Mexican Hat Page 15

  “I did it!” Cody shouted.

  “You sure did.” He set Cody down, walked to the corral fence, and dropped his rope over a post. “Now try it again.”

  As Edgar watched Cody, his thoughts wandered. It was hard for him to pretend it was just another ordinary day. Margaret was in the kitchen with Elizabeth, working up meals for the freezer that would carry Edgar through her surgery and hospitalization. She acted as though she were preparing for nothing more than one of her periodic visits to her sister. On top of that worry, he was damn unhappy with himself for lying to Karen. While she hadn’t said a word about it, he knew she didn’t believe him. He could see it in her eyes.

  Engrossed in his thoughts, Edgar didn’t hear Kerney drop over the corral fence.

  “Mr. Cox,” Kerney said politely.

  Surprised, Edgar turned his head. “Mr. Kerney.” He looked back at Cody, who was moving in on Babe for another try. He didn’t want to think about Eugene, José Padilla, or any of it. Not now.

  Kerney remained silent.

  Edgar got tired of waiting. “What can I do for you?” he asked, his blue eyes searching Kerney’s face.

  “I thought you’d like to know about José Padilla. Seems he is from around these parts.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No, his daughter did. Padilla died last night.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “She also told me why Padilla came back. He thought his father was murdered.”

  “That’s pretty unlikely.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Edgar paused, rubbed his palm along the smooth corral railing, and tried to stay calm. Cody’s throw snaked out and the noose snapped against Babe’s neck. The horse whinnied and skipped back from the boy.

  “Let the noose open up before you throw it,” Edgar called. “Remember the circle. Don’t let the noose flatten out.”

  Cody nodded glumly and walked toward the mare, coiling his lariat for another throw.

  “Why do you say Don Luis wasn’t murdered?” Kerney asked.

  “Because he died in a fall with his horse.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Don Luis was an old man who went into the mountains alone once too often. He got caught in a blinding spring snowstorm and tried to find his way home. His horse plunged off a ridge. Dropped a good sixty, seventy feet. Took Don Luis with him.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “Near Elderman Meadows. They didn’t find his body for two weeks.”

  “What was he doing up there?”

  “His sheepherder quit on him to take a WPA job building roads for the county. He hired a replacement, but the man didn’t show. When the storm blew in, he went to check on the herd. He needed those sheep. He planned to sell them at the end of the season to pay a bank note and taxes. He was trying to hold on and get through the Depression, just like everybody else.”

  “What happened to the sheep?”

  “Stolen. Most folks figured the sheep had been rustled before Don Luis left the hacienda.”

  “Was the crime ever solved?”

  “No.”

  “Ever hear of a place called Mexican Hat?” Kerney asked.

  “Can’t say I have,” Edgar answered. “I hear you’ve been released from your position.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Will you be staying on in Catron County?”

  “Probably not.”

  Edgar watched Cody. He was all tensed up again and twirling much too hard. “I didn’t think so. Not many jobs hereabouts.”

  Cody let fly, and the lariat whipped out and snapped Babe in the eye. The horse bawled, pitched back on her hind legs, forelegs flailing, and headed straight for Cody, who stood frozen in position. Before Edgar could react, Kerney grabbed the lasso from the fence post and ran toward the mare, measuring the distance to the horse, spinning the lariat in a tight loop at his knee parallel to the ground. He let it go and the noose caught the mare by the forelegs. He yanked it tight and the horse went down hard on her side less than a foot in front of Cody.

  Babe was on her back kicking in the air when Edgar scooped up Cody.

  Kerney released the mare. She got up, shook herself off, snorted, and trotted away.

  “Where did you learn that trick?” Edgar asked, holding Cody tightly in his arms.

  “A fellow by the name of Blas Montoya taught it to me when I was a boy.”

  “Well, I thank both you and Mr. Montoya. That’s some damn fine roping.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He stroked Cody’s head. “Are you all right, cowboy?”

  Cody’s eyes were wet, but he wasn’t crying. “Yeah. That was scary.”

