The Lovely Pines

by Don Travis

  Del blew air through his lips. “You know Billy Jenkins?”

  “I met him for the first time when I was down in Carlsbad the other day.”

  “Talk about a sharp lawyer hiding behind a country-bumpkin front. Normally I’d say it’s pretty clear-cut. When there are no parents, grandparents stand next in line for custody.”

  “Is that what Gonda’s asking for?”

  “I don’t think he knows what he wants at this point. He just wants to make sure he has a role in the child’s life.”

  “I’m not sure custody is the right thing for the boy at the moment.”

  “I’m not either,” Del replied. “Not until his father’s shooting is solved. I assume you haven’t ruled out someone inside the Gonda family.”

  “Not at this point. Do you think that’s why Gonda doesn’t know his own mind on this? He’s acknowledged to me that he already decided to include the boy’s father as a Gonda heir.”

  “Which probably got the kid killed.”

  “He claims no one knew, not even his wife or nephew.”

  “By now the whole clan knows of the blood tie, and they also know Ariel Gonda. You didn’t have to tell me he’d decided to leave something for the Zuniga kid, and I’ve known him less than a month. Don’t you think Margot and Marc knew?”

  “At least suspected. So what are you doing for Gonda until he makes his mind up?”

  “Talking to Bill Jenkins to establish the Gonda family’s rights. Let him know Gonda wants to be involved. I won’t press for custody but leave the issue open. By the way, Billy’s already raising the issue of the child’s safety, given the murderer of his father’s not yet identified.”

  “What’s Barbara Zuniga’s position in all this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t represent her, but I understand she engaged an attorney in Las Cruces. Despite what Gonda decides to do, she might seek custody of her grandson.”

  “What does this do to the Forsyths’ wish to adopt little David James?”

  “Slow track. If Jenkins goes to court, he knows I’ll put forth the Gonda claim, which should be superior to an aunt and uncle. Also trying to arrange for them to meet on neutral ground so the Gondas can see their grandchild. And, of course, Billy’s having me jump through hoops validating Zuniga’s paternity and the blood relationship between Zuniga and Gonda. That will take a little time to get done properly. Especially since most of it will have to be done by blood test.”

  “How are you going to do that? Zuniga’s buried. Will you have to exhume?”

  “Probably not. Gonda saved his son’s bloodstained clothing, had it attested by the medical examiner. It’s already at a local lab.”

  That caught my attention. “Why? He didn’t know about the baby at that time.”

  “Gonda’s a detail man. He might have had some question about Zuniga’s patrimony in his own mind. Maybe he didn’t accept Barbara Zuniga’s claim he was the father and wanted it settled once and for all.”

  I shook my head. “He convinced me he’d accepted Bascomb Zuniga totally. And Margot reinforced that belief when she recognized the boy as her husband’s son back when he was a child.”

  “When there’s money like the Gondas have, a guy learns to protect his back. He may have figured he’d have to prove he and Zuniga were father and son someday. So what are you going to do now?”

  “While Hazel and Charlie take another look into Katie Henderson’s boyfriend’s background, I’m going to take another crack at the Daytons.”

  “Another trip to Las Cruces, huh? Be sure and stop in at Coas Books. Best used bookstore in the state for my money.”

  “I remember them. They started in a little space down on North Main—”

  “And kept adding space as other tenants moved out,” Del finished for me. “Fascinating place full of nooks and crannies.” He switched abruptly on me, as Del was wont to do. “What’s Paul up to these days?”

  “About finished with his master’s. Plans on graduating at the end of the term.”

  “Is he going thesis or master’s exams?”

  “Thesis. But now I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “What’s he going to do when he gets his degree?” Del asked.

  “Thinks he can make a living off the internet. Right now he’s sifting the listings on Mediabistro.com for publisher jobs and JournalismJobs.com for newspaper and magazine positions. He believes he can do freelance work from home.”

  “Man, how this world’s changed since we first went looking for work,” Del said with a sigh in his voice.

