by Don Travis
Today Columbus initially appeared as a disruption astraddle the flat, monotonous highway. After entering the town of mostly one-storied adobe affairs—some painted in brash colors of green or pink—I found a bed-and-breakfast and registered for the night.
My carcass taken care of, I set out to tend my gullet. A hand-lettered sign reading Lupe’s Cocina drew me onto the porch and through the door of what could have been a residence. A tall woman with jet-black hair in a white peasant’s blouse and a dark midcalf skirt approached and bid me welcome. Her smile looked genuine—as opposed to commercial.
She seated me at a small table in the corner next to a rough wall of whitewashed plaster hung with colorful serapes and lace mantillas, introduced herself as Teresa, and handed me a menu. As she left to get my Dos Equis, her tall, tortoiseshell combs reminded me of Hazel’s, before my secretary’s recent transformation from dowdy plain to dowdy chic.
I scanned the menu and settled on a bowl of menudo—a traditional Mexican soup of tripe, hominy, and chili paste—and a couple of pork enchiladas with a side of black beans and rice. After giving Teresa my order, I sat back and sipped my beer, tuning in on the Spanish, Spanglish, and English conversations swirling around the small dining room. The two men at the table next to me spoke in English. The words “Mud Hen” caught my attention. Apparently, Quacky Quack’s ducknapping was the talk of the border country.
Teresa brought my order, and I went to work on the food, blocking out everything until I heard one of the men at the next table say he thought swiping the duck was a warning.
“Maybe old Mud Hen got herself mixed up in some across-the-border doings,” he said.
“She do seem to have plenty of money, even when the wells run dry,” the other one allowed.
Maybe my penchant for local history had paid an unexpected dividend.
Chapter 5
RANCHERS, LIKE farmers, generally rise with the sun, so I got on the road early Monday, breezing west along Highway 9 over a landscape dominated by creosote, locoweed, and wildflowers. Scattered clouds dotted the bright sky. The blue silhouette of the Cedar Mountain Range shadowed the horizon.
The weathercast this morning had predicted a high of ninety-nine degrees, but the temperature had not yet climbed to that point as I drove into the country that once sheltered the likes of Curly Bill, Old Man Clanton, and Dick Gray, desperados who hid out in the caves and canyons of the Boot Heel. Somewhere ahead of me stood a black oak with large knotholes where the outlaws left messages for one another in what is still called Post Office Canyon.
I passed a sign noting I crossed into Hidalgo County, a landmass of about thirty-five hundred square miles populated by fewer than five thousand residents. I smiled inwardly. I knew people back east who couldn’t conceive of such large ranches and small human populations this part of the country sported. Of course, they didn’t understand the meager carrying capacity of a single section of land. Sometimes just one cow/calf unit. The Gray Ranch, now called by its original name of the Diamond A, boasted 321,000 acres—a staggering 500 square miles. Alongside that, the M Lazy M was a piker.
I turned south on Highway 81. The ranch lay a fair distance from Hachita, the closest town, and as I had a considerable amount of work to do, I phoned Del to let him know I intended to take Bert Kurtz up on his offer to remain overnight. He wanted to clear it with the insurance company to make sure they wouldn’t consider it a conflict of interest should Mud Hen be involved in any sort of scam. He promised to call me back.
The M Lazy M lay hard against the Mexican state of Chihuahua just short of the Big Hatchet Mountains in the upper reaches of the Boot Heel. A cattle guard, flanked by a tall adobe arch bearing the ranch’s brand—two capital Ms, the second one lying on its side—marked the main gateway to the spread.
I stopped to snap a photo of the entrance before heading down a well-graded gravel road toward what I assumed would eventually lead to the ranch house. I snapped several pictures of the road and anything else of interest. Like crime scene investigators, PIs can’t function without loads of photos.
