Death comes to santa fe, p.1
Death Comes to Santa Fe, page 1
Contents
Cover
Also by Amanda Allen
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for Amanda Allen
About the Author
Prologue: Santa Fe, September 1924
Chapter One: A Few Weeks Earlier
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five: The Night of Zozobra
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by Amanda Allen
Santa Fe Revival mysteries
SANTA FE MOURNING
A MOMENT IN CRIME
DEATH COMES TO SANTA FE
Amanda Allen
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
This eBook edition first published in 2023 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © Amanda Allen, 2023
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Amanda Allen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1099-9 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1100-2 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
Praise for Amanda Allen
“A satisfying read for Maddie fans; it’s also a good bet to give fans of Jessica Fellowes’ The Mitford Murders (2018).”
Booklist on A Moment in Crime
“Readers will appreciate Allen’s likable group of characters, acute attention to historical details, and cameos of such real-life celebrities as poet Alice Henderson and her artist husband, William Henderson. Fans will be eager for Maddie’s next adventure.”
Publishers Weekly on A Moment in Crime
“Auspicious … Readers will want to see more of the appealing Maddie, whose next adventure is hinted at in the epilogue.”
Publishers Weekly on Santa Fe Mourning
“Allen’s re-creation of 1920s language, dress, and clashing norms helps create an immersive whodunit, and Maddie is sure to become a beloved heroine.”
Booklist on Santa Fe Mourning
“Spoiled NY Flapper meets the Wild West – what could be more delightful?”
– Rhys Bowen, New York Times bestselling author
“Engrossing … With evocative descriptions and captivating historical detail, Amanda Allen paints a vivid picture of post-WWI Santa Fe and weaves a mystery that is sure to keep you guessing until the end!”
– Ashley Weaver, author of the Edgar Finalist Murder at the Brightwell on Santa Fe Mourning
“For fans of Miss Fisher’s Murder mysteries … A mystery with the tang of bootleg hooch and the sharp bite of poison.”
– Kate Parker, author of the Deadly Series and the Victorian Bookshop mysteries
About the author
Amanda Allen wrote her first book at the age of sixteen – a vast historical epic starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class.
She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA Award, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Santa Fe with two rescue dogs, a wonderful husband, and far too many books and royal memorabilia collections.
PROLOGUE
Santa Fe, September 1924
‘Burn him! Burn him!’ The shout went up into the purple-black night sky, eager, full of laughter, touched with just a bit of anxiety. Madeline Vaughn-Alwin glanced around at the faces of her friends, barely lit with the few torches planted around the garden, and shivered.
Will Shuster, her artist friend, had outdone himself with this project. Everyone was still shouting, dancing, when a burst of fireworks exploded over their heads, a sparkling bouquet of red, green, blue, gold. The light shimmered on Will’s giant puppet up on his dais, ghostly white in his long paper skirt, except for a shock of bright green hair. His enormous eyes, painted black and ringed in red, stared down at them wrathfully, his immense bat ears flapping in the breeze.
They’d spent a week building him out of wire, wood, wool, and cotton, painting him, stuffing him with everyone’s written woes. Zozobra – gloom. Now they would execute him, and destroy their problems to move free into the future.
As a bell tolled, Maddie reached for David’s hand and held on to it tightly. He gave it a reassuring squeeze, making her smile.
Zozobra’s long arms fluttered upward, his red-painted slash of a mouth opening and closing, emitting a rough growl. A group of Maddie’s artist friends, who also fancied themselves musicians, started pounding their drums and blasting their trumpets from the shadows. It was all very enthusiastic, but very out of tune, and combined with Zozo’s growling it was deafening. Maddie laughed, and let go of David to clap her hands over her ears.
‘Burn him!’ the cry went up again. ‘Que viva la fiesta!’
She looked forward to this week every year since she moved to Santa Fe, the time when the city celebrated the moment three hundred years ago when Don Diego de Vargas marched back into Santa Fe after being driven out twelve years before in the great Pueblo Revolt. It was a few days of pageantry, as the man given the honor of portraying Don Diego and the young lady voted La Reina and her princessly court led the city’s old families in special Masses at the cathedral, processions, dances. And, since Will and the others had come to town, silly touches as well, like parades and masked balls.
And burning the glooms of the year.
Maddie studied Zozobra as he moaned and flailed, and wondered what the real Don Diego would have thought about all this as he sat in his camp outside Santa Fe centuries ago. As he prayed to La Conquistadora, the wooden Holy Mary statue who fled Santa Fe with the Spanish and returned with them, and now resided in a gilded chapel at the cathedral to be paraded around every year in September. He had prayed to her, it was said, to help him reenter the city without shedding blood. If she let him do so, he told her, he would throw her a party every year.
