“Can’t you see he’s in pain?” she said to me, disgust in her voice.
I took out the watch I’d retrieved from the corpse in the mine and handed it to Caroline.
“Read the inscription on the back,” I said.
She did, then looked from me to Soames.
“What does it say?” Witherspoon asked.
“To Rueben from Gloria with love,’” I said. Witherspoon didn’t get it. “Gloria is the name of Rueben Archuleta’s wife. Widow, I mean. That’s Archuleta’s dried-up body at the bottom of the mine shaft.”
“What?”
“You want to tell us about it, Soames?”
Instead of answering, he sat up with Caroline’s help and asked her to bring him a shirt.
“Archuleta’s been down there since the day of the Lochemont robbery, hasn’t he?”
Soames looked at me, then lowered his eyes and nodded slowly.
“Yes,” he said.
“But, Grandpa, how …” Caroline wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.
“What happened back then?” I said.
Soames’s frail chest rose in a sigh. “You already know most of it,” he said and began buttoning his shirt. “Except that when I ran away from Teague, Archuleta ran with me.”
“You mean he ran after you, don’t you, Grandpa?”
Soames shook his head. “And there’s something else I never told anyone. When Ed Teague first approached me, he used more than threats to get me to help him rob Lochemont Jewelers—he offered me a share of the take. I accepted. And they accepted me as one of them.”
“No,” Caroline said. “You must have just pretended to join them. You were never one of them.”
Soames reached out for her hand.
“Maybe I was only pretending,” he said. “Maybe not. There was an awful lot of money involved.”
“So you were a willing partner,” Witherspoon said.
“No, he wasn’t!”
Caroline wasn’t ready to accept that as fact, and neither was I.
“You couldn’t have been stupid enough to trust Teague and the others,” I said.
“No, I guess not. But either way, I had to go along. It was Teague’s show. Teague and whoever was giving him orders.”
“Whoever masterminded the robbery,” Witherspoon said.
Soames nodded. “Teague told me someone else was running things, someone I never met.”
“The blond guy in the Ford.”
“I suppose so,” Soames said. “Anyhow, that’s why I couldn’t go to the police before the robbery—this guy was in the background waiting to kill me and my family if anything went wrong during the robbery.”
“What happened after the robbery?” I asked him.
“We drove to the shack near Idaho Springs to split the jewels and then, supposedly, to leave in three cars—Teague in one, Buddy Meacham and Robert Knox in another, and me and Archuleta in the third. But Teague killed Knox and Meacham before anybody knew what was going on, then came after me and Archuleta. Archuleta grabbed the satchel of jewels, and the two of us ran for it. We ran for hours, then stumbled into the mine opening. It was pitch black in there, and all of a sudden Archuleta crashed through some boards and fell down the shaft, taking the jewels with him. My momentum almost carried me in after him.” Soames stared at nothing, remembering. “After that, well, you know everything that happened. I didn’t tell anyone about Archuleta, because it would have implicated me in the robbery. Of course, as it turned out it didn’t matter.”
“How did Villanueva get involved?” Witherspoon asked.
Soames shrugged.
“The blond guy probably hired him,” I said. “He’s been using Villanueva to do his dirty work, just as he used Ed Teague twenty years ago.”
“Maybe the blond guy found the jewels,” Witherspoon said.
“I doubt it. Otherwise, Villanueva wouldn’t still be hanging around. Which means we may see Blondy again.”
“Surely he’s not a threat to us now,” Caroline said.
“He is if he thinks we have the jewels.”
But I had a more pressing issue—surrendering to the cops. First I got everyone to agree on a little white lie, one that didn’t stretch the truth too much, one that would save me a lot of grief later. When everyone had it straight, I went to the front room to make the call. Someone had saved me the trouble. There were police cars in the street and policemen crouched behind them, each displaying his favorite firearm. One red-faced sergeant put down his riot gun and picked up a bullhorn. He gave me some friendly advice:
“COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”
The cops weren’t taking any chances—not with one of Caroline’s neighbors calling to report us creeping into the house with a shotgun and then minutes later hearing it go off, not with corpses in the kitchen and the basement and the smoking guns to go with them, not with a convicted murderer in one room and an accused murderer in another. They arrested us all on suspicion, read us our rights, and hauled us downtown.