I traveled another ten miles with no sign of habitation, although white-faced cattle grazing in the distance identified this as a working ranch. At the end of the road, I encountered another fence, behind which loomed an odd-looking structure, one that appeared to have grown from a modest home into something of a monstrosity as succeeding generations of Muldrens left their stamp on the edifice, building first with wood, then with fieldstone and brick. The latest addition was adobe.
The place reminded me of Gothic novel cover art, although the graceful cottonwoods and sycamores scattered about the broad yard softened the effect. Even so, their towering presence on this landscape of stunted bushes and twisted piñons was almost as bizarre as the building itself. They had obviously been carefully nurtured by the first Ms, possibly even the Lazy M, until they dwarfed every other living thing within sight.
I parked in the gravel circle before the house between a late-model gray Lincoln and a vintage blue-and-white Corvette. Two big Dobermans trotted up to the car and regarded me solemnly. Just then the front door opened. Bert stepped over the threshold and greeted me with a wave. I rolled down my car window a couple of inches.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Vinson. Bruno and Hilda won’t bother you unless I put them on guard. Now the ferocious beast in the house, I’m not so sure of.”
“Right.” I cast a wary eye at the large animals and stepped more briskly than usual toward the broad, shaded veranda. I offered Bert a hand. “Most people call me BJ.”
He accepted my shake with a smile, casting an indulgent eye on the dogs. “BJ, I hope you had a pleasant ride. Missed the hottest part of the day, anyway. Welcome to the M Lazy M Ranch, or as most folks call her… the Lazy M.”
As he ushered me through the door, I took a good look at the Lazy M’s manager. According to my information, he was born in Silver City and raised on the Lazy M. Single but with a reputation for playing the field. Although Bert carried the reputation of a hard drinker, he was credited with running a good ranch.
A small, hairy bundle of energy with sharp, pointed ears and equally sharp teeth greeted us in a foyer laid with rough flagstone. The feisty beast emitted an endless series of sharp yips as it raced in circles around the life-sized wooly calf cast in bronze dominating the entryway.
“That’s Poopsie, Mom’s terrier. Eventually she’ll run down, but it takes a while.”
For a moment I thought I’d been transported to the Middle East, where affluent families purposely hid opulent interiors behind ugly exteriors. The living room, a high-ceilinged, rough-paneled expanse, probably comprised the entire original house. A bank of twelve-foot windows looked out over a green lawn extending all the way to a group of buildings and fences about a hundred yards distant.
Poopsie, who had transferred her attention from the bronze calf to my host’s boots, lost interest and wandered away. Kurtz pointed out a few things in the big common room: the mounted head of an antelope his father had killed, the rug made from a huge bear bagged by Granddaddy Muldren lying between a pair of heavy, overstuffed couches, and a board of mounted arrowheads he’d collected as a child. Rare pieces of Mimbres pottery, found on the ranch, lined a big fireplace mantel. I sized up Kurtz as someone easy to like and even easier to underestimate.
He knocked on a solid oak door and entered without waiting for an invitation. Two massive walnut desks, facing one another across a red-and-black Navajo rug that should have hung on the wall, dominated a room almost as large as the living area.
Poopsie scurried around us and jumped into the arms of a woman as she rose from the desk nearest the windows. I figured her at five ten and about one eighty. Big-boned, she was not fat despite the weight she carried. Millicent Muldren must have been in her early fifties with graying brown hair worn short in no particular style I could discern.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Vinson.” She acknowledged my introduction with a firm grip. “I hear you a
nd Bert met in Deming yesterday.” She touched her lips to the little dog’s head. “And this is my precious Poopsie. I hope you had a nice drive. You missed the hottest part of the day.”
Apparently finished with chitchat, she directed me to a black leather, brass-studded barrel chair and bluntly asked what I could tell her about her missing duck.
“Not a lot at this point, but you can answer a question for me.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out two white feathers. “I found these in a shed at the rear of Richard Martinson’s place, but I don’t believe they’re duck feathers.”