And so they did, every autumn at Fiesta. But hundreds of years of Masses and family parties were turning into ghostly burnings, dancing, drinking.
Will climbed up on to the dais, his rumpled red hair glowing in the torchlight, his paint-stained hands waving much like Zozo’s. The light reflected in his round spectacles. ‘My friends! Thank you for being here tonight, and for all your hard work in gathering our glooms. Here’s to their destruction, and a bright new year ahead of us! Que viva la fiesta!’
The poet Witter Bynner, Santa Fe’s master of ceremonies if there was one, paraded past in a long black cloak, a torch held high, followed by a procession of red-clad glooms moaning and singing.
Everyone cheered and whistled as he tossed a flaming torch at Zozobra’s feet, and flames touched and licked at the papier-mâché. It caught and spread, crackling higher and higher, the smoke curling around the vast, tangled garden and into the night sky. As his bulbous head burst into flame, his face melted, his eyes backlit and demonic. Sparks flew up toward the stars, and his arms flailed faster, caught helplessly in the glooms he had created.
One big, cleansing moment.
More flames shot up, popping loudly. Maddie laughed, and closed her eyes, holding tight to David. She hadn’t many glooms, it was true; her painting was going better than ever, her studio behind her Canyon Road house filling with work for a new exhibition, her feelings for the handsome English doctor growing and growing. Her little created family in that house were happy, too, with Juanita’s twins at the Loretto School, Eddie being promoted at his job at La Fonda Hotel, Juanita baking up a delicious storm every day, when she wasn’t writing to her handsome movie actor suitor in Los Angeles. It had been a good year, a happy one. Yet somehow the fire, the moaning demon, created a touch of cold disquiet somewhere deep inside of her. She wrapped her arms around David and held him close.
‘Dance with me!’ she cried as the music swung into a wild waltz. He laughed, and twirled her around and around in the dying flames, the expanding night, the stars that seemed to sparkle just within her reach as they only did in New Mexico.
Maddie blinked open her eyes as the rose-gold light of morning pierced her sleep. She groaned and rolled over, finding not her own fluffy bed with its bright quilts and soft sheets but the thin cushions of the old iron chaise on Will’s portal. She laughed to realize she must have fallen asleep there after dancing for hours, and rubbed at her mussed, bobbed hair.
The day smelled of the freshness of morning, the flowers growing wild in the garden, the tinge of smoke from Zozobra’s death throes. She stretched and sat up as she studied the people around her, slumped on pillows on the portal, sleeping in hammocks. Will was poking through the ashes, a frown creasing his lean face behind his spectacles.
‘Will?’ she called, finding her shoes before she stepped down off the portal. ‘Is something wrong?’
He glanced up, his eyes wide. He gestured to the metal backbone of Zozobra, the pitted dais, which was all that remained of the demon. ‘I think Zozo got more than he bargained for last night, Maddie.’
He poked his rake at the smoking ashes again. The slips of paper they all wrote their glooms on were gone, but something else gleamed there, smoke-stained but intact. Something she hadn’t seen when they sewed Zozo closed the day before.
A set of false teeth, pale ivory still attached to fake gums. A pocket watch, the silver marred by the dark gray ashes. The mangled gold frames of a pair of spectacles.
Maddie swallowed hard. ‘Those weren’t there before.’
‘No. Neither was this.’ Will used a small spade to hold up something else. A human finger bone and the remains of a burned shoe.
‘Nertz,’ Maddie cursed. It looked like her idyllic year was ending.
ONE
A Few Weeks Earlier
‘Oh, Señora Maddie! That was the saddest thing I have ever seen.’ Juanita Anaya, Maddie’s housekeeper and dearest friend, took an embroidered handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at her eyes as they stepped from the dim lobby of the El Onate movie house into the bright autumn light. Everyone else around them was sniffling, too.
Maddie blinked at Juanita in astonishment. Juanita was not usually given to shows of emotion – it was always hard to tell what she was really thinking or feeling, everything she did was to comfort (or usually feed) someone else. But Maddie had to agree with her; The Far Sunset was indeed sad, and filled with romance and thrills and the beauty of the mountains where it was filmed. ‘I can’t believe we actually saw them film those scenes, right here, practically in our own back garden! I was sure we were right there a hundred years ago, on that ranch.’
She also couldn’t believe now there had been a murder behind the scenes of those grand vistas. Life had been so filled with lovelier things since then, with art and friends and – dare she think it? – romance. Real romance, not movie swooning.