We were separated and each given our personal inquisitor. Lucky me, I got Dalrymple. We had a nice chat and he rarely used his rubber hose. I spoke openly and freely without my attorney, and I hardly lied at all. When Greenspan finally showed up, we conferred alone.
“Have the police found Helen Ester?” Tasked, dreading the answer, guessing what Villanueva and his pal had done. “I mean, have they found her body.”
“Her body?” He shook his head, frowning. “Look, Lomax, you’re in a lot of fucking trouble here. Now talk to me, goddammit, and don’t leave anything out.”
I told him the whole truth and nothing but. Never lie to your lawyer, they say, because you’ll only hurt yourself. Let him do the lying. That’s what he gets paid for.
The cops cut loose Caroline and Soames and Witherspoon late Friday afternoon. There was no reason to hold them, since their stories and the physical evidence all pointed to one thing: Witherspoon had shot Villanueva in self-defense. Me, however, they kept locked up overnight.
And I remained in jail all day Saturday while they ran a background check on Anthony Villanueva and a ballistics check on his gun. I sat and waited, confident of the results. Fairly confident. Lieutenant Dalrymple was not to be underestimated. Or, I feared, trusted.
On Sunday afternoon Greenspan showed up with a turnkey.
“I’m wasting my talents on you,” Greenspan said as the guard let me out. “You’re a free man.”
We shouldered our way through the crowded cop station and into the sunlight. I felt like I’d just climbed out of another mine shaft.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The lab tests proved Villanueva’s gun killed both Zack Meacham and Willy Two Hawks. Also, with a bit of prompting from me, Detective Healey showed Villanueva’s picture to the people at the Frontier Hotel, and guess what? The desk clerk remembered seeing him the night Meacham was murdered. The D.A. decided his case against you was too weak. He dropped the charges.”
“That’s great, Abner. No doubt Dalrymple’s pissed.”
“No doubt.”
“What about my jumping bail and not appearing in court?”
Greenspan waved his hand to show me it was nothing, really.
“Judge Sanchez dismissed your arrest warrant after I sold him on your lie.”
The lie was that Caroline and I had been prisoners of Villanueva all day Thursday and Friday, while he forced us to search for the jewels. I couldn’t be in court, Your Honor, because some fool was pointing a gun at me.
“I’m in your debt, Abner.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll let you know exactly how much.”
“Just one more favor.”
“What, for chrissake?”
“I need a ride to Lakewood.”
“For chrissake, Lomax.”
“Hey, I’ll give you gas money.”
“My car’s a diesel.”
We rode in his Mercedes—dark-tinted windows, power everything, and Mozart drifting from
six speakers—and I asked him if the cops had dug up anything on Villanueva.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Greenspan said. “Four years ago he was a suspect in a murder case in California.”
“Oh?”
“He was a chauffeur for some rich old dude named Parmody, who died under suspicious circumstances. Villanueva was charged with murder, but the case was dropped for lack of evidence.”
And I was dropped at Caroline’s house, where Greenspan left me standing in a thin cloud of diesel smoke.
Charles Soames let me in the front door. He looked grayer than ever. And for good reason: He’d been beaten and burned, and his girlfriend was still missing and presumed dead.
“How you feeling?”
“My chest hurts,” he said.
No shit. “I want to thank you and Caroline for helping me out with the cops with the story—”
“Caroline’s out back. Go thank her.”
So he didn’t feel sociable. So what? Or maybe he was just grumpy because the jewels were gone. I wasn’t too happy about that myself. I went out through the kitchen. The basement door was closed tight and the kitchen floor looked freshly washed and waxed. Caroline had tried desperately to scrub away the memory of Willy Two Hawks and Anthony Villanueva.
