Sky High Stakes (Pacheco & Chino Mysteries Book 2)

by Ted Clifton

  “I am unusually tired this morning. Believe I will go to my room and take a rest.”

  Isabella called a trucking company she had on stand-by and told them they should be at the house that evening. She ordered the household staff into a frenzy of activity boxing, wrapping, and crating up the paintings. There were many by her mother, as well as maybe fifty by other famous artists. Isabella estimated their value at something over twelve million dollars. The process was irritatingly slow—the household staff were so stupid.

  She looked in on her father several times and found him sound asleep. She locked him in his room as a precaution, and also took his pistol from the bedside chest.

  The truck arrived on time to pick up the load of paintings and take them to a beautiful house in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Isabella would be so happy to finally leave the family prison where she’d been held for so long. Once everything was loaded, she dismissed the staff and gave them their final checks. She explained that she and her father had decided to return to Mexico and would not need staff.

  At that point she went and found the head of the household guards. Most people thought these people worked for her father, the famous drug lord, but they didn’t—they worked for Isabella. She’d made a deal with the man that once the paintings she wanted were removed, he could have anything else in the house. There were additional paintings, plus all sorts of silverware and gold objets d’art. Isabella had no idea how much it was worth and didn’t care. The deal stipulated that he and his gang would drive the trucks across the border into Mexico and sell the goods there. And there was one other package that he had to take into Mexico.

  Isabella went to her father’s room. She opened the door and looked at the old man asleep on the bed. Her hatred of him was palatable. She thought of her mother and how miserable this old man had made her. Life would have been so wonderful if he’d never been around. She pulled the gun from a pocket in her jacket and shot him in the head. The noise was terrible—but Isabella felt free.

  The goon and two of his men rolled Andres Ortega, the once-powerful drug lord, into an old blanket and took him to the truck. They would dispose of the body in Mexico. As a precaution against these evil men trying to blackmail her in the future, Isabella would shortly contact the cartel, say that the guards had killed her father, and tell them of their destination in Mexico, adding that they had trucks full of valuables. Isabella gave the man some money, as they’d agreed, and left, never looking back at her childhood home.

  She drove to Albuquerque and went to the hospital—her cuts needed medical attention. She was finally allowed to just be Isabella, not a treasure to be owned by someone else.

  She had a plan. She’d turn herself in to the Albuquerque police after a few days. She’d demand to see that T or C private investigator who had been nosing around on behalf of the Governor. They’d be so excited to get her story, they’d screw it up some way. She knew no one could tie her into the murders of her father and husband—she’d confess just to the drug business. Her plan was to get off on everything, but if she had to she’d serve a little time for the drug trafficking she knew now that she could survive anywhere, even prison.

  Mr. Mayor

  Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

  “Well, if it’s not the Mayor himself. Do we call you Mr. Mayor or just Mayor—or maybe Mayor Big Jack?”

  “Very funny, Ray. I really don’t give a shit what you call me, just don’t call me on the goddamn phone. Did I promise hundreds of people a job with the city? I don’t think so. They just keep calling saying I said this or that—or even that my girlfriend said they could have a job. The phone doesn’t stop ringing. Not real sure I knew what I was signing up for as mayor.”

  “Maybe that’s why the ex-mayor was always in such a bad mood. By the way, who’s your girlfriend?”

  “Ray, you must have taken a funny pill today. Why am I here anyway?”

  “We’re going to have a wrap-up meeting to finalize what happened on the Ruidoso case, plus talk about what we have coming up.”

  “Is it too early to drink beer?”

  “Yes. Have you seen Tyee this morning?”

  “Nope. He’s probably out fishing. You know it’s been a long time since he could enter the tournament—I think he’s going to be hungry to win. Your butt is in trouble, Ray.”

  Tyee entered the room followed by Sue, Beverly, and Nancy. Big Jack made a face, or at least it looked like he made a face.

  “Looks more like a party than a meeting.”

