The Lovely Pines

by Don Travis

  When we were in the Impala, I started the car and asked Paul if he noticed anything unusual about the Lincoln.

  “Other than it doesn’t fit in with the environment around here, no.”

  “You put your finger on it first try. I think David James Dayton financed that car.”

  Paul’s fine dark eyebrows raised. “You think they sold the kid?”

  “Interesting possibility, isn’t it?”

  “What do we do now?” Paul asked.

  “Some old-time detective work.”

  We left the area but didn’t go far. Working the neighborhood on foot, we knocked on doors. Lots of doors. It didn’t take long to learn the Daytons were not popular. The two oldest brothers were local bullies while their father was abrupt and rude. Even so, we didn’t come up with much information. Two months ago, one elderly woman saw a man and a woman carry a child out of the house and drive away in a green car. She could add little to that except to say the four-door sedan had New Mexico plates. Within days after that, James Dayton drove up in a new Lincoln.

  After a good meal, we retired to the motel, where I watched Paul’s small dragon tattoo dance for half an hour before we got a solid night’s sleep. Then after an early breakfast, we headed back to the Dayton house, arriving just in time to see Dayton Sr. throw a bag in the back of the Lincoln and pull off down the street. An admission of guilt if I’d ever seen one. We followed discreetly until he picked up I-10 and headed south. He was fleeing the jurisdiction of the state by heading for Texas. There was no legitimate reason for detaining him, so I headed back into town. We tried the challenging NMSU golf course the next morning before driving back to Albuquerque Sunday night.

  We’d no sooner unloaded the car than I caught a call from my former Marine buddy now with the Department of State. His contact in Homeland Security, plus some of his own State associates, had delivered. Ariel Gonda had a very clean record both in Switzerland and abroad. The long and the short of it was that Bosco said the family enjoyed a good relationship with their government, including law enforcement jurisdictions. To wit, Ariel had no sheet, but his family money could have cleaned up minor indiscretions.

  However, Bosco declared, it had been a close thing. The fly in the ointment, and undoubtedly the matter Gonda had indirectly referred to, was a youthful competition for a fair hand. Margot’s hand, as a matter of fact. While at the University of Zurich, Gonda vied with a fellow named Bernard Solis for the heart and soul of Margot. Solis was a member of a wealthy family and considered quite a catch. So when the fair lady in question selected his rival, Solis reacted badly. The story was, he challenged Ariel to a duel, but as these were outlawed at the time, wiser heads prevailed so the challenge simply ended up in a fistfight/wrestling match. The record didn’t say who won, but the entire affair caused a rift between the two families.

  Even so, as Gonda and Solis built their professional careers, the competition continued, contributing to some juicy gossip in the salons of Swiss society. For youthful passions to engender enmity that lasted a lifetime was not unheard of, but not common either. It was possible Gonda had not exaggerated when he mentioned that his place would have burned down if Solis were involved.

  Bosco had gone to the additional trouble of determining that Mr. Solis was in Europe on the night of June 16 and the morning of June 17, when Bascomb Zuniga was murdered. Of course, had Solis really intended mischief, he could have hired it done. But why would he do so? He knew nothing of the young man’s connection to the Gonda family. No, it wasn’t logical. To my mind this was an issue that reached the end of its road. Gonda’s past—unless it was something so deeply hidden as to be invisible—had not reached out and touched his present… and future.

  Chapter 13

  CHARLIE USED Tim Fuller and Alan Mendoza to keep a watch on the winery while Paul and I were in Las Cruces. Neither saw anything of interest, although Alan thought he heard someone or something in the forest behind him. Because it sounded like a deer or some other animal, he remained in hiding. So I had nothing to report to Gonda other than my abortive meeting with Dayton.

  “You think he sold the baby!” Gonda exclaimed at the end of my report.

  “That’s what it looks like to me. Now we need to get a lawyer involved. A court can require Dayton to reveal the whereabouts of the child, especially if it wasn’t a legal adoption.”

