“Sit,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, I’ve gotta get the salad ready.” She glanced at the outside door. “Bilbo better get back here pretty quick and set the table. The wolves’ll be showing up soon. Want a beer?”
“No thanks,” I told her. I sat down where she’d set the bowl, and she sat down at the table’s end, in front of the salad vegetables. “Eat,” she said, and picked up a head of Boston lettuce.
I tasted the stew.
She leaned slightly forward. “So how is it?”
“Good,” I said. It was. “Very good. It’s got some oregano in it.”
“Not too much?”
“Perfect.”
“Good,” she said. “The Mediterranean touch,” she said, and began tearing leaves off the lettuce. “You don’t look like a private detective.”
“What do private detectives look like?”
“Oh, I dunno.” She tore each leaf in half along its width, then tossed the halves lightly into the bowl. “Kind of sleazy and sad. Except on TV, where they’re all hunky dreamboats.”
“Have you met many private detectives?”
She looked over at me and grinned. “Hey. Cool. Am I being interrogated?”
“No. We private detectives call this a conversation.”
She grinned. “Technical term, huh? Y’know, you eat too fast. You should chew your food more. Sam said you’re looking for that Alonzo woman?”
“Cool,” I said. “Am I being interrogated?”
She laughed again and then she looked at me gravely. “Seriously. She got lost?”
“I don’t know what happened to her. I know she was supposed to show up here.”
She nodded. “Yeah. She never did. We thought she’d just changed her mind or something.”….
“Has that ever happened before?”
She shook her head, not in negation but in refusal. “Sorry. Sam says we’re not supposed to talk about that.” And then, as though to make up for the refusal: “You sure you don’t want a beer or something? I could make some tea?”
“No, I—”
The door opened and two men came in. The first was in his forties and he was big, taller than I, and wider, and he wore an open red mackinaw over a gray plaid flannel shirt and denim overalls. A weathered, clean-shaven, craggy face. A broad forehead, bristling black eyebrows, pale blue eyes, a hooked nose, a wide friendly mouth. His long gray hair hung between his shoulders in a ponytail.
The second man was shorter and younger, in his late twenties, and he wore work boots, jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and a leather bomber jacket. Close-cropped curly black hair, two or three weeks’ worth of black beard. His eyes, set back in their sockets, were dark and intense.
“This is Joshua,” Freddy said. “The big guy is Sam and the other one there is Bilbo.”
Sam smiled and crossed the floor, his right hand outstretched, his left waving me back into my chair. “No, man, don’t get up,” he told. “Finish your food.”
I shook his hand. Bilbo, hands in his jacket pockets, silently watched me.
“He’s finished,” Freddy said. “He’s almost as big a pig as you are. And you’re getting snow all over the floor. Why don’t the two of you get out of here, so Bilbo can set the table. Bilbo, stop standing there looking like Rasputin. Get the plates.”
Sam grinned at me. “Jesus, man, I can’t stand a bossy woman. Come on. I’ll show you around the spread.”
I stood up and turned to Freddy. “Thanks for the food.”
She grinned. “Hey. Glad you liked it. Bilbo, the plates.”
Bilbo had unzipped his jacket. Now he took it off and hung it on a hook by the door. Something heavy in the pocket thumped against the wall.
It didn’t have to be a gun. And even if it was, it was none of my business, so long as he wasn’t pointing it at me.
But just the possibility that it was a gun made the kitchen suddenly seem less cozy and domestic, and suddenly made me feel again like what I was, an outsider.
“Come on,” Sam said to me, still grinning.
I followed him and nodded to Bilbo, whose intense dark eyes shifted away from my glance.
Outside, Sam pushed the door shut, turned, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his mackinaw. “This way,” he said, lifting his chin toward the east. We crunched through the snow, circling the house.
“Bilbo’s a little weird,” he told me. “Used to be a junkie and he’s still not real housebroken. But he’s good people.”
