by Susan Slater
The safe had been opened and the vial of crystals removed. Dan gave a deposition detailing how he’d found them. He didn’t need to hide Eric’s part in their discovery. He reiterated that he suspected they had been planted, and by whom. He told what he knew about Miss Iris. How the finding of Shortcake Dream figured into the United Life and Casualty claim. By the time he was finished, he was exhausted. The stress of the day caught up with him.
Elaine had fixed a plate of cold cuts and cheese. He’d grabbed a couple of beers and followed her out to the porch. Hank joined them. Supper was quiet, not uncomfortable, but each lost in his own thoughts, Dan decided. Hank ate quickly and went back to the barns.
“There’s one more thing I have to do.” Dan stood and took her hand. “Come with me.”
He led her back into the house but stopped by a phone in the hall.
“If you disagree with anything I say, interrupt.” He dialed the number and waited.
The front office at Milford Correctional put him through to Eric without any questions.
“If you haven’t heard what happened to Billy Roland by now, you need to know that he committed suicide about four this afternoon.”
Briefly, he recounted what had happened. Apparently Eric hadn’t known. His shock seemed real. Real because he saw what he thought was his chance at two million go down the drain once and for all, Dan thought.
“A couple other things. I’m going to find out who was behind the two million—not for you, but to clear Billy Roland’s name if he’s innocent.” Then he told him about the Lear.
Elaine gestured that she wanted the phone.
“Eric, I’ll have the divorce papers at the front desk by noon tomorrow. I have them with me now.” She paused, then continued, “I don’t mind the drive over to get this taken care of…I don’t want to see you…Eric, I think you will sign. My lawyer has suggested that I charge you with having detained me against my will for the last few weeks. They know you had a gun. It would add a few more years…Good, I thought you might see it that way.” She handed the phone back to Dan and walked back out to the porch.
***
Billy Roland had requested that he be buried beside his first wife in a family plot on the Double Horseshoe. The small cemetery in the strand of poplar not far from the house also held the remains of Billy Roland’s mother and father, a couple of ranch hands and their families who had died from cholera in the early 1900s. In the corner a small marker rested on the grave of a young woman who had met her death in the woods, on an altar as a sacrifice many years ago.
Judge Cyrus filled Dan in on local lore as they walked between the well-kept mounds. The plots marked with whitewashed crosses paled next to the elaborate marble and bronze statuary that adorned the pink quartz mausoleum behind a picket fence and flagstone walk.
“Ol’ Billy Roland used to come out here a lot. Fresh flowers every other day, that sort of thing. Never quite forgave himself for weaknesses of the flesh. Thought his first wife would never understand about Miss Iris.” Judge Cyrus stood with hat in hand. “Well, they’re together now. I hope they make their peace.”
The service was held at the mausoleum, Judge Cyrus presiding. More than two hundred people lined the drive, trampled the grass on the knoll and ate from the picnic tables set up around the pool.
Iris arrived with the resident preacher from The Wings of the Dove. Hadn’t taken her long to figure out what was hers. Dan wondered if she’d known the terms of the will all along, only now the price was worth it. All eyes were on her as she placed a single white rose at the base of the urn holding Billy Roland’s ashes. She stepped back, and bowed her head before Hank placed the urn on a marble shelf above the tomb of Billy Roland’s first wife. The fact that Iris was dressed in white added to the drama: white veil to white shoes peeking out from the gossamer skirt.
“The angels are with me now,” Iris informed Dan later over a heaping plate of the ever-present potato salad.
“Come again?”
“I’m being guided. I believe my mission is to save poor souls trapped by their carnal desires and earthly ambitions.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “There are those among us who serve a false God.”
He couldn’t think of anything to say. He wished her well, but didn’t miss the look she gave the young minister who brought her. Adoration and lust. Working on carnal desires didn’t seem to start at home, Dan thought.
