Enduring a restless night in my bare room in Staff House at Ghost Ranch, I was glad for daybreak. I wasn’t too interested in the communal breakfast offering of boiled eggs, oatmeal, and bran cereal served in the dining hall, so I stuck with the weak coffee. After chatting with a group of Belgians touring the Southwest, I packed my gear in the car and headed out for more photographic opportunities.
The day was bright and promising, and I planned to spend as long as I could before I met Betty Huckleston in Santa Fe. At the same time, I couldn’t wait to tell her what I found out about Shannon, and to see what she might have learned from her newspaper friend.
I cranked up Bruce Hornsby—his piano syncopation had a jazzy Southern feel—and seat danced my way back down the road, stopping to take pictures as the vistas suggested. Just north of Santa Fe, as I was coming down Opera Hill, the vista to the south opened out in muted magnificence of the dusky blue Ortiz Mountains, backed by the Sandías; then the low, rounded Cerrillos a bit to the west, with the Jemez running north and south on my right; on the left the dark green forested flanks of the Sangre de Cristos. Way out in the distance, I could see the faint bump of the Lone Butte, an outcropping near where the dogs and I used to live in the desert. Making the wide sweeping turn onto St. Francis Drive, I knew it was time to meet Betty Huckleston at Jackalope, and get on with things.
I found her in the outdoor yard of the large import extravaganza on Cerrillos Road and it was crammed with pottery of all sizes and styles, big earthenware jars, 4-foot ollas, garden Ganeshes, and tinkling fountains in every corner. As Betty shopped, I searched for the right pots for my clients, and then I had the yard guys help me pack them in the back of the CR-V, where the large burnt orange ones for Susan Cramer’s front porch just barely fit.
Betty returned from her extensive research inside the mercado carrying numerous packages for her kids, and yet another new work satchel for me—a blue, green, red, and yellow woven one from Oaxaca. I had enough work bags to last me if I continued to work into my eighties, but Betty Huckleston couldn’t resist bags of any kind, and continued to add to the collection. Our business end of the visit thus accomplished, we gazed at even more colorful vessels as we talked more about our little mystery, as she called it. There were rows of pots, huge blocks of cerulean blue, sunflower yellow, and moss green pots stacked together, squat square ribbed ones standing beside tall and slender ones; and elaborately decorated Mexican terra cotta pots of all sizes. Betty pointed out a pot she liked—a wide blue bowl to put on her patio—and I just wanted them all.
As we continued walking in the dappled shade of the yard, she said Gary Rogers, her source at the newspaper, had confirmed the parts of Andrea Brubaker I remembered: Anglo, very rich, highly connected, used to getting her own way, very successful in high-end real estate; Regina Baca and I had had to pack many boxes of her glossy promo materials at Stedmans. I remembered other things about her, too, but I let those ride for the moment.
“But here’s where it gets good, Toots.” Betty handed me an apple slice as we walked along the rows and rows of pottery. “Mmm, aren’t these good? They’re giving away samples—guess they’re from Dixon. Anyway, Gary said just as the economy was beginning to tank, there had been rumors that Brubaker Properties was in trouble. Andrea denied it, of course, but the gossip was that she had extended the company too far in the fat times, and that irregularities appeared once the times went lean. Money was missing, properties had been misrepresented, clients cheated, that sort of thing.” She offered me more apple which I declined.
“Anyway, it went so far as her being investigated, her books looked at, and what not. Turns out everything checked out, the books were clean. All of a sudden, money was where it should be, accounts in order, all on the up and up. She’s exonerated, and one of her competitors goes down as having set her up. He adamantly denied it, of course, but he went down. I guess Andrea went after him, sued him. It ruined him.”
“But she got off, nothing bad happened to her?” I guessed.
“Not only did nothing bad happen, but Gary suspects that she started her foundation right around then to show how just wonderful she really was, all philanthropic and all. Guess it won her a lot of good press, good relations. All was forgiven, as they say.”
“Well, nobody on her side lost any money, right? So, it’s easy to forgive as long as you don’t have to pay for it, or take the consequences!” I said, feeling bitter at the perceived injustice.
“Yeah, stinks, doesn’t it?” She made a rude sound that made our adolescent selves laugh long and loud.
“Thanks, you always put things into perspective,” I said, catching my breath. “What else did Gary have to say? Did he know the name of the foundation?”
“I wrote it down, it’s something like helping the oppressed or something … here,” she said, showing me a note from her pocket. “It’s Ayudar a los Oprimidos. I guess it’s pretty successful, according to Gary. They help formerly illegal immigrants get jobs and homes, learn English. It does a lot of good things.”
I must have made a face because she said, “Look, Toots, I know you want to paint Andrea Brubaker with one broad, evil brush, but the foundation raises lots of money for these causes, and she helps lots of people with Ayudar a los Oprimidos.”
“Okay, you’re right,” I said, but didn’t really feel it. “Any trace of Shannon in that info?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. I guess Gary met Shannon at an AO—that’s what he called Ayudar a los Oprimidos—media event. He said he liked the AO ones best because they had the best open bar.” She smiled. “He was introduced by Andrea herself. He said it seemed that Shannon was being groomed as Andrea’s personal aide or something. Anyway, she introduced her warmly, and indicated that Gary would see more of her at later events, that Shannon would be a media resource person.”
