by Lynne Hinton
“And why would he come back now?” Eve wondered out loud.
“Well, he knew Daniel and I were checking out his property. Maybe he felt like he needed to be here to make sure nothing else is discovered.” He took another bite of roast.
Eve nodded. That made sense to her.
“Or maybe he’s come back to confess.”
Eve smiled. “Well, that would make things a lot easier for us, wouldn’t it?” She took another bite of her meal.
“Now, tell me what happened with Polland.”
Eve finished her bite. “He drives a Porsche,” she replied.
“Okay,” the Captain replied. “Why is that important?”
“It wasn’t a Porsche that Miss Buttercup saw at the intersection.”
“He could have rented a black SUV and driven here,” he added.
Eve hadn’t thought of that. “Right.”
“But he admitted that he thought Cheston was stealing from him?” The Captain had heard some of what had happened in Santa Fe when Eve first got home.
“That’s what he seems to think. He didn’t give me any details. He just said he was sure Cheston was headed toward using drugs again if he wasn’t already and that this was Polland’s last project with him.” She took a swallow of her milk. “Maybe he had told Cheston that and they got in a fight?”
The Captain nodded. “Could be,” he said. “But I think if he had come here to New Mexico the night Cheston disappeared, Megan would have seen him. He had no reason to hide if he came to confront Cheston.”
“Maybe she’s covering for him?”
“If she was, and she was as upset as you say she was after hearing Polland say all those things, she likely won’t be covering for him much longer. All that will take is a phone call.” He finished his supper and wiped his mouth. He folded the napkin and placed it beside the plate. “So, tell me about Los Angeles.”
She was still eating. “I liked it,” she said. “It’s big and spread out and I’d never want to live there, but it’s a nice city.”
He was staring at her. “I’m talking about what you found at Megan’s house.”
“Oh.” She dabbed at the corners of her mouth. “It’s like I said, I didn’t find much. Everything on the list you gave me was definitely missing. There was no computer of any kind, no cell phones, no related files other than the one I brought back that contained information on filming locations.”
“You said you took a calendar?”
She nodded. “It was hanging on the wall beside his desk. It just had a few notes on it, and I thought they might mean something. It had a bank’s name stamped on it.” She suddenly thought of her conversation with Polland. “It could be passwords to an account or something.” She wrinkled up her nose. “How would we check that out?”
“We could find out where he had bank accounts, see if the codes work. What bank did that calendar come from?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to take another look at it.”
“We can google the bank, give the number and the codes you found, and see if they are valid account numbers or passwords.”
This impressed her. “Oh, and there was a gun,” she remembered.
“A gun?”
“It was in Megan’s closet, in a shoebox.”
The Captain seemed to be thinking about this news. “Well, since a gun was not the murder weapon, I guess it doesn’t matter if Megan had a gun or not.” He shook his head. “What else?”
“Nothing much,” she replied. “The CDs, DVDs, and the file. Nothing that appears to support the theory that Cheston was killed by Megan or by anybody else. Inside it was just a regular house.”
“But you wouldn’t want to live there?” he teased.
Evangeline was just about to respond when a knock on the door interrupted her. She stood up.
“It’s probably Daniel,” the Captain noted. “We’re going over to Biltmore’s again later.”
Evangeline opened the front door and stood there for a moment without saying a word.
“Well, don’t just stand there, Eve, let him in.”
“It’s not a him,” came the response from the other side of the door.
Trooper began to bark.
“Hello, Eve, Captain.”
And Evangeline opened the screen door and stepped aside so that her sister could make her way into the house.
FIFTY-FOUR
Eve left so that Dorisanne could have a little time alone with the Captain. Neither one of them asked for it. She just thought that the two of them should have their own private conversation. She had fixed a plate for Dorisanne, cleaned up the dishes, and given the Captain his insulin. She told them that she was going to visit Madeline and chose not to mention that on her way she would stop and introduce herself to Mr. Biltmore. She knew the Captain would disallow such a meeting, even if she promised that she would not confront him or ask any questions about his relationship with the victim, but she was feeling confident after making a trip to California and after having what she thought was a productive conversation with Ron Polland.
She headed down the highway and made the turn onto the dirt road. She glanced over to her right and saw the lights on at Miss Buttercup’s house. She wondered if the librarian was watching and taking notes of whose truck was heading west on the dirt road. She kept going and thought about Dorisanne and the conversation that was being held in the dining room of her parents’ house. She hoped her sister wouldn’t get mad and leave too quickly and that the Captain would be on his best behavior.
Once she started thinking about what might be happening between the two remaining members of her family, she slowed down and considered turning around and going back, taking on the role of mediator between the two, a role she used to step into very easily when she was younger. But instead, she sped up. Dorisanne was old enough to manage her own discussions, and the Captain needed to learn how to deal with his own messes. If she had learned anything from living in community, Eve was clear on the lesson that not every drama needed to be her drama.
