The City of Rocks Read online

  “Not everyone would think of snatching a duck as a real crime. Probably nobody outside the family knew she had it insured for big bucks.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “How many bucks?”

  “Plenty. Otherwise the insurance company wouldn’t be paying me to sit here and have tea with you.”

  “Well, thank the insurance company for me, will you?”

  I stayed for another half hour and another glass of tea, asking all sorts of questions, including a couple intended to trip her up. She didn’t fall for it, and the wry smile on her pouty lips told me she knew exactly what I was doing.

  When I stood to go, she asked if I wanted a tour of the place. “You can inspect every damned duck I have, if you want.”

  “They all look alike to me.”

  “Don’t gimme that. They’ve got some way of identifying that duck if they rolled the dice on her. And if they didn’t share that info with you, then neither one of you’s very smart.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, they shared it with me, but I’m not too certain your assessment isn’t accurate anyway. Insure a duck?”

  “They insured Betty Grable’s legs and Harry James’s lips. You know, her trumpet-playing husband.”

  “And Millicent’s duck.”

  “And Millicent’s duck. By the way, I hear she races that damned thing. I hear tell there’s big money thrown around at some of those races. You ever think about that?”

  “Do you know where she races and who she races against?”

  “No. I just heard things. Everybody around these parts knows about it.”

  “In other words it’s a rumor.”

  “Maybe so, but that’s big money.” She indicated her farm. “This is just chicken feed, but you come out here to Lily Stropshire’s pitiful little duck farm looking for valuable property anyway. What kind of private investigator are you?”

  “A thorough one.”

  Yeah. Thorough. One of these days, Del would tell me to inspect every blessed duck on the Lazy M to make sure Quacky wasn’t hidden somewhere among the flock. And being thorough, I’d end up taking advantage of Lily’s semiserious offer to look at every damned duck she had.

  Chapter 9

  I CALLED Del with an update. He heard me out patiently enough and then summarized my report in a slightly exasperated tone. His buddy, the VP, must have phoned him again.

  “So it boils down to three things—payback from somebody who holds a grudge against Mrs. Muldren, another somebody who wants to screw up a big-stakes duck race, or yet another somebody—this Ms. Stropshire, for example—who’s looking to improve the gene pool of her herd of ducks.”

  “Flock,” I corrected. “Or gaggle. Or brace. Or raft. And there are a couple of other names for bunches of ducks.”

  “Thank you for the day’s trivia lesson.”

  “Don’t feed me sarcasm. You called me in on this caper. I didn’t ask for it. Besides, there’s another possibility.”

  “Yes, I know. The one Hank Grass wants to hear. The duck died, and the owner is claiming someone took her.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “This went from a simple interview of a simple man—”

  “Who is now dead. Most likely murdered.”

  “—to a range of individuals who wish Millicent Muldren ill,” he finished.

  “You have stated the situation perfectly. Charlie’s contacting another investigator in Florida to look into a fellow by the name of Kenneth Hammond, who’s supposed to be big in the duck-racing circuit. Still, do you know the odds against getting to the bottom of this? Probably something akin to winning the lottery. Nobody takes it seriously.”

  “Somebody does if Martinson was murdered.”

  “That assumes he was murdered because of the duck. It might have nothing to do with the theft. He wasn’t exactly a sterling character.”

  The long and the short of our conversation? I was sentenced to spend more time hundreds of miles from home—and Paul. I suppressed the urge to call him. He would be at work now.

  So I started over, beginning with Det. Manny Montoya, who told me that on the night of Liver Lips’ fatal car wreck, a Deming police officer had spotted a black Firebird speeding west on I-10 near the city limits. By the time he found a turnaround on the interstate, he’d lost the car. At the time there was no alert out for the Pontiac, so the policeman’s only interest was in issuing a speeding ticket. He wasn’t certain but thought the car had Mexican license plates.

