Free Holy Guacamole! by NANCY FAIRBANKS Page B

interest in my theory of Gubenko’s death. At the time Guevara had sneered and told me to mind my own business because I wasn’t on the force anymore, and good riddance. Nice guy. I should have shoved his ugly face into a puddle of vomit. God knows there was plenty of it around that morning. Problem was I know better than to screw up a crime scene. “I don’t suppose you thought to take fingerprints from his condo—just in case I got it right, and he had an unfriendly visitor that night,” I added.
    “I got fingerprints up the wazoo,” he snapped. “They just don’t match nothin’.”
    “So ask around,” I snapped back. “That wasn’t any ordinary barf-in-the-windpipe death. Either the killer gave him something to make him sick and then made sure he died of it, or it was a crime of opportunity, but it sure as hell wasn’t some bad-luck death. I saw that pillow. What’d you do? Throw it out so you wouldn’t have to work the case?”
    “Screw you, Vallejo.”
    “Back at you.” I was tired of this conversation.
    “Say, how’s the joints? Looked to me like you was limpin’ Sunday. Hate to think you’re getting worse.” He laughed and hung up.
    I threw the phone across the room. Smack, thinking the game was on, ran after it and brought it back, then shook her head playfully when I tried to retrieve the sucker. I raised my hands in surrender. “Keep it,” I said. She didn’t know what to do. I was changing the rules.

Carolyn
    As I pulled out of the parking lot, I assumed that Sergeant Guevara wouldn’t even question Professor Collins, which was, perhaps, just as well. Although the geologist had threatened Vladik, it seemed to me that he was much more likely to have gone home and yelled at his wife than followed her lover to his condo and smothered him with a pillow. The couple had continued the argument after Vladik’s departure, at least for a while. All the rest of us escaped as fast as we could because the incident was so embarrassing. And maybe—what was her name?—Melanie hadn’t been unfaithful and had managed to convince her husband of her innocence and—oh well, I didn’t even know them. Olive had said the wife was a twit, which was probably true if she’d had an affair with Vladik, who had obviously been a one-night-stand sort of man.
    Which reminded me of Adela. Perhaps I should stop by the dorm to see if she knew anyone who had hated him, besides herself, and she’d already confessed to her part in the crime, if it was a crime. I found North Mesa without getting lost again, then turned left at the light at Schuster, and drove to the back university entrance. Without argument, the guard gave me a pass to park and visit the dorm. He probably thought I was the mother of the Adela Mariscal I cited as my reason for coming on campus. Or maybe not. I was blonde and Adela had black hair and darker skin than mine. Also she was a graduate student. My children weren’t in graduate school yet, although Chris would undoubtedly follow that path. Who knew what Gwen, a drama student presently studying Miro sets in Barcelona, would do when she graduated. Anything but become an actress, if my mother-in-law had her way.
    Adela was in her room and distressed to see me. “Something happen, no?” she cried.
    “No. You missed a nice luncheon at the Magic Pan, and then we went over and picked on Sergeant Guevara for bothering us when there’s a murderer out there to catch.”
    “Me?” she squeaked. “You told him that I—”
    “The person in Vladik’s house. With the pillow.”
    “Oh. Three, four months since I visit his house. Couldn’t be me.”
    “The thing is, Adela, you did know him. You must have seen him every day.” She shook her head. “Well, often. At the department. Can you think of anyone who really disliked him?”
    “Me,” she replied bitterly.
    “Besides you. Maybe someone he got into a fight with. Or someone who complained about him.”
    She shook her head.
    “Can you