  “It scared me, too,” Edgar said. “Is there anything else we need to talk about, Mr. Kerney?”

  “I don’t think so,” Kerney replied.

  Edgar stuck out his hand. “Well then, good luck to you, and thanks again.”

  Kerney shook his hand and left, wondering what it would take to shake out Edgar’s secret. He was damn sure there was one. Maybe Edgar had all the family skeletons locked in a closet that required a special key.

  IN DEMING, Kerney went looking for a smuggler. South of town, along the state highway, in view of the Tres Hermanas Mountains twenty miles distant, he found a mailbox with the right numbers at a roadside business that had gone under. The old farmhouse, bordered by cotton fields on three sides, had a front yard filled with rows of sagging wooden bins that once contained rocks for sale to the tourist trade. Signs at either end of the yard, the painted letters faded by the desert sun, welcomed rock hounds to the defunct establishment. There was a Keep Out sign posted on the front door of the house. Kerney parked and looked in the windows as he walked around the building. The rooms were empty except for some litter and a thick carpet of sand on the plank floors. Nobody had been inside for a good long time.

  The wire strands to the back fence were filled with fluffs of raw cotton from the last harvest. In front of the fence was a level spot of sand and gravel near a utility pole with an electric meter attached to it. A dented propane tank sat on the other side of the site. It was clear that a house trailer had been recently moved off the property. The tracks of the truck that had hauled it away were barely filled in with drifting sand.

  Kerney kicked at the sand with the toe of a boot, pissed off at himself for taking too long to follow up on Juan’s lead. It was another dead end, and he was getting tired of running into walls. He looked down the road. About half a mile away, at the intersection of the highway and a county road, was a farm equipment and supply business. Beyond that, cotton fields gave way to desert that ran up against the dark groundmass of the Tres Hermanas.

  At the dealership, a metal-skin building with a large plate-glass window that bounced the sun into his eyes, he stood next to a hundred-thousand-dollar tractor and talked with the owner. Clancy Payne was in his sixties. He had a cheerful smile and a trace of a west Texas twang. He shook his head and said he didn’t know much about the man up the road. Kerney learned that his target, Leon Spence, had sold the house trailer and moved to Tucson. Other than that, and a belief that Spence was a traveling salesman of some sort, Mr. Payne knew nothing more.

  “When did Spence move out?” Kerney asked.

  “I don’t know when he left, but they hauled the trailer away over the weekend,” Clancy replied.

  “Were you open for business on Saturday?”

  “I sure was, but I didn’t see Spence, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “What kind of car does Spence drive?”

  “He’s got two vehicles. One of them is a Toyota four-by-four sport utility and the other is a four-door Chevy. A Caprice, I think it is. The Toyota is a dark blue and the Chevy is white.”

  “New Mexico plates?”

  “Yeah, but don’t ask me for the license numbers. I can’t even remember my own.”

  LAID OUT ON A GRID, Deming ran parallel to the
interstate until it petered out at both ends of the main street. On a smooth desert plain, broken only by low sand mounds and shallow arroyos, the locals fought the starkness of the land and lost the battle. There would never be enough greenness, no matter how many trees were planted or lawns were sodded, to combat the sparseness, dryness, dust, and wind that constantly wore at the town.

  With all of that going against it, Deming had been discovered by working-class retirees on limited pensions, and new, inexpensive subdivisions were pushing back the cotton fields, as the city touted its resurgence with billboards and bumper stickers.

  On the outer limits of Deming’s main street, in the air-conditioned comfort of a restaurant that gave customers a great view of the interstate highway and the railroad tracks, Kerney called the BLM officer, who agreed to meet him for a cup of coffee. While he waited he borrowed the phone book and called the electric and phone companies, hoping that Spence had left a forwarding address. No such luck. He called mobile home movers. None had hauled Spence’s trailer. The BLM cop arrived, and Kerney sat with him in a window booth, the sun’s glare cut by a thick plastic shade that made the outside world look dark brown.

