The Daughters Of Alta Mira (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 4)

by Michael Wallace

  “Under certain circumstances, but we’re not too strict about it. Maybe we should be. In any event, this is prodding me to be more virtuous. Last month’s personnel records have been sitting on my desk since Monday, waiting for sign-off. I’ll look at them after dinner, paying attention to the dates our first two students went missing and the date Tiffany Reese disappeared in Ponderosa County. I’m not expecting a hallelujah moment, but who knows? I might see something that bears a second look.”

  “You’ve got to start somewhere. And thanks for not laughing me out of the room when I threw out that idea.”

  “It’s an idea. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.”

  Gordon rose to leave, but she asked another question.

  “By the way, I’m curious about what you, as a former athlete, make of the coach’s decision. I have to say it surprised me a bit. I thought he might try to cover for them.”

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “He is a Santa Clara man, so maybe that Jesuit education left him with a bit of a conscience.”

  “Or there could be a simpler answer. I understand he has a daughter.”

  I WAITED IN THE HOTEL ROOM for nearly an hour, before Gordon came back. For most of that time, I was feeling that I should take a shower, but I knew it would take more than hot, running water to wash away the slime from that video. Something like that, you don’t forget very easily.

  Gordon was a bit grumpy when he got back. It was nothing I haven’t seen before, and I waited for it to pass, which it finally did. He announced that Brenda Hastings and Elizabeth would be joining us for dinner at Elizalde’s. At the rate we’ve been going there, they should put a plaque on one of the tables in our honor.

  We picked Brenda up at five. She’d made herself up a bit and looked better than on Monday, and the black dress became her. But the strain was still evident. I was thinking that some man will probably ask her to marry him in a few years, but I wonder if she could ever do that. When you’ve been married 15 years to someone like Mountain Bob, who is, let’s face it, sui generis, would it ever be possible for anyone else to take his place?

  On the way to the restaurant, she told Gordon the funeral would be Monday morning, and I wondered if any church in town would be big enough. She also asked Gordon if he would say a few words, and he said yes without hesitation, even though he hates public speaking.

  Elizabeth was waiting at the restaurant, and we were quickly seated. The place was just starting to fill up, but a couple of the other customers clearly took note of Brenda and knew who she was.

  “I hope nobody thinks I’m being wicked for going to a restaurant,” she said after drink orders were taken. “But if they do — well, tough! I haven’t been out of the house in two days, and I need to get away a bit. Thanks for asking, Gordon.”

  The drinks came. She had a cherry Coke, and I noticed Gordon ordered a 7-Up. We made small talk for a few minutes before Elizabeth turned to Brenda.

  “You may have heard this already,” she said, “but two football players have been brought in for questioning in connection with the rape at that party two weeks ago. What you might not know is that it wouldn’t have happened without Bob.”

  “But … how?”

  “He was onto something on Sunday, and he left enough of a clue as to what it was that Gordon figured it out. That enabled us to run down a student who was a witness and get a break that the sheriff could follow.”

  “Elizabeth is being far too modest,” Gordon said. “She had a lot to do with it.”

  “No, Gordon. You cracked Bob’s code and you talked the kid into going to the sheriff. Bob would have been proud.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Brenda finally said. “Bob was really upset about that. Do you think they’ll make an arrest?”

  “Too soon to say,” Gordon replied. “But it opens up the investigation. And it was Bob who did most of the digging. We just had to figure out where the bone was.”

  Brenda smiled. “When Bob was onto something, he was like a dog with a bone.”

  The waitress came, and we ordered dinner. After she left, Gordon leaned toward Brenda just a bit and lowered his voice.

  “Brenda, I don’t know if you’re up to it, and if not, just say so. But I wanted to ask if you could help with something.”

  “Tell me more. I’ll help if I can.”

  Gordon reached into his shirt pocket and took out the notebook.

  “The morning Bob was killed, he had some notes on a notepad by his side. It seemed to be a list of five things in his own peculiar shorthand, and the sheriff let me copy it down. Do you think you might be able to make sense of any of it?”

  He placed the open paper in front of her.

  “Let’s take this from the bottom up,” Gordon said. “The last thing he wrote was ‘Wheaties.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head. “He hated cold cereal, and they didn’t advertise. Sorry. I have no idea.”

  “All right, then. ‘DS – Gurgle,’ we thought might be a note about a sound effect for DeShayne Plumbing.”

  “It has to be,” she said. “Bob loved coming up with weird sounds for those ads. It appealed to his inner eight-year-old.”

  “How about ‘Geiser – Wed?’ We think …”

  “He told me Sunday night he wanted to get the coach on his show this week.”

  “Good. And ‘Time - :30’ we think is a memo to himself to remember to give the time.”

  She nodded. “He’d get so carried away with his routines he’d forget to do that sometimes, so he often wrote a note to himself.”

  “Great. We’re making some progress. Now, does this first one, ‘SBYM – TW’ mean anything to you?”

  Her jaw dropped and she sat open-mouthed for a second. Then her eyes teared up, and big drops began running down her cheeks.

  “Brenda! Are you all right?”

  She shook her head and waved him off.