  “Please come in and have a seat. This is going to be a wrap-up meeting regarding our recent case in Ruidoso. I want to make sure everyone has the facts about how it all turned out, and I want to kind of review how we handled everything. Plus, I want to go over where we are regarding new projects and how that’s going to be handled going forward.”

  “But first, I wanted to talk about some changes. Toward the end of the Ruidoso case I got pretty tired and grumpy. I think more than anything it was the driving all over the countryside and not being home. I even thought that maybe I just didn’t want to do this anymore. I think as a team we are pretty damn good, and we are going to be offered a lot of additional work from the state. Also, I received a call from FBI Agent Crawford and they have several matters they’d like us to get involved in. Much of what they have involves computer work and analyzing reports prepared by field agents. So we’re a little overburdened and now we’re going to have even more work. I asked Nancy and Beverly to be here to discuss the possibility of them helping us with various functions in the office. I know they’re doing the taco business, but I thought that—if they were interested—we could devise a schedule that would work for them and for us. And I know I probably should have brought this up in a different forum, but I thought it might be best to just get it out on the table and see what happened.”

  Nancy raised her hand.

  “You can just speak up Nancy—we’re pretty informal.”

  “When I left Albuquerque I was a paralegal and I think I was pretty good. I’d love to have some more income, so I’d be very interested in working with you all.” Nancy looked at Tyee and blushed. Ray was mostly oblivious to the things going on under the surface.

  Sue jumped in. “Ray sometimes just gets going without thinking about all of the ramifications. Beverly and Nancy, this is not a fair forum for Ray to ask you if you want to work at P&C. So you think about it, and you can tell us later.”

  “Well hell, I didn’t mean to embarrass anyone.”

  Beverly spoke up. “I’d love to work here—just tell me what to do. I don’t have Nancy’s background, but I’m good on the phone.”

  Everyone started talking at once. Ray had done this all wrong, but it had turned out to be just right. In a matter of minutes he had a decision and people working together—something that could have taken days if he’d talked one-on-one with each of them.

  “What I’d like to suggest is that Sue becomes the office manager. She can arrange everyone’s schedules and duties.”

  That made sense to everyone.

  “We’ll work out a bonus schedule for everyone based on the performance of the company—if we have profits, we’ll share them. I know we got into this business because we’re friends, and I want that to be the priority—maintaining our friendships, all of our friendships.”

  Ray changed the subject and started reviewing the Ruidoso case. He gave them all of the facts he had, plus what the governor had said would be the outcomes of the legal issues. They were surprised that Isabella was being released. Everyone agreed that Tony and Kate, while they’d been in the wrong, shouldn’t be prosecuted. They all felt bad about Dick Franklin, whom everyone agreed was probably the only completely innocent victim in the whole mess. No one cared much what happened to Tito.

  “Ray, don’t you think it’s an amazing coincidence that the same people from Houston ended up interacting in Ruidoso and also that Marino was associated with Kate’s fiancé and ended up marrying
her sister in Miami? Seems almost impossible that all of that could be connected.” Tyee was frowning, his disbelief showing through.

  “Yeah, it all seemed so odd—what do you make of it?” Big Jack also looked puzzled.

  “Well first, coincidences do happen. We don’t like to admit it, but they happen. I don’t have the facts to back this up, but I think most of this is tied to Marino. My guess is that there was some connection with the mob that brought Marino to Miami. Probably Marino had to get out of Houston in a hurry and knew someone in the mob in Miami. We know that Lisa’s father—Kate’s half-sister’s father—was socializing with the mob. I don’t know the details of how, but one way or another Marino made a connection with Lisa. She was in her rebellious phase and started using drugs, probably at the urging of the asshole Marino. We know all of that got bad and Marino had to leave before the father killed him. Now Marino needs a new place to go to. We haven’t been able to identify who it is, but I do believe he had a cousin in Ruidoso. Once Marino started to think about heading out to New Mexico, maybe he did some research and he found out that Tony was the Attorney General. Again, I’m guessing on the details, but the bottom line is that I think he knew the AG would be a benefit in some way because of what Marino thought he knew about Tony’s wife. He thought he could figure out an angle to blackmail the AG for his own gain. It’s almost certainly one of the reasons he moved to New Mexico—he thought he had leverage against the top law enforcement official in the state. That had to be very enticing to a thug like Marino.”

