“It was the times. We had an open community, if you know what I’m getting at.”
“Free love,” Oliver said.
“It’s been a while since I’ve heard that term.” Alyssa gave a sad smile. “As far as I know, when things got…passionate.” She cleared her throat. “Neither Beth nor Manny participated except with each other. I had been a close friend of Beth’s. If she was doing someone on the side, she would have told me.”
Marge was trying to develop a motive for Manny wanting Beth dead. She said, “Maybe Manny wanted get into the action and maybe Beth said no. Maybe he got angry with her and struck her. Is that possible?”
Again, Alyssa just shook her head. “If Manny had wanted to participate, Beth would have gone along with it. Manny was more about food and drugs than about sex. He loved his pot, he loved his frijoles and carne. I don’t remember anyone in the group having a violent temper. We were all about love and peace, Detectives. To be honest, most of the time we were stoned on weed or flying on acid. Whenever we held a private church service, we smoked weed.”
“What was the difference between your private and public service?”
“Well, every Sunday we tried to do a more traditional service to attract new people. It was a mixture of Christianity, Judaism, Unitarianism, and some Indian tribal customs that we learned from Beth and Manny. The public service was conducted without drugs. If we felt that the members would fit into our lifestyle, we’d invite them to our private session. We’d meet like twice a week and that’s when the drugs, booze, and sex began to flow.”
Marge replayed Peter Devargas’s summations about the Church of the Sunland. He had been pretty much on target. “Did Beth and Manny go to these meetings?”
“Oh, sure. They got drunk or stoned with us.”
“What about the sex part?”
“I told you, I don’t think so. I do remember Manny being wasted a lot. Beth always had to drive home.”
Oliver said, “This is all very illuminating. But it doesn’t explain why we found Beth’s body and not Manny’s.”
“So you do suspect him despite what I’ve told you.”
“He’s still an unknown as far as we’re concerned,” Marge said.
“Do you think he’s alive?”
“It’s possible,” Marge said. “Do you have any old pictures of him?”
“No. When I went back to Boston, I really finished with that stage of my life. I chucked everything and threw myself into my family and my career. The name Mapplethorpe opened doors.”
“Are you related to Robert Mapplethorpe?”
“Third cousins,” Alyssa said. “I met the man once or twice, but we were hardly close. Being an architect, I was way too bourgeois to be considered acceptable by his crowd. Anyway, that’s immaterial. The answer is no, I don’t have pictures of either Beth or Manny.”
“You don’t have any old group pictures perhaps?”
“I saved a couple of pictures of Christian Woodhouse. I’m sure you figured out that we had a thing going on. Maybe Christian has some old pictures. I’ll give you the number I have if you want, but it’s ten years old.”
“It’s a start,” Oliver told her.
She got up and told them she’d be right back. When she was out of earshot, Oliver asked Marge what she thought.
“Her account doesn’t match what Peter Devargas had to say about Manny.”
“So you think she’s more credible about Manny Hernandez than the old man?”
“Peter Devargas is hurting. He’s looking for a scapegoat. But there are the facts. We found Beth’s bones but not Manny’s. The guy is still missing and now we have a witness who says that she saw the withdrawal slip with Manny’s signature on it, proof that he did abscond with the cash. Peter Devargas’s conclusion is a logical one.”
Alyssa returned with a slip of paper. “Christian’s phone number, his cell number, and his address. Don’t call him at work. It’s a real snooty prep school and I don’t think the board would approve of his past.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Oliver said. “Anything else you’d like to tell us?”
“If you talk to Sandra Devargas, send her my best. Tell her I’m very, very sorry.”
“You know I have her phone number,” Marge said. “You can call her yourself.”
Alyssa nodded and blinked tears. “Yes, that would be the honorable thing to do. Do you have the number on you?”
“No, but she’s listed in the Santa Fe directory.” Marge gave her the street number.
Alyssa wrote it down. “No gain without pain, right?”
Marge nodded, although that was a warm crock of shit. There were some people who fell into mucho gain just by being born to filthy-rich parents. And there were others-like Sandra and Peter Devargas-who had very little gain but tons of pain.
34
B ECAUSE THE COMPUTER lab was on the second floor of the morgue, Decker could digest his lunch without interference from the charnel-house smell that emanated from the bottom of the Crypt. Not knowing what traffic would be like, he had allowed himself plenty of travel time, arriving at the coroner’s complex fifteen minutes early, just as Marge and Oliver were pulling into the lot. The trio met outside and swapped notes. Oliver was finishing the last of a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich while Marge gave Decker the abridged saga of the Church of the Sunland.
“We need to talk to Christian Woodhouse, more for the sake of completeness than anything else.”
“You don’t think he was involved?” Decker asked. “He had access to the money.”
Oliver swallowed with difficulty. The sandwich was more peanut butter than jelly. “We both came away thinking that Alyssa Bright Mapplethorpe was credible. She was there when Christian tried to take out the cash and they both saw Manny’s signature on the withdrawal slip. We found her story believable.”
Decker looked at Marge. “And you also believe Alyssa’s assessment of Manny being a nice guy?”
Marge popped a mint into her mouth. “The verdict’s still out on that one.”
Oliver said, “Look, Loo. I could buy Woodhouse as a suspect if there had been remains belonging to Beth and Manny. But because we only found Beth, Marge and I feel that the main focus of the investigation should be on what happened to Manny Hernandez.”
“Agreed,” Decker said. “But give a call to Woodhouse anyway and just sound him out.” He addressed Marge. “Did you round up a picture of Belize Hernandez?”
“I did,” she said proudly. “Hold on for just a moment…” She rummaged through her purse and pulled out several black-and-white facsimiles. “Currently, Belize isn’t in the New Mexico prison system, so I don’t have any recent photographs of him.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “I did get Belize’s mug shot from 1973. He was arrested for breaking and entering and did a little time in a prison in southern New Mexico.”
Decker regarded the badly printed copy. The boy had been just a smidge over eighteen when he had been arrested for the felony. He was stocky, with round eyes and a soft round face. His hair was cut marine short but with the long sideburns that were fashionable in the seventies.
Marge noticed the intense look on Decker’s face. “What is it, Pete?”
“He looks really familiar, but I can’t place him.”
“He looks familiar because he looks a lot like Manny Hernandez.” Marge handed him the other copies. “These are high-school yearbook photos of both boys.”
Decker compared the high-school pictures. They did look similar, but Decker couldn’t shake the feeling that he had met this guy before. He gave the copies back to Marge. “I got a call from forensics about an hour ago. We have a positive ID on Beth Hernandez from her dental records. God bless Fred Bradley.”
“The forensic computer tech is in the process of buttressing up the ID by superimposing the Jane Doe skeleton onto Beth’s wedding picture, but the dental is a sure thing.”