Forcing Amaryllis

by Louise Ure

  The haircut part of the tradition made less sense to me. The locals said that if you cut your hair on San Juan Day, it would grow back lush and full and shiny. I wasn’t willing to turn down any offer of help right now, so on my way to mail the package to the DNA lab I took a detour to the walk-in, unisex hair salon on Broadway for that six-dollar haircut I had put off. I’d wait to see what kind of magic San Juan could work, but if his power had dried up like the Santa Cruz River, I might have to come back to the salon for highlights.

  Strike called at ten thirty.

  “I’ve got some work to do on Cates’s case today,” he said, “but I thought I could also stop at the No-Tell Motel in Nogales, see what they remember. Do you trust me on my own, or do you still want to come along?”

  I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the No-Tell Motel again. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

  If the trip to Nogales didn’t take more than a couple of hours, I could still get to the office after lunch. If it took longer, I was going to have to come up with something creative as an excuse for Jessica.

  When Strike pulled into the driveway, the roar of the engine set off my neighbor’s car alarm.

  “Wow, not just a muscle car—a muscle car on steroids,” I said. Strike made sure the car was in neutral, then revved the engine, and I watched the tach climb to 6000 rpm. I felt the vibration in my spine. I stepped back to admire the car, as I knew he expected me to. Black with gold stripes and tiny black and yellow Hertz insignias on the wheels. He revved the engine again.

  “It’s a ’66 Shelby Mustang, one of the original thousand or so that Ford sold to Hertz for use as rental cars. Most of ’em were automatics, but not this baby.”

  “Have you had it a long time?”

  “Almost fifteen years. I don’t drive it much. For some jobs, like when I have to follow someone or do a stakeout, it stands out too much. Then I borrow Enrique’s van.”

  Traffic was light, and he pushed the speed up to eighty as we headed south on Highway 83 toward the border.

  “What do you have to do for McCullough today?”

  “Meet with Salsipuedes. I want to make sure we’ve got all the details for his testimony.” He passed a slow-moving truck as if it were a turtle in the road, and I watched the dusty, olive green hills of San Rafael Valley’s cattle country pass by in a blur.

  “You seem to understand what this is like for me, Mr. Strike. Somehow I never expect men to understand. Do you have sisters?”

  “No, but I have an ex-wife.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  At first I didn’t think he was going to answer. “She looks a lot like that picture of Amy you showed me.”

  Now I understood why he was willing to help me. Amy’s picture made it personal for him. Made it too easy to imagine the same thing happening to his wife.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Maria. We’ve been separated about ten years now, but we’re still friends.” He huffed a short laugh. “The only thing I didn’t give her as part of the divorce was this car.” He tapped the steering wheel with affection.

  We were quiet for the rest of the trip, but a couple of times I caught him looking at me as if there was something important he wanted to ask. For my part, I was hoping this detour to the Cates ranch didn’t take too long, and I could still get back to work this afternoon.

  We slowed and pulled up to the entrance of the Cates ranch. Two vertical timbers as thick as telephone poles supported an arch over the entrance. There, a wrought-iron design two feet tall celebrated Cates’s Sleepy C brand: a recumbent letter C with small caret marks, like distant mountain peaks, on either side.

  The gate was closed but unlocked. I got out and swung it open, and Strike drove over the cattle guard. I shut the gate again behind him.

  A half mile of dirt road stretched between the gate and the main house. Strike was cursing under his breath at the abuse the Shelby was taking. He probably should have thought about these ranch roads before he pulled the car out of the garage. He downshifted to first gear and gingerly released the clutch.

  The sprawling house on the hill was visible all the way from the main road. It was two stories tall in the center where the original part of the house stood, with newer wings branching out on either side. One massive cottonwood shaded the front door and porch, and feathery-leafed mesquite trees dotted the landscape like surviving chess pieces near the end of a match.

  A barrel-chested, bandy-legged man appeared on the porch as we approached. He looked as though his voice would be a bellow.

