No Witness

by Warren C Easley

  I feigned a forehead whack with my palm. “Of course, I should have thought of that.” I smiled. “How good are you at poker?”

  He looked me straight in the eye. “I know the tells for people who bluff and lie, especially Latinos. I can handle this, Cal.”

  I had little doubt that he could. There was clearly more to my well-mannered assistant than met the eye.

  The addresses of the first four workers on the sheet were crossed out. In the margin, Carlos had written in a single address. Google maps took us to a small apartment complex in Newberg, near the Highway 18 bypass. U-shaped with a flat roof, clean and unadorned, the Woodbridge Apartments had a nearly full parking lot and an equally crowded play area teeming with small, energetic kids. Most of the attending mothers had their heads bent over their small screens. I parked away from the play area, wished Timoteo good luck, and waited with Archie.

  A short time later, he slipped into the seat next to me. “They don’t know anything.”

  “Tell me how it went.”

  He laughed. “It was chaotic—four guys packed into a two-bedroom apartment watching Mexican soccer and answering my questions.”

  “You believed them?”

  “Yes. They’re from Michoacán, good guys, the kind who send money back to their families every month. They said they had great respect for my father, called him a good patrón. They didn’t even know about the key or where it was. The gate was open fairly often, but they didn’t notice who handled the key or opened the gate while they were working.”

  “Okay. Four down, seven to go.”

  The next address Carlos had written in was for two men with the same last name, Guerrero. Victor and Paolo were probably brothers but didn’t answer the door at a shabby, side-by-side duplex on the other side of Newberg. Of the next four on the list, two were home but neither one provided anything of interest.

  The address for the seventh worker took us to a mobile home park just off the Pacific Highway past Dundee. We parked out on the street, and Timoteo walked in. Ten minutes later, a text pinged on my phone: join us. 4th on the right, a single wide.

  “Cándido, this is Cal Claxton,” Timoteo said as I stepped into the trailer, a small, cramped space, but clean and neat. After we shook hands, Timoteo said, “Cándido worked mainly in maintenance during the harvest, so he spent a fair amount of time in the barn tinkering with stuff.” A thin young man with a wisp of a moustache and hollow, acne-pocked cheeks, Cándido nodded, indicating he understood some English. “Two days before, um, the shooting, he needed the key to let in a delivery truck, but it wasn’t on the hook.” He eyed Cándido. “You sent the truck through the main entrance, right?”

  “Yes. And I get in trouble. El patrón is not happy. I tell him the key is gone, but when I go to show him, it is there again.” His mouth formed an inverted U. “He did not believe me.”

  Timoteo looked at me. “That probably explains why my father didn’t mention it.”

  “Do you know who had the key?” I asked.

  “No. I am sorry. Any worker could have taken it,” he said, glancing from me to Timoteo and back again.

  Timoteo closed the space between them and said something in Spanish I didn’t catch.

  The young man opened his hands and shook his head. “This is all I know. Please. I do not want any trouble.”

  “Do you know how long the key was gone?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It was gone that morning. This is all I know.”

  “Could it have been gone overnight?”

  He shrugged. “It is possible.”

  We both thanked Cándido, and without any prompting from me, Timoteo gave him a stern warning not to breathe a word of our discussion to anyone. The young man nodded with an earnest expression, and as we were leaving said to Timoteo, “I am very sorry about your sister. I see her several times at the vineyard. She is a beautiful girl. I am very sad about this.”

  At the car we took Archie for a short walk. Timoteo said, his voice excited, “What do you think?”

  “I think you did a nice job of getting him to open up, and I think he’s telling the truth.”

  Timoteo lifted his chin and broke into a broad smile. “Thanks.”

  We discussed the next steps and came up with a plan. I was impressed with my new assistant and felt good that we had our first lead. At the same time, a vague yet familiar feeling nagged at me, that sense that we were venturing out on a slope. Had I known just how steep and just how slippery it would become, I would’ve felt considerably less sanguine.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Give me a couple of hours to photoshop it,” Timoteo said as he got into the family car back at my office. “I’ll include as many as I can, but not all the vineyard workers show up.” He was referring to the celebration that Angel Vineyard held every year at the completion of its grape harvest. We were hoping to utilize the group photo taken at the event to provide decent mug shots for all the workers who attended. The photo was posted on the vineyard’s website. Privacy, after all, was a thing of the past.

  Timoteo left, and Archie and I drove back to the Aerie so I could grab a late lunch—some smoked salmon mixed with a little mayo, crushed red pepper, and lemon juice spread on toasted Dave’s Killer Bread. Archie was off somewhere patrolling the property, and I was out on the porch, facing south toward the valley, so Zoe’s voice surprised me.

  “Ever get tired of this view?”

  I turned to face her. “Nope. Never. It’s constantly changing. The fall colors are my favorite.”

  Her hair was up, and she wore tie-dyed jogging shorts and a faded blue sweatshirt that accentuated the color of her eyes. “I was out jogging, and I saw your car pull in. I have to take Gertie to the hospital tomorrow. Wondering if you could give me a hand with getting her into the car? I had a heck of a time when I brought her from the hospital.”