We walked along the east side of the house. The children were gone now and, except for their rumpled tracks in the snow, they might never have been here. Sam nodded toward the low yellow buildings. “One on the right there is a dorm for the kids. Boys on one side, girls on the other. Thing in the center is the school. We’ve got a guy here, Bennett, he’s a certified teacher, so we’re okay with the state. Third building’s for the folks can’t fit in the big house.”
“The kids are raised communally?”
He grinned at me. “Right, man, that’s what a commune’s all about. Name of the game. Nuclear family just doesn’t cut it. Mom and day lay all their sad little trips on the sprouts. Guilt. Neurosis. Sexual hangups. And how can two people meet all the needs that a sprout’s got? This way, the grownups balance each other out. And there’s like a pool of emotional and psychological resources the sprouts can draw on.” He took his hands from his pockets, held them before him as though he were shaping a ball of dough. “And the sprouts get a sense of community. They’re part of a large, interconnected group. It’s all organic.” He slipped his hands together, fingers interlocking, to show me what organic looked like.
He put his hands back into his pockets and we walked on. We were walking toward the unfinished wooden structure, and six or seven people were walking toward us. I had thought that all the people working on the building were men, but I saw now that two were women, one a blonde in her thirties, the other a young brunette who could have been a teenager. Like the men, they wore jeans and bulky winter coats. The men looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties and most of them had long hair and beards and, like the young people back in the Plaza at Santa Fe, seemed to have suddenly materialized here from some earlier and less complicated era. But everyone looked as healthy as Freddy, and most of them smiled and nodded at me as they passed. Only one or two—the young brunette among them—eyed the interloper suspiciously.
“How many kids do you have here?” I asked him.
“Fifteen right now,” he said, and put his hands back in his pockets. “Ten adults.”
“Have most of the kids been here long?”
“Born here, some of them. But people come, people go. Part of the process, man. Change, movement. Nothing stands still. Ruth—that’s Freddy’s little sprout—she and Freddy only came here last year.”
“Freddy’s married?”
He smiled at me. “Like her, huh? No, man, Freddy’s on her own.” The smile became a grin. “Watch out. She’s one tough lady. A pistol.”
“What about you? Any of the kids yours?”
He shook his head. “I got a son, nearly grown now, but he’s back in Portland with his mom.” He grinned again and shook his head, as though embarrassed by this failure. “Like I said, man. Nuclear family doesn’t cut it.”
We had reached the wooden structure. Two wooden steps led to a wood flooring supported all around by a two-foot foundation of cinder block. Sam stopped walking and looked up at the building. “This is our new project. Meditation hall. We’ll rent it out to groups from Santa Fe and Taos. Retreats.” He turned to me. “Makes for good vibes, man, people on the property meditating. Lots of energy.” He grinned. “The extra bread won’t hurt, either.” He waved a hand at the flooring. “Take a load off.”
I walked across the snow and sat down on the unfinished wood. Sam sat down beside me.
“What can you tell me,” I asked him, “about Melissa Alonzo?”
He shook his head. “Not a thing, man.
She was supposed to be here at the end of September. She never showed.”
“That didn’t bother you?”
He shrugged. “We offer a place to stay, man. Someone doesn’t want it, that’s their decision.”
“You didn’t notify anyone that she hadn’t turned up?”
He nodded. “Yeah, well, I probably screwed up there. I admit it. See, the thing of it is, I was never too big on the idea anyway, being part of this Underground Railroad deal. I was afraid it was gonna bring the heat down on us. Some of these people, it’s the feds lookin’ for ’em. FBI, man. That’s heavy. That we don’t need. We got a real good relationship with the local fuzz right now. Well, shit, man, we should. We been here almost twenty years. Anyway, sheriff knows we don’t take runaways—minors, I mean—and we keep our noses clean. No drugs, no booze except for a beer now and then. I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”
“Why did you?”