  “Yeah. And I keep wondering if that’s good or bad.”

  Chapter 24

  I WAS reluctant to leave for Las Cruces the next morning. This was an important time in Paul’s life. But we discussed the situation, and he said everything was under control. He’d opted to go for UNM’s Plan 1, which was to write a thesis. He would, he assured me, have his required hours in 599/thesis, whatever the hell that was, and do his thesis defense. After that, he had ninety days to turn in the manuscript itself. Appropriately enough, the subject he’d chosen was to examine the effects of social media on journalism. The subject was more specific than that, but that was my take on it.

  The last thing he needed at this point, he claimed, was me hanging around the house and distracting him from his research and writing. That might have been true or he might just be making it easier for me to do my job, but there had been an air of desperation about our lovemaking last night. He came across as one confident young man, but he possessed nerves like the rest of us, and they were plucking at him. All I could do was lend support.

  So morning found me on the road to the City of Crosses once again, with my mind at least partially back at 5229 Post Oak Drive with the human being I loved more than all others on God’s great earth.

  With difficulty I dragged my attention back where I needed it at the moment. Yardley had given me the names of two individuals who claimed they’d seen Dayton Sr. at the bar called the Crippled Aggie. Sherree Rinds was a waitress there. The weird name of the establishment apparently came from the owner, a guy named Reggie Batt, who broke his leg while he was playing for the New Mexico State University Aggies. The weird spelling of Sherree, I’d leave alone.

  The other individual was a Hal Silva, who Yardley said was an ex-Aggie pal of the bar owner who sold cars in the daytime and drank Scotch after the sun went down. Sold cars, huh. Any connection to the Forsyths?

  Usually I enjoy travel. I can look at a flat expanse of desert and realize that forty miles over in that direction was an old archaeological dig or in the opposite direction was a place that served one of the best hamburgers in the state. Today, my mind wanted to go back to my partner at home. Eventually it ended up at the Crippled Aggie, appropriately enough not far from Coas, the bookstore Del mentioned.

  Sherree hadn’t come on duty yet, but I met all two hundred seventy pounds of Reggie Batt. He was my kind of bar owner. He answered all my questions readily and with a smile on his jowly face. Of course, I had no idea if he answered them honestly. According to him, James Dayton was in the bar that night with a woman, but contrary to Dayton’s claim, she wasn’t married. Hester Heigh was single and apparently available. Why would Dayton complicate his life by withholding her name from the police by claiming she was married? Hard to say. Some people just resented answering questions and told a lie when the truth would serve them better. That was pretty much my impression of James Dayton.

  When asked how he could be so clear about events on a night almost four weeks ago, Batt acknowledged he hadn’t until Lt. Ray Yardley of the NMSP contacted him. Then he went back over the calendar and bar receipts to fix the date. He was, however, unable to confirm how long the couple remained in the bar. That was left for Sherree to clear up when she came in later. Dayton and Hester left the bar around eight thirty the night in question, but Dayton reappeared alone in the Crippled Aggie about half an hour later. The waitress claimed Dayton remained unti
l the bar closed, but Batt disagreed. The more they talked, the more I became convinced that Sherree was covering for Dayton, either by request or out of a sense of loyalty. On the other hand, Batt seemed to liberally partake of his own brews, which might cloud his recollection. Nonetheless, each espoused his or her position vehemently.

  I left the bar and headed for the address Batt provided for Hester Heigh. She was, he explained, a lady of leisure by virtue of a penurious dead daddy. A thin but somehow semiattractive woman of fifty years or so opened the door to my knock. It was quickly apparent she was up for a good time. In fact, so pressing was she in the pursuit of a party, I told her I bounced the other way. She merely said she was confident she could put the bounce back on the appropriate trampoline if I’d just give her a chance.