  I told her I could, then asked, “How did the salmon turn out?”

  I think she actually blushed. “Oh, God, it was a disaster. The plank started smoldering about halfway through, then burst into flames.” Her eyes got huge and she giggled, giving me a glimpse of what she was like as little girl. “It turned out to be salmon flambé.”

  After I stopped laughing, I said, “The barbeque was too hot. You have to cook slowly on a plank.”

  She looked at me with a sheepish expression, then smiled. “You did tell me that, didn’t you. Well, I’m a klutz in the kitchen, but Gertie was a good sport about it.” She paused and changed the subject. “How are you feeling about the case?”

  “Is this a therapy session?” I said, smiling.

  “Yes, it is,” she answered, holding the smile. “Frequent doctor-patient contact is beneficial.”

  I described the lead we’d uncovered and how Timoteo and I planned to follow up. We kicked it around for a while before she said, “How about you? Still on the mend?”

  “A little each day. It’s, uh, hard to reconcile, you know? The absolute horror of it. Sometimes the scene just rushes back, unbidden. It was something that never should have happened.”

  She leveled her eyes at me. “Don’t underestimate the trauma you’ve suffered, Cal. When it rushes back, let it. Don’t bottle it up.” With that, she turned to go, saying over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow at eight thirty.”

  ***

  “There were nineteen workers at the harvest feast. I printed out a headshot for each of them,” Timoteo said an hour later, as he handed me a stack of photographs. “The resolution’s not great, but it was the best I could do.”

  “These might work,” I said after leafing through the stack. “There are two twenty-four-hour locksmiths in the area, one in McMinnville and one in Wilsonville. It’s a Sunday, but they do house calls.” The McMinnville shop was closer. I called that number first, reached the technician on call, and explained what I needed.

&n
bsp; “Nope, I didn’t copy no keys the night of the twenty-second,” he said when he came back on the line. “Didn’t make one service call that night. Real quiet.”

  I called the Wilsonville locksmith next. “The twenty-second? Hang on,” he said. After a short pause: “I did duplicate one, as a matter of fact.”

  “What kind?”

  “A key to a Master padlock.”

  I had my phone on speaker mode. Timoteo thrust a fist up. “Do you remember the person you did this for?” The line went quiet again. “I understand your hesitation,” I said, quickly filling the void. “I’m conducting an investigation, and this information is vital.”

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “I just need you to look at some pictures, see if you can pick him out. I’ll come to you or pay you for a service call. There’ll be a tip in it for you, too.”

  He agreed.

  We met the locksmith at the Coffee Cottage in Newberg twenty-five minutes later. A young man wearing a Seahawks ball cap, extravagant tattoos on both forearms, and thick-lensed glasses. “Nah, I don’t think so,” he said after carefully going through the stack. “He was Mexican like these dudes, but I don’t know, his face was kind of narrow, he had a long neck, and his eyebrows were real bushy.”

  I felt a sharp pang of disappointment. “You’re sure? This is important.”

  He handed the photos back to me. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m good with faces. What’d he do?”

  “Nothing. We just want to talk to him,” I said. “Where did you duplicate the key?”

  “In the parking lot of the Dundee Hotel. I can make a duplicate in a couple of minutes in my van.”

  “Was he with anyone?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so, but as I was pulling out, another dude came in on a motorcycle. The Mexican went over to him.”

  “Did he give the key to that person?”

  The locksmith shrugged. “It was dusk. He handed him something. I’m pretty sure it was the key.”

  “Did you get a look at the guy on the motorcycle?”

  “Uh-uh. He had on a helmet with a tinted visor.”

  “Tall, short, fat?”

  He looked me over. “Maybe your height or a little taller, but skinny.”

  “White, Latino?”

  He shrugged.

  “Age?”

  He opened his hands. “I don’t know. Thirty or forty, maybe.”

  “What kind of bike?”

  “Kawasaki. Black. That I’m sure of.”

  I asked a few more questions, but that was the extent of the information. We got the locksmith’s name and cell phone number, paid for a service call, and gave him fifty bucks cash. He looked a little disappointed but didn’t say anything.

  Timoteo got back into the car and slouched down in the seat, looking crushed.

  “Hey,” I said, “don’t be disappointed. Chances are, whoever had the key made was a go-between, so the guy on the Kawasaki might have been the shooter. We now know someone else was probably involved, someone who rides a black motorcycle. That’s worth the effort and then some.”

  Looking straight ahead, he said, “Yeah, but whoever had the key made would know who this guy is.”

  “Maybe. You said not everyone attended the harvest feast. Could your father make a list of the missing persons?”

  Timoteo sat up a little straighter. “Sure. I’ll get that right away.”

  As I pulled in next to Timoteo’s car in the lot behind my office, I said, “How’s your mother?”

  He turned to face me, his eyes suddenly bright with a film of moisture. “Horrible. She still won’t come out of her room, won’t talk, doesn’t want to eat.” He shook his head. “I don’t think she’s even bathed since the funeral.”

  I felt a stab of guilt for broaching the subject, but Zoe’s comments were fresh in my mind. “I’m sorry to hear that. I talked briefly to a psychologist about your mother. She said it’s vital that you try to draw her out of her room, engage her in conversation, and remind her that Olivia would not want her to react like this.”