Carolyn and Phillip paid their respects, appropriate tears, lots of hand shaking. It was difficult to look at Phillip and not see the posturing of a gubernatorial hopeful. The bodyguard was still in evidence and ate his weight in fried chicken. He seemed to have a lot in common with good old Sheriff Ray. It might not be anything more than a love of fried chicken, Dan thought, as he watched the two reload their plates. But chummy didn’t quite capture it. These guys were inseparable.
Carolyn didn’t miss the fact that Elaine was with him, that he had his arm around her shoulders. She gave them a once-over glance when she didn’t think he was looking; lingering, it seemed, overly long. Dan hoped his mother would be pleased since she would undoubtedly have the news by morning.
Someone had dug up Billy Roland’s Premier Exhibitor banner and several other rosettes and ribbons. The mausoleum was plastered with them but the display seemed fitting, and impressive. Dan was surprised when a number of dignitaries from the cattle judging circuit made it all the way out to the Double Horseshoe for the service. Billy Roland was respected. And it was this respect that Dan wanted to make certain wasn’t tarnished. At whatever cost, he would get to the bottom of the promised two million, prove that Billy Roland Eklund didn’t set up Eric Linden or anyone else for that matter.
When he had time to reflect on the day, he decided that Billy Roland would have enjoyed himself, and, then again, maybe he did. He wasn’t sure that he didn’t believe the dead hung around for a while before taking off to wherever.
When Elaine told him that she would be leaving Monday for a month’s tour of Ireland, he understood. Understood and envied her and wanted to stop her, keep her with him. But it was all too soon. There was still a lot of work to do. And Dan would be here when she got back. He’d pick up Simon in the morning.
He walked her to the car and held her, kissed her. She whispered, “I can’t say the things to you that I want to say. Not now, not yet.”
“I know.”
“It’s like too much has happened. Eric, Billy Roland….”
“It’ll take time.”
She nodded. “You understand my wanting to get away?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t forgive Eric. I’m working on it, but I’m still angry about so much. I don’t want that anger to get in the way of our…future.”
He had thought she was going to say something else. But it was too soon to add the “love” word. They both knew that.
“Time. Just give it time,” he said instead.
“He caused Billy Roland’s death.”
“In the name of survival. Eric’s own. We probably can’t say what we’d do in the same position.”
She smiled. “I like your sense of fairness.”
“Anything else on that list?” He was teasing, wanted to keep her smiling. And then he kissed her, opened the car door, and stood back. Before temptation made him do anything else.
“I think this is the time I ask you to drop me a postcard now and then.”
“I’ve heard phone calls get through.”
He watched until the Benz turned onto the county road and was out of sight, and fought the tremendous sense of loss that washed over him, threatened to engulf him. For Elaine? No. He believed that they would have a chance to put something together someday. But for Billy Roland, there were no chances left to exonerate—no chances left to prove that Dan hadn’t sold him out.
***
Monday morning came too soon. Elaine was already on her way to Albuquerque to catch the flight to New York. He had picked up Simon from Elaine’s back y
ard and taken him to Carolyn’s. Good old Sis offered to puppy-sit. It would cost him. But he didn’t know in what way yet. He was still more or less headquartered at the Double Horseshoe. He’d work out there during the day, but couldn’t bring himself to spend the night. Too many memories, too fresh. He needed to finish up and turn over copies of the paperwork, the inventory with a history of losses to the University, and make sure there wouldn’t be any pending claims for United L & C. Hank was helping; it would go quickly.
Roger and crew barely waited for the funeral to end before combing the ranch. And that meant every foot of it. He was even sending out riders to check stock tanks. It would be useless. Dan could tell him that, and had, but it fell on deaf ears. Finding a trace of crack in the clinic after the fire made him crazed.
Yet, in front of Dan on the desk in his office at Roswell’s branch of United Life and Casualty was proof. Big-time proof that Eric Linden hadn’t fabricated his story about meeting with a lawyer seven years ago. A lawyer who supposedly promised him a new life. Someone signing his name Jonathan James Reynolds but whose signature matched, even to Dan’s untrained eye, the squiggles and backward slant of one Juan Jose Rodriguez.