  Ray paused to let that much sink in.

  “The circumstances with Nelson being the make-believe police chief in Ruidoso were just chance. I don’t see any way that Marino could have known about Nelson before coming to Ruidoso. I can’t imagine any circumstances where Nelson would have sought out Marino in Miami—that was just bad luck for Nelson. I haven’t been able to prove this, but my guess is that Nelson was probably taking kickbacks from Marino in Houston, or Marino knew about him taking kickbacks from someone else. When Marino bumped into Nelson in Ruidoso, he leveraged his knowledge about Nelson into a job in the sheriff’s department. And then, once he had the job, proceeded to spread his usual misery.”

  “Of course, Nelson had already started his drug smuggling business before Marino showed up. When I talked to Nelson on the first trip to Ruidoso, his hatred of Marino was obviously real and intense. I should have known right then. That kind of hate isn’t casual or recent—this was hate with a whole lot of history. He knew Marino was trouble, and I believe he was going to kill him but stopped when Tyee and I showed up in his office. Once again this is just speculation, but I think Nelson backed off of his plan to eliminate Marino because suddenly people were watching.”

  “Not sure there are any winners in this small-town drama—although I think the county ended up with a much better sheriff and sheriff’s department. I guess all of the players contributed to their own downfall, but mostly it just seems sad to me that humans can be so easily attracted to evil.”

  “On a personal note. Sue and I are going to spend more time doing things that are not related to the PI business. We all need to decide how much time is enough for the business and how much we need for ourselves. We can work out schedules, pay, and other details so that you guys meet your goals as well. We’re people first and I want us all to be happy.”

  At the mention of his name, Happy began wagging his tail. Everyone laughed, although it looked like Beverly and Sue were crying a little.

  Sue pulled Ray aside afterward. “You are a good man Ray—maybe you should have been a priest.”

  “Can priests carry guns?”

  “If a priest has a gun, who’s going to take it away from him?”

  “I was wrong not to consult Tyee and Big Jack about Nancy and Beverly before springing that on them. Sometimes things just don’t register with me until it’s too late, and it’s almost always something to do with women.”

  “Don’t worry about it—it’ll work out. It almost always does.”

  “If I’m a priest, can you be a nun?”

  “I don’t think so, big boy.”

  Sue grabbed Ray’s hand and they headed to the cabin with Happy following. It couldn’t get any better than this.

  San Juan County Sheriff

  “The research on this San Juan County stuff is pretty amazing. If what I’m finding is right, the sheriff has managed to accumulate enough military hardware to start a pretty sizable war.” Tyee mentioned this as Ray walked into the computer room.

  “Pretty sure that’s not going to make the governor happy.”

  “Looks like it’s worse than just the governor being unhappy. I’ve tracked some of the travel of these military vehicles, and it appears they left the state and entered Colorado. I have no idea where this stuff went once it was inside Colorado, but I’ve checked and it definitely did not come back out of that state.”

  Ray was frowning. Not only was the wacko sheriff apparently accumulating old military hardware for his white supremacist take-over of God-knows-what, but he now had taken property of the state of New Mexico and moved it to Colorado. How do these people get elected?

  “How much equipment do you think we’re talking about?”

  “Well, over the last eighteen months I can track twelve armored vehicles, some of them described as having mounted weapons. One tank and two armored troop carriers. Of course, I can’t tell you what was inside the vehicles.”

  “Did you say tank?”

