by Don Travis
“You do a lot of guessing, Richard. But I don’t think the sheriff of Luna County would have sicced me on you if he was just guessing.”
“Hidalgo,” he blurted.
“What?”
“Sheriff of Hidalgo County.”
“Okay. Now that you’ve admitted you know all about the theft, tell me about it.”
“Didn’t admit nothing.”
“You know where the abduction—uh, theft took place. Stop wasting my time. What did you want with a prize duck named….” I stopped, unable to call a bird by that ridiculous name.
“Quacky Quack the Second,” he said. “That’s what old Mud Hen calls her. Ain’t that a hoot?”
“Mud Hen?”
“Millicent Muldren. Everbody calls her Mud Hen.”
“She’s the duck’s owner?”
“Yeah. She’s run the Lazy M Ranch since her old man died.”
“Why’d you steal her duck?”
“Who says I did?”
I improvised. “About everybody in the countryside. Police chief, sheriff, Ms. Muldren. There’s a warrant out for your arrest. Talk to me, and maybe I can do something about that.”
Old Liver Lips wasn’t as dumb as he looked. Those blood-suffused appendages quivered a couple of times before he squared his thin shoulders. “Ain’t nobody gonna arrest me for nothing, I guess. Who’d press charges on something like that?”
“Mud Hen for one and the insurance company for another.”
“Insurance company?”
“You didn’t know the owner insured her property?”
“Shoot. I guess there ain’t no insurance company in the world that’d insure a frigging duck.”
I didn’t know much more than he did, but I couldn’t let up on him now. “Then you’d guess wrong. They’ll insure soap bubbles if you pay the premiums.”
Liver Lips wiggled in his chair, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Uh, you said something about a warrant?”
I was flying totally blind. I had no idea if there was a warrant out for this character. In fact I didn’t even know why he was suspected of the theft or how Del found out he’d be at the UNM Emergency Center today.
“Yes. But I can deal with that if you give me what I want.”
“Like what?”
“Like what have you done with Qua—with the duck?” His eyes slid away as he opened his mouth and licked his lips. I held up a hand. “Don’t bother to deny it. You’re caught flat-out. Man up and admit it. Where’s the duck?”
“Dunno.” The word came out in a whisper.
“Why not?”
“Somebody took her.”
“We’ve already established that. You took her. What did you do, pluck her and eat her? You like roast duck, Liver Lips?”
His thin shoulders twitched. He did that rapid blinking thing and twisted his neck to loosen it up. A bead of sweat worked its way through thin tendrils of blond hair and trickled down his forehead. It looked muddy by the time it reached the corner of his eye. “Hell, I didn’t eat her. I give her to somebody.”
“Who?”
His pale eyes clouded over. “Just somebody wanted to play a trick on Mud Hen.”
“Who was this ‘somebody’?”
“I give up his name, he’ll get me in trouble. And he can do it too.”
“So can I. A world of trouble. You’ve already given me enough to report to the insurance company. You’re the chicken thief, Liver Lips. And they’ll come after you hard. You have any idea how far they’d go to keep from paying out all that money?”
“How much money?” His attitude changed. If Liver Lips possessed a crafty side, this was it.
“More than you can ever repay in your lifetime.” I built on the fiction I was spinning. “They’ll see you prosecuted for grand theft. What does your record look like? Probably penny ante, right? Well, you made the big time with this.”
“For stealing a duck?”
I stared at the raunchy-looking man and wondered if this was an act. “Answer my question. Who hired you to steal the duck?”
“Hired?”
Jeez. The guy hadn’t even been paid. He’d done it as a favor. Or else someone had leverage on Richard Martinson.
“Who told you to take the duck? Who’d you give it to?”
“Her.”
“Her?”
“It’s a her. The duck, I mean. Quacky—”
“Who’d you give her to?”
Liver Lips crossed his arms over his chest and hugged himself tightly. “Oh shit! I hurt, man. They supposed to be getting me something for the pain. And the infection too. I gotta go check on it.”
“Okay. We’ll go together. Maybe I can help.”
“I can do it.” The words came out as a whine. “I ain’t no kid that needs babysitting.”
Despite his objections I trod on his heels as he walked toward a counter. They’d made some big-time changes at the UNM Emergency Center since I was here last. It was now housed in a new building called the Pavilion, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t the outpatient pharmacy. Liver Lips was getting ready to make a move. He did, but it wasn’t the one I expected. Probably not the one he anticipated either.
He turned a corner and bumped squarely into a burly Albuquerque cop. Backpedaling, he held out his hands in a plea. “Sir, this here guy won’t leave me alone. Can you make him stop pestering me?”
The six-foot-two officer transferred his irritated look from Liver Lips to me. His shoulder unit belched static, but he ignored it. “What’s going on?”