She snatched them from my hand and swiveled to the windows, holding the feathers to the light with shaking fingers. A large diamond set in a heavy gold ring caught the sun and sparked shards of multicolored light. Her hands clenched involuntarily.
“No. These are chicken feathers, thank God. Did you talk to that scaly lizard before he ran off the road and killed himself?” She handed the crushed white feathers back to me. “Sorry if that sounded crass, but they tell me I am crass.”
“I spoke to him in the emergency room at UNM hospital. He was being treated for some bad scratches. He’d developed blood poisoning, I believe.”
“Good for her!” she exclaimed. I deduced she meant Quacky for getting in her licks. Then the room momentarily went quiet except for the ticking of a clock, made preternaturally loud by the silence. Somehow I didn’t think this was in honor of Liver Lips Martinson’s memory.
“My poor baby!” Millicent’s cry shattered the moment.
A man was dead, and she worried about a damned bird. Well, to be fair, it was a $250,000 bird.
She leaned forward over the desk and fixed me with a pair of opal eyes. “You find her for me. I’ll pay you. Find her and bring her back home.”
I removed a tape recorder from the clip on my belt and laid it on her desk. “Do you mind if I record this interview?”
“No, of course not.”
“Bert?” I asked.
“Okay by me.”
I turned on the machine, stated whom I was interviewing, where and when, and had them repeat their agreement to be taped.
“Just to set the record straight, I’m working for the insurance company. If they want me to find the duck, then I’ll look for the duck. But I can’t work for both of you.”
“That’s okay.” She smiled. “They’ll tell you to find her. I’ll make sure of that.”
I briefly related the results of my abortive meeting with Martinson. “I’m convinced he took the duck, but he wouldn’t say why. Before I could talk to him again, his truck rolled over and killed him.”
“Shit!” she exclaimed.
“Who would want to steal the duck? Let me rephrase. Who would want Martinson to take the duck from you?”
“No one. At least, I can’t think of anyone. Can you, Bert?”
“Not offhand.”
“Have you been contacted for ransom?”
She let out a throaty cry. “You think they took her for ransom? Oh Lord. I hope so.” She looked at her son. “Has anyone called? Anyone at all?”
Bert shook his head. “Just a couple of business calls.”
“Is there anyone who would want to do you harm, Mrs. Muldren?”
“Call me Millicent,” she said. “And I’ll call you….”
“BJ. The world calls me BJ.”
“Well, the world calls me something else, but I’m an oddity. I like my name. Millicent. It has a good sound, I think.” She absently scratched a patch of white fur at Poopsie’s silky neck. The animal squirmed contentedly, her button eyes half-closed.
“That it does. But back to the question.”
“Half of Hidalgo County and half the state of Chihuahua across the border. And that doesn’t even include Grant and Luna Counties. And then there’s a few folks up in Santa Fe don’t like my politics. I’m an old-fashioned Republican. Notice I said ‘old-fashioned,’ not the kind we got up there now. That means both sides of the aisle would probably like to see me kicked over the hill. But to steal my baby? I don’t know anyone who’d do that.”
I glanced at Bert, who sat behind his desk. He had no reaction to his mother’s comments, so I led them through a series of questions about the ranch. The Lazy M not only ran cattle, it also bred and raised ducks as a commercial venture. The birds were sold for meat and eggs but were mostly prized for down. According to Millicent, Lazy M ducks were unsurpassed for down feathers.
Sometime after nightfall just shy of two weeks ago—Wednesday, July 9, to be exact—Poopsie had been making such a fuss that Bert put the little Yorkie out, presumably to do her business. Later he heard a clamor from the duck pen out back. When he and Luis Rael, the ranch’s groundskeeper, who also tended the domestic livestock, checked on it, they found the dog happily racing around herding ducks first one way and then the other.
They were mystified as to how the small dog had gotten through the fence until Millicent came out and discovered her prize duck missing. Someone had let the dog into the pen when they took Quacky. Despite an immediate search of the area, they found no sign of the intruder or the missing bird. They did, however, find the two Dobermans sound asleep near the front gate.