  “You couldn’t have known, Gordon. It’s not your fault. That was our special song.”

  “Song?” he echoed.

  “It was even a little inside joke with us. Whenever he’d get off on a high horse about something and I tried to calm him down, he’d go, ‘SBYM, Brenda. SBYM.’ It means Stand By Your Man. He’d play the song every week and always called to tell me when it was going to be on.”

  She began sobbing violently. Elizabeth quickly talked her into going to the ladies’ room. They went off, leaving us men to our discomfort.

  “That didn’t go too well,” Gordon said, when they were out of earshot.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But how could you have known? Between this and Jessica’s mother this morning, all I can say is I’m glad I’m not a police officer. I wouldn’t want to do this more than once every lifetime.”

  “Same here,” he said, putting the notebook back in his pocket.

  “By the way, what does TW mean?”

  “Tammy Wynette,” he said. “It’s her signature song.”

  BRENDA RECOVERED ENOUGH to get through the dinner and even reasonably enjoy it, but said afterward she needed to go straight home. Elizabeth invited Gordon and Sam to her place to hear about the video, but Sam pleaded fatigue. So after dropping Brenda at her home and Sam at the hotel, Gordon started for the Nuñes Ranch, where Elizabeth lived.

  The dull overcast had lingered over the area all day and into the night. The moonless, starless sky provided no light at all, and Gordon felt as if he were driving through a tank of oil. Just outside town, he became aware of a pair of headlights behind him, perhaps a bit closer than necessary. In the complete darkness, he couldn’t see what kind of vehicle it was. After several miles of being closely tailed, Gordon slowed down on a long straightaway. Instead of passing, the car stayed behind him, and he began to get nervous. There was no one else on the road, and he’d seen only a couple of vehicles coming the other direction. Just as he was beginning to worry seriously, he heard a loud engine noise, and his follower pulled out to pass. It was a smaller p
ickup and was quickly far ahead of him. He exhaled with relief.

  “Thanks for coming,” Elizabeth said, as she let him in. “I really want to hear about the video, but it didn’t seem like appropriate dinner conversation.”

  “Maybe at Caligula’s table,” Gordon said. “Part of me wishes I hadn’t seen it.”

  “Steel yourself with a small glass of wine,” she said, pouring a few ounces of Russian River Cabernet into a glass. “But first I want to show you something.” She led him to the door at the edge of the living area and grasped the knob.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she said.

  She turned the knob and flipped a light switch in the room. As Gordon stepped in, he saw that the half-dozen easels that had been covered Monday night were now unveiled, their paintings open for inspection. Without saying a word, he started at the one farthest to his left and made the rounds clockwise, stopping before each painting — longer at some than others. Between the paintings and her physical presence, Elizabeth seemed to have enveloped the room, and he was aware of her with every step and every breath he took.

  When he had looked at all six, he stepped back to take a second look at the painting fourth from the left. It was a scene of Alta Mira, viewed from the mountains to the west, at twilight, after a thunderstorm. The town was an indistinct mélange of light points, the light contrasting with the dark sky above. It looked safe and inviting, and Gordon wondered when she had painted it.

  “If you want my opinion,” he finally said, “I think this is the best one.”

  “Damn! I thought you’d go for the one with the fisherman.”

  “That’s a good picture, and it’ll probably sell faster than this one. But it doesn’t have the boldness of light and color and the dramatic composition. Just my opinion, for whatever it’s worth.”

  “For whatever it’s worth, that’s pretty much what I think, too.”

  They stepped back into the living area. She sat on the couch, and Gordon began to take a seat in a facing chair, but she patted the couch next to her with her left hand and he sat there, a discreet distance from her.

  Elizabeth asked him to describe the video, and he did, in considerable detail. She listened intently, interrupting once or twice to ask a question.

  “That is so awful,” she said when he finished. “I’ve been to some wild parties, but I don’t recall anything like that ever happening.”

  “Same here. Watching that, I couldn’t help thinking that there don’t seem to be any rules anymore.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it. What you’ve told me is enough to make me a believer in the Antioch Rules.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gordon said.

  “You’ve never heard of the Antioch Rules?”

  Gordon shook his head.

  “I thought everybody had,” she continued. “Anyway, Antioch is a liberal-arts college in Ohio, and because of cases like this one, they established a code of sexual conduct for their students a few years ago. What it basically comes down to is that if you want to have sex with someone, you have to ask permission for every action you take along the way. You look skeptical.”

  “I am. So let’s say, hypothetically, of course, that a normally healthy pair of college students has been sitting together as we are, baring their innermost souls to each other, and the guy decides he wants to take matters to a less spiritual plane … ”

  “Spirituality can be expressed in many ways, Gordon.”

  “ … He would have to say something like, ‘I’d like to put my arms around you.’ ”

  “You have to frame it as a question.”

  “May I put my arms around you?”

  “Yes, you may.” He sat still for a second. “That wasn’t a hypothetical answer.”

  He slid his arms around her and drew her toward him.

  “Then I’d follow it up with something like, ‘May I kiss you?’ ”

  “Yes, you may.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her. She returned it warmly, and the kiss, growing steadily more intense, lasted over a minute before she broke it off.”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Gordon. You have to ask before your hands do that.”