  According to Manny, no such car left the country through the Columbus, the Santa Teresa, or the Antelope Wells POE. That indicated Martinson’s problems might have arisen from his drug connections, not from stealing a duck, but I needed more information before zeroing in on that conclusion.

  I ran down Officer Garza by phone and quizzed him about Paco Rael, who provided another tenuous connection between the Lazy M and Liver Lips. And to Acosta, for that matter. Did the Mexican rancher fit into this picture? Was he a gambler who bet heavily on duck races? He struck me as more of a thoroughbred man, but who knew? I contacted Colonel Guerrero in El Paso to ask about it. He didn’t have an answer, but he agreed to ask around.

  A phone call to the Lazy M revealed that Paco had left for home that morning. The querulous tone in Maria’s voice told me she was dying to ask about my interest in her son, but she was too well trained to do so.

  Perhaps Liver’s boyhood buddy, Lopez, knew where to find him. It was a stretch but not much, because everything seemed to be a closed loop down here. Everyone seemed connected to everyone else in some manner or form. It took a little doing to find Elizondo Lopez. He wasn’t at his shack, and the neighbors on either side claimed they didn’t speak English—or Spanish either, when I pulled out a few words I’d learned in high school classes.

  I spent the afternoon in my hot car parked around the corner from Lopez’s place, sweating liberally and marshaling my troops by cell phone and laptop. Within the hour, I knew Hector Acosta frequented horse races, sometimes making large wagers, but there was no indication the duck-racing crowd knew him.

  I was also aware, thanks to Hazel’s efforts, no record existed of Paco Rael crossing into Mexico through any of the nearby POEs after my visit to the ranch. That didn’t mean a whole lot since most people walk or drive across the border simply by flashing ID. Or maybe he didn’t use the legal routes for his visits. He could simply hop the fence between the Lazy M and the Rancho Rayo. Of course, that would leave him with a long hike unless he had left a vehicle over there. I should have asked how he arrived at the ranch in the first place.

  A little later in the afternoon, an old pickup short on paint but daubed with liberal globs of Bondo dropped Lopez off on the road almost directly in front of me. I got out of the Impala and intercepted him before he reached his dusty front yard. He recoiled slightly when I hailed him, but at least he didn’t take off running. He stood in the middle of the dirt road and stared at me while I invited him for a drink. Judging from his eyes, that was a risky maneuver. Dilated pupils and dark shadows beneath them signaled a dope high. His agitated manner and instant nervousness when he recognized me confirmed my suspicion.

  “Naw, man. I gotta rest. Up all night.”

  “Okay, we’ll go talk at your place.”

  “Uh-uh. No good. Girlfriend’s coming by later.”

  Yeah, like this guy had a girlfriend. “Okay, then we’ll talk in my car.”

  “Cut me some slack, man. I need sleep.”

  “You need to get in the car, or else I’m coming to your place.”

  “You ain’t got no right—”

  “Do you really want to complain to the cops about rights in your condition?”

  “Arright. Your car, but jus’ a minute.”

  He stumbled as he turned to follow me but recovered and slouched along behind. I regretted the choice of the vehicle as a meeting place the moment he shut the door behind him. His body odor was foul. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He kept scratching at his arms. Classic sym
ptoms of meth users. I started the car and turned on the air conditioner.

  “All right, let’s get this over with. What do you know about Paco Rael?”

  He blinked rapidly but couldn’t hide the sudden wariness in his red-rimmed eyes. “Nothing. Don’t know—”

  “You lie to me, Lopez, and I’ll haul you down to Bill Garza. He believes you’re a piece of shit, so what do you think he’ll do when he sees the condition you’re in? Paco Rael. How do you know him?”

  “School. Went to school together. Down in Columbus.”

  “Is that where Liver Lips met him?”

  “I dunno. Guess so.” He scratched at his upper arm so hard he drew blood.

  “Don’t bleed on my seat covers. They have business together?”

  He dropped his gaze to the left. “Naw. Just friends. Not buddies—not, you know—compadres. Just friends.”