She lightly touched the brakes as she passed over each cattle guard and could see the lights on at the Biltmore cabin a couple of miles before she got to the gated driveway. She thought about what she would say when Biltmore opened the door.
“I’ll just say I was at Madeline’s and hadn’t met him, saw that he was home, and thought I’d drop by,” she said out loud. It’s mostly true, she thought, and then recalled the L.A. taxi driver’s comments and how short she was falling of bearing only the truth. “Or, I could say that I’m working on a murder case and have no idea what I’m doing.”
She stopped when she made it over the last cattle guard and saw that the gate to the property was closed. She thought about her options. She knew the Captain would be very angry about her decision, but she parked the truck on the side of the road as she had done once before—only this time right in front of the driveway—turned off the engine, got out, and jumped the gate. She also remembered a promise she had made about not doing this kind of thing again. It had been in a prayer. She stopped and made the sign of the cross. She would be in confession by the end of the week, and she knew what she’d be confessing. I’ll be quick, she told herself, thinking a speedy trespass was somehow less offensive.
Eve was happy that she was wearing sneakers and had an easier time making the hike from the end of the driveway to the cabin. She walked the distance in a much shorter amount of time than she had when wearing the clogs. She headed up the path and noticed the truck by the porch. She had seen it before at the Silver Cross. Ewing was still with Mr. Biltmore.
She stopped at the back of the vehicle, trying to get an idea of where the two men might be and where she would have the best chance of observing them without being noticed. She glanced over at the house and peered in through the open windows. She immediately saw the rancher sitting on a barstool in the kitchen. She thought she could see Mr. Biltmore moving around near the stove and sink. She guessed that he was prepar
ing a meal. She could hear the sound of two men talking. She moved a little closer and crouched down on the porch between the front door and the window.
“If he picked up the script, then where’s the money?” It was Mr. Ewing’s voice.
“I don’t know,” came the reply. “I just know that the safe was empty and that’s where he was supposed to leave it.”
“Maybe somebody else was here,” Ewing said.
“It seems unlikely,” Biltmore responded. “I mean, I talked to him the night before he was coming over. He was the only one who knew where I had hidden the pages.”
“Do you have any whiskey?”
“Top drawer of the desk.”
She heard the stool move and footsteps coming toward her. A drawer opened and closed, and she remembered having seen that Biltmore’s desk was situated near the window, not far from where she was hiding.
“How much was supposed to be there?”
She guessed Ewing was standing right next to her.
“Twenty-five thousand,” Biltmore replied.
He was so close to her she could hear the man breathing. Then he turned and headed back to the kitchen.
There were the sounds of ice cubes dropping into a glass and the stool sliding back out. “And none of it was there?”
“Nothing. I told you. He took the pages and left me nothing.”
Eve could hear sounds from the stove, popping, frying noises. She scooted up a bit because she was having a difficult time making out the voices. When she did, she kicked her foot out and banged into the rocking chair that she was crouched behind. It slipped forward.
“What was that?”
Eve quickly jumped up and hurried away from the porch, finding a hiding place behind Mr. Ewing’s truck.
The front door opened. A light came on. She was squatting behind the back tire. She held her breath.
“Probably just the wind.”
There was a long pause when she could hear nothing. And the door closed. Eve exhaled. She waited, unable to hear anything else, and then she stood, carefully, slowly, keeping her body pressed to the truck. She was at the rear of the bed on the passenger’s side.
She hesitated a bit longer and then lifted her head to look across the truck toward the porch. The coast appeared to be clear, and she was about to head back at full speed to the gate and into her vehicle, having a close enough call, when something caught her eye in the bed of the truck. It was a slip of paper sticking out of the equipment box bolted behind the cab. She pushed on the lid and it opened, and the paper, which she didn’t catch a good look at, sailed past her.
She was closing the lid as quietly as she could when she noticed something odd. Inside the equipment box was something shaped almost like a gun, but with the porch light on, she could just make out that it was not a firearm. It was something else, she thought, and then she remembered the vaccine injector used at the clinic in Cerrillos when she was a child. It had been explained to her that the stainless-steel medical device used a high-pressure jet of compressed air to administer medicine rather than a hypodermic needle. She recalled that the shot had stung a bit. As far as she knew, they didn’t use them any longer because of the hepatitis scare and the possibility of contamination.
She was reaching in to pick up the contraption and get a closer look when she felt a hand suddenly reach across her face and fingers tightly clamp her mouth.
She heard a whisper, “Don’t make a sound,” and she was immediately pulled back down behind the truck.
FIFTY-FIVE
“If your daddy knew what you were doing, he’d have your hide. And it doesn’t matter one bit that you’re too old to get whipped or that you’re a nun!” Daniel spoke in a harsh whisper. He held on to the collar of Evangeline’s shirt and escorted her away from the truck and down the path back to the end of the driveway.