She was raking leaves between a pair of peach trees under the warm October sun. Several black trash bags lay near by, stuffed full as balloons. When she saw me she smiled and rested her hands on top of the rake. Her forehead glistened with sweat.
“You’re free?”
“I am that.” I told her about Greenspan’s efforts.
“That’s great news, Jake. So everything’s okay?”
“Almost. I seem to have a car stuck up on a mountain.”
She laughed. “I’d forgotten. You’ll need a tow.”
“Tell me.”
“There’s a towrope in the Land Cruiser. We’ve got time to do it today, if you want.”
“Honest, I didn’t come here to ask—”
“Sure you did,” she said, and gave me a playful punch in the arm. “I’ll see if my grandfather wants to go for the ride.”
A few minutes later she came out the backdoor with her oversized purse and no grandfather. We took I-70 west toward Idaho Springs. The afternoon traffic was light and we cruised along with everybody else, about ten miles over the speed limit. Snow had brushed the high country last night and all the peaks were dusted white.
“I hope it didn’t snow on the Olds,” I said. “It’s going to be tough enough to get it out of there without slipping and sliding all over the place.”
Caroline didn’t respond.
“You know what I mean?” I said, turning toward her. She was staring horrified at the rearview mirror. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. Her face was pale. When I looked back, I saw why. Sneaking through the thin traffic behind us was the blond man in the tan Ford.
34
“WHAT ARE WE GOING to do?” Caroline sat rigidly behind the wheel, gripping it with both hands.
The blond guy kept the Ford ten or twelve car lengths behind us. He might have been Anthony Villanueva’s boss, and he might have murdered Helen Ester, and he might or might not have masterminded the Lochemont robbery, but one thing was certain: He didn’t have the jewels. Otherwise he wouldn’t be after us.
“Just keep driving,” I told Caroline.
“Is … is it him?”
“It’s him.”
“God, Jake, if he was working with Villanueva …”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got a little surprise for him.”
We drove to Idaho Springs and turned up West Chicago Creek. Our friend stayed with us. When Caroline left the pavement and started up the road to my car, the Ford pulled onto the shoulder a hundred feet back and stopped. Maybe he thought we were finally going to retrieve the jewels and he’d get us on the way out.
Caroline steered up the mountain to the boulders blocking the road, then put the Toyota in four-wheel drive and easily maneuvered around the rocks and through the trees. She stopped beside the old Olds. It looked pathetic and out of place.
I got Willy’s long-barreled .22 revolver from the glove box and snapped open the cylinder. Six shiny brass eyes winked back at me.
We turned around and drove down the trail. Caroline let me off before we reached the paved road.
“Give me twenty minutes,” I told her.
I moved on foot through the trees and brush, picking a course parallel to the asphalt road and a few hundred feet above it. When I spotted the Ford, I circled behind it and came down to the gravel shoulder.
Blondy was still sitting at the wheel with his elbow out the window and his head on his hand. He’d shut off the engine and now watched the road ahead and behind, occasionally checking his outside mirror.
I kept low and to the right edge of the shoulder, out of sight of his mirrors. As I reached the Ford’s rear bumper, I could hear the muffled pulsing of a Top Forty tune. God, I hate that music.
I yanked open the passenger door and shoved Willy’s pistol in Blondy’s face. Obviously too young to have been involved in the Lochemont robbery, this guy was in his late twenties with a narrow nose and close-set pale blue eyes, wide with surprise and fear. He wore a cheap suit and a fifties haircut, and his thin-lipped mouth was sucking air.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“Put your hands on the wheel and—”
Before I could finish, he popped open his door and literally fell backward out of the car onto the pavement in a tangle of long, skinny limbs, then scrambled to his feet and took off down the road, his suit coat flapping on him like a ripped mainsail.
