by Don Travis
I touched Gonda’s arm and nodded toward the shotgun. “You know how to handle that?”
“Since I was a boy of ten.”
“You?” I asked Juisson.
“Don’t worry about me. I know how to use it.”
I hesitated. I’d feel much better about entering an unknown situation without armed men I didn’t know very well guarding my flanks. But if they left their weapons in the winery, I might be inadvertently arming our intruder. I filled them in on what happened.
After they were briefed, I led them into the dank wine cellar. The scar on my thigh burned fiercely. It didn’t like having two armed men behind me any more than I did.
The wine racks ran in neat north-south oriented rows, so I put Gonda at the entrance to the cellar to block anyone’s escape. Then Juisson and I started walking from the west end of the cellar to the east, one of us at either end of the rows of barrels and wine racks.
When we reached the area where the barrels were stacked, our task became a little more difficult, both because of the bulk of the containers and because someone could have lain prone on the top of a stack and not be visible. Even so, by the time we finished our sweep, I was convinced we were the only three people in the cavern.
We moved out of the chill of the wine cellar into the more comfortable atmosphere of the winery to assess the situation. Before we had a chance, the sound of footsteps and the darting beam of flashlights announced the presence of the police. I opened the side door to admit Ray and Roma and a couple of other officers. Ray looked like he’d been yanked out of bed; Roma didn’t seem to have been in one. I thought of Juisson and wondered if it was a generational thing.
“You coulda opened the gate so we didn’t have to hike up here” were Roma’s first words.
“I marshalled my manpower where they’d be most efficient.” Might as well be as sarcastic as she was.
The officers heard us out, but it was obvious Roma thought I was jumping at shadows. Before taking them to the wine bottle, I backed up the tape in my recorder until I picked up the first noise I’d heard. The rumble.
Gonda spoke up. “I do not recognize that sound. Someone dragging something across the floor, perhaps? But did you hear that faint clink? That is someone brushing a wine rack. I’ve done it a thousand times myself. No matter how careful he is, everyone does it from time to time.”
Then there was the noise of me getting up, but as I moved away and became less intrusive, we heard the sound of a bottle of wine rolling across concrete.
“Is that enough for you?” I asked Roma.
“Okay. It wasn’t shadows. But if the place is empty, maybe it was a shade.”
I appreciated the difference. “Ghosts don’t roll wine bottles.”
“No,” Ray agreed, “but people do. And you were faked out, my friend. Whoever it was figured you’d hear the bottle and try to get between him and the door. When you didn’t see him, you hunted for the bottle. In the meantime he skirted around the other way and went out the door.” He turned to Gonda. “You say there’s only one way in and one way out of that cellar?”
Gonda nodded to the double doors behind us. “That one right there.”
“It probably happened the way you say,” I agreed. “But he moved fast to get through those doors, unlock the outside exit, lock it behind him, and get out of sight before I came out.”
“Well, let’s go see if I’m wrong.” He walked to the cellar and opened the door. “Damn, it’s cold in here.”
“Try spending three or four hours in it,” I said.
Ray sent Roma and one of the other officers to check out the place again while the fourth, a Sandoval County deputy, guarded the door. Juisson went to help search the place, probably because that’s where Roma was. Gonda and I led Ray to the wine bottle. After assuring him we’d stayed out of that particular aisle and hadn’t touched the bottle on the floor, we squatted down and directed the light from our flashlights across the bare concrete. We could see where the bottle had rolled in the dust. There were also a few indistinct footprints.
“This is our sweet dessert wine,” Gonda said when we located where the bottle rested before it was disturbed. There were two empty places in the rack.
“He took two. One for himself and the one he left for you,” Ray said.
Despite the police’s more thorough search, we found no one in either the wine cellar or the winery.
Chapter 9
THE STATE and county people searched the entire area in and around the winery without turning up a single clue to where the mysterious intruder went. Gonda brought in locksmiths to change the hardware on all the doors, including the chateau and other buildings. So many people marched through the wine cellar in search of a trespasser or evidence of an intruder, the temperature actually went up to the point where Gonda became alarmed and ordered everyone out. I didn’t blame him. In addition to the temperature and changes in humidity, the cops had knocked against racks holding bottles of aging wine. The entire season’s production was probably in jeopardy.
Ray sent most of the officers away, but he and Roma remained behind to talk to the Gondas and Juisson. I heard enough to believe there was nothing new to be learned before walking out to take a tour of the grounds. The police and sheriff’s people covered the premises pretty well, prompting me to eye the forest. Those thick pine woods would be my preferred way of ingress and egress if I didn’t want to be seen.
Sandia Peak still shielded the early morning sun and everything was in shadow when I crossed the Lovely Pines’ west boundary. As I walked deeper into the forest, I grew curious over who owned the acreage north of the winery. So I called the office and left a voicemail asking Hazel to do a title search using the metes and bounds legal description for the Lovely Pines.
