Mexican Hat Read online

  “What about Eugene’s wife? Any leads?”

  Molly shook her head. “Vanished without a trace, but Jim’s looking.” She put her notes away and got up. “That’s all I’ve got. Can I tell Jim my research assignment is over, please? I need to get back to my real job.”

  “Only if you tell me something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “Probably, but don’t you dare tell him. I want to soften him up a bit more.”

  Kerney grinned. “I promise I won’t.”

  Molly stepped over to Kerney and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for saving him for me, Mr. Kerney.”

  Kerney blushed and patted her on the shoulder. “No thanks are necessary. Call me Kerney. Most of my friends do.”

  Molly tossed her hair out of her face and smiled. “Okay, Kerney, you’ve got a deal. Jim gets to go home tomorrow morning. Actually he’s staying with me, so I can nurse him back to health.” She wrote her address on a piece of paper and handed it over. “You’d better stop by to see him. He likes you a lot. So do I.”

  “The feeling is mutual on both counts,” Kerney replied. “Give Jim my best.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  WHEN KAREN RETURNED from her meeting with Kerney, Edgar carried Cody and Elizabeth up to the old house—Cody sitting on Grandfather’s shoulders—to tuck them into bed. Margaret and Karen waited for him to return. When he didn’t come back they looked for him out the living room window. The light was on in the horse barn, and they saw his shadow through the open door as he moved around inside.

  “He’ll be fine,” Margaret predicted. “He always putters when he’s worried.”

  “I’m worried too,” Karen admitted.

  “It will all be over soon.” The surgery was scheduled for eight o’clock in the morning. “I plan to breeze right through it,” Margaret said, patting her daughter’s cheek.

  “See that you do.”

  When Karen left, Margaret turned out the living-room lights and waited for Edgar to come back inside. Ten minutes passed before the kitchen door squeaked and Edgar walked quietly into the living room. She turned on the reading lamp next to the couch, and Edgar looked at her in surprise.

  “Didn’t the doctor tell you to get a good night’s sleep?” he asked.

  “He did. I will. Sit down, Edgar, I need to talk to you.”

  Edgar’s expression grew grim.

  “It’s not about the surgery,” Margaret reassured him.

  He walked to his chair and eased his long frame down, his face still gloomy. “What is it?”

  “I want you to promise me something,” she said.

  “Anything you want.”

  Margaret held back a smile. “I want you to tell Karen what happened on Elderman Meadows.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. It’s time, Edgar. I’ve kept your secret for over forty years, and I’ve seen it eat at you from the day we were married. Tell Karen and let her help you. A promise is a promise, and you’ve always been a man who kept his word.”

  Edgar, stunned by the request, knew he was trapped by a woman who wouldn’t let him off the hook. He tried anyway. “It’s a hard thing you’re asking me to do.”

  “But you will do it.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Very soon.”

  “You know what it may mean,” he countered.

  “Yes. A burden will be lifted and we can get on with our lives.”

  Edgar took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Margaret, still waiting for his answer, would keep him rooted in his chair until she got what she wanted. Maybe she was right and the time had come.

  “I’ll tell her,” he said. “Before you come back home.”

  Margaret went to him, sank down on his lap, and pulled his arms around her. Her wet eyes smiled. “Thank you, Edgar.”

  He held her tightly, and neither spoke for a very long time.

  KERNEY SPENT A HOT, long day in El Paso checking out the last two smugglers on Juan’s list. Both seemed to operate legitimate businesses, which made Kerney’s snooping by necessity discreet. After posing as a customer in each establishment, he staked-out the buildings until it became clear that he would need a surveillance team to help him and a lot of luck to catch any kind of a break. Frustrated, he gave it up late in the afternoon, wondering how far he could get going it alone with limited resources.