  Aside from confirming Sherree’s version of the story that she and Dayton left the bar around ten, all I learned was that she considered “Jamie” to be a quite adequate performer—something I didn’t need to know. Their conversation that evening had been limited to a rundown on the other patrons of the bar and intimate talk, which led to their early departure. According to Hester, there was no discussion of Baby David or any other member of the family. Nor was there a mention of the child’s paternity. I accepted her view of things, since she appeared to be one of those people who would have delighted in creating a problem for someone else. Anyone else. She did contribute one solid fact. She told me where James Dayton habitually filled up his gas tank and said he hadn’t done that while they were together that evening.

  A swing by the Gas House revealed Dayton topped up the tank on the Continental about once a week, usually on a Friday night. But the attendant couldn’t say whether or not Dayton altered his pattern a month ago.

  WILLIE DAYTON, the eldest brother of the baby’s dead mother, was openly hostile, bothered apparently in equal measure over questions about his whereabouts, the mention of Bascomb Zuniga’s name, and most likely life in general. He mirrored his father in that attitude, so far as I could tell. He did give me, probably inadvertently, the youngest brother’s—Patrick’s—place of employment. He was a clerk at Spilled Ink, one of Coas Books’ rivals farther up Main Street.

  As soon as I introduced myself to the youngest of the Dayton clan and shook his hand, a few things fell into place for me. Slender, sandy-haired, gray-eyed, and attractive in an understated way, Patrick blipped on my gaydar. This effeminate young man undoubtedly worshiped the extremely good-looking Zuniga and longed for a sexual connection. Perhaps there had been one, and Zuniga’s subsequent attraction to his sister cut two ways. An indirect, sympathetic connection was better than nothing, which would have bonded him to the young man even absent a physical relationship. Or jealousy of Zuniga’s sexual contact with Pat’s sister could have driven him crazy. The gentle soul I observed before me seemed more apt to hang on to whatever relationship was left to him than to take revenge.

  He turned the cash register over to a female clerk and walked to a reading area with comfortable chairs grouped around a huge, square coffee table… except it was loaded with books, not coffee cups. He answered my questions without hesitation. The night was firmly fixed in his mind because of his trip to the Santa Ana Star to see a comedy show and, of course, by the death of his friend. Eventually I asked him a highly personal question.

  “Pat, I don’t want you to take offense at this next question, but it’s something I need to know. Were you and Bas lovers?”

  His head dropped and he went still for a moment before he spoke in a low voice. “No… not—”

  I held up a hand. “Let me make something clear. The question wasn’t designed to expose or embarrass you. I’m gay myself, so I don’t view it as an odd question. But it might help me to understand your friend and give me another direction to go in my investigation.”

  He leaned forward in his chair and glanced around. We were alone in the area. “You’re gay? You’re not just leading me on, are you?” When I shook my head, he leaned back. “I wished we were lovers…. Bas and me, I mean. Even if he was taken away like he was, I’d have that to remember. I’ll be honest. I loved Bas… like Lucia did. My sis and I looked a lot alike, and I fantasized that he did it with her because he could pretend it was me.” The kid blushed with that admission and made an impatient gesture.

  “It wasn’t like that, but anyway….” He let a long moment of silence pass. “We talked about it. He knew how I felt. Sometimes I thought it was going to happen. I know he got aroused when we talked about it a couple of times. But it just never happened. Then when Lucia showed some interest in him, we stopped flirting and talking about it.” Sadness thickened his voice at the end.

  “Do you think he was active with other men?”

  He shook his head. “We talked about that too. He started teasing me about this guy or that, you know, who appealed to me. So I’d do the same, ask if some guy or the other turned him on. But he said he’d never done it with a guy and—” Pat’s voice died away, and I gave him a moment to recover. “—and that if he decided to give it a try, it would be with me.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Pat flared. “Yes! Not… not just because I wanted to believe it, but because Bas was so open and honest about everything. I miss him. S-so much.”

  I changed to questions of another nature to give him an opportunity to recover. “Pat, why did Zuniga show no interest in his new son?”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “He did! He tried to see little Davy lots of times.”

  “When I spoke to your father, he said that wasn’t true.”