Gonda had told me the wall surrounding the ten acres of the winery ended at the northwest corner of the property, where it was replaced by an ordinary four-strand barbed-wire fence closing off the north side. I cut through the forest to locate that juncture and was surprised to see a small tumbledown log building that people around here called a homesteaders’ cabin—whether it was or not. The ruined, roofless building sat just outside the Pines’ wall within a few feet of the north boundary. The south and back walls still stood, but the front of the cabin was virtually gone, and the north wall was only half-standing. Most of the roof lay on the planked floor of the structure.
After checking the small building thoroughly and finding no sign of recent intrusion, I walked south along the stone wall toward the highway. About halfway to the road, a wallow caught my attention. This was where local mule deer or some such large animals often chose to bed down for the night. Curious, I paused for a better look and spied a couple of tracks. I couldn’t say they were human footprints because they had no real shape, but they certainly weren’t made by any cloven-hoofed creature. While puzzling over them, some broken twigs on nearby bushes snagged my attention. Someone had made an effort to conceal the fresh breaks. The twigs had been straightened and made to lean at an angle to make the damage less obvious. Only one animal was capable of that… a human. A human who didn’t want his presence to be noticed. I glanced over the wall and noted I was almost directly opposite the chateau, with a good view of the winery and the parking lot.
The indistinct trail leading to the west, deeper into the forest, proved difficult to track. I went blindly for distances before finding another place where the dirt and leaves and fallen pine needles had been disturbed. Half by guesswork, I kept going until a scrap of something caught in a thorn bush drew me. Small tufts of thread moved gently in the morning breeze. Burlap. It looked like burlap.
Now I knew why the footprints were so indistinct. Someone had covered his boots with burlap to obscure his trail. A particularly good hunter might do that. But one kind of hunter existed who did it as a part of his trade. A sniper.
The trail led to a narrow, rutted road cut into the forest years ago and then abandoned. It was half-grown with we
eds and young saplings. Nobody used it anymore, except perhaps the occasional hunter or kids looking for a place to drink beer and party. At the side of a pair of deep ruts, the footprint impressions disappeared. The intruder had parked his vehicle there. He was long gone by now.
Walking on the verge to avoid destroying any vehicle tracks, although there was little sign of any, I followed the road back to the highway. To my surprise, I came across my own Impala blocking access to the road running beside the winery. That meant the spoor I’d been tracking was made prior to around eight o’clock last night. Unless the vehicle headed north and found another way out, that is. If not, then the watcher in the woods must have been delivered by a second individual already in the winery by the time I arrived.
Unless, of course, he walked in. Somehow I doubted that. The hiding place had been used several times, judging from the way the grass and weeds were crushed. That meant the intruder held to a pattern. Perhaps the sniper—and that’s the way I thought of him now—and the intruder in the wine cellar were not the same. I mentally shook my head. Two skulkers? That required believing in one hell of a coincidence or accepting them as somehow related.
A state police cruiser and an SCSO unit were still in the parking lot by the time I made it back to Gonda’s property. Good. Ray and Roma were still on the premises.
RAY, ROMA, Gonda, and I stood at the property line and peeked over the wall at the wallow area, even though the span of the stone prevented us from seeing much. Neither cop wanted anyone tramping over the area until some technicians could make it back to the site. They were more inclined to view this as evidence in Zuniga’s murder than anything to do with the break-in. They could be right.
“If the perp went out after you parked here last night, he must have gone north.” Ray stated the obvious as he turned to Gonda. “Where does that road go?”
Gonda lifted his hands helplessly. “I do not know. I have never set foot outside my own property line. Perhaps Marc or James or one of the others know.”
“I’ll check it out,” Roma volunteered. “I’ll walk up the wall for apiece before going over. I don’t think the forensics team’s going to find anything, but we might as well keep from contaminating the area. Vinson, you want to come along?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
The underbrush where she elected to enter the forest was heavy, which made me realize the area where the intruder came and went was a natural trail. Maybe a game trail or an old firebreak. After finally fighting our way through the foliage to the logging road, Roma knelt beside the ruts.
“I don’t see any sign of a vehicle passing recently,” she said.
“I don’t either, but I merely assumed a vehicle waited for him. It’s possible he walked in and out.”
“Possible but not likely. Let’s see where this road goes.”
We walked for thirty minutes before the ruts simply petered out. It was obvious that at one time they proceeded on up the hill, but weeds and brush and immature trees clogged it to the point it was impassible, except for someone afoot.
Roma stood with her hands on her hips. “Well, he didn’t go out this way. Let’s hike back to your car.”
“Okay, but you’ll have to explain to the crime-scene boys why we tromped all over their territory.”
“Screw the crime-scene boys.” She seemed to reconsider. “We’ll keep to the west side of the ruts.”
Our inspection of the lower end of the road revealed exactly what I’d found earlier—nothing. No vehicle had gone up or down that rough, overgrown track last night or this morning.
We found Ray in the salon at the chateau talking to Gonda and Maurice Benoir, the chocolatier. Benoir told us what we’d learned for ourselves. The road dead-ended two miles north of the Lovely Pines property line.
