Mexican Hat Read online

  “Shut up, Jim,” Molly said sweetly as she waved and left.

  Jim smiled, his eye fixed on the empty doorway.

  “Nice-looking younger babe,” Kerney noted.

  “I knew you were going to say that,” Jim replied with a laugh. “Doesn’t she do good work?”

  “Is that what you like about her?”

  “No comment.”

  Kerney and Stiles spent the next ten minutes going over what they knew.

  “Old José Padilla may have been right about his father’s death,” Jim said. “It’s too bad he didn’t make it.”

  “He may have left us enough to work with. Let’s see what Molly digs up.”

  Jim nodded enthusiastically. “She’s something, isn’t she?”

  “A gem,” Kerney agreed. It was clear Jim was in love.

  The car that had been with him since he left Deming followed at a discreet distance as Kerney pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

  8

  The campus of Western New Mexico University, a tidy complex of buildings situated on a hill near downtown Silver City, was quiet and nearly deserted. At the administration building, Kerney learned that no information about students could be released without written parental permission. In the business office, he had better luck. After a little cajoling, a billing clerk agreed to pull up financial information on a computer screen and let Kerney read it. None of the Lujan kids, including the oldest one who had graduated, had received student loans, and all payments for tuition, housing, and fees had been made in full and on time by checks written against the account of Steve and Yolanda Lujan. Kerney found that pretty amazing for a couple who lived on the income of a secretary and a seasonal worker with the forest service. Lujan must sell a hell of a lot of flagstone, landscape rock, and firewood during the off-season in order to pay the freight for three kids in college.

  The car following Kerney in Silver City was nowhere to be seen on the drive back to Reserve. He pulled to the shoulder of the road near the town limits and waited for it to reappear. It never showed up. Whoever was following him had either switched cars or dropped the surveillance.

  The Lujans lived in a settlement south of Reserve called Lower San Francisco Plaza, where the river squeezed into a confined channel and rushed through the mountains toward Glenwood before veering west to Arizona. A bridge crossed the river below the settlement, and a paved road twisted through the high country up to Snow Lake. The plaza, a collection of a half-dozen widely scattered houses and double-wide mobile homes, was one of the last remaining Hispanic enclaves in the county that hadn’t passed into Anglo hands.

  Kerney drove from house to house until he found the Lujan residence, a sprawling, unstuccoed adobe dwelling hidden by stacks of seasoned and fresh-cut firewood, piles of flagstone, and mounds of landscape rock on wooden pallets. From the look of it, Lujan had quite an inventory built up, which certainly wasn’t putting cash into his pocket.

  The property was enclosed by a chain-link fence and steel panel gate. Inside the fence sat a one-ton truck outfitted with a winch, hydraulic tailgate, and dual rear tires. A load of green pine had been dumped next to a commercial log-splitter. Two vehicles, a late-model Pontiac Grand Am in cherry condition and a beat-up full-size Ford Bronco, were parked facing the front porch. A chained German shepherd sprawled between them. The dog barked angrily as Kerney stepped through the open gate.

  Steve Lujan waited on the porch and watched Kerney approach. “What the hell do you want?” he asked.

  “What’s your dog’s name?” Kerney countered as he walked to the animal. It stopped barking and sniffed Kerney’s hand.

  “Loco,” Lujan answered. Small-boned and lean, Lujan stood in a defiant pose with his legs spread and his arms crossed. His bushy mustache completely covered his upper lip.

  “Does he bite?” Kerney asked cordially.

  “Only when I tell him to,” Steve replied. “What are you doing here?”

  “Would you mind answering a few questions?”

  Steve considered the request. “I don’t have to tell you nothing.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said gruffly. “Come inside.”

  Steve led him through the front room, past a big-screen television set, expensive-looking reclining chaise rockers, sofa, oak-veneer end tables with ceramic lamps, and a gun cabinet filled with hunting rifles, and into the kitchen. Yolanda was at the sink. She turned and nodded abruptly at Kerney. A dumpy woman, dressed in leggings and a loose top that covered a thick waist, she had a testy expression.