He had made copies of all three samples, then cut out the signatures so that he could align them, paste them on a three by five card and study them: the fax from Chicago containing J.J.’s signature on the deposition; the traced copy from the contract offered to Eric; and last the signature of the lawyer in Dallas. The one that didn’t match. The true signature of Jonathan James Reynolds.
Now what? For starters he needed to get an expert to agree with his suspicions, testify, if need be in court, that the two top signatures were done by the same individual. He called Eastern New Mexico University and found out they offered an Associate of Arts in Criminal Law. Yes, the professor in charge of the department also did work for a crime lab out of Albuquerque and one of his specialties was signature verification. Dan made an appointment to see him at two.
Dan thought that all small college towns had a charm that emanated from old cut stone facades on buildings with fake turrets. But that’s where it stopped. The turn of the century architecture also seemed like “much ado about nothing,” a strange posturing that made ponderous buildings sit in the center of vacant fields until decades later civilization reached that edge of town. By then, ugly flat-roofed, fifties-style, cement block barracks cluttered the once austere grounds that properly showed off the original three- or four-story edifices. A good example was Beeman Hall.
Dan parked as close as he could to the back of the building in a space marked visitor, locked the car, walked down a ramp to the basement, pushed open a windowless steel door, and promptly sneezed about a half dozen times. Musty. Unopened windows, and a below ground dampness that added up to mold—about a century of it, Dan thought. He hoped he wouldn’t be there too long.
Professor Lang was in the first office on the right, next to the elevators. A small man, wisps of graying hair combed over a very bald crown, sat on a stool in front of a drafting table.
“Come in. Let me finish up here, only take a minute.”
Dan found a chair that wasn’t covered with papers and sat. The office was tiny but efficient. Outside light was blocked by blackened windows but various lamps were clamped to the edges of the desk and drafting table. A workroom, not just an office, Dan decided. Professor Lang was busy with a magnifying glass that hung from a cord around his neck. He leaned close to a document tacked to the board. As Dan watched, he pulled a larger magnifying glass with self-contained light swinging across the table from where it was fastened to the opposite corner.
“Yes. Much more like it.” Seeming satisfied, he switched off the lamp and turned to Dan. “Dan Mahoney, I presume. A signature verification, isn’t it?”
Dan handed him the three by five card, and Professor Lang held it out at arm’s length, studied it, then tacked it to the drafting table. He turned on a bank of overhead lights by pressing a button on a side panel of assorted knobs and switches anchored to the table and hunched forward using the glass around his neck to inspect each letter of each signature. Sometimes he stopped to make a note of something on a yellow tablet to his right.
“Uh huh. Interesting.”
“Problem?” Dan wasn’t certain he was supposed to comment but thought he’d try it.
“Open Os.”
“Is that bad?”
“Your guy here isn’t very self-confident. Probably wasn’t breast fed.” Professor Lang paused to enjoy his own humor. “And here? See this?” He motioned Dan to bend over the table. “These little loops, here and here, definite indications of insecurity.”
Dan wasn’t necessarily interested in a personality profile. But he supposed graphoanalysis was a natural offshoot of working with handwriting. And, it wasn’t like he didn’t believe in it. Next the professor measured the letters, then width and height of the entire signature.
“Don’t like to say this but your guy here isn’t too nice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Probably wouldn’t bat an eye at a little blackmail.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Unlike the real Mr. Reynolds. Bottom signature is from an entirely different type of person. Boy next door, upstanding citizen.”
“So you’re saying that the same man signed the top two?” Dan wanted to keep him on track. This was the only thing Dan had come to find out.
“Absolutely.”
“Certain enough to say so in court?”
“No problem. Must have thought he’d never get caught, had some assurance of it, because this is sloppy work.”