  “Yep. Just what a sheriff’s department needs—a tank, in case they’re invaded by the Chamber of Commerce.”

  “The governor is going to shit. Why would they move all that equipment into Colorado?”

  “All I can do is guess, but my first thought is that they have some kind of joint operation with like-minded morons in Colorado and they’re combining forces for some kind of action.”

  “Action? What the hell would that be?” Ray knew Tyee didn’t know—he was just yelling to blow off a little steam. They both knew he needed to call the governor and give him an update on the San Juan County military movements. Ray could hear the governor bellowing already—and his imaginary version of the reaction wasn’t far off.

  “What the fuck are you telling me Ray? The asshole San Juan sheriff is gathering an army in Colorado with New Mexico fucking equipment. Is the guy a complete moron? Is every sheriff in this state a goddamned idiot?”

  Ray hadn’t said much. The governor was asking some of the same rhetorical questions Ray had asked.

  “Ray, you know I could send in the National Guard, but I can’t order them to cross into Colorado. And that bastard of a governor in Colorado hates my ass and will gladly keep all of that stupid fuckin’ equipment if he finds out. Do you really think this guy is going to mount some kind of operation with these weapons?”

  “No, I don’t. I know some of these people—they just want to dress up in their uniforms and play war. I think the only people actually at risk are the participants, with some chance that one of their fellow loonies will shoot them.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right to me. But hell, I can’t let him take New Mexico assets into Colorado and not do something about it. Ray, I know this is beyond the scope of what we initially talked about on this, but could you and some of your people just go up to Farmington and snoop around and find out what the hell’s going on?”

  “Sure, governor. We’ll see what we can find out. It’s a long drive to Farmington—any chance the state patrol or somebody would have a plane we could use?”

  “Shit, Ray, I’ve got a plane. And I hate to fly. Consider it yours, along with two pilots. You now have an official air force to attack the loony sheriff’s army.” Ray sure hoped he was just being the oddball governor of New Mexico—he didn’t want to go to war, with or without an air force.

  Navajos, Apaches, militias, good sheriffs, and bad sheriffs are all drawn to a small town by millions in stolen money and a small army’s worth of s
tolen military equipment. Is this the start of a Four Corners War? Nothing is as it should be as Ray Pacheco and Tyee Chino try to untangle the mix of greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians and a slightly unhinged sheriff—along with the usual dead bodies.

  Farmington, New Mexico’s unique mix of cultures is the backdrop for Ray and Tyee’s most dangerous assignment to date from the bombastic Governor of New Mexico.

  Read on for a preview of Four Corners War...

  “Tyee, I can’t force you to get on the plane, but it’s a long drive to Farmington and if you don’t want to fly you’ll have to drive—alone.”

  Tyee was pouting, his expression that of a two-year-old—a very big two-year-old—about ready to have a tantrum. He kicked at the ground and gave Ray a dirty look.

  “Okay, I understand. You’re not comfortable in a small plane. But this,” Ray pointed at the aircraft behind them, “is really a big plane, with two engines and two professional pilots. They know what they’re doing.”

  “Bullshit Ray. This is the crazy governor’s plane with two pilots who may or may not know what they’re doing. You can fire me if you like, but I’m going to drive.” Tyee’s stubborn expression dared Ray to demand that he get on the plane.

  “What are you two arguing about?” Sue had walked up while Ray and Tyee were frowning at one another.

  “Tyee’s afraid to fly.”

  Tyee’s face got still darker. He crossed his arms and gave Ray a stare that was decidedly cold.

  “Well if Tyee isn’t flying, neither am I.”

  “What! Have you all lost your minds?” Ray stomped off in the other direction—toward nothing in particular. He seemed to be mumbling.

  This was not going as planned. Sue was coming along for the ride, to offer moral support and to take a break from her routine. Big Jack was babysitting Happy, with help from his new girlfriend, Beverly. Happy liked staying at Big Jack’s bait shop for reasons that only a dog could understand.