  He stroked his invisible beard. “But you said he fled to Texas.”

  “That’s my supposition, but we’ll find him. And the Dayton boys may have the information we need.”

  I handed him Del Dahlman’s card and instructed him to call for an appointment. I agreed to accompany him to see the lawyer.

  After that, I took a hard look around the grounds surrounding the cellar, including walking on top of the cavern and all around the edges. I saw nothing that even hinted at an opening to a tunnel or a door to a hidden room. Would ground-penetrating radar work here? I dug my toe into the earth. The vineyard was sandy soil, where such equipment might penetrate several meters, but the ground around the cavern was heavy with clay-covered stone. Sometimes the equipment wasn’t so successful in that type of soil. The foliage on the hill might make ground-contact antennas impractical, though aerial ones might work. But what would they show? A cavern that we already knew was there? At the end of that reasoning process, I concluded the prospect was iffy, but I’d talk it over with Charlie before mentioning the possibility to Gonda.

  Next, I walked the thick forest west of the winery. The road that Roma Muñoz and I explored the other day showed little signs of recent traffic. I did find a few footprints, but those could belong to locals out hiking or hunting varmints. What was more interesting was a faintly worn trail that ran parallel to the road on the west side. Who would wear a path through the forest when there was a road within paces? Animals, perhaps, but I found an indistinct footprint in one area. It was too faint to cast, so I took out my pocket notebook and drew the design and noted the dimensions simply because it looked to be deliberately smudged. Had the sniper made the track?

  I’d not yet explored the area east of the Lovely Pines, so I walked down to the well-traveled road in front of the winery and followed it past the Pines’ east property line without spotting anything but a faint trail leading north. I trekked up it for a distance without finding any footprints. This was likely a game trail.

  After that I called it quits and headed back to the office to see if Charlie or Hazel had better luck than I had. Hazel had completed all the background checks on the Lovely Pines’ staff without finding anything other than minor things that threw no light on the subject. Of course, I was pretty well convinced the break-in had nothing to do with Gonda’s employees. Zuniga’s murder? Probably not, but Ray and Roma would shake that tree, and hopefully they’d share information.

  LATE THAT afternoon, I parked in the Lovely Pines parking lot, grabbed my five-battery flashlight, and crawled over the wall on the west side of the property. If Alan thought he heard someone in the forest last weekend, I’d stake out a position alongside the logging road and see what happened. But first I wanted a look around before the light failed. This time I found something I’d missed before. Thin tire tracks running along the hump between the two ruts in the forest road. Grass and weeds almost obscured the impressions, but they were there. Likely several days old. Certainly not fresh. Too small for a motorcycle. Probably a mountain bike.

  The fact the rider took the trouble to hide his trail argued this was either the intruder or the watcher I’d spooked the other day. Anyone else would have ridden in one of the ruts… much easier going. I managed to track it back down toward the highway and discovered the rider cut through the forest in order to avoid riding straight up the logging road. That led me to believe this track was left by the intruder who broke into the winery. He was trying to avoid not only me but also the man watching for him… the man hunting him. This wasn’t proof of that, but I was willing to leap to that conclusion. That meant I needed to
go on the hunt for a bicycle.

  Reversing course, I headed back up the rough track. Just before the light failed beneath the thick canopy, I found where the tracks stopped. And they did just that… halted. There was a smudged spot in the sandy dirt, and then nothing. The canny son of a bitch got off his wheels and simply picked the bike up and carried it from that point onward, his prints muffled once again. Were two snipers involved? Not necessarily. I wasn’t a trained military sniper, but I knew about the use of burlap and other materials to distort and make tracks harder to find.

  I searched diligently but unsuccessfully for signs of more footprints before the light failed. Then I walked east until hitting the winery property line and discovered I was some distance north of the small bluff where the winery backed up to the cavern. At this juncture, the four-foot wall ended, replaced by a six-foot wire fence. The falling-down cabin ruins called to me again, but I found no evidence of humans disturbing the premises.