  The only bright spot to the day was leaving El Paso. Big cities made no sense to Kerney at all. After the clutter of the strip malls, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants on the main drag out of town, he reached the desert that spread out like a vast ocean of glistening sandy breaks rising to steep-walled mountains on the western horizon. He cranked the air-conditioning up a notch, flipped down the visor, and headed west toward the enormous pale pink sun hovering at the horizon. It was a two-hour haul from El Paso to Silver City. If he made good time, he might arrive early enough in the evening to pay a social call on the convalescing Jim Stiles and his lovely nurse.

  Kerney’s unknown traveling companion was back, and had been with him all day. Whoever was driving used a different car each time and tailed him like a pro. Kerney checked the rearview mirror and shrugged it off. Up ahead, the sun had vanished before it could set. A shroud of yellow dust came straight at him, pushed along by crosswise gusts that buffeted the truck. He turned on the headlights and reduced his speed. The cars coming at him were nothing more than floating beams of dull lights as the dust cloud boiled over the highway.

  The storm blew through quickly, leaving a clear evening sky in the west and a huge sand cloud billowing to the east behind him. Drivers parked on the shoulder of the road, heading in Kerney’s direction, pulled back into traffic. He watched for the car tailing him to emerge from the storm that still swallowed up the asphalt ribbon of highway in his rearview mirror. Nothing. Smiling, he increased his speed, fairly certain he had shaken the tail with the help of Mother Nature.

  IN KERNEY’S MIND, Silver City had two redeeming characteristics: the foothills where the town sat, and the historic district, slowly coming back to life after years of neglect. The old hospital on the main drag, abandoned after the new medical center opened, looked like a relic from a World War II bombing raid. And the growth along the strip was a checkerboard of vacant land alternating with commercial enterprises surrounded by parking lots that appeared large enough to accommodate the cars of the entire city population at one time.

  But downtown Silver City appealed to Kerney, with its long row of brick and stone storefronts with rounded second-story windows and elegant parapets, substantial old warehouses in back alleys still showing the faded letters of failed enterprises, the Big Ditch Park where Main Street once stood until a flood early in the century washed it away, and Victorian houses that climbed the hills on narrow streets.

  Molly Hamilton lived in one of the Victorian cottages on a hill. A steep set of steps rose to a covered porch and an oak door with a leaded glass window. A brick chimney jutted at one end of the pitched roof.

  Molly’s brown eyes filled with censure when she opened the door. “Where have you been?” she demanded.

  She shook her blond hair in mock dismay and pulled him by the hand into the living room, where Jim scowled at him from the comfort of an easy chair, his feet propped on an ottoman. He still wore an eye patch, and the cuts on his face had turned into bright scarlet splotches.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d been fired?” he snapped at Kerney. “I had to find out about it on the TV news.”

  “I didn’t want to induce a relapse.” Kerney’s attempt at humor felt flat; Jim kept scowling. “It’s no big deal,” he added lamely.

  “It sucks, big-time,” Stiles retorted.

  “Stop bitching at him, Jim,” Molly ordered, turning to look up at Kerney. “He’s been moaning and groaning all day that you probably packed up and left without even coming to see him.”

  “I wouldn�
��t do that,” Kerney replied.

  “That’s what I told him.”

  Jim’s expression softened, and his boyish grin reappeared. “What I was really worried about was having to solve the damn case by myself with one eye, my arm in a sling, and a face like Boris Karloff.”

  “You might be able to frighten the truth out of people,” Kerney acknowledged.

  “Good!” Molly proclaimed, clapping her hands. “You’ve kissed and made up. I love this male-bonding crap. Sorry to leave you boys, but kitchen duty calls.” She pranced out of the room, looking lovely in her tunic top and cutoff jeans that showed her legs to advantage.

  The room was the nicest Kerney had been in for some time. It had a high ceiling, a fireplace bordered by a cast-iron surround, oak wainscotting, and two wooden casement windows that faced the street. The modern, comfortable furniture, slightly undersized and placed at angles to the walls, gave the room a feeling of space.