  “That’s George Cates,” Strike said. “Ray’s father.”

  His jeans were cinched tight under a bulging stomach, as if his legs belonged to a smaller, less strident man. He strutted to the porch railing, his angled, cowboy-boot heels punishing the wooden slats at every step. He took a short hit off an unfiltered cigarette and ground the butt out under his heel.

  “Good morning, sir,” Strike said. “I’m working with your son’s lawyers, and I’ve come to see Hector Salsipuedes.” I nodded at Cates as if I was part of that introduction.

  “Good man, Hector. Lost his father when he was fifteen. Been like a son to me since then.” Cates senior spat to the side. “What do you want with him?”

  “I need to go over his testimony about the night he and Ray were drinking together.”

  “He already talked to the lawyers about that night. Leave him alone.” He turned to go back into the house.

  Strike narrowed his eyes and brushed the sides of his mustache with his thumb.

  “You’d probably rather have him talk to me than the police, Mr. Cates. He’s important to your son’s case, and we’ve got to make sure that he can answer any question the prosecutor puts to him at the trial.”

  Cates senior stopped short of the front door and pulled another cigarette from the stubby pack in his shirt pocket. “He’s down at the barn. Keep driving around this side of the house.” He motioned with his free hand.

  Strike nodded his thanks and nursed the car around to the left, careful to raise as little dust as possible and to avoid stones that could chip his pristine black paint job.

  “I don’t get it,” he said as we rounded the side of the house. “Salsipuedes is his son’s ticket out of this murder charge. George Cates should be parading him around like a Heisman Trophy.”

  “Maybe he’s not such a prize after all.”

  A new, bright red Ford F-350 pickup was snugged up next to the open barn door, and a rhythmic hammering came from inside the dark building. A round-faced Mexican in his late thirties came out, wiping his hands on an oil-crusted rag. He had a light, arc-shaped scar on his cheek. Like Cates senior, he wore his jeans tight under a rounded belly. The back hem of his pants dragged in the dirt.

  “Are you Salsipuedes?”

  “That’s me.”

  Strike turned to me. “Wait here. This won’t take long.” He opened the car door and approached Salsipuedes. I got out to stretch my legs but didn’t stray far, aware that my low shoes offered no protection from the all-too-present snakes in the area. The men’s voices carried to me clearly.

  “My name is Strike. I work for Raymond Cates’s lawyers, and I wanted to talk to you about that night you and Ray were drinking beer out here at the ranch.”

  Salsipuedes looked from side to side as if checking for avenues of escape, then gave a sigh of resignation.

  “Come on, then. I’ve got work to do on this truck.” He retreated to the building and knelt next to a round-fendered, rusty blue pickup truck that was sticking halfway out the barn door.

  McCullough had said that Salsipuedes had been with the Cates family for almost twenty years. His mother and siblings were still in Oaxaca, and Hector sent money down regularly, but he’d decided to settle into the life of a cowboy and ranch hand in Arizona.

  “About that night with Raymond. What do you remember?” Strike asked.

  Salsipuedes dug his fingers into a tin of dark grease and conti
nued to pack the wheel bearings. “It was a Monday, I think. I spent the day moving the cattle to the south pasture. I hadn’t seen Ray all day. I was finishing my chores about nine thirty at night when he pulled in. We grabbed a couple of beers and drove over to where the herd was.”

  “How do you know it was nine thirty?”

  “I don’t know for sure; I don’t wear a watch. Anyway, we just sat on the hood of the truck, had a couple of beers, and watched the moon. It couldn’t have been much later than nine thirty because it was only midnight when I got back to the bunkhouse.” That tracked with what he’d told McCullough and Merchant. Salsipuedes kept working, his eyes on the rusty parts in front of him.

  “How come you’re trying to fix up this old worn-out truck when you’ve got a brand new one out there?”