  I should have started this search earlier. By now the light was failing rapidly. I walked back to the spot where the tire tracks stopped and settled down to watch from a few feet away.

  It was an uneventful watch, although I did hear some noises to the north of me. But I was willing to bet the intruder hadn’t gotten past me on the road, so it must be some animal. Probably one of the mule deer in the area.

  Before heading home for some much needed sleep the next morning, I walked all the way around the Lovely Pines. I found no hidden access to the property through the fences on the north end and found no secret entrances anywhere along the cliff face sheltering the cavern. Time to try out that GPR, I thought. As soon as I got some rest, I’d discuss it with Charlie.

  MY BATTERIES were recharged enough to go to the office by midafternoon. As I walked through the door, Hazel handed me a message slip saying German C de Baca phoned this morning. I dialed, and after a few moments, he came on the line.

  “I thought you should know that Diego withdrew a portion of his trust money. He transferred $10,000 to the SunTrust Bank branch on Fort Benning Road where he did his banking when he was taking training in Columbus, Georgia.”

  “He was able to do this without going into the Albuquerque bank?”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “We made sure the funds were transferrable at his request because he was away in the Army.”

  “Did he ever draw on the funds while he was serving?”

  “Small amounts on occasion. A hundred dollars here and a hundred dollars there.”

  “But never such a large amount?”

  “No. But at least this lets us know he’s okay, right?”

  Did I detect a little fraternal feeling here? Certainly more than his sister expressed. So I chose not to tell him it meant nothing of the sort. Such a large, uncharacteristic withdrawal more likely signaled trouble. Someone was pressuring Diego for money or extorting it. Or perhaps he just needed it to flee.

  “I certainly hope so, Mr. C de Baca.”

  After I took down the transfer data, I thanked him and hung up. The information was a bit disconcerting. I was willing to bet that Diego was the intruder in the winery. Nothing else made sense… unless old man C de Baca had come back from the dead to haunt the place.

  I ran into a brick wall at SunTrust. They wouldn’t even confirm an account in Diego’s name, much less whether there was more than one signer on the account. I expected as much but had to try. Columbus was an Army town, so it was logical that Diego maintained his banking there throughout his service.

  But I was willing to bet that Diego was nowhere near Columbus. He was here in the Albuquerque area. That meant he needed to have the funds transferred yet again to a local bank in order to lay his hands on the money. I reconsidered. Had he left the area after our near-encounter in the wine cellar? Not necessarily, but it was possible.

  Charlie poked his head in the door at that moment, and I took the opportunity to apprise him of the latest development and discuss the GPR idea. We concurred that such a scan would only reveal a cavern we already knew was there. We’d wait before trying that expensive undertaking. Then I did something I’d been remiss in doing. I asked him to get photos of all the C de Bacas and of Diego’s two buddies from US Division-South in Basra.

  CHARLIE WAS scheduled to keep watch Tuesday night, but I decided to take his place. With an ample supply of coffee, I should be able to stay awake. The problem with that was, if I held a cup of hot coffee in my hand all night, any sniper worth his salt would smell it a mile away. Couldn’t be helped. That was the only way I could remain halfway alert for the second night in a row. Jeez, was I already over the hill at thirty-seven? Sometimes my sessions with Paul raised that same question. Here was further proof.

  Remembering how the sniper had scanned the parking lot the one time I’d caught a glimpse of him, I pulled off into the forest on the south side of the highway a hundred yards west of the logging road that paralleled the Pines property and hiked the rest of the way in. I located a likely spot with an oblique view of the winery doors near the wallow where I’d encountered the sniper. By turning my head, I could see the area where the bicycle tracks had ended. Satisfied, I pulled my backpack off and settled into a sheltered spot. This was not the perfect stakeout location, but since I was keeping an eye out for two separate individuals on two separate missions, it would do. Once comfortable, I hauled out the old Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm semiautomatic I’d elected to carry and stuffed it in a jacket pocket. My new Ruger revolver rested in the trunk of my car.