He grinned, shrugged. “I was outvoted, man. It’s a democracy. Everyone else was hot on the idea. Gotta go with the majority. Anyway, when the chick and her sprout didn’t show, I just figured she changed her mind. People do that. But looks like I screwed up. If anyone should’ve called the people in California, it was me.”
“Has it ever happened before, that someone just didn’t show up?”
He looked off for a moment and then he looked back at me. “Shit, man, you’re puttin’ me on the spot. The people out in California, the ones I talked to this morning, they told me to go ahead and talk to you about the missing chick. But they don’t want me talking about anything else. I got to honor that.” He shrugged. “Thing of it is, this place is blown now anyway.”
“Because I know about it?”
“Right. They can’t take any chances.” He shrugged again. “So maybe it all worked out for the best.”
“It hasn’t worked out that way for Melissa Alonzo.”
He frowned, looked down. “No. No, man, it hasn’t.” He turned to me. “You think she’s okay?”
“No. I think she’s in trouble.”
“Shit,” he said sadly. “Bummer. If I can do anything, man, to help, you know, you tell me.”
“When was she supposed to show up here?”
“On the thirtieth. Of September.”
“How long was she supposed to stay?”
“A week. And then she was gonna move on to the next place. And I can’t tell you where that is, man. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t even know where it is. But she hasn’t been there. The people in California told me to tell you that. She hasn’t been there.”
“I still don’t understand why you never let them know that she didn’t arrive here.”
“Okay, man, I fucked up. No question. But, shit, you got to realize that I got other things on my mind. Right now, here, this is the first time since sunup I’m able to sit down and shoot the shit. I got the plumbing to worry about, and work crews for the Hall, and food supplies, and we got someone sick over at the hospital in Taos. If it’s not one thing, man, it’s another. Twenty-five people here, man.”
“I’ll explain all that to Melissa Alonzo, when I find her.”
“Hey, man, come on. I didn’t tell her not to come here. That was her decision.”
“I hope so.”
He frowned again. “What’s that mean?”
“It means I don’t know that it was her decision. I won’t know anything until I find her.”
“Shit, man, it hasn’t even been two weeks. She’ll show up. She’s probably, like, taking a little vacation. Maybe it got too much for her, hiding out and all.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I hope you’re right. Bilbo’s carrying a gun, isn’t he?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. I thought you glommed on to that. It’s empty, man. I got the bullets. He only carries it ‘cause like I say he’s not housebroken yet. It’s like a pacifier for him, man. Guy’s gone through some rough times. I could tell you stories, make your hair stand on end. But basically he’s good people. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
I nodded. I got out one of my business cards, handed it to him. “If Melissa Alonzo does contact you, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.”
“You got it. Anything I can do, man.”
I was angry as I drove off down the track from the weathered old house. If Sam had made a single telephone call, back when Melissa had failed to appear at the commune, then perhaps someone in the Underground Railroad would’ve set in motion a search for her.
Maybe they didn’t have the resources to check up on missing women. But maybe, when I spoke with Elizabeth Drewer earlier in the week, she might’ve told me the truth, and today I would be that much closer to Melissa.
I was still angry when I reached the main road. I drove back to the small general store and used the pay phone to call Norman Montoya. Once again, he answered the telephone himself.
“Ah, Mr. Croft. It is good that you call.” His voice was light, relaxed.
“How’s that?” I said.
“The telephone line is clear?”
An isolated pay phone in an isolated northern New Mexico town? Probably, but I didn’t know, and I told him so.
“Ah,” he said. “Well. The package you were asking about. It has arrived.”
Twenty-Four
SHE IS IN THE GUEST HOUSE,” Norman Montoya told me. “She arrived less than two hours ago.
“Is she all right?”
He nodded. “Yes, but she is quite tired. She has been under considerable strain.”