I ran after him and considered shooting at his legs, but before we’d gone more than a hundred yards, he pulled up short, holding his side. I grabbed his collar, yanked him across the gravel shoulder, and shoved him against a dead tree at the bottom of the mountain slope.
“P-please,” was all he could manage. His face was pale and twisted in pain, and I wondered if he was having a heart attack, not that I cared much. I patted him down. He wasn’t armed.
“Please,” he said, gasping for breath and clutching his side. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Who are you? And what’ve you done with Helen Ester?”
“I’m only doing my job, honest, I—”
I shook him by the lapels and he rattled inside his clothes like a gunnysack full of bones.
“Was Villanueva working for you?”
“No, no, I work for the insurance company and—”
“What?”
Caroline was coasting down the road, looking for us. I waved her over.
“My name is Neal Ullman. I work for National Insurance as an investigator and—”
“You’re a lying sack of shit.”
Caroline made a U-turn and parked on the shoulder. I shoved the guy in the backseat and went in after him.
“Who is he? What does he want?” Caroline looked ready to bolt from the car.
“My name is Neal Ullman and I work for—”
“Shut up,” I told him. “Give me your wallet.”
He fumbled with his wallet, dropped it, picked it up, dropped it again, so I took it from him. He had thirty-seven dollars in cash and a Colorado driver’s license identifying him as Neal N. Ullman. There were a few other things with his name on them, including a picture ID from National Insurance Company: Neal N. Ullman, Investigator.
“Jesuschrist.”
I tossed Ullman his billfold and asked him what the fuck was going on.
“I was assigned to the case by Mr. Carr after—”
“What case?”
“The Lochemont Jewelers case,” he said. “Mr. Carr reopened it after you told him about Lloyd Fontaine and inquired about the reward for recovering the jewels. He thought it would be worthwhile to stick someone on your tail. Me.”
I told Caroline to find a phone in Idaho Springs.
Ten minutes later I was sh
oving Ullman into a phone booth near a gas station on the edge of town. I dialed the number for National Insurance and after talking to a receptionist and a secretary, I got Mr. Carr on the line. When I asked him if he had someone following me, he hemmed and hawed.
“I’ve got him in a phone booth right now, Carr, with a gun stuck in his ribs. He says his name is Ullman.”
“Oh.”
“Well?”
“Yes, he works for me.”
“What does he look like?”
Carr accurately described Ullman, right down to his two-tone wing tips, then asked to speak with him. I gave the phone to Ullman. He mumbled a lot of yes, sirs and no, sirs and then hung up.
“He’s not too happy you spotted me,” he said dejectedly.
“Things are tough all over.”
We got back in the Toyota.
“He is what he says he is,” I told Caroline.
“Then why are you still following us?” she asked him.
“The Lochemont jewels. Why else?”
“The jewels are long gone, Ullman,” I said. “We found the mine, but someone got there first.”
He shook his head and smiled. “That’s not true and you know it. You just haven’t found the right mine yet.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.”
“How?”
He just smiled, the smug bastard.
“Talk to me, Ullman, or you’ll be limping back to your car on two broken legs.”
“Are you threatening me?” he asked with mock fear.
“Goddamned right.”
He looked me in the eye for a few seconds, trying to decide just how serious I was. Then his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, as if he were trying to swallow an olive.
“Okay,” he said, “you might as well know. I’ve had someone helping me up here. I phoned him each time you drove to the mountains, and he followed you while you searched the mines. He told me just yesterday that you two hadn’t given up and that I’d better stick close.”
“Who is it?” Caroline asked, but I knew even before Ullman answered. I remembered now seeing the big blue Dodge pickup on the mountain the first day that Caroline and Soames and I searched the mines—then again parked behind a Victorian house in Idaho Springs—and again when Caroline and I got a lift into Denver after escaping death at the hands of Anthony Villanueva.
Blood Stone (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 2) Page 20
