Only if he knew what she was looking for.
He took a couple of steps toward where Sadie had been standing, allowing Sadie to step past him and the door of his truck. She immediately headed toward her car again. Her hand was on the door handle when Benny spoke up.
“Come to the casa with me,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder to see that he’d crossed his arms over his chest and was attempting to smile, but the kindness he seemed to be trying to communicate didn’t reach his eyes.
“We have many lizards you can take home to your nephew. I’ll have one of the ranch hands catch one for you and put it in a box.”
“Uh, that’s okay. I’ve already taken too much of your time.” She quickly pulled open her door as he began walking toward her, causing her heart to speed up. There was a time when Sadie would have accepted his invitation and taken advantage of getting to the heart of the investigation. But her curiosity had taken a back seat to fear. Putting herself in danger no longer seemed exciting.
“Don’t go,” he said, still smiling that distrustful smile. She slid into the driver’s seat, but he kept talking from behind her. “Come with me. I give you a tour of the ranch, sí?”
“Um, no thanks,” Sadie said. She didn’t look at him as she pulled the car door closed. The window was open, so she looked at him in the side mirror and added, “I’ve got somewhere to be. My nephew is waiting for me.”
“Where were you going when you made the wrong turn?”
She didn’t answer but instead shifted into reverse. With his truck behind her, there was barely enough room for her to execute a tight three-point turn, but he got back into his truck and pulled back and to the side, making it easier for her to use the worn dirt on the sides of the blacktop to complete the turn. She smiled and waved at him as she passed his truck.
He inclined his head, not bothering to smile any more.
She watched him in her rearview mirror for as long as she could. He didn’t go through the gate, and as she reached the end of the road, she thought he got out of his truck again. She wanted to think he didn’t know what she was really looking for, but what if he did recognize her from the police station? If Margo had come to the ranch Monday night—and Sadie was all but certain she had—and if Benny knew she and Margo were friends, would he guess Sadie was looking for evidence?
She turned onto the main road and drove back toward Santa Fe. Her anxiety level slowly evened out and her breathing returned to normal. She thought through everything she’d learned that morning and it didn’t take long to reach the conclusion that she had to go to the police with what she knew. Maybe they could go back for the cigarette butt. She didn’t know how she’d explain a second appearance at the ranch, or how she’d talk herself into taking the risk of going back.
She pulled her phone out of her purse and sent a text to Caro so she wouldn’t worry.
I’ll meet you at the bakery as soon as I can. I need to do something first.
She then took a breath and texted Pete.
Margo hasn’t been home since Monday night. I’m going to report it. Who should I talk to at the station?
Chapter 17
Detective Marcus Gonzalas had been friends with Pete for over twenty years and, despite his ethnic name, looked as Caucasian as anyone with the last name of Hansen or Smith. Whenever Pete came to Santa Fe, they went fly-fishing on the Pecos River and, in Pete’s words, “solved all the world’s problems.” As soon as he shook Sadie’s hand, he invited her to call him Marcus, which made her feel like they were old friends too.
Marcus was in his late fifties, same as Pete, but with less hair and more belly, which reminded Sadie how lucky she was to have met a man of Pete’s age with such refined good looks. Marcus led her back to an interrogation room without making a big deal about her arrival. It was nice to already feel trusted by this man; he trusted Pete and Pete had assured him Sadie was just as trustworthy.
They didn’t waste much time with small talk, and Sadie agreed to have their conversation recorded. She told him everything she suspected and everything she’d figured out, leaving out only the part about her picking the lock in order to get inside Margo’s apartment. Luckily, he didn’t ask if the door had been locked or not.
He took notes while she talked and asked a question here and there, but mostly he just listened.
“Benito Ojeda, or Benny, is the ranch foreman,” he said when Sadie finished explaining about the road that ended at Cold River Ranch and Benny giving her a hard time. “He takes his job very seriously. I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“He tried to get me to go to the ranch with him,” Sadie reminded him. That seemed outside Benny’s job description, and there was something unsettling about the way he’d watched her and, in her opinion, tried to lure her to the ranch. “Plus he bailed Sheldon Carlisle out of jail yesterday.”
“I’ll look into the bail situation, but the ranch has had a couple run-ins with some environmentalists the last few years, and so they beefed up security—no pun intended. I’m sure that’s why he came across the way he did this afternoon.” He gave her a half smile, and she returned it out of politeness, even though she felt as though she were being placated. “Benny’s been running the ranch hand-in-hand with Edward for nearly thirty years, and he’s taken the lion share of the workload these last five years after Lacey got sick. He’s just doing his job.”
“Lacey?”
“Lacey Standage, Edward’s wife. She developed some respiratory issues that required her to move to a lower elevation. She’s living in Oregon now, and Edward divides his time between the coast and the ranch. Ethan will eventually take over the ranch but in the meantime, Benny’s doing a lot of the management. Honestly, I’m not sure how he keeps up. It’s not a small ranch by any means.”
“You seem to know a lot about the family.”
Marcus shrugged a shoulder. “They’re pillars of the community, you could say, and I’ve lived here all my life. Anyhow, we’ll go back and look for that cigarette butt by the gate and talk to Benny. Anything else?”