“The vet said it was tranquilizer darts,” Bert explained.
That meant the theft was planned. “Why didn’t you just race down that long road out front and cut him off at the gate?” I asked.
Bert’s Adam’s apple bobbled a couple of times. “I did send somebody down the road, but there are several ways off the property. Liver Lips was long gone before we found out what was going on.”
So far everything matched the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s report Del e-mailed me. “How did you know it was Martinson?”
“Didn’t at the time.” Millicent’s deep, rough voice seemed uncertain, tentative… yet forceful enough to command attention. “But it had to be someone familiar with the setup out here, and he’d worked for us off and on over the years.”
“Wouldn’t anyone familiar with the place know about the Yorkie too?”
“We’ve only had Poopsie for about a year. Liver hasn’t worked here in almost two.” She clasped her hands on the desk and absently twirled the square-cut diamond on her left ring finger. It looked like a man’s ring. Her late husband’s?
“How did you narrow it down to Martinson?”
Bert chuckled, which earned him a look from his mother. “Liver Lips never could keep his mouth shut. He told someone who told someone who told someone else he’d helped play a trick on Mud Hen.” Bert looked sheepish. “The whole countryside calls her that.”
“Certain elements of it, anyway.” She leaned back in her chair and ruffled her short hair. Poopsie looked to be asleep in her lap. “Eventually word got back to us.”
“Did you report this to the sheriff?” There had been no mention of it in the report I had.
Bert shook his head. “Didn’t bother. He’d have heard it already. So I went to see Liver. Found him in that run-down shack he lived in. Shook him up pretty good when he saw me, but he went dumb. Scared speechless, probably. I should have hauled him back to the ranch and got the truth out of him, but one of his neighbors showed up right then. It wouldn’t have been hard to squeeze the worthless son of a bitch. He wasn’t only liver-lipped, he was yellow-livered too.”
Given Bert’s penchant for fighting, it’s amazing there hadn’t been bruises on Martinson when I saw him in the emergency room. Probably because of that neighbor. “When did this happen?”
“Let’s see. This is Monday. That would have been a week ago today.”
I turned back to his mother. “What makes a duck worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars? That’s what you have her insured for, right? Frankly, I didn’t think an insurance company would take that kind of risk.”
“If you saw the premiums we pay on this place, you’d damned well know they’re going to insure anything I want them to.” Millicent rubbed her eyes with her thumbs. “Even though they watered down th
e policy until it was practically useless. As to what makes her worth that, come on and I’ll show you.”
She placed Poopsie on the floor and bounced out of her chair. I grabbed my tape recorder and followed Bert out the door. Millicent moved easily despite her bulk. I examined her as she led us across a pebble-encrusted concrete channel disguised as a creek bed on a decidedly out-of-place oriental-style bridge. Her back and shoulders were built like a man’s, a hefty man’s, but her broad hips were all female.
We were still ten yards from the fence when a cloud of white and orange rushed forward, emitting loud quacks and squawks and hisses. The Lazy M’s herd… gaggle of ducks.
Millicent halted at the fence and waved a hand over them. “I’ve been raising ducks since I was six years old. I bred this flock to give the best down feathers in these parts. I did that. Me. Without any fancy degree from a college that costs too much.”
I took that to be a backhanded swipe at Bert and NMSU.
“Quacky’s the best of the lot. I breed her with a special drake, and she gives us ducklings that grow up to be the best.”
“But surely their offspring give the same quality down,” I said.
“You’d think so. They give us good ducklings, but not great ducklings. Not like Quacky.”
“I think I heard somewhere that she’s the second Quacky.”
Millicent nodded. “Quacky Quack the Second. She came from another duck just as good as she was at giving quality offspring. When we found she did as well as her mama, we started to hope there’d be another duckling somewhere along the line that would do as good as she did. You know, a Quacky Quack the Third.”
“But you hadn’t found that duck yet?”