  “You’re lying, Lopez. Rael was Liver’s meth connection, wasn’t he? He’s probably yours too.”

  He put both hands to his head and rubbed vigorously. Dust motes flew. “Naw, man. Don’t know nothing about that. Don’t know nothing!”

  “Where’d you get what you’re on now?”

  “Had some around. Found it in Liver’s place.”

  “Try another story. I was there when you went looking, remember? You didn’t find anything.”

  “Went back,” he said, eyes whipping around wildly. “Found it after you left. I gotta go, man.”

  “Lie to me one more time, and I’m driving straight to the police station.”

  Lopez hugged himself. His head drooped. I would lose him soon.

  “Did Rael supply Liver with dope?”

  “Okay, okay. So he scored some weed for us now and then. Just for old time’s sake, you know.”

  Was that a breakthrough or just this guy’s pathetic effort to get me off his back? “Where did Rael get it?”

  “I don’ know.”

  Suddenly his head snapped back. I caught his reaction and followed his stare. A low-slung black car approached from the east, slowing as if to make a turn. Instead it came to a halt a quarter of a block away. Lopez went crazy.

  “I gotta go,” he yelled, clawing at the door handle.

  I grabbed for his arm, but he snatched it away and made his escape. My eyes were glued to the motionless car, so I wasn’t even certain which direction he ran. The vehicle was a black Pontiac Firebird with red-and-white flames painted over the hood and across the sides. I wasn’t sure if it was a ’96, but it certainly had Mexican plates. I started trying to make out the numbers when the car suddenly shot forward, heading straight for me. The Impala idled in neutral, but I managed to get it in gear and jerk the wheel to the right. The Pontiac veered off at the last minute and sped down the dusty road. I ended up in the ditch.

  It took me a minute to work my way back onto the roadway and get turned around. By then the Firebird had disappeared. I got on the cell phone to the state police, but Montoya wasn’t available at the moment. I left a message about his missing murder vehicle, citing three numbers from the license plate I’d memorized before the car came charging toward me. Then I spent half an hour vainly searching for the car.

  Although I knew Lopez would make himself scarce, I returned to his shack anyway. He didn’t answer my knock, so I resorted to peering through the filthy windows to satisfy myself no one was inside.

  I checked in at the closest motel, one called the Border, to be near Lopez’s shack. The place was a row of cinder block rooms with a carport between each. The motel could have been lifted right off of an old Route 66 postcard. When I traveled on other people’s money, I didn’t stay in the priciest digs, but this was considerably beneath my usual standards. The room had a musty smell, and cranking open the old casement windows didn’t help. The air conditioning was the evaporative type, which contributed to the mustiness, so I switched it off.

  I stripped to my shorts and washed up in the stained bathroom sink. That gave me some temporary relief, but not a lot. Still in my skivvies, I sat on the creaky bed and brought my files and expense tickets up-to-date.

  After about an hour, Manny Montoya called my cell and thanked me for the tip on the Firebird. He asked if there was anything else I could provide, like who was in the vehicle and how many? But the windows had been tinted far beyond the legal limit, so I couldn’t help him out. Neither he nor the Deming police had had any luck in locating the Pontiac, which probably meant it was stowed in somebody’s garage by now.

  We hung up, and I prepared to go find a place to eat when my cell phone rang again.

  “Where are you, Vinson?” Bill Garza’s tone was gruff, unfriendly. I told him and earned a chuckle. Probably the only one I’d ever hear from the guy. “What are you doing in a dump like that?”

  “I wish I could give you a rational reason other than it’s the closest one to Lopez’s shack I could find, but that’s the truth.”

  “Funny you should mention Elizondo Lopez. Is that who you was talking to when you caused a dustup about that black ’96 Firebird?”

  “Yep. We were sitting in my car around the corner from his place. Why?”

  “Was he breathing when you seen him last?”

  “Breathing and running. Why?”

  “Well, he ain’t doing neither one of them now.”