  “Hello, Yolanda,” Kerney said.

  She cleared her throat and shot a glance at her husband before responding. “Hello.”

  Steve settled into a chair at the kitchen table, crossed his legs, and reached for a pack of cigarettes. “Sit down.”

  “No thanks. I’ll only stay a minute.”

  Lujan tapped a smoke on the table, lit up, and glanced at Yolanda. “What do you want to ask me?” He pulled back his head to look up at Kerney.

  Yolanda took the cue, turned back to the sink, and began rinsing off the dinner dishes.

  “Where were you when Jim Stiles got shot?”

  Steve blew smoke in Kerney’s direction and uncrossed his legs. “Day off. I was cutting wood on a mesa. I always cut wood or haul rock on my free time. I’ve got a bunch of regular customers down in Silver City. I sell about fifty cords every fall and winter.”

  “What’s the going rate for a cord?” Kerney asked.

  “It depends on the weather,” Lujan replied. “Between a hundred and a hundred and twenty. You need some wood? I’ll cut the price by twenty dollars a cord if you load and haul it yourself.”

  “I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer.” Kerney did a rough calculation in his head. Lujan would be lucky if he cleared three thousand dollars on the wood after expenses. “Did anybody go with you yesterday?”

  “No, I went alone.” Lujan took another puff on his cigarette.

  “Did you run into anybody?”

  Steve stubbed out the cigarette, tilted his chair, and tipped his head so he could look Kerney in the eye. “No. Do I need an alibi?”

  “Are you a hunter?”

  Tired of craning his neck, Steve let the chair drop down on all four legs and stood up. Kerney still towered over him. He reached for another cigarette and lit it. “I take a deer every season. That’s all I have time for.”

  “Nothing else?” Kerney queried.

  “Elk, when I can get a permit. I’m not a poacher.”

  Kerney switched gears. “You have a boy in graduate school and two kids at Western New Mexico, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “It must be expensive to put three kids through college at the same time.”

  Lujan laughed bitterly. “Don’t you mean how can a peon like me come up with that kind of money?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Kerney replied calmly.

  Lujan thrust his face forward. “You don’t have to say it to mean it. I had an industrial accident at the copper mine a few years before I got laid off. Hurt my back. The union helped me settle with the company. I got a cash payment. The money went into savings for the kids’ education. We don’t use it for anything else.”

  Lujan turned to the sideboard behind him, opened a drawer, pulled out a bank passbook, and flipped it onto the table. “Check it out for yourself. Every dollar pays for tuition, books, dormitory costs, and expenses.”

  Kerney looked. From the amount of the initial deposit it was apparent the Lujans certainly could cover the cost of three children in college. It had been spent down systematically over a period of years.

  “Satisfied?” Lujan asked. He had forgotten his cigarette. It was in an ashtray on the table burning down to the filter.

  “Where were you the day Hector Padilla was murdered?” Kerney asked, holding out the passbook.

  Steve took it and returned it to the drawer. “That’s a st
upid question. You know where I was. I was at the campsite with Amador and the rest of the crew.” He pulled another smoke out of the pack.

  “Did you leave the job at any time?”

  “No.”

  Kerney glanced at Yolanda. She stood with one hand on her hip, her eyes darting from him to her husband. Her expression was one of masked resentment.

  “That about does it,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”

  Steve grunted, lit up, and blew smoke in Kerney’s direction. “Let yourself out.”

  Loco, the German shepherd, wagged his tail when Kerney stepped off the porch. He rubbed the dog’s snout and let him sniff his hand again before moving on to his truck. It seemed that Steve and Yolanda had been expecting his visit. Probably Amador had told Steve that Kerney might come around asking questions. But that didn’t explain why Lujan had been so forthcoming with someone he thought no longer had any legal authority to question him. And why was he so nervous?