  Salsipuedes jerked his head up and looked at Strike before glancing at the F-350 and then back to the mechanical task at hand. “Ranch gotta have more than one truck to get the job done,” he mumbled.

  “That one’s kinda fancy for ranch work, isn’t it?” Strike asked. “Leather seats and all?”

  “That’s none of your business.” Salsipuedes swatted his thigh with his hat as if ridding himself of a pesky gnat.

  Strike said he had a few more questions, and I walked back around the new Ford, keeping an ear cocked for the leathery passage of a snake. When the ranch hand turned his back to me, I jotted down the license numbers of both trucks, and the long vehicle identification number from the metal tag on the dashboard of the new truck.

  After a few minutes Strike thanked him and returned to the car. He pulled out his notebook, looked back toward the barn where Salsipuedes sat hunched over the disassembled car parts, and started to write down the plate numbers.

  “I already got ’em.” I waggled the paper with the numbers under his nose.

  His mustache curled up with his smile. “That’s my girl. How’d you know to do that?”

  I waited until we drove over the cattle guard. “Did you see the Sacred Heart scapular and the fuzzy dice hanging on the mirror of that new truck? That’s no ranch vehicle.”

  Strike smiled. “And if it belongs to Salsipuedes, I wonder how a hired hand can afford the payments. That truck would have run close to fifty thousand the way it’s tricked out.”

  When we reached the main road, I closed the gate behind us again and got back in the car. “I know how we can get some more information about who owns that truck.” I fanned myself with the notepaper.

  “I’ve got a few ideas, too. How about some air-conditioning and a burger to get us started?”

  It took twenty minutes to get from the ranch to the tiny town of Patagonia and the air-conditioned Old Gringo Bar.

  Patagonia has always been cattle country, but up until World War II it had also been a town full of hard-digging and hard-drinking miners from the surrounding hills. The Old Gringo Bar looked as if it might still carry the echo of their drunken shouts.

  It was a small building with tiny, barred windows, a red brick base, and wooden slats from knee level up. I followed Strike inside, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness as the door shut behind me.

  Six round tables with mismatched chairs squatted to my left, and there was a long wooden bar on my right. The men at three of the tables looked up as we entered; then, not seeing anything to amuse or intrigue them, returned to their food. Not another woman in sight except an elderly waitress in a short, hot pink skirt.

  We each ordered a draft beer and a cheeseburger, then Strike asked for the pay phone. Luckily, it was at the far end of the room from the diners and tucked into an alcove with a three-legged stool.

  I excused myself to go to the restroom. After I washed my hands and grimaced at the too-sallow face in the mirror, I heard Strike’s voice just outside the door. I waited there, with my hand on the knob, to eavesdrop.

  “Wells Fargo?” he said. “Molly Trenchant, please.”

  Then a moment later, “Molly? It’s Tony Strike… . I know. I’ve been busy. But I’ll make it up to you.”

  He paused to concoct his lie.

  “There’s a guy who owes me money, but he says he’s broke and can’t pay me back. I need to find out if that’s the truth or if he’s been spending the money on something else. He lives in Patagonia, and you’re the biggest bank in town, so he’s probably got an account with you. Can you help me?” A heartbeat later, he added, “Please, honey.”

  Strike gave her Salsipuedes’s details, then I heard the scratchy-pencil sound of his note-taking.

  “Uh-huh. That’s not much in savings. Uh-huh. And that’s how often? Every two weeks. Got it.” There was a moment’s silence. “No big deposit or withdrawal recently? … Uh, no, I gave him money months ago.”

  I left the restroom and brushed past Strike on my way back to the bar. When he finished his call and joined me, he ignored the cheeseburger and gulped down half of his beer.

  He told me about the call to Wells Fargo, and I pretended I didn’t already know.

  “Was that the part you couldn’t hear over the toilet flushing?” Strike asked with a straight face.

  The color rose on my cheeks.

  “I guess you really don’t trust me to do my job alone.” He nudged me with a denim-clad elbow, then continued with his report.

