Once in their room that night, Steve did a quick review of the scans of the documents they found in the first well. The assessment of the other two wells revealed nothing. At first light the team was scheduled to give the old mine tunnel connected to the Fuentes house a foot-by-foot going over. Steve planned to do a thorough walkthrough of the house and the underground vault, hunting for any recesses or indications of another hidden stash.
Also someplace the Fuentes might have hidden away a vehicle, a small plane or both for emergency transportation. Last fall the stealth of their operation had kept the Fuentes from being alerted when an arrest team moved in, giving them no chance to run. He called the head of the Albuquerque office and asked her to schedule aerial videos for just after dawn the next morning. He wanted shots of a five-mile radius around the Fuentes’ properties. The shots would also reveal any rustic roads up into the rugged mesas furnishing a promising way to flee their home. He ended the call.
“Arroyos,” Ivy said. “You were on the phone wanting aerial views. After not finding any reports on caves in the area, I searched for other geological formations and found arroyos – which range from shallow to steep-sided canyons with flat bottoms. They should go over them, especially if they have been dry for some years and don’t flash flood anymore. A vehicle could be disguised under a ledge.”
Steve gazed at her the way he did when intrigued, raising one eyebrow. “Perfect for driving unseen, as long as it leads to a way out. We make a good pair of investigators. We go down different tracks or take separate views of the same facts,” he said, settling himself into bed next to his wife.
Ivy put her iPad on the nightstand and clicked off her light. “Hold me, Agent Nielson. Being back at that house kept giving me flashbacks. Bad recollections are crowding in.”
He gathered Ivy into his arms and enjoyed the warmth of having her slip her arms around him. While he kept quiet about his foreboding, poking around that place had given him the willies, and he did not tend to become edgy. Was having technically died in the house troubling him? Did the whole Fuentes case and the brothers who kept popping back up bother him? Or did the region carry whispers of old inhabitants, Caucasian or Native American? Moll said the locals claimed Madrid to be haunted with multiple sightings of ghosts. When a shiver chilled him, Ivy pulled him nearer. Steve wanted to return to Spook Hills where the ghosts, like Casper, came from jests.
Right before bed, Mathew’s cell phone rang. Expecting a call from Steve, he answered without checking the incoming phone number and found his dad’s attorney on the other end of the line. After a few preliminary pleasantries, the man mentioned Mathew’s family situation. Now into his seventies, he had worked for Mathew’s father for a long time, and he still oversaw the remainder of his dad’s affairs, consisting of four trusts. Mathew always found him responsive and loyal to his dad’s wishes.
“Mathew, I will speak with the candor you deserve,” the attorney said. “This Alisha is a woman whose charms ensured a life-long income while she maintained her flamboyant lifestyle. Even now in her early sixties, she claims several so-called admirers. Her life is only about herself.”
“What did my dad see in her, besides sex?” Mathew asked.
“That and being your birth mother is all I know. Your father pursued her and supported her. When I coordinate with Alisha by phone, I find her manipulative, cold and greedy. Your father established a sizeable trust fund for her, restricted to only paying out the interest unless the administrator approves an exceptional disbursement. You should know that when Alisha dies, any remaining money in the account reverts to you.”
“What you say coincides with what I heard from Laurel,” Mathew said. “Nonetheless I feel I should at least meet her.”
“Mathew, I caution you to think this over with care. If after due consideration you want to communicate with Alisha, I will ask her approval to release her information. Be aware that I have a hunch she will try to inveigle money out of you. Be advised -- the woman is like an addictive drug and about as poisonous.”
From growing up with his cold and often absent stand-in mother, Mathew had experienced enough pain in his early years. Now he had an opportunity to know Laurel as a person without the barrier of her faked motherhood status. She was not the loving mother he wanted, but she was an ardent philanthropist. His birth mother sounded like a bad character.
“I’ll take your advice and think about it for a few days. Thanks for the call,” Mathew said and hung up.
With his good life here at Spook Hills and the promise of a relationship with Callie, he did not want to take on a problem with Alisha. On the other hand he felt obligated to meet her and draw his own conclusions.
He smiled at the thought of Callie now spending time in Sedona. Rather than choosing one center based on their website and literature, she opted first to evaluate them, making him respect her caution. He reconciled himself to her reasons for this retreat and began to consider if he might benefit from spiritual wanderings to free himself of any residual adolescent hurts. Perhaps with now knowing about his two mothers, the usefulness of that healing process may have passed.
Chapter 18
The next day Steve and Ivy reached the Fuentes property just as the horizon showed the morning’s gloaming. With the local FBI team readying itself to explore the tunnel to the vault, Steve gave specific instructions, relying on the agent who made the find the day before to be observant. They were to search foot by foot, examining floor, sides and top for any hiding places.
Ivy worked with Steve to go over the vault in the basement where they probed for any hidden storage places. Discovering nothing, they moved to the adjoining room where the Eduardo had kept a computer center and entertainment space. From there they went room-by-room through the house.