  IT WAS EVENING when Kerney got home and found Karen Cox standing next to her station wagon waiting for him. She wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a ribbed scoop-neck shirt. He parked, got out of the truck, and stretched his knee to ease some of the stiffness. He had spent too many hours driving with the leg locked in one position.

  “You don’t have a telephone,” she said as he reached her.

  “The phone company is supposed to put in a line, but now I guess I won’t need it. Are you here to ask me about Padilla Canyon?”

  “Not really. Jim Stiles filled me in. To him you’re quite a hero.”

  “Hardly. I did what was necessary. What can I do for you?”

  “Can we talk inside?”

  In the trailer, he turned on the ceiling light and offered her the choice of the chair or the couch. She sat on the couch and waited while he opened windows to let out the heat of the day. The metal skin of the trailer absorbed heat like a sponge, and the room was stifling hot.

  Except for two Navajo saddle blankets that hung on the walls, the living area held no personal touches. From the weave and the pattern she guessed both were late-nineteenth-century trade blankets, worth a considerable amount of money. The room, a combination kitchen, dining nook, and sitting area, was tidy but bleak in the harsh glow of the overhead light.

  Kerney turned on a table fan, sat in the overstuffed chair, and stretched out his legs. It felt good to let the knee rest.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  Karen smiled apologetically. “I came to thank you for rescuing Cody. My father told me what you did. I appreciate it.”

  “No thanks are necessary. I think your father could have handled it without me.”

  “That’s not the way he saw it. Why did you go to see him?”

  “Are you wearing your ADA hat now?”

  Karen shifted her weight on the lumpy cushion. “You could say that.”

  Kerney nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll trade with you.”

  “Trade what?”

  “Information.”

  “I don’t have to do that.”

  “What’s holding you back?”

  “From what I’ve learned from Jim Stiles, you’re still directing the course of his investigation. I can’t allow that.”

  Kerney smiled in amusement. “That’s quite a stretch you’re making, Counselor. I’ve provided nothing more than friendly advice to Jim.”

  “That doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to tell me what you’ve learned.”

  “I’ve already done that.”

  “Not completely. You said you had information to trade.”

  “It’s more like a suspicion.”

  “Of what?” Karen demanded.

  “Something happened a long time ago that brought José Padilla back to Catron County. It has put your father between a rock and a hard place. Maybe it ties into the deaths of Hector and José Padilla, and maybe it doesn’t. But until there is a solid lead on the killer and the motive, it can’t be discounted.”

  “Now you’re the one making a stretch.”

  “I don’t mean to put you in an uncomfortable position.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You got uptight as soon as I mentioned your father in the same breath with José Padilla. You did the same thing this morning when we talked about it at the hospital.”

  Karen looked at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, and forced herself to relax. “Why are you pushing this?”

  Kerney leaned forward in his chair, his blue eyes filled with anger. “Because whoever shot Jim Stiles was worried about something. But the question is, what? The poaching case? Hector Padilla’s murder? The death of a man your father knew sixty years ago? All of the above?

  “I like Jim. He’s good people, and he deserves to have the son of a bitch who shot him caught. Besides, Jim was my partner, and the cop in me won’t let it go until I catch the bastard. And that’s what I plan to do.”

  Karen nodded vaguely, thinking he’d been straight with her and deserved the same treatment in return. Maybe it was time to trust him. “The day Hector Padilla was murdered he left a letter with me to give to my father. He said it was from José Padilla.”

  “Any idea what was in it?”

  “None at all. What I do know is that my father hasn’t spoken to his brother in his entire adult life. Whatever was in Padilla’s letter broke that silence. My father paid a visit to Eugene the day he got the letter.”

  “Something had him worried,” Kerney ventured.