“No, that’s everything.”
He nodded, then looked at the notebook and tapped his pen on the desk in a way that almost looked as though he were rereading his notes, except that his eyes were fixed instead of moving over the words.
Sadie waited him out, wondering what he was thinking about so hard and wishing he’d think it out loud. It was hard for her to give information and yet not know everything the police knew.
After a few seconds, he made eye contact with her again. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
“Sure,” Sadie said, even though it made her nervous for the first time since she’d sat down. She didn’t like being left in interrogation rooms, though she would never feel truly alone with the mirrored wall on her left. It made her feel like she’d done something wrong.
He thanked her and left the room. She tried not to think about people watching her from the other side, evaluating her movements, talking about the things she’d said—judging whether or not she could be trusted. Wasn’t coming to Marcus with the information proof enough that she could be trusted?
It felt like several minutes before Marcus returned, but was probably less than two. “Do you have time to come down to the impound lot with me?”
“Impound lot?” Sadie repeated. “Like, for cars?”
“You said you drove in Ms. Kauffman’s Land Cruiser on Monday, right?”
Sadie nodded.
“We impounded a vehicle last night that meets the description of her Land Cruiser you just gave me. It’s waiting to be processed, so a conclusive owner hasn’t been determined or notified, but I’d like you to take a look, just in case.”
Sadie’s throat immediately thickened as she stood up. “I’ve got time,” she said, but she couldn’t help wondering how many green late-70s model Land Cruisers there were in Santa Fe.
Sadie drove with Marcus to the impound lot a few blocks away, and in the p
rocess, he updated her on the vehicle. A teacher at an elementary school had reported it that afternoon. It had been parked in the faculty-only lot since Tuesday morning.
They pulled up to a chain-link fence with razor wire at the top and wheels at the base of the gate portion. Marcus pushed a button on a key pad not that different than the one she’d seen at the entrance to Cold River Ranch. A voice said hello, Marcus explained who he was, and the chain-link fence buzzed, then moved to the right. When the fence had pulled back completely, Marcus entered the lot and wound through several lines of vehicles until he pulled up beside Margo’s Land Cruiser.
“It’s hers,” Sadie said tightly.
“You’re certain?” he asked. “Would you like to take a closer look?”
Sadie didn’t need a closer look, but she got out anyway and walked around the vehicle. The “Bark Less Wag More” sticker in the center of the back window and the “Coexist” bumper sticker were just as Sadie remembered them. “It’s her Land Cruiser,” she said. “I’m absolutely certain of it.”
She stepped to the passenger window and looked around the interior, glad that there was no trunk, nowhere a body could be hidden. Why would Margo abandon her Land Cruiser? There was no escaping the ominous probability that she hadn’t done it by choice. The teacher who reported the car had seen it parked at the school Tuesday morning. If they kept hours similar to Sadie’s when Sadie had been teaching school, that would have been somewhere between seven and eight o’clock in the morning—ten hours since Margo would have followed Langley to the ranch.
“We haven’t cracked it open yet,” Marcus said, interrupting her thoughts. “We’ll do a thorough search when we do, since you’re worried about her.”
Sadie stared at the Land Cruiser a few seconds longer. “We’ve got to find Kyle Langley. He’s the last known person to have seen her.” She’d already told him that, but it bore repeating.
“We will,” Marcus said, emphasizing that she was not part of the we, though his tone was kind. He opened the passenger door of the police car for her, signaling an end to the field trip.
Sadie took the cue and got into the car, but she felt sick to her stomach as she tried to imagine a reasonable explanation for Margo to abandon her Land Cruiser.
However, based on the last two years of Sadie’s life, it was very, very hard for her to be optimistic. Sadie already suspected the BLM was aware of something criminal related to the dig crew—why else would she have been put there as an informant? To then find recent bodies and have Margo go missing after they started making inquiries cast a dark shadow on the disappearance. An uneasy feeling sat like iron in Sadie’s stomach.
“You said the Land Cruiser was found at an elementary school?” she asked as they left the lot. “Was that school near the ranch?”
“Nope, the school’s on the west end of town.”
Her momentary disappointment was quickly overshadowed by a new realization. “Which school?” Sadie was familiar with just one elementary school in this town. It sat behind and to the west of the apartment complex Langley lived in on that end of town. What were the chances?
“Ponderosa, I think. I’ll have to double-check at the office though.”
Sadie caught her breath. “Ponderosa Elementary on Santaquin?” She and Caro had parked in that lot and climbed the ten-foot high embankment to get a view of Langley’s apartment complex less than a week ago.
“I think so,” Marcus confirmed, not hiding his surprise as he glanced at her. “What do you know about it?”
She didn’t answer right away because she was visualizing how the school and complex related to one another. They were reached from different streets, one block apart, but they shared a property line along the back side.
“What?” Marcus prodded when she didn’t explain right away.
“Kyle Langley lives in the apartment complex behind that school,” she said. “The complex is called Colonial Hills. Langley lives in number twenty-eight.”
“And how on earth would you know that?”