  Timoteo swiped a tear with the palm of his hand. “Thanks. That’s good advice.” He sighed and blinked rapidly to stanch any further tears. “There’s something going on between her and my father, too. Something weird. They’re avoiding each other at the time they need each other the most.”

  I wanted to explain the situation, but, of course, I was sworn to secrecy by Carlos. “Give it some time, Timoteo,” I said, finally. “Meanwhile, let’s catch the bastard who did this.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Intel on the cartels? A tricky subject,” Nando Mendoza said in response to my question. It was Monday, midmorning, and my PI and I were in my Dundee office discussing the Olivia Fuentes case. Nando had stopped by on his way down to the Spirit Mountain Casino to meet with its security head about a potential contract. “The cartels have crossed the border and have strong, reliable ties here, the kind that big money can buy. It is hard to know who to trust these days.”

  “If they tried to assassinate a runaway member, wouldn’t there be some chatter in their circles about it?”

  He paused and stroked the dark stubble on his chin with thick fingers. The Rolex on his wrist glittered in the overhead lights. “Ordinarily, yes. However, in this case they may have killed the wrong person. Perhaps they would not wish to brag about that.”

  “Can you at least put your ear to the ground, see what’s out there?”

  “Of course. I have one contact in L.A. who might know something. Also, I know a private investigator in Mexico City I can trust. I will speak to them both.”

  “There’s one other item,” I said, explaining that a man named Darrell Benedict had gotten into a fight with Luis Fuentes a year earlier. “Luis was arrested but not prosecuted.” I handed Nando a copy of the police report and asked him to get a line on the guy.

  He glanced at the report and furrowed his brow. “This is a lot of work, Calvin. Is your new client good for it?”

  Despite an effort, my smile probably looked sheepish. “Well, I’m giving them a discount, and I was, uh, hoping you could do the same.”

  A mock offended look. “Why would I do that?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Nando, don’t forget where you came from. They’re immigrants just like you were when you arrived from Cuba. The only difference is you had a lot of help from the Cuban community in Miami. They’ve had nothing but their bootstraps.”

  He held my gaze for a few moments. “Okay, I will bill any searches at my cost and charge one hundred dollars an hour for my time.”

  “Agreed. Thank you.”

  A thin smile. “I should have known. You are such a pushover, my friend.” I started to respond, but he wisely cut me off. “How is Gertrude?”

  “I saw her this morning, helped her niece load her in the car for a checkup. She looks good. She’s getting her mojo back.”

  He smiled, an incandescent flash that lit the room. He was as fond of my accountant as I was. “That is good news. Please give her my best.” His look turned mischievous. “I was as concerned about you, my friend, as I was about her. I am thinking you might go broke without her.”

  “Well, you’ve got Esperanza to keep you out of trouble, don’t forget.” I was referring to his highly competent office manager and one of Archie’s favorite humans on the planet. Before my friend could counter, I nodded toward his left shoulder, where he’d taken a small-caliber round six months earlier. “How’s the shoulder?”

  He raised his left arm partway, grimacing slightly. “I am making progress. And I am back to salsa dancing. I have had to modify some of my best moves, but I’m out there.”

  “Good. I’m sure Portland’s salsa scene wasn’t the same without you,” I said in jest, but it was undoubtedly true. My Cuban friend sported a personality as large as
his passion for dancing.

  ***

  Early that afternoon, Timoteo called between classes to tell me his father had already identified the vineyard workers missing from the photo. “There were three of them,” he explained. “Two have left for Washington to catch the end of the apple harvest, and one’s still around here. He, um, told me he was going to talk to the guy in Dundee—”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not a good idea. Call him right now. Tell him we’ll handle it, that we just need the address.”

  “Okay, but it may be too late. He was pretty worked up. He said he was going to Washington, too, and talk to the other two.”

  I exhaled a breath in frustration. “Tell him to call me before he does anything, okay?”

  “Will do.” Timoteo paused. “Are we still on for the Tequila Cantina tonight?”

  “Eight thirty,” I replied.

  ***

  I planned to sneak out early that afternoon, hoping to clock some time on my rock wall, but my phone rang just as I was locking up. I groaned internally when Ned Gillian announced himself, admonished me for not calling him back, and told me he wanted to talk about the Chihuahua.

  “Although Nathan purchased the dog, he’s willing to compromise,” Gillian said. “He’s willing to share custody of Cha Cha with Veronica.”

  “He gave her the dog as a birthday present.”

  “So Veronica says. I have the credit card receipt to prove who purchased the dog.” He exhaled noisily. “All he’s asking for is alternate weekends and holidays. Simple as that.”

  A tired sigh escaped my lips. “Look, Ned, Veronica wants a clean break. She thinks this dog thing is just Nathan trying to hang on. I feel for the guy, but she’s not going to give on this.”

  The line went quiet for a long time. “Jesus Christ,” he said finally, “I’m a defense lawyer. I took this case as a favor. He’s an old friend. I love him, but he needs a shrink, not a lawyer.”