The Lovely Pines

by Don Travis

  Could Patrick Dayton have contacted his friend to let him know he was going to be in the neighborhood and learned Zuniga was slated for guard duty? Possible. But there was no evidence that either Zuniga or his roommate owned a cell phone. Was there a telephone in the room they rented? My gut told me I was wasting time concentrating on the workers at the winery, but every base needed to be covered.

  YARDLEY HADN’T been able to add much to my store of information on the C de Bacas. Neither German nor Consuela had jackets. I found some unpaid speeding and parking tickets, mostly for the sister. Acquaintances who knew the Simpsons wouldn’t say a cross word about Braxton Simpson, a respected retired banker, but there were plenty who expressed a dislike of his wife. Some of it could be placed at the feet of jealousy, but a pattern emerged that reaffirmed my initial opinion of a liberated, selfish woman, who cared little what others thought of her. Her husband’s reputation and popularity were enough to gain her admittance to the right clubs and living rooms but were not strong enough to make her liked. When asked to describe her in one word, almost invariably, greedy was the answer.

  Gene wasn’t able to help me. Even he had to have some reason for hauling a respected banker’s wife down to the station house for a grilling. So I tackled the lady on her own turf. The maid left me standing on the front porch while she carried my business card to the lady of the house. The señora appeared at the door shortly thereafter.

  “What do you want?”

  I considered asking how the twelve million dollars my parents left me stacked up against her inheritance but resisted the urge. It wasn’t a fair comparison. My schoolteacher folks had advanced a little working capital to a garage business that turned into Microsoft. Hers labored the whole of their lives to build what they had. Of course, her mother’s land-grant claim was a matter of chance too.

  I expected to have to talk my way into the house, but she just leveled a look at me and said I was the fellow who’d turned Diego over to the police and invited me in. That wasn’t enough, however, to earn me the offer of coffee. Merely a seat on the living room couch while she asked me what I wanted. Sweet-talking would gain me nothing with this woman, so I didn’t try it.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Simpson, did you attempt to kill your half brother, Diego?”

  Her dark, expressive eyes widened, but I couldn’t honestly tell if she was surprised by my question or by my manner of address. Her familiars all told me they were required to go through the whole “C de Baca de Simpson” bit.

  With a great deal of dignity, she rose to her feet, making me notice that she wasn’t appreciably taller when she stood than when she sat. “Mr. Vinson, I know of no such attempt. Nor would I be a part of it if I did.”

  “Why? If he died, he has no heirs. His portion of the family estate would revert to you and German. And he’s left his share virtually untouched.”

  She made a point of glancing around the elegant room, heavy with expensive furniture, lace, and ormolu. “I assure you I am adequately cared for.”

  “That is obvious. You have a very good sense of style.”

  That earned me nothing but a fish eye. But my question had sparked her interest.

  “When and where was this attempt made on his life?”

  “I didn’t say it was an attempt, but yes, it was over the night of June 16 into June 17 and again on Thursday, July 2. A daylight attempt.”

  She smiled faintly. “I see. Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, but Braxton and I were in Taos visiting friends that entire week in June. I don’t recall the July date, although that was shortly before the holiday on the Fourth, so I assume we were preparing for guests.”

  “You could have hired someone.”

  “To do what? I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Have you been out to the Pines lately?”

  She sniffed. “Not since those Swiss people bought it. Are you going to answer my question? What happened that night at the Pines?”

  “Someone accosted a young man who looks enough like Diego to be his brother when he left the Pines at around two o’clock.”

  “Accosted him how?”

  “By shooting him in the back three times.”

  “Killed him?” At my nod, she continued. “And why do you assume the murderer was looking for Diego instead of this other man?”

  “Because Diego broke into the Pines a few weeks earlier and has been living there ever since.”

  “Living where?”

  “Living someplace on the premises.”

  “I see. One of your people asked about some secret room in the winery. I told him that was nonsense, of course. It doesn’t exist.”

