“He's a charlatan who milked her for everything he could get.”
“Then I take it you're not enamored with the Reverend Wise?” Never that fond of orange juice, I sipped my mimosa anyway. I noticed Peter wasn't drinking anything.
Van Thiessen laughed. “You could say that. He used to play football, you know, before he took up religion. Bobby Bangs, 49ers.”
I vaguely remembered hearing about Bobby Bangs. He'd gotten into some kind of trouble while playing pro ball, had gone into rehabilitation and when he came out he'd turned his back on the pigskin. I wondered about the epiphany that had brought about that renunciation.
“Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life?” I asked, reciting the title of a country song.
“Something like that. So now he's got the Church of What's Happening Now and my sister was his primo worshipper. And I do mean was. Since she married J.B. she hadn't been going all that often.”
“Did her checks quit going to church too?” The minute I said it I was sorry. I'd promised myself to lie low here today, and was quickly breaking my vow.
“That would be something to check out, wouldn't it?”
“I imagine I'll be checking out a lot of things.”
The small, Brillo pad woman I'd seen on my last visit came up with a trayful of tiny sandwiches. She nodded at one end of the tray. “No mayonnaise on those.”
Peter took one of the dry sandwiches. “Thanks, Gloria.”
“Isn't she the cook?” I asked. Eventually I'd get all the players, but I really saw nothing wrong with a head start.
“Gloria Covarrubias. She's married to José.” He nodded in the direction of the small gray-haired Mexican man with the cotton ball mustache I'd seen on my earlier visit. “Gloria cooks and José mostly drives, although he was available for other chores as my sister needed him.”
“They've been with her a long time?”
“A long time.” He spoke with the authority of someone who'd had hired help around all his life.
“Are you from here?”
He shook his head and licked bread crumbs off his fingers. “Key West. I was at a marathon in Silver City, New Mexico, when I got the call.”
“You run?”
“As often as I can.” He cocked his head, as if he was listening to the music. Amazingly, I recognized the tune, a favorite of mine. It was “Somewhere, my love”—Lara's theme—from Doctor Zhivago.
“I'd like to talk to you before you go back.”
He looked like he was concentrating on the music, not me. When he didn't answer, I repeated my request.
“That won't be a problem. I'm the personal representative for the estate and there's a lot to take care of, even with the lawyers. I'll be staying in Oracle for some time.”
“Where can I reach you?”
“Here at the house. It looks like my brother-in-law and I will be roommates for a while.”
As if on cue, J.B. walked up and gave me a quick hug. “Trade, thanks for coming. I see you've met Peter.”
“Good choice, J.B. She's already asking questions.”
“Sorry,” I said, although I'd detected no hint of malice in his tone.
“No, I mean it. We're all eager to get this behind us. If something dastardly happened out there, we need to find out about it, don't we, J.B.?”
Calendar looked away, to the fireplace, as though he were in another world. I wondered if he was on tranquilizers to get through this.
“I guess, Peter, we do.”
“Did you talk to that lawyer I recommended?” Van Thiessen asked.
“Yeah, but I think I'm going with María López Zepeda.”
“J.B.'s had to hire a defense lawyer to deal with all of this.”
Of course I knew that, since I'd been the one to mention María López Zepeda to him, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Nice meeting you, Trade,” Peter said, again shaking my hand. “Give me a call if you have any questions.”
“Thanks. I'll be in touch,” I said as he walked away.
“Let's go outside,” J.B. said, steering me toward a set of French doors that opened onto a covered veranda. As he held the door open and I walked through, I was hit with a fine spray. The porch had been equipped with misters in an effort to keep the temperature bearable. Below us was a perfectly manicured green lawn, rimmed with bright petunias, salvia and blooming roses.
“We can park over there.” J.B. nodded to a couple of equipale chairs on the porch. As we walked over to them, he took off his Western-cut jacket and tossed it over the back of an empty chair.