He and I were in his living room, me sitting on one end of a long white sectional couch, he sitting upright, spine straight, in a white padded armchair. To my right, the wall of glass looked out over a spectacular vista of steep river valley and snow-wrapped pines, all of it drifting down into shadow now as the last of the sunlight drained from the sky.
Montoya was wearing brogues again—maybe he always wore brogues—and also a pair of neatly pressed black wool slacks and a white dress shirt. The shirt was opened at the neck but the sleeves were buttoned. He was not an informal man.
I said, “She’s awake, though.”
“Oh yes. She is anxious to speak with you.”
“Have you talked to her yourself?”
“Only in the most general way. To ascertain that she was all right, and to assure her that she is quite safe here.”
He wasn’t exaggerating about her safety. Coming up the forest road above Las Mujeras, I had seen two cars backed into side trails in the woods. In both, the drivers had watched me pass while they spoke into telephones. No one had tried to stop me. I had told Montoya, when I spoke to him from Palo Verde, what time I would be arriving and what kind of vehicle I would be driving.
Montoya said, “From what she tells me, she does not know where Melissa and Winona are.”
I nodded. “We’ll see.”
Another guard, a short stocky man wearing black boots, black slacks, a black leather coat, and a black cowboy hat, stood outside the guest house door. As I approached, he said something into a small walkie-talkie, then slipped the device into his coat pocket and nodded to me, unsmiling.
I knocked at the guest house door. After a moment, Juanita Carrera opened it. She took a quick drag from her cigarette and, blowing smoke, she said, “You are Croft?”
“Yes.”
“Come in.”
Inside, the guest house was one large, spacious room. Behind a counter at one corner, to my left, was a small kitchenette. The living area, on this side of the counter, held a white leather chair, a small white leather sofa, a glass coffee table that supported some glossy magazines and a portable television. To my right was a king-size bed in an oak frame; beside that, an oak dresser. Farther to the right, a door led off into a bathroom. The curtains were drawn at the windows and the light in the room came from behind a white cornice that ran along the top of the white walls.
For a moment, the two of us stood there staring at each other.
Up until then, ever since I drove up
the mountain road from Las Mujeras, I had been feeling a dull, almost dreamlike sense of unreality, similar to what I’d felt at Deirdre Polk’s house. I had been feeling somewhat unreal, in fact, since all this began; and everything I had learned as I stumbled along, everything I had confronted, had seemed only to intensify the feeling. Roy Alonzo’s glib sincerity in my office, the glitter and humbug of Los Angeles, the petty but brutal bigotry of Bill Arnstead and Rebecca Carlson. The endless veils of secrecy behind which Melissa Alonzo appeared to live and move and hide. Salvadoran assassins, two innocent woman brutally murdered, inconclusive shoot-outs in the wide white wilderness. Aging hippies so laid back they couldn’t make a simple phone call. Burly guards murmuring into car phones and walkie-talkies. And, at last, a melodramatic meeting with a frightened woman who might be able to lead me to Melissa Alonzo.
Juanita Carrera was frightened, desperately frightened, and the sense of unreality dropped away like cobwebs falling from my shoulders.
She wore black pumps, a black skirt, a wrinkled white rayon blouse, and she was hugging herself as she looked at me, shoulders hunched, one arm beneath her breasts, the other upraised to hold her cigarette. The cigarette was trembling slightly, as if she were chilled. Her entire body was rigid, poised for flight.
She was also, despite the stiffness of her body and the tension showing at the corners of her mouth, despite the smudges of exhaustion below her eyes and the gauntness of her checks, a remarkably beautiful woman. Her hair was thick and long and black, her face perfectly proportioned, her features perfectly shaped the rich red mouth, the thin and aristocratic nose, the large dark eyes hooded by delicate and slightly slanted, almost Oriental lids.
I said, “May I sit down?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” She sucked on the cigarette. “Please,” she said, and waved her cigarette at the sofa. The please was an afterthought, a politeness remembered because it had been automatic in better times.
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