  “Oh, it exists, all right. I know. I killed one of the men looking for Diego in that very chamber behind the wine cellar.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Your privilege. But you can ask Sergeant Muñoz of the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office or Lt. Ray Yardley of the state police.”

  That’s pretty much the way the rest of the interview went… nowhere. She seemed to be more offended by her father not sharing the secret of a hidden room than the death of two men.

  I left the house feeling as if I’d wasted my time. Sometimes I felt as if 75 percent of my time was wasted, but that’s all right. This was something needing exploring in order to close one more avenue that led away from the killer.

  HAZEL’S INTERNET search on Miles Lotharson turned up a driver’s license showing a home address on Railroad Track Road, an MVD registration of a 2003 Custom Harley Davidson Hardtail motorcycle, and a mediocre credit report showing him working at a gas station with the name of Drive-By Gas. She located no jacket with any police jurisdiction in our vicinity.

  A drive to Bernalillo revealed no one with the name Lotharson lived at the Railroad Track Road address, nor did the current occupant know of him. The attendant at Drive-By Gas, hiding behind her bulletproof pane of plexiglass, allowed as to how she knew Miles Lotharson, but he no longer worked there. She didn’t know where he’d gone.

  So I invaded Roma Muñoz’s space at the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office. She was more closemouthed than Ray Yardley, but she’d likely not hold out on me on such a minor player in this little drama. I reconsidered. Why was he a minor player? He wasn’t on site all the time, but I gathered from speaking to people at the Pines he was around occasionally.

  Roma met me at the front desk at SCSO rather than have me escorted back to her office. While I don’t have an outsized ego, I do have one and couldn’t help but wonder if she was a bit afraid I’d identify the murderer before she did. She struck me as a woman with drive and ambition. I could easily see her petite form sitting in the sheriff’s office one day in the future.

  “Lotharson?” She looked a bit startled. “Why are you asking about him?”

  “Well, he’s Katie Henderson’s boyfriend, isn’t he? So he has a connection.”

  Her brown eyes looked vacant for a moment, making me realize she hadn’t even turned up the kid’s name as yet. She covered her lapse well. “So far as I can tell, he wasn’t around much.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “And when was the last time that happened?”

  “Have to consult my notes. But Gonda can tell you that. Now is there anything else?”

  I answered my own question. “After the tasting on the Fourth of July. They all gathered in the common room and drank a toast to the holiday.”

  “Including Lotharson?” she asked a little too quickly.

  “Not at the tasting, but his bike was on the premises. Of course, that was after Bas Zuniga’s murder. But back to my question. Will you share the information you have on Lotharson?”

  “Have to check out what we have on him. Let you know.”

  That ended that. And probably our tenuous relationship. I’d embarrassed her by asking about a lead she hadn’t pursued. At least that’s the way it looked to me.

  Since I was in the vicinity, I decided to go to the winery, where someon
e was bound to know something about this Lotharson kid. If I remembered right, it was James Bledsong who told me about him.

  I FOUND the Pines’ viticulturist, appropriately enough, in the vineyard, talking to Claudio Garcia and Winfield Tso. They broke off their discourse about the new planting—which looked to be about done—when I walked up to them and asked for a moment of Bledsong’s time. Once we were in the shade of the shed near his cottage, I asked him what he knew about Katie’s boyfriend.

  “Like I told you at the C&W, the kid’s a loser.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I know for a fact he borrows money from her.” He snorted. “Borrows. More likely takes money from her. And she’s a college student working to make ends meet.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Walked in on them one day when she was handing over a twenty and heard him say it was just until Friday. Didn’t say what Friday.”

  Okay, so that colored Bledsong’s attitude. Might mean something, might not. “What else can you tell me about him? Does he hang around much?”

  “Brings her to work and picks her up sometimes.”

  “Doesn’t she have her own car?”

  He nodded. “Maybe she likes to ride on that motorcycle of his.”