Since only a couple of handguns appeared in the inventory, Ivy worked with Steve to take measurements of the house outside and inside, to see if they revealed a secret storage cupboard with a stash of weapons. Now they returned to the big kitchen. With stainless steel counters and appliances and everything else in white, the room seemed sterile to Ivy rather than inviting. While Steve tallied up the dimensions on his laptop, she rummaged in the cabinets and moved to the pantry on the right.
Ivy paused by the pantry door, letting her eyes rove around the shelves. She glanced up at the ceiling and took a step back. The pantry height was a good three feet lower than in the rest of the kitchen. She stepped into the room to hunt for an outline of a trap door. Finding nothing, she tugged at the line of shelves on the left wall, but they stayed hugged to the wall. She rattled the ones on the right and they shifted about half an inch. Ivy knelt, running her hand under the bottom shelf and discovered recessed casters.
“Steve, help me with this,” she said, craning her head around the corner of the big pantry.
He hurried over, flattened himself on the floor, slid his hand under the lowest board, groped around and found a locking mechanism. After he released it, the unit budged a little more at the base. He extended an arm up, fished around and undid a similar lock. The shelving rolled out to reveal a solid wall standing behind it. Up above Ivy spotted an access panel in the dropped ceiling. Steve stretched his long arms up to open it. Even at his height, he needed a ladder.
After wrestling a stepladder out of the broom closet, Steve put it in place while Ivy retrieved the flashlight she brought with her.
“Here Steve,” she said, handing it to him.
He took two steps up, poked his head into the space and shone the light around. In front of him, neat stockpiles of guns, ammunition, gas masks, night-vision glasses and explosives were organized with precision and left undisturbed under a thin layer of dust. A regular agent would bring the weaponry down and secure it, as well as search for anything else in the hiding space.
“Good work, Ivy. How did you spot that trapdoor?” Steve asked after he stepped off the ladder.
“Luck. Noticed the room height was lower when I walked in.”
“You up to meandering out to this gulley with me?” Steve asked.
“A walk outdoors would be a relief,” Ivy said. “This house creeps me out.”
They gathered up their belongings and stepped outside. After stowing their gear, Ivy and Steve walked hand-in-hand out towards the arroyo. Even though the survey team scanned the area the day before, Steve wanted to scrutinize the length of the arroyo himself. The gravelly arroyo bed lay shallow and flat in front of them, making an unpromising den for a vehicle.
“Let’s follow it,” he said, nodding to where the shallow chasm bent to the right.
“Lucky the day is sunny. Dangerous in a rain storm if a flash flood came rushing at us,” Ivy said, as they strolled along into the gorge about half a mile to where it deepened and became narrower.
After another half mile, the fissure split. While the left-hand branch widened only enough to hold an automobile, the right one remained broader. Steve chose the left one, wanting to see how the narrow ravine might change. They walked about two hundred paces to where the tapered canyon opened into a wide chamber.
“You take the right wall,” Steve said. “Be careful. Inspect the walls, methodically and deliberately. I’ll go left and hook up with you at the far end.”
Ivy nodded. As bone-dry as the cavity looked, sparse, scruffy sage struggled along. Continuing deeper into the narrow rift, Ivy stopped to appreciate the way the walls rose on either side of the brown and gray arroyo. What had started as a shallow gravely wash, now had sides of carved rock that ran back into the hills with the walls becoming higher as they advanced back.
When she reached the far end where the arroyo narrowed again, a bolt of electrical current threw her backward, forcing out a short scream of surprise.
Steve ran over, sweeping her off the ground in a protective embrace. “Snake?”
“An electric shock.”
He raked the walls with his eyes. “Not likely. You sure?”
“I can recognize jolt of electricity when one hits me,” Ivy said, pushing away from him to get her feet back on the ground.
He let her go and took a step forward, then leapt back with a yell of astonishment. “Force field. Wired from the house?”
“Perhaps solar panels to storage batteries?”
“Something is stored here for sure. Even I am smart enough to keep away from this and bring experts in.” Steve got on his phone, but the weak signal prevented a call. They walked back out until the reception strengthened.
An hour later, an agent skilled in handling high voltage disabled the source driven by sunshine receptors and batteries tucked among the brush. They unearthed an armored SUV secreted away by the back wall of the chamber, protected by power fields as well as camouflaged by colored canvas. The rugged Land Rover was an unregistered 2014 model, likely obscured there not long before their assault on the site last fall.
With their Bubird due to fly out of Santa Fe at five, Steve met with the man in charge of the investigation and with the head of the Albuquerque office, giving strict instructions for the remaining work in the mineshaft, on the land and in the house. While they could stay longer to oversee the work, the tone Steve used to deliver his directives gave the two agents no doubt of his lack of tolerance for any more substandard casework.
Ivy turned away from her husband to hide a smile when he ended with, “Ivy and I came up with three ideas and made three significant discoveries. I do not expect anything – stone, closet, wall, or arroyo -- to be left untouched. If you are meticulous about your work, you will find more. Become creative and be thorough this time.”