  “You did the ibex investigation in the Florida Mountains,” Kerney said, after the small talk concluded.

  Mike Anderson, a man with a blocky face and fat earlobes, took his sunglasses off and wiped some dust out of the corners of his eyes. “That’s right. Couldn’t get anything definite on it. I called a state police buddy of mine to help out, but we couldn’t get a damn bit of hard evidence other than the tire tracks. That didn’t pan out either. The impressions didn’t take. Not enough tread depth.”

  “So, what have you got?”

  “Two days before I found the kill site, I stopped a kid on a four-wheel ATV. He was on state land outside of my jurisdiction, but I gave him a butt-chewing anyway. Said he was camped at Rock Hound State Park with his family.”

  “Did you ID the kid?”

  “Got a name,” Anderson said, pulling a small notebook from his shirt pocket. “The kid was maybe twelve, thirteen years old.” Anderson thumbed through his notes. “Here it is. Ramón Ulibarri. Said he was from Reserve. I called up there after I found the trophy kills, just to check it out. There was only one Ulibarri listed in the phone book and the telephone had been disconnected. So I called the Catron County sheriff.”

  “And?” Kerney prodded.

  “I talked to the sheriff. He didn’t know any kid by that name, and nobody matched the description I gave him. I figured in a town that small, the sheriff would know.”

  “You talked to Gatewood?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Describe the boy to me,” Kerney asked.

  Anderson gave him a rundown. Four-six or -seven, slender build, wearing floppy jeans and a baseball cap with the bill turned backward. He closed the notebook and put it away. “The kid told me that he was camping with his family at the state park, but later when I talked to the manager he said there was nobody registered from Reserve during that time.”

  “So the kid lied to you.”

  “Appears that way.”

  “Do you know a man named Leon Spence?” Kerney asked. “Used to live on the highway to Columbus.”

  Anderson suddenly got busy stirring his coffee. “Doesn’t register.”

  Kerney pushed a bit. “He had a trailer behind a vacant house that used to be a rock-hound shop. You must have seen it.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Anderson allowed. “Didn’t know who lived there.”

  Kerney picked up the check for the coffee. “Thanks for your time.”

  “Hope I didn’t waste yours,” Anderson replied. He put some change on the table for a tip, shook Kerney’s hand, and wished him good luck before putting his sunglasses back on and pushing his way out the door into the simmering desert furnace of the day.

  As he paid the bill, Kerney pondered Anderson’s behavior. The man had gone from one extreme to another. He’d been more than willing to talk about poachers, but went into a complete shutdown when Leon Spence had been mentioned. That was damn interesting.

  Anderson hadn’t left much of a tip for the waitress. Kerney went back and put more money on the table.

  “READING WITH ONE EYE isn’t easy,” Jim said. “And I don’t do it very well.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t try,” Kerney replied.

  Jim sat in the chair next to his hospital bed, a pile of papers in his hand. The dressing covering his eye had been replaced with a patch and his left arm was in a sling.

  The bed was occupied by a very pretty, blue-jean-clad, blond-headed young woman with a dimple in the center of her chin, who sat cross-legged with a laptop computer balanced on her knees.

  “That’s Molly Hamilton,” Jim explained. “My research associate. When she gets desperate, I’m allowed to date her.”

  “Shut up, Jim,” Molly said sweetly, looking at Kerney. “Hi.”

  “Hello.”

  Molly held out a modem cord to Kerney. “Plug this in the phone jack, please. State archives is sending me some confirming information.”

  Kerney did as he was told. “Where did you find such good help?” he asked Stiles.

  “Molly’s the chief research librarian at the university,” Jim explained. “I can’t get her to quit her job, marry me, and have my babies.”