  “Sorry. Instinctive reflex. May I slide my hands up your body.”

  “Sure.”

  They kissed again, and he slid a hand up either side of her torso, stopping with his thumbs just under her breasts.

  “No more until you ask,” she said.

  “May I lick your ear?”

  She jerked her head back several inches.

  “Whoa! That was not what I was expecting.”

  “Well, if you need a minute to think about it …”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “I’m confused. Was that no, or go ahead?”

  “It was go ahead.”

  He began licking her left earlobe. She squirmed at first, then began giggling and finally pushed him back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s a real turn-on, but it tickles like hell.”

  “Then let’s go back to where we were. May I touch your breasts?”

  “Yes, you may.”

  He slid his hands under her blouse, and when they reached breast level, they moved to the back to undo her bra.

  “I just said yes to touching the breasts. If you want to take the bra off, you need to ask.”

  “May I remove that stifling contraption you’re wearing?”

  “Which one?”

  “Your bra.”

  “Yes.”

  He began to slide his hands around her back, but at that moment his cell phone went off. She immediately jumped to her feet, and his hands came out from under her blouse.

  “You’d better answer that,” she said. “It might be your mother.”

  “At moments like this, I miss my pager,” he said, taking the phone out of his pocket, “It looks like the sheriff.” He put it to his ear. “Gordon.”

  “Gordon! Thank God you picked up.” Chris’s voice sounded strained and worried. “I need to talk to you right now. Where are you?”

  He looked up at Elizabeth, who appeared only slightly disheveled.

  “Isn’t that kind of a personal question?”

  “Don’t be a smartass, Gordon. This is big.”

  “I’m at Elizabeth Macondray’s place. It’s …”

  “I know where it is. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

  She rang off. Gordon looked at the phone for several seconds, then put it back in his pocket.

  “The sheriff will be here in 10 minutes,” he said.

  “Funny. I don’t recall inviting her.”

  “She’s the law, Elizabeth. When you’re the law, you don’t have to play by Antioch Rules. You don’t have to ask permission.”

  CHRIS CAME IN ON SCHEDULE, looking haggard and worried. Something had obviously shaken her. She declined a glass of wine, took a glass of water, and sat in a chair. Gordon and Elizabeth sat on the couch facing her, leaving a couple of feet of discreet space between them.

  After drinking half a glass, the sheriff took a deep breath and began.

  “I’ll take it from the beginning. It may help compose me. Back on the 17th of August there was a high-speed vehicle chase that started south of Ponderosa, blew through that town, and kept heading north. A 19-year-old kid got hopped up on meth, stole a car, and hit the accelerator instead of the brake when the red lights started flashing behind him. This was all in broad daylight, by the way.

  “Anyway, when the chase left Ponderosa and was headed toward our county, we got a call and quickly set up a little welcoming committee a couple of miles into Plateau County. Several law enforcement vehicles established a roadblock at a point where the guy who stole the car could see them up ahead, but couldn’t get around because the road was a bit elevated at that point. If he made it that far, he wasn’t going to get any farther.

  “Or so we thought. When the kid saw the roadblock, he sped up, swerved off the road and went airborne. He cleared a barbed-wire
fence at the bottom of the embankment and landed in the meadow below. He could have killed himself, but the impaired are sometimes lucky. The car was disabled, but he got out and made a run for it before he was finally tackled and handcuffed.

  “That was our biggest excitement for the month, but because the chase began in Ponderosa County, they were handling the prosecution, so it kind of faded from my mind. Then, a couple of hours ago, Gordon, I started looking at our personnel logs for last month, like you suggested, and …”

  She shook her head, took a big gulp of water, followed by a deep breath, and plunged forward.

  “On Friday October 17, they had a preliminary hearing for the kid, who was facing a bazillion charges. It was held from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Ponderosa County Courthouse, and just before noon the judge ruled there was enough evidence to bind the defendant over for trial in superior court. But because the chase ended here, one of our people was subpoenaed as a witness to testify about it.

  “So, in short, a Plateau County sheriff’s officer was in Ponderosa, in court, until noon that day. And at 1:30 p.m. that same day, Tiffany Reese was last seen heading toward the entrance to Ponderosa Community College. She hasn’t been seen since. I still can’t believe it.”

  She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Was it one of your campus police officers?” Gordon asked.

  “No. It was worse than that.”

  She picked up the glass of water, drank what was left of it, and set it down.

  “It was Howard Honig.”

  Gordon whistled, and Elizabeth’s eyes grew wider.

  “And it gets worse. Reviewing the personnel records, I saw that Howard had the day off and put in for overtime for the testimony. But he was off all afternoon, and didn’t return the department vehicle he drove down there until Saturday morning. If nothing else, he had the means and opportunity to commit the crime.

  “And I don’t know what to do next. I’ve never had to handle a case where a major crime investigation swept up one of ours. And for obvious reasons, I can’t talk about it to anyone in the department — or even to Diane, at this point. But I needed to talk to somebody, and since it was your idea in the first place to look at law enforcement, Gordon, I’m dumping it in your lap.