“Did he see her at later events?”
“Well, he doesn’t go to that many of them because he can’t stand the BS, he said. But he did see her a couple of times, though he couldn’t remember anything of consequence.”
“What about Barry Correda? Any info on him? Or Momo Morgan?’ I asked.
“Gary didn’t remember Barry at Brubaker’s, if that’s where he worked. Of course, real estate isn’t his regular beat, but he hadn’t heard of him, or Momo Morgan either.”
We sat down in the shade of one of the courtyards, listening to a Buddha fountain splash water into a dark red bowl. Betty searched her jacket pockets, and extracted her cigarette case and lighter. She tapped one end of a Pall Mall on the dull gold surface of the case, stuck it in the corner of her mouth, and lit up. She got up and waved the smoke away from me, but I had to admit that even though I hadn’t smoked in twenty years, sometimes a whiff of a cigarette still appealed.
“Let’s see … hmm, where are the rest of my notes? Oh, here they are.” She pulled a crumple of large yellow post-its out of a mailbag posing as her purse. “Gary said that he started seeing less of Shannon at AO because Ernesto came on the scene and Andrea seemed to rely on him more. Shannon seemed to have spent more time then at the Brubaker office on the Plaza; Gary said he sometimes saw her on the street by his office at the paper’s downtown hub.”
“Who is Ernesto?”
“Ernesto Mondragón. Gary seemed to think that he helped Andrea with her foundation, that he had connections in philanthropy. And the gossip is he became more helpful in other areas as well, and then, well, you know—ultimately helpful to Andrea,” she said with an arched brow. We laughed. “I don’t know if he has an official title.” We made some ribald suggestions about what that might be, but soon got serious again.
“Gary says Mondragón is very smooth, very professional, seems to have an impressive resume. Very good with people, contributed lots of money in the community, that sort of thing. Has made a name for himself in town as a philanthropist, and a good name for Andrea Brubaker as well,” she said
“Andrea seems to be my connection to Shannon at this point, I think. Maybe
she could tell me how or if Shannon met Barry down here, or if she knew Barry through real estate, or something. I have to talk with her, I guess,” I said.
“How, Toots? Gary says she is notoriously difficult to get an appointment with. And you don’t have a very good history with her, either!” We discussed various ideas on how to get an appointment with Andrea Brubaker, but came up short of anything that sounded plausible.
Then Betty Huckleston got an idea. “Ask a local! Give me your phone, and I’ll call Gary,” she said, referring to her friend at the newspaper.
“My phone’s in the car, Toots, with my purse. Don’t like to carry stuff.”
“And Hannah accuses me of being the only one on the planet without a phone 24/7! Ha! I’ll see if mine’s in my purse; otherwise you’ll have to go get yours.” She dug around the bag and pulled out several things I wouldn’t have thought to find in a purse, such as an ten-inch wrench, an empty egg carton, and something that looked like a fish net; but her cell phone appeared in a side pocket, and she turned it on to call Gary Rogers. As she waited, she tapped another Pall Mall’s unfiltered end on her cigarette case, stuck it in her mouth, and lit it.
When her friend answered, she briefly explained the situation, said mm,hmm and nodded a couple of times, smiled, and covered the mouthpiece. “He has an idea. Wanna hear it?” She handed the phone to me.
“Uh, hi, Lily,” Gary said. “I’m on deadline here, don’t have much time, but here goes. I hadn’t planned on going, but there’s an AO fundraiser/media event tonight at Andrea Brubaker’s. I think I could get you in as a potential donor. You’d be on your own then, you know.” He laughed quietly. “If Andrea Brubaker finds out I brought an imposter in … well, she’d probably try to get me fired, or I’d be banned from all her media events until hell freezes over. Not that that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he concluded.
“Well, she kind of knows me, and would think I was a very small-time donor. I probably couldn’t get two words with her,” I said.
“We could say that you just came into money, lots of money. Yeah, pose you as a large donor who wants to do good in her old home town!” he said with a sardonic note in his voice. “And in my experience? When Andrea Brubaker hears ‘large donor’ she’d talk to La Llorona herself.”
I laughed.
“Who is La Llorona?” hissed Betty, overhearing.
“A witch who lives under a bridge and catches children to eat!” I hissed back. “A New Mexican fable. I’ll explain later!”
I immediately agreed to his idea, and arranged to meet him in the Cities of Gold Casino parking lot in Pojoaque at seven o’clock. I could follow him from there to Andrea Brubaker’s estate in Jacona, an area northwest of Santa Fe.
As I hung up I realized with these plans I had just agreed to extend our trip by a day. “Sorry, Toots! Is it okay with you if we stay a night here? I’ll try not to be too late at this fundraiser thing, and we can get an early start tomorrow. I can call Gary back and cancel if it doesn’t work for you. I just feel like I need to follow this up, see what I can find out.”
“It’s fine, really, Toots. As you were talking I was already figurin’ out where we’d stay tonight in town. I’ll call Richard and let him know. No big deal. I don’t have to be back until late tomorrow anyway. Let’s do it.”