  Chapter 10

  A FIERCE bald eagle centered in a gold-trimmed blue shield adorned the door to the Deming PD. The flowing ribbon across the bottom read “Deming Police 1902.”

  Garza had paved the way for me, and I found myself escorted back to a bullpen of open spaces littered with desks, with a few cubicles around the perimeter. Garza occupied one of those semiprivate affairs.

  He rose and shook my hand with a mean grip. I dismissed it as an unconscious display of strength from a very powerful man. His luxurious black mustache—speckled with touches of gray—was so thick I inspected it for clues to his last meal.

  He motioned me to a chair and got right down to business. I decided what I had taken for unfriendliness was merely his brusque way of dealing with the world. “What time did you talk to Lopez outside of his house?”

  “Must have been about two. You can pin that down, because I called Detective Montoya from my cell phone the minute the Pontiac raced by me. They’ll have the call logged.”

  He tilted a tablet on his desk and took a look at it. “Two-oh-seven.” His black eyes rose to meet mine. “You get run off the road by a car in Deming, but you call the state police?”

  “The state police had a bulletin out on the car. I came into this thing in the first place because of Martinson’s death. Why wouldn’t I call them? And I didn’t phone you because I knew they’d contact you. I spent my time trying to locate the car again.”

  “But you didn’t have no luck.”

  “That’s right. He’d put me in the ditch, and by the time I got out, he was gone.”

  “He?”

  “That’s an assumption on my part. The windows were tinted so dark I couldn’t see.”

  “Hmmm. What did you want to talk to Lopez about?”

  I briefed Garza on everything I’d learned, although I skimmed over some of the facts surrounding confidential information Millicent had given me. But I made a point of describing Lopez’s condition. “You warned me he was a pothead. But he was on meth, not weed.”

  “Not surprising. Lopez used whatever he could get his hands on. Where’d you go after that?”

  “I don’t know how long I drove around looking for that Firebird, but after I gave up, I checked into the Border Motel.”

  “You didn’t talk to nobody else?”

  “No one can corroborate my story, if that’s what you mean. Now you tell me something. How did Lopez die?”

  He hesitated momentarily. “Albuquerque PD says you’re okay, so I guess I can share information. A man walking home from the store found him in a ditch about five o’clock not half a mile from where you were parked.”

  “How was he ki
lled?”

  Eyebrows as thick as his mustache climbed. “What do you mean, ‘killed’? You know something you haven’t told me?”

  “He was alive when I saw him. Now he’s dead. Something or somebody killed him, right?”

  “Overdose. If he was high when you talked to him, he must have been in outer space before his heart quit on him. I’m surprised he had time to pull the needle out of his arm.”

  “He injected the meth?”

  “He injected something. The tox screen results aren’t in yet, so we don’t know for sure what it was. Could be horse.”

  “Did he have the needle on him?”

  “Beside the body. I sent it for testing.”

  “It doesn’t add up.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was feeling no pain when he was talking to me. Lopez struck me as the kind of guy who scrambled for every dollar, every fix. He’d have waited until he came down from his high before using up another dose. And most users choose the drug because they don’t need the needle to get a good high. Smoking does it just fine. Did he have tracks on his arms? I didn’t notice them the two times I saw him.”

  “Nope, but there’s a first time for everything.”

  “How are you going to treat his death?”

  “I’ll leave it open until I have the ME’s report. Then we’ll see. If I understand things, the first time you talked to Lopez, you were interested in Liver Lips Martinson. This time you were asking about Paco Rael.”

  “That’s right. Rael and his relationship with Martinson. Martinson needed a drug connection somewhere, so I started asking questions.”

  “You think every Mexican is involved in drug running?”

  “No, I don’t. I have some very good friends who are of Mexican heritage, and they’re fine people. But when I’m looking for leads, I pursue them until I’m satisfied they’re dead ends. In this case I don’t have any leads, so I’m casting a net to see what I catch.”