She didn’t say a word until he had hoisted her over the gate and they were standing at her vehicle. “Geez, Daniel, you almost gave me a heart attack!” She rubbed her neck. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“What am I doing out here?” he repeated. “That’s my question. What are you doing trespassing again? Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?”
Daniel was dressed in a suit, the same attire she was used to seeing him in when he was at work. He was sweating a bit and he had leaned over, dropping his hands on his knees. She could see the firearm on his belt, his badge, and a cell phone.
“Why are you breathing so heavy?”
“Because as soon as I saw the truck and knew it was you making an unlawful entry again and knowing that Biltmore was home and could be very unhappy about a trespasser on his property, I parked and ran up the driveway to see what kind of mess you were making for yourself. That’s a long haul up to the cabin.”
He was right, Eve thought. It was a lot harder going up the path to the house than coming down. And she had never run it. She glanced around for Daniel’s car. “Where did you park?”
“About half a mile up the road,” he answered.
His fatigue was making a lot more sense. He had covered quite a distance before getting to her.
“If you hadn’t yet been discovered, I didn’t want to give anybody a reason to call Biltmore and tell him he had two vehicles parked at the end of his driveway, one a police car. Your truck is suspicious enough.” He was still trying to catch his breath.
Eve nodded. “Were you going to go visit Biltmore?”
“That was the plan,” he said, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiping his face. “I stopped by your dad’s place and saw that he was busy with Dorisanne, so I told him I’d just come by and make an initial contact, see what I might find out. Little did I know Sister Ethan Hunt was out here snooping around.”
“Who’s Ethan Hunt?”
He shook his head. “Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible series.”
“What happened to Peter Graves?” She used to watch the television series reruns and loved the main character from the drama filmed in the seventies.
“Died in 2010. He was eighty-three,” Daniel replied. “The first new Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise came out in 1996.” He studied her. “Are you telling me you haven’t seen a movie since 1996? That’s a lot longer than just six years. That’s like—” He started counting.
“I know what it’s like,” she interrupted. “I just didn’t see this movie. I’ve seen a movie since then.”
He put the handkerchief back and rested his hands on his hips. “You never answered my question. What are you doing out here?”
She made a couple of shoulder rolls, a neck stretch, anything to avoid direct eye contact. “I saw Mr. Biltmore at the airport. I just thought I’d stop by.”
“Did you speak to Mr. Biltmore?”
“Uh, no.”
“Did you call him up and ask him if you could stop by?”
She shook her head.
“So, you knew this man was home, and you jumped his gate to trespass and spy on him?”
She shrugged. “You don’t have to make it sound so much like a crime.”
“Evangeline, it is a crime.”
She played with her hair, smoothing it down on both sides, trying to pass off her best “I’m so innocent” look. She could see it wasn’t working.
“Go on home,” he said. “Go be with your sister and your dad.”
“How’s that going, anyway?” she asked. She thought she might prefer to wait a little longer.
“Seemed fine. I didn’t see any evidence of plates being thrown, and as far as I know, there haven’t been any complaints lodged by the neighbors regarding domestic violence. Besides, that’s what I expected from you two, not Dorisanne.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “Right, because she’s the quiet one.”
He walked over and opened the driver’s-side door of the truck. Eve got the message and met him there.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I saw or heard anything interesting?”
/> He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be prudent for a police officer to receive information that was obtained illegally.”
She hadn’t thought of that. She got in the truck and he shut the door. She started the engine and rolled down the window. He was still standing beside her.
“Hypothetically, why would somebody have a jet injector?” she asked.
“A what?”
“A jet injector, you know the kind they used to give vaccines to us in the seventies and eighties, the kind I think they still use in other countries.” She thought she had remembered seeing pictures of Catholic mission work in third-world areas, some of which had to do with health care and vaccines being given to children.
He shook his head. “Could be somebody has to give shots to horses, use it for a tranquilizer for mountain lions or bears. I’m not sure.” He studied her. “You see something like that up there?”
“I thought you didn’t want to hear anything that might have been obtained without a proper search warrant.” She faced ahead.
“Listen to you. When did you start talking like this?”
“What?”
“How do you know anything about proper search warrants?”
She was about to answer when they both turned to see lights coming from the cabin in their direction. Somebody was heading toward them, and he or she seemed to be driving very fast.
FIFTY-SIX
“Watch out!” Evangeline shouted, and Daniel quickly jumped away from the vehicle that they were both sure was going to be T-boned by the truck careening toward the end of the driveway and just about to plow through the gate.
Evangeline faced forward and braced herself, still holding on to the steering wheel. She squeezed her eyes tightly and held her breath. There was a moment of utter shock when she realized that the truck had come to a screeching halt just on the other side of the gate.
There was gravel flying and swirls of dust everywhere. Then a door opened, and a bright light was shining in Evangeline’s eyes. She held up her hand, blocking the glare.