  “Well, my father lied! He’s a bully and a liar. Every time Bas came around trying to see Lucia and the baby, my dad always set my brothers on him. Even tried to shame me into taking Bas on. You know, for getting my sister pregnant.”

  “Why didn’t he and Lucia meet elsewhere? At school. His room. Anywhere?”

  Pat’s features sagged. “She had a real hard time with the baby. After Davy was born, she was bedridden most of the time. And even on her good days, she didn’t leave the house. So he had to come to her.

  “I don’t know how many times Bas went around with bruises and black eyes because of my dad and my brothers,” Pat went on. “Finally he had enough and put up a fight. Defended himself from Bart and Willie with a baseball bat. Got him in trouble and run outa town.”

  “The assault charge was dismissed. No reason for him to leave.”

  “That’s what happened officially. But my old man’s friends with some of the cops. Plays poker with them. They hassled Bas every day, so he just took off and started working the vegetable fields.”

  Pat’s complexion darkened. “That’s why Lucia did… what she did. She wanted to see Bas. Needed to see him, but they wouldn’t let her. Chased him away and took her cell phone. I used to lend her mine so she could talk to Bas every once in a while. But she seemed sadder after she got off the phone than she was before she talked to him.”

  Pat sat back and straightened his spine. “Even after she was gone, Bas slipped back into town a couple of times. My dad caught him once in the house with me, looking at the baby. Dad called the cops. Bas had to take off.”

  So Dayton got Zuniga run out of town by his buddies down at the police station. Why didn’t the boy go to his mother? She might have straightened things out for him. The answer to that one was easy. He didn’t want to bring trouble down on her head.

  “Pat, were you aware that Bas’s mother didn’t even know he fathered a son?”

  He ran a hand over his face. “Yeah. He was ashamed.” Pat’s hand fluttered. “Not ashamed of the baby. Ashamed of the way he’d done it. His mom’s a big churchgoer. I kept telling him she was entitled to know she was a grandmother, but he kept putting it off.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Zuniga know what was going on? If he had all those bruises and black eyes you spoke of, wouldn’t she have demanded to know about them?”

  “You gotta remember, Bas lived on campus. He wouldn’t go near
her when he was beat up. He was awful protective of his mom.”

  Perhaps he was ashamed of fathering a child without the benefit of marriage. Our background checks confirmed what Pat said. Barbara Zuniga was a churchgoer. If only that tragic young man had known the circumstances of his own birth, he might have reacted differently. And lived.

  After digesting that, I asked Pat if he knew Zuniga was standing guard on the winery the night he died. He claimed he hadn’t.

  I learned nothing more of interest from that interview other than the fact the two young men had remained in contact. They talked about once a week via cell phone, which meant Zuniga did have a private phone. When I dialed the number Pat provided, it went straight to voicemail.

  Although Bart Dayton was in jail the night Zuniga died, I took the trouble to look him up at NMSU, where he was a sometime student. His attitude was less hostile than his father’s and older brother’s, but he wasn’t interested in adding to my store of useful knowledge.

  I COULDN’T leave town without having another go at the old man. James Dayton was no “old man” in the strictest sense. I judged him to be in his mid- to late forties. His occupation as a water-well driller kept him in fit physical condition. The scarcity of work likely put a perpetual burr under his saddle, as my father would have said.

  When I knocked on the door, he came charging out of the house with the obvious intent of bodily harm. I backed to the edge of the broad front porch.

  “Mr. Dayton, I’m—”

  “I know who you are, you nosy son of a bitch. Been asking questions about me all day. Well, I got a right to my privacy, and you got no right to be standing here on my porch!”

  He managed to get those words out before he lunged. I stepped aside and clipped him on the back of the head as he passed, sending the man stumbling down the steps and tumbling on the concrete walkway. I followed him down and planted my feet on his front lawn, conveniently out of reach of the big man. He got to his knees and lunged for me again. He anticipated my sidestep, but chose the wrong direction. His arms closed on thin air. I shoved his face in the lawn with my foot.