  Kerney settled into the chair next to Jim, thinking of the time when he’d been living with Laura, a bright-eyed, feisty woman who seemed to have every desirable attribute he was looking for in a lover. They had rented a small adobe home on a hill above Palace Avenue near downtown Santa Fe. It was a gem of a house that looked down at a cluster of mud-plastered homes and a dirt lane bordered by ancient cottonwoods. But it wasn’t a happy place to live as Laura became more and more disenchanted with the demands of Kerney’s job as a detective. He came home one night to find Laura and a stranger packing her belongings into her car. The stranger turned out to be Laura’s new boyfriend, the man she was moving in with.

  “Do you want to tell me what you’ve been doing?” Jim asked.

  Kerney nodded and started talking, leaving out very little. He chose not to mention the tail—which hadn’t reappeared—or the way the BLM officer had flinched when Leon Spence’s name had been mentioned. That stuff was in the pending file for items of developing interest.

  “So my mustache theory about the shooter didn’t hold up,” Jim said, when Kerney finished. “I guess we can write Steve Lujan off.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Kerney replied. “He was a little too eager to cooperate.”

  “Want to check his story out?” Jim said.

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll do it. There’s got to be a record of his injury settlement at the company.”

  “Get his bank records while you’re at it,” Kerney advised. “What about Eugene’s wife? Anything yet?”

  “Nada, except for some background. Louise Blanton Cox moved to Pie Town at the end of World War Two and taught school for two years before marrying Gene Cox. She stayed with Gene for fifteen years and walked out on him in the early sixties. I haven’t found any record of a divorce, but I still need to check with several more district courts.”

  “Maybe she never divorced him,” Kerney speculated. “Have you traced her family?”

  Jim shook his head. “She came here from Ohio or Michigan. All her family was from back there.”

  Kerney sighed. “Keep on it.”

  “I will.”

  Both men were dejected and unwilling to admit it. Kerney watched Jim fidget with the sling that held his arm secure against his chest before resting his own head against the cushion of the chair and closing his eyes. He was almost asleep when he felt a hand shaking him.

  Molly looked down at him, a pillow and a blanket in her arms. “You’re spending the night,” she announced. “The couch in the study makes into a nice bed.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “It is too.” She wheeled and faced Jim. “Have you seen the pit he calls a home?”

  “Just once.”

  “He has mice living with him,” Molly said, in a tone of voice suitable for castigating heretics.

  “That seals it,” Jim agreed, laughing. “He stays.”

  Kerney took the bedding and followed Molly to the study.

  DOYLE FLETCHER rose every morning before his wife so he could make the coffee while she showered and dressed for work. At thirty-seven, he didn’t need a mirror to know he looked older than his years. His prematurely gray hair wasn’t the worst of it. The bags under his eyes seemed to get bigger every day.

  Doyle had hauled logs to the sawmill until the lumber industry got screwed by the spotted owl and he was laid off from truck driving. Two years without regular work had battered his once cheerful disposition into a real bad attitude. Lately he had caught himself bitching about everything, criticizing the wife and kids for minor crap, and throwing temper tantrums for no reason.

  It was four o’clock in the morning. His wife worked the day shift at Cattleman’s Café. Her job and food stamps were keeping a roof over the family’s head and food on the table. Fletcher hated the situation he was in, hated not being able to contribute to his family, and most particularly hated the United States Forest Service.

  Doyle had charged Kerney all he could get for the trailer, and slapped a hefty security deposit on top of the rent. He had been counting on the extra income through the end of summer, but the stupid son of a bitch had gone and gotten himself fired from his job. To make it worse, the security deposit was gone, used to pay a bill, and there was no way he could scrape together the cash to give Kerney a refund. Doyle figured cleaning up the mice shit in the trailer would cancel out the deposit. If Kerney didn’t agree, he’d have to wait until hell froze over to get his hundred dollars back.