  Zuniga owned a motorcycle too. Did that mean anything? “Were he and Zuniga friendly?”

  He shrugged. “Casual, so far as I could see. Whenever Miles showed up at a picnic or something, they spent a few minutes talking bikes.”

  “Did Zuniga show any interest in Katie?”

  “I see where you’re going. Yeah, he did. Until he found out she was taken. Then he backed off.”

  “Where does Lotharson live, work? That sort of thing?”

  “Think he’s a motorcycle mechanic. That reminds me, I know he worked on Bas’s bike once. Does that help?”

  “Know where to find him?”

  “Katie can tell you for sure, but I think he works at a bike shop in Bernalillo. Don’t know the name, but it’s on the main drag. You know, Camino del Pueblo. But watch out. I get the feeling he’s a mean one.”

  Chapter 23

  KATIE HADN’T come in for her shift yet, but the cook, Nellie Bright, gave me the information I needed. She also managed to convey her disapproval of Lotharson without saying a word about him.

  Childer’s Motorcycle Repair was located a few blocks south of the Range Café, a well-known eatery in the older part of Bernalillo. The owners operated a restaurant under the same name in Albuquerque, but I preferred the original.

  The cycle shop was unique in that it occupied a wood-frame building, whereas 99 percent of the structures in this town were adobe or at least stucco. The relatively grease-free middle-aged man laboring in the front of the building waved to the rear without evidencing the least bit of curiosity when I asked for Miles Lotharson.

  Lotharson in the flesh—and I do mean in the flesh—was a handsome muscle boy. He would have been exceptionally good-looking had he not been shrouded in an air of desperation. He wore old-fashioned bib overalls without a shirt, and the tanned muscles that flexed as he knelt beside a Kawasaki bike were sexy as hell. I knew with a fair degree of certainty what was eating at his soul.

  By virtue of his looks and spectacular build, he’d latched on to a bright, pretty girl. But now that girl was going to college, bringing to the fore a probably well-ingrained feeling of inferiority because he either had no inclination to climb higher on the socioeconomic totem pole or didn’t have the chops to do so. He would forever remain a grease monkey while Katie Henderson graduated to bigger and better things. What he didn’t realize was that he might have made it work if he could rein in the inevitable jealousy gnawing at him. Unfocused jealousy of anyone and anything that threatened his relationship.

  “Miles Lotharson?” I asked.

  “Yeah. That’s me. What’chu want? You look like fuzz to me.”

  “Used to be. Now I’m private.”

  “Private fuzz. Public fuzz. What’s the difference?”

  That gave me more insight into the guy. Nice wasn’t going to work. Logic wasn’t in the cards. Go tough. “Not much, except that I can get away with a lot that the boys with badges can’t.”

  He looked up from his work and regarded me through eyes so startlingly blue they disconcerted me momentarily. “Like what?”

  Better watch myself with this one. Don’t get lost in his looks. “Like beating the shit out of you without compromising your testimony.”

  He straightened his back and flexed his shoulders. “You can try it.”

  “Might be worth it. But on the other hand, I might bruise a knuckle. If we’ve spread enough machismo on the ground, let’s get down to business.”

  “What business?” He remained knelt beside the bike.

  “What did you have against Bascomb Zuniga?”

  “Who? That kid that got waxed up at the winery? Didn’t have nothing against him. Didn’t even know him. Not really.”

  “You worked on his bike.”

  “I work on lotsa bikes. Okay, yeah, I did him a favor once and did some adjustments to his wheels. Ran a lot better too.”

  “Where were you on the night of June 16 and the early morning of June 17?”

  “You know where you were three weeks ago? I sure as shit don’t. Besides, why would I off the guy?”

  “He was good-looking and made moves on your girl.”

  The blue eyes were a little duller now. “He was?”

  “Don’t play dumb. You were afraid he’d take Katie away from you. Pretty girl like Katie who’s got the gumption to put herself through college was worth protecting, wasn’t she?”