After we settled into the pigskin furniture, he pulled his can of Copenhagen out of a hip pocket of his ironed black Wrangler's. Dipping into the snuff, he pinched a good wad and stuffed it into his cheek.
“I talked to Jim Carstensen, Abby's lawyer, and asked him to talk to you. He's got motions Monday morning, but he can see you around eleven.”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he handed me two sheets of paper. The first was the detailed map I'd asked for of his camp site in the Baboquivaris. I unfolded the second piece of paper and saw it was a list of names, addresses and telephone numbers.
“That's the list of the help and most of Abby's friends. I'm sure I'll be adding to it as I think of more people.”
I studied the list for a moment. Abby's staff, in addition to the Covarrubiases, included the maid, Ramona Miller, her assistant, Laurette Le Blanc, and Rabbit Carter, Abby's personal trainer.
I raised an eyebrow when I came to one of the names, Lonnie Victor. His home address was a post office box in San Carlos. I was familiar with San Carlos, it was the hub of the reservation, and the small town where both my grandmother Shiwóyé and my cousin Top Dog lived. I also knew an Apache man with the same name.
“This Lonnie Victor from San Carlos. Is he a tall skinny guy with a bad complexion and a gold front tooth?”
“Yeah. Why, do you know him?”
“I've seen him around. It says here he was a gardener.” I'd never heard of Lonnie growing anything other than an occasional pot plant.
“He did a lot of the weeding, mowing, that kind of thing. Abby used professional growers for putting in all the landscaping. Lonnie just kind of kept it up. And he helped me with the bull school too.”
I'd forgotten that Lonnie Victor had been a bull rider of sorts. He usually participated in a few of the local rodeos, whenever he could scrounge up enough money for the entry fee. “Surely he doesn't commute from San Carlos?” I asked. It was a two-hour trip.
“No, he lives, lived, in a little travel trailer Abby had pulled onto the property.”
“He isn't here now?”
“He quit the day after she died.”
“Did he give a reason?”
J.B. shook his head. “Said his relatives needed him at home, something like that.”
I'd never thought of Lonnie as a particularly doting family man. Why had he cut and run just because his employer had died? He was bright enough to figure out that J.B. would still need someone to clean up the rose petals and trim the trees.
“Does Laurette Le Blanc live here too?”
“No. She's inside.” J.B. looked over his shoulder through the glass window and then leaned over and whispered, “She's standing next to the fireplace.”
I looked over his shoulder. A tall, thin, gorgeous young woman, with a soft taupe color and black corn-rowed hair, was talking to Peter Van Thiessen.
I looked on the sheet and saw her home address and telephone number.
Her name was followed by Abby's accountant and, of course, Jim Carstensen, her personal attorney. I imagined that he was also somewhere in the big room, but had no desire to speak to him today. Monday would be soon enough. These names were followed by a list of Abby's closest friends. I was surprised to see my old friend Lolly MacKenzie listed. Abby's husband had done a good job of giving me a thumbnail sketch of each person, but there was a major omission.
“I'll need your close frien
ds too, J.B.”
“Mine?” He looked startled, like he was choking on his chew. “Why do you have to talk to my guys?”
“If I'm investigating, then I need to look at everything. Your friends might know something pertinent to the case.”
“I doubt it, but yeah, I'll get that list together too.” He didn't look too happy about it.
As I walked out, I took a last look at the beautiful lawn. It was really hard to imagine that Lonnie Victor had had anything at all to do with it.
12
I DROVE INTO SANDERS'S RANCH ON MY WAY HOME. I FOUND him out in his garden gathering ripe summer tomatoes.
“I've got a new case,” I began. “J.B.'s hired me to look into Abby's death.”
Sanders never said much and today was no exception.
“Anyway, I'd like to take a drive out to the Baboquivaris tomorrow and take a look around and wondered if you'd be interested in going with me.” My offer wasn't entirely without guile, and we both knew it. Sanders, before his retirement, was the best tracker the Border Patrol ever had.