On the way back to Roswell, Dan contemplated his next move. A couple things came to mind. Talk to Judge Cyrus and Phillip to get a little background on J.J., maybe even fill them in on what he’d found out so far, what he suspected happened. The drawback would be spilling the beans about Eric. And he wasn’t quite ready to do that. Not just yet.
That left one thing—probably what appealed to him most in the first place—he knew before the outskirts of town that he would confront J.J. himself. Screw tipping his hand to others. He wanted to see the reaction on J.J.’s face. Wanted to be there when a ghost from the past came back to haunt.
***
J.J.’s office was at one end of a strip shopping center on the west side of Roswell. A Furr’s Super Market, Sherwin-Williams paint store, Goodwill center, the Praying Hands Bookstore, Walgreen’s drug store, and Juan Jose Rodriguez, Attorney at Law, in that order, lined up to face the parking lot. Which in this case was more than two acres of asphalt.
Dan pulled in beside a red Ferrari. Somehow he knew he wouldn’t have to ask who it belonged to. Was this a big horse-powered clue right under his nose? Took some bucks to own one.
The receptionist took his name and buzzed an office in the back, presumably J.J.’s. She had indicated that he was in.
“May I tell him what this is concerning?”
“Estate of Billy Roland Eklund.”
That wasn’t exactly a lie, Dan told himself, but it would have been more honest to say the reputation of Billy Roland Eklund.
“He’ll be with you in a minute. You know, it’s so much easier for all of us, and you can save yourself some time by calling ahead. Counselor Rodriguez works mainly from appointments.”
Just a teeny bit of a snotty overtone, Dan thought as he watched the young Hispanic woman turn back to her keyboard. An attitude probably works with the locals. A buzzer sounded from an adjoining room and the young woman rose, pulled down her mini skirt, and teetered on four-inch spikes toward a hallway.
The rear view wasn’t bad. The woman had a fantastic body once you got your attention away from the hair falling almost to her waist, permed into long ringlets and ink black, bangs another six inches above her forehead. Dan chose a chair by the window and picked up a magazine.
The office was tastefully done. A couple original bronzes accented by pedestals obviously buil
t for them. Oils, three end-of-the-trail roundup-type scenes. Dan wasn’t familiar with the artist. But they were good, collector quality originals. The furniture was wood and leather, ivory leather with matching ottomans, the coffee table a tree trunk holding a kidney shaped piece of beveled glass. Not cheap. Not one thing. Not even the receptionist, probably.
“Counselor Rodriguez will see you now.”
“Mr. Mahoney, isn’t it?” J.J. stood in the hall doorway.
Dan wondered why the formalities. J.J. knew perfectly well who he was. The snottiness of the receptionist seemed mirrored in the boss. “Is this something we can handle here? I’m very busy right at the moment.”
“Probably not. I think you’ll want a little privacy for our discussion.” That caught his interest.
“Very well. Hold my calls.” J.J. turned on his heel and headed down the hall.
A conference room and small library on the west faced two offices across the hall; J.J.’s office was at the back, expansive, containing more pricey oils and sculpture and leather sofas.
J.J. waved at a chair across from his desk and Dan sat down. He thought J.J. looked thin and drawn.
“May I offer my condolences. I believe you had a close working relationship with Mr. Eklund?” Dan began.
“It’s been a terrible shock. But he was infirm. The headaches…. Is there something I can help you with?” There was an edge to J.J.’s voice.
“You can explain this. An expert will testify that the top two were done by the same man.” Dan placed the three by five card carefully in front of J.J., and standing over him saw clearly what happened next. Before he could check the gesture, Juan Jose Rodriguez had started to cross himself.
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. But let me refresh your memory. About seven years ago, a lawyer matching your description met with Eric Linden in a jail in El Paso. The promise of two million dollars for taking a fall was guaranteed by the document that this signature was lifted from.”
J.J. didn’t say anything, just absently ran his finger over the copies of the signatures. But sweat, just a fine misting of perspiration formed on his forehead at the hairline.