  “Salsipuedes deposits two fifty every two weeks,” he said. “That’s probably his paycheck from Cates. His room and board is already paid for at the ranch, but that still only gives him about sixty-five hundred of income annually. Not nearly enough to afford a down payment on that truck with all the extras it’s got and still send money back to Oaxaca. Maybe the truck’s not his.”

  “That’s one thing we can check right now,” I said. “Let’s see if there’s Internet access at the library.” We finished the onion-laden burgers and walked three blocks to the city library on Duquesne.

  The young woman behind the desk wore a nametag that said “Nicole. Library Volunteer.” She looked as if she might still be in high school herself. She collected a credit card from Strike and showed us to an available computer.

  I logged on to the VIN search site I had seen my insurance company use when we had to track down the car that had dented my Jeep in a parking lot. It would only take a second before the information I entered was matched to the current owner.

  I tried the license number for the old blue truck first. The listed owner was George Cates. Then I typed in the long string of vehicle identification numbers for the new F-350.

  “Marta Veracruz? Who’s that?” It showed her address as a PO box in Patagonia.

  I logged off and went in search of a local phone book. There were lots of Veracruzes listed, but no Martas.

  Strike took my notes up to the desk. “Nicole? Where would I find this post office box?”

  “There are a couple of mailing places in town, but I guess I’d start with the post office on Taylor.” She gave him directions through a wad of spearmint-scented gum. We paid for the small amount of computer time we’d used and headed back outside.

  At the post office, I pretended to fill out international mailing forms while Strike approached the clerk, a middle-aged man with thick glasses and comb-over hair.

  “Hi there. I need to pick up my mail, but I forgot my key. Can you check box 1825 for me, please? The name’s Veracruz.”

  The clerk squinted and pushed his glasses back up with the middle finger of his right hand. “Veracruz? Are you sure? Mr. Salsipuedes already picked up his mother’s mail today.”

  Strike thanked him and hustled me out of the building before I could squeak in surprise. When we reached the car, I opened the door and leaned across the roof, waiting for the interior to cool.

  “Marta Veracruz is Salsipuedes’s mother? So if this sweet old woman in Oaxaca needs money from her son in Arizona, how do you suppose she can afford a new truck like that?”

  “I think I know how to find out,” Strike said. “Did you see the license-plate holder on that truck? Jim Click Ford in
Green Valley. We’ll ask the guys who sold it to her. Let’s head to Nogales first, then on the way home, stop in Green Valley and pay a visit to the Ford dealership. And for that one you get to play my wife.”

  9

  I squinted against the blowing dust and debris. Arizona summers were not flattering to Nogales. It was midafternoon, and the temperature had soared to a hundred and nine. Buildings shimmered in the heat waves rising from the asphalt. I’ll bet Strike was mentally kicking himself for driving the Shelby today. I would have preferred any car with air-conditioning. My shirt made a wet, sucking sound when I leaned forward in the seat.

  Three of the bigger structures downtown had new white paint jobs that contrasted with the neglected, illused buildings around them like dentures in an old man’s face. We looped through downtown and headed east.

  The No-Tell Motel was on the outskirts of town near the rodeo grounds. It didn’t look like it had changed much in the seven years since I’d last been there. Two stories of concrete and rebar with vaguely Mayan designs on the burnt orange walls. The sign out front still said they had “rooms to let by the half hour” for those who didn’t think much of their staying power.

  Weeds sprouted through the cracked concrete in front of the office, and a dust devil swirled through the parking lot. I watched Strike push the heavy glass entry door and heard a small bell ping to alert the desk clerk that he had a customer.

  The man who came out of the back room looked like a desert tortoise, his long neck and leathery skin shown off by a sleeveless white undershirt. Wife-beater underwear, Jessica called that style. His hairline had retreated to a U-shape at the top of his head, and tufts of gray hair waved in the breeze from the window air conditioner. I was willing to bet this was the only working air conditioner in the motel.