“What's it been, five, six days?”
“Last Sunday.”
He threw a bird-pecked tomato over his garden fence. “We best go early in the morning. The light will be good then.”
“We'll take the horses,” I said, not eager to hike when I could ride.
When I finally got home to the Vaca Grande, I noticed Jake Hatcher's pickup parked in front of the bunkhouse. It looked like Cori Elena was becoming the Pearl Mesta of La Cienega with all the entertaining she'd been doing lately.
I was backing up to my horse trailer when Martín suddenly appeared behind the pickup, guiding me onto the trailer hitch. I jumped out of the truck to finish hooking up.
“Jake's here, huh?” I wanted to add again, but thought better of it.
“He brought some chiltepins for Cori Elena.”
I winced. I'd had an experience once with the hot chiles and it wasn't pleasant. Some people, though, could eat them with impunity.
“He's got to go up to Oracle and Cori Elena's going to ride along and spend the night with her father.”
“I just got back from there,” I grunted. Most of my energy was going to the trailer jack as I cranked the hitch down onto the ball attached to the truck. “I could have dropped her off at Alberto's.”
He shrugged. “She didn't want to go this morning. Now she does.”
I'll bet she does, I thought. Especially if Jake's driving. Maybe it wasn't her father she'd be spending the night with after all.
By the time I walked back to my house, I noticed that Jake's truck was pulling out. Cori Elena was in the passenger seat. While she hadn't even come out to say goodbye to Martín, it didn't seem to bother him any.
Having the alarm jar you awake at three-thirty in the morning is not like awakening to the gentle greeting of the rising sun. I stumbled out of bed, threw my clothes on and grabbed a quick bagel and decaf before loading Dream.
Forty-five minutes later Sanders and I were on our way to the Baboquivaris. When we got to Robles Junction, also known as Three Points since three roads come together here, we turned left heading into the Altar Valley. This road not only would keep us off the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, but it was also the same one that J.B. and Abby had traveled last week.
Baboquivari Peak, over seven thousand feet tall, dominated the skyline of the mountains bearing the same name. Even with the higher elevations in this part of the county the desert grasses were as thirsty as those on the Vaca Grande. I noticed that the leaves on the mesquite trees were even shriveled.
Consulting the map that J.B. had given me, we drove past the Anvil and Elkhorn ranches and finally turned off on a faint dirt road. Sanders got out of the truck and opened the barbed wire gate and I drove through. We didn't drive far before we started seeing some crossbred cattle.
The road was rough, but we took it slow and Priscilla and the horse trailer lurched over the single, weed-studded lane. Finally arriving at the end where a bulldozer long ago had bladed a broad parking swath, I wondered with all of the terrific places in southern Arizona that J.B. could have picked, why he would have chosen this particular one.
It wasn't the most beautiful camp site I'd ever seen. When I stepped out of the truck, I could see that the area had been used heavily lately. A crazy quilt of striated tire tracks marked the dry earth. Not surprising considering that this would have been the command post for the initial investigation into Abby's death.
When the horses were unloaded, their chests and necks were dark with sweat. Sanders poured some of the water we had brought with us into a black rubber bucket and gave them both a drink. Then we tied them to the trailer and started checking out the camp site.
It didn't take Sanders's tracking skills to figure out where J.B. had made his camp. There was only one smooth raked area that would have been a logical site for their sleeping bags. Everything else was rock-studded.
Sanders walked to an old fire ring close by and knelt down. He grabbed a piece of dried cholla and poked around in the dead ashes, finally retrieving a charred lump of something. He rolled it in the dirt a minute, studying it intently.
“Steak.” He said. “The fat.”
Interesting, but not all that pertinent to Abby's death, I suspected. With the blistering temperatures I was surprised that J.B. had even wanted to start a camp-fire. He must have wanted that steak awfully bad.