  We might just be heading into July, but twilight was coming up fast, and at this altitude the temperature would drop sharply once the soil lost the sun’s warmth. I no sooner poured myself a lid of coffee than the odor of weeds and wildflowers and fallen pine needles surrendered to the pungent aroma of the hot liquid. I resolved to take my refreshment in smaller doses thereafter.

  Hours passed. Despite the coffee and isometric exercises, I was rapidly losing ground to the need for sleep. I’m a trained stakeout artist and had done this a hundred times, but the gentle swish of the pine boughs all around me was as effective as a sleeping tonic. I’m sure I dozed at times but for the most part managed to remain on guard.

  Somewhere around midnight, I grew aware of something. I hadn’t actually heard a car, but there was one down on the highway. I glanced south but caught no glare of headlamps or parking lights. Then I heard a slight growl as a motor accelerated. The vehicle had stopped for some reason. To let someone out, perhaps? But there was no bang of a car door. Of course not. He was sneaking in.

  Just as I was about to go check on the intruder, I caught movement down near the wallow. It wasn’t much, just a slight swaying of brush. In the darkness I wasn’t even certain I’d actually seen anything, but something snared my attention.

  Son of a bitch! The sniper! He’d snuck into place right under my nose. And movement told me he’d heard the car too. He was going to intercept whoever got out of the car. Sniper and intruder were about to meet.

  I stood, making sure to create a racket while doing so. No reaction. Cautiously I worked my way, tree bole by tree bole, toward the wallow. He wasn’t there. He’d slipped by me again. I turned and ran to the road and headed south. I caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure ahead of me. There was just enough moonlight piercing the overhanging canopy to determine the man carried a rifle. No doubt he’d use it if cornered. More troubling, would he use it if he met the intruder? I couldn’t take the chance. I raised my S&W and fired three bullets into the trunk of the nearest pine. The flashes blinded me, but I stumbled left into the covering wood in case the fleeing man decided to return fire. There was nothing. Nothing but the roar of an approaching vehicle.

  Before I reached the logging road again, I heard a car screech to a halt, a car door slam, and the vehicle roar away. The sniper likely phoned a buddy who’d been hanging around nearby to retrieve him. That settled things in my mind. Natander and Pastis, Diego’s two buddies from Iraq, were hunting him do
wn.

  That was probably Diego in the other car. Someone dropped him off, and he was out there somewhere. I phoned the police dispatcher and gave a message for Yardley and Muñoz before starting my search for Diego. Voices caught my attention, so I returned to the wall near the deer wallow and saw two flashlights playing near the chateau. Lights blazed in the house’s upper floor. Gonda and Juisson, likely.

  I hailed them and brought them up-to-date. Both immediately insisted on helping me search despite my effort to dissuade them. I had no idea if Diego—and I was virtually certain he was our intruder—went to ground or fled. Or if he was armed and frightened enough to shoot without asking questions.

  As long as they refused to be deterred, I decided to leave the field to those two and play a hunch. As I hustled back to my car, I replayed my logic in my head. The first car I heard had been someone dropping off Diego. That was probably the way he got into the area; then he rode the mountain bike he either brought with him or stashed somewhere in the woods nearby. Why a bike? Because if he didn’t have a car, he’d at least be mobile on a conveyance that did not need to stick to the roads. He might not be able to outrun a car, but he could likely outmaneuver one. And he could certainly leave someone afoot behind very quickly.

  If I were a fugitive who heard gunshots and figured they were aimed at me, what would I do? I’d take off on that bike as fast as possible, right down the road, with my ear cocked for the sound of a pursuing vehicle so I could leave the road and take cover in the woods. Which way would I go? Up the mountain into more isolation or toward town and civilization? If someone caught me in the mountains, they’d be more aggressive about doing me harm than if they found me in the midst of witnesses. Time to head to the biggest town nearby, and that would be Bernalillo. Upon reaching my Impala, I got in and raced down the mountainside toward town with one eye out for a bicycle.