Steve spun on his heel and hastened to their rental car. From the annoyance on his face, Ivy knew she did not want to be on the receiving end of his lecture. As they settled into the car, she said, “We can stay if you want.”
“No need. Made my point. Unless those agents are total screw-ups, they will be diligent about searching for more case artifacts. I think we made the biggest finds. We are one hell of a pair.”
“Not bad as a married couple either.”
“First class as husband and wife,” he said, his expression softening back into the Steve she loved. “Let’s make time for each other soon. How about we go up to Portland in a week or two, dine again at Urban Farmer and take a walk around town like we did on our first dinner date?”
“A little smooching in the Park?” Ivy asked, with a seductive sideward glance at him as she pointed the car down the driveway.
“Why only a little?” Steve asked, matching her playful humor.
“When we are there, I will take you out to breakfast.”
“Unlike our first date, we will sleep together this time.”
Steve pulled out his cell, twirled through his contacts and dialed, humming “The Very Thought of You,” while waiting for the hotel in Portland to answer.
Three days later, Mathew hesitated and then stepped into the dining room of a swanky restaurant in Bangkok where the maître d’ seated him next to an indoor aviary surrounded by palms. Fifteen minutes later, the click of heels told him a woman approached. Even with skin tanned by years in the sun and hair bleached to a white blonde, she could only be Laurel’s sister. Where Laurel’s skin stayed pale and her hair a glowing auburn, the years of sun exposure made Alisha appear older than Laurel, although in years she was younger.
He stood to greet her, and she held out a cheek for a kiss. She wore a loose, long white cotton dress with a translucent quality and a large red straw hat with matching lipstick, nails, handbag and sandals. The slit up the side of the skirt ended near her hip where she pinned a red hibiscus flower made for a counter-maternal effect. The woman might be out for a lunch of seduction with some old codger, not greeting her birth son of forty-one years.
Mathew also saw the remnants of the woman who drew his father to her. Alisha remained striking, with navy blue eyes set in a long elegant face with attenuated features
“You are a replica of your father,” Alisha said, as he pulled out a chair for her. “You might not have any of my genes at all.”
The waiter strutted over with a bottle of the 2009 Puligny-Montrachet Les Purcell’s arranged by Alisha. Mathew waited in silence while the waiter poured the wine. While Alisha’s hand shook a little when she picked up her glass, her expression communicated confidence.
“When my dear sister hit you with the bombshell that she only stood in as your mother, did the news astonish you?” Alisha asked.
“Yes and no. She seemed distant even when I was a small child. Her revelation explained why she kept her distance from me,” Mathew said, fiddling with his silverware.
“Your father insisted on the masquerade. Perhaps if he had dangled an engagement ring as a temptation . . . But he did not leave Laurel. I suppose he loved her, although I dominated his passion. He said he owed her his allegiance.” Alisha sniggered, sounding more wicked than amused. “How strong is a commitment where he kept sneaking away to my bed?”
“Alisha, I am not here to discuss your affair with my father,” Mathew said. “I am here to meet you and find out why you gave me up.”
When the waiter came for their orders, Mathew was too nervous with this woman to be hungry, yet he ordered to be polite. Alisha asked for the most expensive dish on the menu, a chilled poached lobster on a bed of greens with dots of caviar.
She drained her glass of exquisite white burgundy and paused for Mathew to refill it.
“I could not raise a child on my own,” she said. “I wanted an abortion. Your father refused to let me have one. He threatened never to come near me again if I did. After years of trying to conceive with my barren sister, he had the prospect of a child and an heir. The way he went on about you every time he a
rrived out here to be with me! As if you descended like a mythical god from the heavens! He often sent me pictures of you.”
“My dad always acted kindly towards me, but with his dedication to his business empire, he traveled most of the time.”
“He kept too busy building his businesses and his wealth to be around anywhere long. Sitting here in this restaurant sipping this wine and talking with you takes me back to memories of dining with your father, listening to his voice and losing myself in those bedroom eyes of his,” Alisha said.
She put her hand over Mathew’s where it rested on the table. “You have those eyes too.”
She voiced those words in a seductive manner and inched her hand back, tracing her fingers down his in an unmotherly way, surprising and repulsing him. His dad’s attorney words came back to him, ‘The woman is like an addictive drug and about as poisonous.’ He pulled his hand back into his lap, determined to stay out of range of her caresses.
Alisha smiled and began nibbling her seafood, savoring each bite as she talked more about his father. Near the end of the meal, she said, “I was his amour passionné. Laurel came out a weak second. Even so, he did not express his love well. He left me so little. Despite having many things cheaper out here, I can’t live on what I receive. You must use part of the fortune he left you to help me regain the level of comfort he wanted for me.”
Although forewarned, the naked greed in Alisha’s request astounded him. Mathew decided to confront the issue. “Alisha, I understand a generous trust fund from my father pays you an income to allow you to live comfortably. You gave me life and my father paid you for the effort with a generosity that will continue until you die.”
New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) Page 17