  His cheeks blazed as he banged the wrench he was holding against the bike’s seat, something I’m sure both the shop’s owner and the bike’s owner would disapprove. “Me’n Katie are solid, man.”

  “Me’n Katie? Is that the way you talk to a college girl?”

  Cheeks still blazing—now joined by his fiery ears—he stood… all six two of him… and pointed the wrench at me. “Don’t make fun of me, man. Nobody pokes fun at me.”

  I snaked my right hand behind me. “If you don’t drop that wrench, I’m going to consider myself under threat. Then I’m going to pull my weapon. After that, who knows what’ll happen?” It was all a bluff. Despite Bledsong’s warning, my S&W was still with Roma, and the Ruger lay in the trunk of the car.

  He didn’t drop it, but he lowered the heavy tool to his side.

  “Look, Lotharson, no need for this to go bad. Just tell me what you told the police about that night, and I’ll go about my business.”

  “Police?”

  Crap! Neither Roma nor Yardley had sent anyone to question this bozo. “If they haven’t been here already, they’ll be here soon. Just account for your time that night.”

  We sparred a few minutes longer before he set about trying to reconstruct his calendar. When I reminded him Zuniga died on a Tuesday night, he came up with a meeting of his bike club, the BBAs. I took that to stand for the Bernalillo Bad Asses.

  “Did Katie go with you?”

  He frowned, revealing more of his insecurity. “She don’t… uh, doesn’t go for that kind of thing. Katie and my club are two different things.”

  So far as I could see, he’d just condemned his relationship to ultimate failure. I poked at the guy for another fifteen minutes, getting information I could verify later. Then I got into the Impala and drove away convinced I had met a man capable of violence if he felt threatened, but unable to shake the feeling he hadn’t even considered Zuniga a rival. Too soon for judgments. I needed to confirm the BBA meeting and dig a little deeper into Miles Lotharson.

  BACK AT the office again, I turned the expanded search of the internet for Lotharson over to Hazel and settled at my desk to call Del for an update. He was handling both Diego’s custody situation and pursuing Gonda’s interest in his grandson, the Dayton child. Ever since I’d crossed swords with Del’s executive secreta
ry during the Zozobra trouble, Collette Brittain always put me through to her boss unless there was a good reason not to. Today she connected us without a hitch.

  Del was more interested in hearing about my shootout with a trained military sniper and coming out unscathed than he was in talking about what I wanted. Nevertheless, after I gave him the gory details, he got serious.

  “You said those exact words to him, ‘You’re dying’? And it’s on the voice recorder?”

  “Yep.”

  “Might hold up as a deathbed confession and eliminate a bunch of people from suspicion over that Zuniga kid’s death.”

  “What’s the rap on Diego C de Baca?”

  “Gene’s finished with him. I delivered him to SCSO, and Roma Muñoz’s claws are out for him. Since the Gondas declined to prosecute, not sure why. But she was rough on him.”

  “Probably pissed at us for finding the winery intruder before she did and is taking it out on Diego,” I said.

  “Whatever, she wrung him dry and put him in SCSO Detention Center on Montoya Road to hold for the feds. Not sure what’s going to happen there. If I heard you right, we’ve got Natander’s dying confession he killed the priest over in Iraq without Diego’s or Pastis’s knowledge. Diego’s turning over the stolen artifact will also help.”

  “Do you think they’ll return him to Iraq for trial?”

  “I doubt it, since the Iraqis will get their treasure back and Natander’s confessed to the murder. If they do anything, they’ll do it over here. Aiding and abetting’s a possibility since he mailed the artifact back to the States. Other than that, failure to report a crime is the most likely possibility.”

  “And Sergeant Pastis?”

  “Not one of my concerns, but I understand Gene’s holding him in the Bernalillo County Detention Center for the feds. They’ll likely come down hard on him since he was AWOL, something Diego was not.”

  “Keep me posted, will you? What about Gonda’s grandson?”