Barbara Zuniga joined us at that point. My reaction to her was unsettling. She was an attractive, older, female version of her slain son. Somehow that highlighted the androgyny some of the others had seen in Bas. As soon as the introductions were over, she turned to Ray.
“Lieutenant, have you apprehended the Dayton brothers yet?”
“No, ma’am. It’s a little early for that. Our people have questioned them and the rest of the family.”
“They should be in jail. They murdered my boy. Killed him in cold blood.”
“Why do you say that?” Roma asked bluntly. I think she liked pushing people’s buttons.
Barbara sniffed and fixed the sergeant with a defiant stare. “Don’t tell me you don’t know about their assault on Bascomb after their sister’s suicide.”
“Yes, ma’am, we do. But that doesn’t mean they shot your son.”
Ray spoke up. “Troopers in Las Cruces say they’re alibiing up, but we’re checking things out right now. If they need to be apprehended, we’ll see to it.”
“Talk to the police in Las Cruces,” she said. “Willie Dayton, the eldest boy, threatened to kill Bascomb. Said he would shoot him down like a dog the next time he laid eyes on him. That’s a matter of public record.”
“Was that because Bascomb was contesting the Daytons for custody of his child?” Ray asked.
Barbara Zuniga’s eyebrows shot up. The Gondas both looked as if they’d been struck.
“His what?” they all said in unison.
Chapter 10
LT. RAY Yardley had blundered right into a hornet’s nest. It was almost comical the way he found himself fending off three individuals aggressively pelting him with questions. It became less humorous when Gonda turned to me for answers.
“I just found out yesterday, Ariel. And I didn’t want to mention anything about a possible grandson until I confirmed it and learned more about him.” That didn’t earn me much compassion.
“You should have informed me immediately that I have a grandson. You did not think it important that I know?”
“I wasn’t aware you didn’t know.”
“I assure you that I did not. Did you, Barbara?”
“Absolutely not!” she exclaimed sharply. “Where is the child?”
“With the Daytons in Las Cruces. How is it that you know of the Dayton brothers harassing your son without knowing he fathered a child by their sister? After all, you knew of her suicide.”
“I know because a neighbor whose daughter attended NMSU told me Bas had come to class several times with obvious injuries. But she certainly never said anything about a pregnancy.”
“Didn’t you ask your son about his injuries?” Roma asked.
“Of course I did.” Those two were fast building some enmity between them. “But Bascomb said it was the result of bullying during some fraternity initiation.” She lowered her eyes. They appeared damp to me. “Bascomb and I weren’t in regular contact at that point. I was trying to allow him to spread his own wings.”
“So you didn’t know he and the Dayton girl had been going together since high school?” I asked.
“Well, yes, I was aware of it. But from my son’s deportment, it seemed like a casual thing. Something to fill a social expectation, I suppose you could say.”
Had she seen something in her son that others hinted at? Had Barbara Zuniga considered Lucia Dayton as a “beard” for her possibly gay son? “You live in Las Cruces. You never heard any talk of a child?”
She blinked her large eyes at me. “Never! Nothing at all. Of course, the Dayton family and I do not socialize. I didn’t even know they existed until Bas became involved with the girl in high school.”
“You didn’t meet the family then?” I asked.
“No, I never met them. Tell me what happened to the girl. Does anyone know why she killed herself? That much I learned from the paper.”
“Apparently it was a difficult birth, and the young lady never recovered from the delivery.”
I needed some alone time with Mrs. Zuniga, but my opportunity didn’t come until after Yardley and Muñoz left. Ariel hesitated when I asked to speak to her privately, but Margot took him by the arm. I watched as th
ey mounted the staircase and then switched on my recorder as I laid it on the coffee table between us.
“Do you know who I am, Mrs. Zuniga?”
“I understand you are the private investigator hired by Ariel to find the intruder he had at the winery. He speaks highly of you and expects you to find out who killed our son.”
“You are right about the job he hired me to do. But the authorities are more likely to learn who killed your son than I am. They have more resources and the power of the subpoena. However, I will do my best to assist the police in the matter. May I ask you some questions?”
“Certainly.” She leaned back in the chair and crossed her long, shapely legs. She was a statuesque woman of somewhere around forty-five. She could have been looking at me through her son’s eyes, but her hair was lighter, almost ash blonde. With a little help from her hair stylist, I suspected.
I entered the appropriate data into the digital voice recorder with her permission and then led her over material we had already covered so it would be a part of the formal record. She willingly went over private details without seeming to withhold anything. She painted a picture of a typical single-parent household. Bas had a happy but male-free upbringing, since she had no relatives in the Las Cruces area. Although she occasionally attended parties or company functions at the European Wine Consortium, she purposely avoided social contact with Ariel and Margot. She felt that her son should live the lie she had concocted for him and believe that his father was dead. On one point she was steadfast: she never revealed the secret of his true parentage. No one, not even members of her own family who lived in south Texas, knew Ariel Gonda was the boy’s father.
“I find your description of your relationship with the Daytons—or rather the lack of one—to be curious. Bas was friendly with one of the Dayton sons. I have to assume he brought his friends home from time to time.”