Oh yeah, she hadn’t told him about the BLM stuff. And it didn’t sound as though Pete had said anything either. Shoot. “Um, can I call Pete first?”
Chapter 18
It was almost an hour later—after three o’clock—before Sadie was given permission to leave the police station. She hadn’t been able to get ahold of Pete. And so, without his blessing, she’d told Marcus about her BLM status on the dig site and the report she’d developed about the members of the crew. She could feel his walls go up as she explained herself, even though she finished with, “I’m sorry. I was told to keep it to myself.”
Another detective called Agent Shannon on the phone in one room while Marcus talked to Sadie in another. It would have been nice to feel like she was doing the right thing, but she felt like a naughty child in trouble with everyone. The police now knew she hadn’t been completely forthcoming the first two times she’d given her statement, and Agent Shannon knew Sadie had disregarded her insistence that Sadie keep her undercover role a secret until the BLM was ready to make it known to local law enforcement. She felt like she’d let everyone down. Finally, Marcus left her alone with that mirrored wall, then came back a few minutes later, thanked her for the information, and told her she could leave. He’d call her, he said, as soon as he had news. She’d dared to feel as though they were friends earlier in the day, but that feeling was long gone now.
Sadie left with a rock still in her stomach, and asked herself in a hundred different ways what else she could have done. There were no answers, not firm ones anyway. Yet she really was trying to be upfront with as many people as possible. She dreaded having to talk to Pete tonight and relay everything that had happened. How much more of this could he take before he threw his hands up and said the complication she brought into his life just wasn’t worth it? It was Sadie’s greatest fear that he would say that to her one day. It nearly brought tears to her eyes just thinking about it.
It was close to 3:30 when Sadie pulled into the parking area behind the building Modern Cupcakes by Lois shared with half a dozen other businesses in the strip mall east of Old Town. The bakery was nestled between a tanning salon and a real estate office. Caro’s blue Neon was parked by the back door, and Sadie wondered if she should just go home, pack her things, and head to Albuquerque. Would it be easier for everyone if she just left?
But Margo was still missing, and Lois needed help baking cupcakes, and taking off without a word to Caro would be devastating. Sadie couldn’t do that to her. Not after everything Caro had done for her and Caro’s confession last night.
Sadie let herself in the back door like Caro had told her to, causing Caro to look up from where she was putting cupcake liners into muffin tins. She paused for a moment, then put down the stack of liners and hurried across the room.
“Where have you been?” Caro asked when she reached Sadie and gave her a quick hug. “I’ve been calling and texting for over an hour.”
“Sorry I’m so late,” Sadie said, though she could tell that Caro wasn’t angry, just genuinely concerned.
The desire to unload everything that had happened tugged and pulled at Sadie’s determination not to involve Caro. How was she supposed to pretend she was unaffected by Margo’s disappearance and the discovery of her Land Cruiser? Didn’t Sadie deserve someone to confide in, someone to assure her everything would be fine? If she confided in Caro, however, she’d be making things more awkward with Rex, and interfering in an already strained marriage was not the solution.
“I’m sorry,” Sadie said again, hanging up her purse on a hook near the back door and steeling herself against giving into the desire to explain. She did not have that luxury. She instead casually explained that she’d been talking to the police and hadn’t gotten Caro’s messages because she’d turned off her phone at the station per their request—which was true. She retrieved her phone from her purse and turned the ringer back on, showing it to Caro to prove she wasn’t making thing
s up. “Things took longer than I expected them to.”
Caro’s eyebrows pulled together, and she looked hard into Sadie’s face. “What’s going on?”
Sadie clamped her teeth together, determined not to say anything else.
Caro put a hand on Sadie’s arm, her expression softening with even more compassion. “What’s wrong, Sadie?” she asked, her tone warm with sincere sympathy. “You know you can talk to me, right? You know I’m your sounding board, don’t you?”
“I can’t,” Sadie said in a pleading voice after pushing away another wave of temptation. “I’m sorry.”
“Why can’t you?” Caro asked, then her sculpted eyebrows rose as though she’d just discovered something. “Did the police tell you not to talk about it?”
It was an out, and likely the only one Sadie was going to get. She nodded, but felt horrible about the lie.
Caro took a step closer. “Not here,” she said quietly as someone came through the swinging doors that connected the bakery to the sales counter. “But you know I won’t say a word to anyone else. We’ll talk later.”
“Caro, could you—oh, hi, Sadie.” Lois smiled brightly, picking up the cupcake liners Caro had put down and deftly putting them into the tin cups as though it had been her job from the start. Lois was a petite woman, with dark hair and dark eyes behind her glasses. She was always smiling, always full of energy.
Caro let go of Sadie’s arm and turned back to her friend. “You needed me to do something?”
“Yes. Could you go to the bank for me? It must be twenty-dollar-bill Wednesday or something and I’m almost out of change. Molly doesn’t come in for another hour so I can’t leave the front. Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Caro said, reaching behind her back to untie her apron.
Lois finished putting liners in one pan and pulled another pan forward. A bell sounded from the front of the shop, and Lois abandoned the pans and headed through the swinging doors, throwing a “Thank you!” over her shoulder as she did so.
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