  His wife kissed him quickly on her way out the door. He sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and studying the county health office pamphlet on hantavirus. Cleaning up mice shit was no longer a simple chore; not since the hantavirus outbreak began killing people several years back. Television reporters had yapped endlessly about the mystery killer illness, until the scientists figured out what the hell caused it. According to the pamphlet the disease was caused by airborne particles from deer mice droppings that attacked the pulmonary system in humans.

  There were protocols to follow to remove the danger and avoid exposure, and Doyle read them over again carefully. He’d already picked up the rubber gloves, flea powder, traps, bait, paper towels, disinfectant, trash bags, and mask. It looked pretty straightforward.

  He put everything in a box and carried it to his truck. In the darkness, he could see a single light on in the trailer window, and he wondered where in the hell Kerney was going so early in the morning. It wasn’t like he had a job. Join the club, he thought sarcastically.

  He got the kids up, dressed, fed, and ready to go. Both were enrolled in church camp for the summer on scholarships, but that didn’t bother Doyle; half the children in the congregation attended for free, and he had tithed every year when he was still working.

  He let the kids watch a little television until it was time to drive them to church. Kerney’s truck was gone as he passed the trailer. That was fine with Doyle. Maybe he had moved out and forgotten about the deposit.

  He dropped the kids off, spent a few minutes chatting with the youth minister, and went to the trailer. It had to be aired out for an hour before he could go after the mice. He unlocked the door, called out to make sure no one was home, waited a minute, and flipped on the light switch. The explosion that followed blew the roof off the trailer and slammed Fletcher across the hood of his truck into the windshield. He shattered the glass headfirst, and the impact broke his neck.

  9

  Wind-driven plumes of black smoke forced the onlookers back from the ropes that cordoned off the still-smoldering trailer. Kerney watched unnoticed at the back of the crowd. The trailer lay tipped precariously on its side with most of the roof missing. Scorched metal fragments, strewn in random patterns across the field, showed that the blast had been considerable.

  On the hood of a truck next to the trailer, a blanket covered a lifeless body. Near a fire engine, Omar Gatewood talked to a woman who wore a yellow firefighter’s slicker. Directly behind them police, emergency, and rescue vehicles were haphazardly parked in the open field. A paramedic,
bent over next to the open door of an ambulance, consoled an agitated, sobbing woman who huddled on the ground.

  The wind died off and the smoke rose vertically, allowing people to move forward against the ropes. Kerney scanned the crowd. He recognized a lot of faces, most of them people he knew only by sight. The gathering had almost a carnival air to it as folks shouted comments at the firefighters, who were smothering patches of smoldering grass with dirt. There were lots of smiles and head-shaking going back and forth. Based on the size of the gathering, Kerney reckoned the event had brought out the entire village.

  A voice on his right side spoke. “Bomb.”

  Kerney glanced at the man. He wasn’t familiar at all. “Excuse me?”

  The man was in his mid to late twenties, with a long ponytail tied back at the nape of his neck, eyes that were filled with amusement, and broad Navajo features. He took a deep drag on a cigarette before answering. “I said it was a bomb.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Kerney asked, although he tended to agree with the analysis.

  “I spent three years in an Army demolition unit. No exploding water heater can do that kind of damage unless it’s been rigged with a charge.”

  “You think the water heater was rigged?” Kerney asked.

  The young man nodded. Dressed in jeans, a plaid work shirt, and a lightweight black denim jacket, he wore a very old coral-and-turquoise Navajo bracelet made of coin silver. “I sure do.” He dropped the cigarette and ground it under the heel of a work boot. “See how the roof is torn up? It takes more than exploding propane gas to do that kind of damage.”

  “What kind of bomb do you think it was?”

  “From the blast pattern, dynamite would be my guess.”

  “Triggered by what?”

  “Probably by a spark. It’s easy enough to do. You plant your material, short out an electrical switch, and start a gas leak. Whoever turns on the juice becomes a crispy critter.”

  “Did you do it?” Kerney asked, half seriously.