his cousin Theo, but Theo ain’t so stupid. ”
“You think this is Momo?”
“I don’t know. Kinda looks like him.”
“Could it be somebody else, another cousin or something?”
“Ee, the other one’s dead, and Theo’s brother’s still in the pen. That’s all of them, right? What good that do you anyway? You lookin’ for him or somethin’?”
Before I could answer she said, “From the looks of that picture, if that’s Momo, he went straight or somethin’! But, I don’t know. Sorry, Lily.”
She sent Michele off to the car before she added, “Why are you lookin’ for him? It’s about your friend, right? Ee, I can’t see her running with Momo! And Tomás knew better.”
We stood in silence in the dirt parking lot, listening to the bells of the distant Santuario. Regina Baca crossed her arms and hugged herself as if she felt the cold of her sorrow about Tomás. Her clear dark eyes stared up at me in a look that was full of pain.
“I will tell you this: If that guy, that guy you’re lookin’ for, knows anything about Tomás’s murder, he’ll be sorry he was ever born. Whoever’s responsible for it will be sorry.” She pulled her lips tight across her teeth in a grimace. “You’ve got to promise me, Lily, promise me on our friendship, that if you find out anything about who killed Tomás, you’ll tell me. Ee, he was my hito, so innocent. They tortured him, Lily! The cops won’t do nothing—it’s old news to them now. But mi familia? We don’t forget. Ever. So promise me.” And I did.