Juanita tucked away her handkerchief and took Maddie’s arm as they set off across the plaza. It was filled with people hurrying around putting up the decorations for Fiesta, the bunting and streamers on the bandstand, the wooden family crests that would hang from the portal of the Palace of the Governors, the food booths being hammered together. ‘That Mrs Luther, she certainly proved to be a talented director!’
Maddie nodded, thinking about what a terrible time Bridget Luther had with her husband the famous director – until he was murdered, and she took over the movie as director. It was the second murder Maddie had found herself solving, after Juanita’s husband was killed. ‘Mrs Godwin now, remember? Remember those pics last month in Silver Screen?’ She sighed to remember those gorgeous images of acres of satin and gardenias, of Bridget Luther’s glowing face under Brussels lace as she beamed at her dishy new millionaire husband. Not that Maddie could be entirely convinced by those beaming photos; Bridget Luther had been a hard-headed businesswoman if ever there was one. But it was still difficult not get pitter-pattered at such beauty.
And maybe, just maybe, deep down in her secret heart, all that lace and orange blossoms made her think a bit about a certain English doctor with sky-blue eyes and luscious kisses …
Maddie almost giggled like a schoolgirl to remember the first time she saw David on that train coming home to Santa Fe. Those gorgeous eyes, his sunlit smile. And all the days since, holding hands, talking about anything and everything. And his kisses. Yum!
Juanita seemed to sense some of Maddie’s daydreams, because she squeezed her arm and gave a little smile. ‘Mrs Luther’s, er, Mrs Godwin’s, gown was so pretty, sí? I’m sure I could copy those sleeves in no time for you.’
Maddie laughed, and squeezed back. ‘Then you should copy them for yourself, Juanita. Wasn’t it larky to see Mr Altumara there on the screen? He was quite the bee’s knees.’
Juanita, a widowed mother of three who was usually the essence of elegant dignity, actually blushed. Rosy spots flooded across her high cheekbones, making Maddie giggle. Francisco, Frank, Altumara was a girlhood flame of Juanita’s from the pueblo who had gone off to be an actor and resurfaced at the ill-fated Far Sunset set. He was a real looker, that was true, and had seemed as taken with Juanita as ever.
‘It’s a fine thing he can’t hear you, Señora Maddie,’ Juanita said as they crossed the dusty lane of Canyon Road toward home. ‘He was always too full of himself when we were children! I admit, he hasn’t done so badly, though.’
‘I should say not! We’ve seen him in three movies already besides this one. Have you heard from him lately?’
‘He wrote in July, on set in Arizona somewhere. He says he might be home at the pueblo for Christmas.’
‘Then you must go, too. I’m sure Eddie and the twins would love it.’ Eddie, Juanita’s son, was almost grown now, working at La Fonda as a waiter and busboy, learning all he could about running a hotel so he could move up the ranks one day. The girls were still at the Loretto School, but they, too, were growing faster than Maddie could believe.
Juanita sighed. ‘Eduardo would say he is too busy at that job of his! I’m glad he’s doing so well there, I was so worried about him when his father died. But he has much to learn from my brothers, too. He needs to remember where we come from.’
Maddie nodded. She always wanted to forget where she came from, that stultifying mansion on Fifth Avenue where she could never be herself, never make her own choices. It was only once she was widowed, once she set off on a cross-country train journey and found herself staying in Santa Fe, that she could make her own life. But it was so different for Juanita and her children. Juanita came from the pueblo at San Ildefonso where her family had lived for centuries. They belonged somewhere, and Maddie rather envied that. ‘I’m sure Anton at La Fonda would be happy to give him days off. He says Eddie is his very best worker, he won’t ever want to lose him!’
Juanita smiled proudly. ‘Well, right now Eddie is too busy getting ready for Fiesta, as the whole town is. La Fonda is completely full! Everyone has work to do now. As do you, Señora Maddie.’
‘I am! Not that I’m complaining. I do love this time of year.’ Santa Fe held their Fiesta every September, created to mark the return of Don Diego de Vargas to New Mexico in 1692. There had been processions and special Masses since 1712, but only recently, since statehood in 1912, had parades and dances and all-around fun been added. It grew every year, until now, in protest at the commercialization by Eastern companies that had started charging fees to actually enter Fiesta events, Maddie’s artist friends had added parades and costumes. The Pasatiempo, they called it.
‘The dances and music and parties. The food! Especially your green chile stew,’ Maddie said.
‘My recipe is not so bad,’ Juanita said modestly. She was well known all around town as one of the best cooks there was; Alice Henderson and the wealthy White sisters were constantly trying to lure her from Maddie. But Juanita would never admit it herself; she was not one to boast. ‘That friend of yours, Señor Shuster, though – he will work you to a thread for all his party schemes! I’ve never known someone with so much energy. He is one loco Anglo! It must come from that red hair.’