Sanders walked slowly and quietly around the camp site, making an ever larger circle. I'm not much of a tracker, but it looked to me as though the ground had been tramped over pretty thoroughly. Even without the hordes, the desert is tough on tracks. Especially in June. The deformities in and around an animal's track that are left by the release of pressure as the living thing lifts its foot are dried out by the piercing sun.
Tracks were on top of other tracks and, of course, the tracks on top were the most recent, and the ones least likely to be of interest to Sanders. After all, we were looking for a sign that someone other than J.B. and Abby had been at the camp site the night before she had been found in the stock tank. The problem was all those law enforcement somebodies that had come last Sunday morning.
While I was supposed to be the detective, this time Sanders took the role. He was the one with the expertise in tracking, and tracking requires detective analysis.
I was quiet, for I knew it was important to keep sound at a minimum while Sanders was taking things in. While there is certainly a scientific basis to tracking, I've noticed that much of it is also intuitive.
Sanders said nothing as he continued checking the camp site. He was working his way back in now, finally ending up again next to the raked place where I assumed Abby and J.B. had bedded down for the night.
He walked toward the back part of the raked area, on the far side of the fire ring, and squatted down near where I was standing. He was looking at a track on the ground for a long time. It was wide and splayed, and looked like the track of a sizable bull to me, not unlike my own Brahmas.
Sanders carefully pinched what was left of the sides of the pressure wall of the print. Then he stood and studied the ground. Finding a similar track, he stepped to it, then repeated the process. He didn't need a tracking stick for what he was doing, which was measuring stride. For some as yet unexplained reason, Sanders seemed very interested in the track of this particular bull. What did a bull have to do with Abby's drowning?
I looked at the ground, trying to find a hint. Everything on the earth meant something and was a track of some sort, a signature by something that came before. Every dislodged rock, crushed weed, depression, and earth upheaval held its own story. But where it was an open book to Sanders, the ground kept most of its secrets from me.
“How far is that tank?” Sanders asked as he began following the track of the bull.
“J.B. said it was about a quarter of a mile.” I pointed northwest.
“Think we'd better walk.”
That was my f
irst real clue that Sanders was on to something. Like me, he never walked when he could ride. But he'd obviously seen something in that bull track that made him want to follow it on foot, where he could be down close and personal with it.
I glanced at the horses, who were both asleep, each with a cocked back foot. They wouldn't miss us.
I walked slowly behind Sanders as we set off across the desert. It seemed to me that we were only following the lone bull.
We'd gone a few hundred yards when Sanders stopped abruptly. He squatted once again, his tanned hands passing over the air above the ground. He was definitely using his intuition now.
I squatted with him, hoping to pick up something through osmosis. There was another print just behind the bull's track. It was very faint and almost gone, but it definitely looked like a small human print of some sort. Could it be Abby's? But it was soft and smudged and didn't look like it had been left by any kind of shoe. I couldn't make out toe prints either.
“What's that?” I asked. I couldn't stand it anymore.
“Socks.”
“Socks? Who in the hell would wear socks out here?” Sanders said nothing as he glanced around the bull print. He was still reading his story.
“Someone who didn't plan on walking, I guess,” he said.
“Abby?” It was half a question. Who else would have walked to the tank?
Sanders didn't answer me.
There were a few more of the blurred human prints and then they abruptly disappeared again. We continued with the bull's track, stopping every now and then when Sanders picked up another sock print.
That was our routine until we finally arrived at the pond. We stopped at the crest of a small hill where I made out a faint bull track and nothing in the sock department.
Sanders pointed to an almost undistinguishable disturbance of the earth that I'd overlooked.
“That's not the bull,” I said, barely making out the by now familiar smudge.
We stood on the hill for a few minutes as Sanders studied the pond.
“She made it this far,” he said.
“Abby?”
He nodded.
Rode Hard, Put Away Dead Page 6