  “This afternoon I started doing some digging of my own. I got a copy of my grandfather’s will from the probate court. He changed it the same month that Uncle Eugene was shot in a hunting accident and my father ran away to join the Army. Grandfather Cox left everything to Eugene. My father was completely cut out of a considerable inheritance.”

  “Calvin Cox left nothing to his wife?”

  Karen shook her head. “My grandmother died of influenza when the twins were twelve years old.”

  “So why do you think he did it?”

  “I don’t know. But cutting a son completely out of an inheritance is the act of a very angry parent.”

  “I agree. What happened to Phil and Cory’s mother? She could be a source of information.”

  “She left Eugene when Phil was six and Cory was twelve, and just disappeared. It caused quite a scandal. Eugene packed Phil and Cory off to military school in Roswell as soon as they were old enough. After college, Phil came back to run the ranch. Cory never came back from Vietnam.”

  Karen waited for a response. “Well?” she finally asked.

  He stood up. “Are you going to dig into this any deeper?”

  “I’d like my father to come to me on his own.”

  “I hope he does.”

  “So do I.” Karen got up from the couch. “Will you keep what I told you confidential?”

  “As long as I can.”

  “Fair enough. You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “Phil jogged my memory when I had dinner with him,” Kerney said. “I remember three young girls who followed me around the rodeo grounds when I was here for the high school state finals. One of them had black hair and beautiful blue eyes, and made Cousin Cory introduce me to her every chance she got.”

  Karen laughed and extended her hand. “That was me. In my age of innocence.”

  “Innocence doesn’t last very long, does it?” Kerney replied, taking her hand in his.

  “No, it doesn’t. You’ll keep me informed of what you do?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Kerney saw Karen to the door, said good night, changed into his sweats, and did a two-mile run. He mulled over his meeting with Karen and came to the conclusion that the woman had some fire and steel to her—appealing qualities that increased her attractiveness. The knee felt better when he got back to the trailer. Jim’s girlfriend, Molly, was sitting on the step.

  “Hi, Mr. Kerney. The wounded hero has me running a messenger service.”

/>   “Come in,” he said.

  She sat in the overstuffed chair with an attaché case on her lap. Kerney took a seat on the couch.

  Molly glanced around the room and made a face. “This place is a pit.”

  “You don’t find it homey?”

  “You have mice.”

  “The landlord has promised full eradication.”

  “Good.” She cocked her head sideways and studied him. “You don’t talk like a cop.”

  “Thanks, I think. What have you uncovered?”

  Molly quickly turned to business, opening the case and shuffling through some papers. “You wanted information on the Cox clan.” She paused and fixed her gaze directly on his face. “Do you still want it?”

  “You bet I do.”

  “Haven’t you been fired?”

  “I’m unemployed,” Kerney confirmed.

  “Then what good will all this do? Jim’s so angry about you getting canned he’s spitting bullets. He didn’t know about it until he turned on the evening news.”

  “Tell him to chill out. I’m going to stay with it.”

  Molly gave him a delighted smile. “That’s great.” She dropped her attention to the papers in her attaché case and arranged them in order. “Okay, here it is. Calvin Cox owned the local bank that carried the mortgage on the Padilla ranch. Before the property went on the auction block for back taxes, Cox bought it and immediately resold it to Elderman at an inflated price. Elderman passed the price increase on to the Forest Service. Both men made a chunk of money on the deal.”

  “What have you learned about Eugene’s hunting accident?”

  “He was out alone when he got shot. When he didn’t come home, Edgar went searching for him and brought him down the mountain.”

  Molly flipped over a paper and studied her notes. “When Eugene recovered enough to be questioned, he said he never saw who shot him. The state police speculated that whoever rustled Padilla’s sheep shot Eugene.”

  “Eugene wasn’t a suspect in the rustling?”

  “Nope. He was back home with a bullet in his spine the day before Don Luis left the hacienda for the meadows.”

  “According to whom?”

  “Calvin Cox, Edgar, and the doctor who treated Eugene.”