  “Shut up, Jim,” Molly said, her fingers busy at the keyboard. “Don’t listen to him, Mr. Kerney. Want to hear what we’ve got so far?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Molly punched a few more keys and put the laptop on the pillow behind her. “Okay. Before statehood, Thomas Catron owned most of the land west of Magdalena to the Arizona border. What he didn’t own, Solomon Luna controlled, along with the Padilla family. Don Luis was kind of a junior partner. They pooled their resources and formed a limited partnership called the American Valley Company. There were a few more partners, but Catron bought them out except for Luna and Padilla. The venture never made a profit. Catron was overextended financially and couldn’t raise the money for development. In his day, he was just about the biggest landowner in the country. He held title to, or controlled, millions of acres in New Mexico. When beef prices plummeted in the 1890s and the drought hit, it was all he could do to hold on to the land.”

  “That’s interesting,” Kerney said, “but it doesn’t get us very far.”

  “What’s interesting, Mr. Kerney,” Molly said, arching her back in a stretch, “is what Catron did. He recruited a new partner with working capital: William Elderman.”

  “My granddaddy,” Jim added proudly. “A real scoundrel.”

  “True enough,” Molly replied. “After the American Valley Company dissolved, Catron and Luna walked away from the venture, leaving Elderman and Padilla the biggest landowners in the county, but with a binding agreement that gave each of them first option for a buyout.”

  “So did Elderman exercise his option for the land with Padilla?” Kerney asked.

  “Padilla wouldn’t sell, even though Elderman hounded him for years. It took the Great Depression to bankrupt Padilla.”

  “Did Elderman get the land for back taxes?”

  “Don’t jump the gun,” Molly said, waving a censuring finger. “The only entity buying land in the valley during the Depression was the federal government. The feds wanted to expand the Datil National Forest. That’s what it was called back then. And the land they wanted was owned by Padilla. Elderman knew it. Padilla didn’t. It was pure discrimination. The feds didn’t want to deal with the Hispanics.”

  “Is this speculation or fact?” Kerney inquired.

  Molly tilted her head in Jim’s direction. “Fact. Most of what we know comes from an unpublished autobiography written by Woodrow Stringhorn, the first park superintendent. His family donated the papers to the university after his death. Stringhorn consummated the deal with Elderman to buy the land for the national forest. He wrote in his autobiography that he was ordered by Washington to have no dealin
gs with Padilla, and to wait until the land came under Elderman’s control.

  “There’s even a letter from Elderman to Stringhorn, in which he writes that Padilla probably wouldn’t be able to meet his obligations to the bank when his note came due. Seems that old William had an inside source on Padilla’s finances.”

  “Who owned the bank?” Kerney queried.

  “Another scoundrel,” Jim replied. “Calvin Cox. Karen’s granddaddy. Is this a good story, or what?”

  “A very good story,” Kerney agreed. “So Elderman got control of Padilla’s land through Calvin Cox, turned around, and sold a chunk of it to the feds.”

  “Right,” Molly agreed. “Elderman Meadows. There was no tax auction. We think Calvin Cox covered the tax liability until the proceeds from the land sale came through. Elderman probably paid through the nose for the service, but he walked away a rich man after selling out to the government.” She glanced at Jim. “Are you rich?”

  Stiles grinned. “No, but my grandparents were, and my parents are well off. I guess that makes me part of the landed gentry.”

  “Dirty money,” Molly said, wrinkling her nose.

  Stiles nodded his head enthusiastically. “It’s how the west was won.”

  Molly wrinkled her nose again, in disgust at the idea.

  “I don’t like it any more than you do, really,” Jim said.

  Molly’s smile returned. “You’d better not.” She turned her attention back to Kerney. “That’s about it. What I asked for from state archives should fill in some of the blanks.”

  “Did you find any reference to a place called Mexican Hat?” Kerney asked.

  “Nothing,” Molly answered. “It could be one of those local place-names that never got recorded.”

  “How about the Cox family? I haven’t heard one word spoken about Eugene’s wife.”

  “Be patient, Mr. Kerney,” Molly replied. “Research takes time.” She uncrossed her legs, slid off the bed, and kissed Jim on the lips. “Gotta go. I’ll pick up my laptop when I stop by to see you tonight.”

  “See ya,” Jim said. “And thanks.”

  “It’s going to cost you.”

  “I certainly hope so.”