I took a quick peek at his nametag. “Corporal Hines, my name is Vinson. I’m a licensed PI. I’m going to reach for my ID, okay?”
The outside door crashed open and I whirled. A man and a woman rushed inside with a little girl nursing a bloody hand wrapped in stained towels. Hines brushed by me to see if his help was needed. When I turned back to confront Liver Lips, he was nowhere in sight. I made a quick sweep of the hallways, but he’d disappeared. Maybe Liver did have a crafty side, after all.
Muttering under my breath, I headed for the parking structure to get my Impala. On the way, I hit the speed dial on my cell.
Del wasn’t pleased with the interview results, and I couldn’t blame him.
“So to sum it up,” he said, “you’re convinced Martinson kidnapped—excuse me, stole the duck. You think he did it at the behest of someone else and has turned the bird over to that party. Other than that, the only thing you learned is that Millicent Muldren, the esteemed daughter of an old-line New Mexico ranching family, is called Mud Hen behind her back.”
“That about covers it. What do you want me to do now?”
“Nothing. I’ll let the client know Liver Lips is running, probably back to the Deming area. He doesn’t seem to have personal ties anywhere else. Go back to your golf game, Vince.”
“Too late for that. And thanks, by the way. Today was the first time Paul and I had any time together in a month.”
“The two of you still making it okay?”
“Smooth as silk, except for our schedules. We seldom manage to meet up except at night.”
“That’s probably why it’s still working.” He hung up.
I was out of sorts, possibly for the rest of the day. Paul’s schedule reclaimed him, so I left the UNM parking structure and headed west on Lomas. The office was closed, but I’d been in the field working on a case since yesterday afternoon, so my manager, Hazel Harris, likely left a pile of documents for me to review and sign. Might as well get that chore over and done with instead of waiting for Monday.
Hazel and Charlie Weeks—the retired cop who was fast becoming a full-time investigator for me—had wrapped up a couple of cases. Charlie was not only a godsend to my business, but he also kept my mothering, smothering office manager off my back. The two were becoming quite a pair around the office, although they continued to believe it was a secret.
I settled down at my desk and reviewed the reports they’d left for me. After signing off on the documen
ts, I went through my unread mail, making a few notations and dictating an answer or two before snapping off my desk lamp.
Still vaguely disgruntled, I swiveled my chair to the windows behind my desk and allowed the vista to slowly calm my nerves as I came to grips with my ill-defined sense of unease. It was not Del’s interruption of my pleasant afternoon with Paul—although that was a factor—as much as it was a sense of failure. Of leaving a job unfinished, a goal unattained. Liver Lips had outfoxed me, and that did not sit well.
A pleasant evening with Paul finally laid the thing to rest.
Until, at one fifteen in the morning, the telephone rang.
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More from Don Travis
A BJ Vinson Mystery
B. J. Vinson is a former Marine and ex-Albuquerque PD detective turned confidential investigator. Against his better judgment, BJ agrees to find the gay gigolo who was responsible for his breakup with prominent Albuquerque lawyer Del Dahlman and recover some racy photographs from the handsome bastard. The assignment should be fast and simple.
But it quickly becomes clear the hustler isn’t the one making the anonymous demands, and things turn deadly with a high-profile murder at the burning of Zozobra on the first night of the Santa Fe Fiesta. BJ’s search takes him through virtually every stratum of Albuquerque and Santa Fe society, both straight and gay. Before it is over, BJ is uncertain whether Paul Barton, the young man quickly insinuating himself in BJ’s life, is friend or foe. But he knows he’s stepped into something much more serious than a modest blackmail scheme. With Paul and BJ next on the killer’s list, BJ must find a way to put a stop to the death threats once and for all.
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DON TRAVIS is a man totally captivated by his adopted state of New Mexico. Each of his mystery novels features some region of the state as prominently as it does his protagonist, a gay ex-Marine, ex-cop turned confidential investigator. Don never made it to the Marines (three years in the Army was all he managed) and certainly didn’t join the Albuquerque Police Department. He thought he was a paint artist for a while, but ditched that for writing a few years back. A loner, he fulfills his social needs by attending SouthwestWriters meetings and teaching a weekly writing class at an Albuquerque community center.
Facebook: Don Travis
Twitter: @dontravis3
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By Don Travis
BJ VINSON MYSTERIES
The Zozobra Incident
The Bisti Business
Published by DSP PUBLICATIONS
www.dsppublications.com
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Published by
DSP PUBLICATIONS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dsppublications.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Bisti Business
© 2017 Don Travis.
Cover Art
© 2017 Maria Fanning.
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dsppublications.com.
ISBN: 978-1-63533-112-7
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63533-113-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016914509
Published March 2017
v. 2.1
First Edition published by Martin Brown Publishers, LLC, 2013.
Printed in the United States of America