“According to the LAPD, Monica couldn’t have planned it much better. She and Hope Montgomery were close to the same age and not dissimilar in size and coloring. She drugged Hope with a bottle of sleeping pills, switched all their ID, and took Hope’s body out to the ocean. Before dumping her off a pier, she battered her face so badly that no one would positively identify her. With Monica’s wallet full of credit cards and identification, it was assumed that Monica had drowned and the surf had beaten her body against the pilings.”
“But how did Monica fool Hope’s friends?” Drake asked.
“Right away she disappeared. Left word with Hope’s closest friends that she was checking into a clinic to deal with the depression she was feeling over her father’s death. Actually, she went to a doctor who performed a few surgical miracles, then to a spa where she acquired the right weight, hair color, and makeup techniques. She was an actress preparing for the role of her life.”
I shook my head in disbelief. It was still a gutsy thing to do.
“Remember,” Steve continued, “the real Hope hadn’t been in California all that long. She’d only appeared on the scene a few months earlier, after Monty died. Monty himself was somewhat of a recluse, the inventor who stayed in his lab, so Hope didn’t have too many people to deal with. And even Monty’s lawyers and the other people involved with his estate had only met her a couple of times. Monica believed she could pull it off and she did.”
Eloy had finished tying down the rotor blades and hooking up the tug to pull the helicopter inside. He joined us just as Steve was leaving. They shook hands and Steve murmured a few encouraging words to his cousin. He drove away while Eloy rolled the aircraft into the hangar and Drake filled out his logbooks.
I called Fred Montgomery at his hotel and briefed him on everything that had happened.
“Boy, oh boy,” he said. “I betcha she nearly panicked when we brought that lawsuit. Nobody had really questioned her until then, I’ll bet. Here we thought she was afraid she’d have to give up some of that inheritance, and all along she was afraid we’d known the real Hope and could tell the truth about the imposter.”
“You got it,” I confirmed. “Well, now that we know what happened to the real Hope, it looks like you just might get that inheritance after all. Call your attorney back and see what he can do for you.”
“I sure will, Miss Charlie,” he said. I could practically hear his wide grin over the phone and I grinned with him. “And you send us the bill for your time on all this. We just cain’t tell you enough how much we appreciate everything.”
Drake and I decided to have a celebratory lunch in town, so we headed for Michael’s Kitchen for another dose of chile.
“Speaking of attorneys,” I said.
“Were we?”
“New train of thought. Telling Fred to contact his attorney reminded me that Eloy’s brother-in-law who is supposed to be representing him has been awfully quiet recently. Maybe I should plan to pop in on him and find out what’s going on.”
Still feeling at the top of my game, I told Drake I also thought it would be a good idea to visit the church in Albuquerque where Ramon’s was killed. Seeing the spot might give me a better feel for what might have happened. Our food arrived just then and we concentrated on digging into stuffed sopapillas with chicken and green chile.
Mike Ortiz’s office building looked quiet, again giving the impression that he didn’t have much of a practice. Drake opted to wait in the truck and listen to his favorite country music station on the radio while I went inside. The reception area was silent except for the gentle hum of a computer; his receptionist was not at her desk. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around at the shabby furnishings, assuming the secretary would appear any moment now.
Mike’s voice trickled through the open door to his private office, coming to me in bits as he apparently paced back and forth.
“Don’t worry about . . . be okay . . . resolved soon . . . I know. ’Bye.” The handset clicked down definitively and he muttered an expletive.
I tapped on his doorjamb.
“Mike?” He started visibly. “Sorry to interrupt. Your receptionist doesn’t seem to be here.”
He flopped down in his chair and raked his fingers through his hair. “Oh. She must not be back from the bank yet.”
“I was in town anyway,” I told him, “so I thought I’d see how things are going with Eloy’s case.”
“Nothing much new on it. You knew the judge in Albuquerque set the trial date for April.”
“No—that soon?” It wasn’t giving us much time to get evidence to clear him.
“Yeah. And my wife”—he glared at the telephone—“keeps bugging me about what I’m doing to save her dear little brother.” He shuffled a couple of folders on the cluttered desk. “So, what can I do for you?” His tone let me know that I was just one more interruption he didn’t really want.
“I’ll keep it brief,” I said. I filled him in quickly on what I’d learned from the diaries, although I didn’t say how I’d gotten the information.
“I don’t exactly think this is hold-the-presses news,” he said sarcastically. “There were other rumors about women over the years. The part about the artifacts is news to me, but I don’t know if I could call it surprising.”
“So Ramon the saint wasn’t—except in his mother’s eyes.”
“And his sister’s,” he added glumly.
“Well, I’m still working on it,” I assured him. “I’m not sure how or why Eloy’s gun comes into it, but I think these other guys believed Ramon was dangerous to them and decided to get him out of the picture. Or there’s always the possibility that it was motivated by simple jealousy. That scorned husband had plenty of motive. How he could have performed the switch with the gun is the big question.”
“I don’t know either,” Ortiz agreed. “I’m working on the legal aspects of it. Trying to find a precedent we can use to either get the case thrown out or get the sentence reduced if it comes to that.”
So the truth didn’t really matter, once the case got to court, nearly as much as finding a legal loophole. Guess that wasn’t exactly stop-the-presses news either. I left the office not feeling very hopeful for Eloy.
Drake was dozing when I walked out to the truck.
“Siesta time?” I teased.
He stretched and yawned. “Guess I didn’t sleep too well in that hotel room last night. And people like Hope and her friends wear me down with their constantly changing desires. ‘Go here, go there’ all the time. You know, they actually wanted to dash off to L.A. ‘on the way home’ from Vegas?”
I patiently let him rant. “You’re tired,” I said.
“Yes. Let’s go home.”
I had the feeling he meant really go home, to Albuquerque, to our own house. But that would still be awhile. He had a commitment here and the contractors still had a lot of work to do before our place would be habitable. We started up the ski valley road again.
Back at the cabin, I spent a few minutes gathering the billing information for Fred and Susie Montgomery’s file, which I e-mailed back to our Albuquerque office so Tammy could compile a bill and mail it. Drake took his time under the hot shower and emerged looking somewhat refreshed. We decided that he should take a nap, I would plan something nice for tonight’s dinner, and then we’d spend a couple of days simply being lazy—at least until the phone interrupted. I turned off the ringer while Drake slept.
By the time the interruption came, Wednesday morning, we were feeling satisfied in just about every way. Plenty of food, plenty of sleep, and well . . . we were on our honeymoon, after all. I’d taken Drake to see the huge boulder and picnic area Rusty and I had found, and we trekked up to the overlook one afternoon. So the phone call, when it came, wasn’t entirely welcome but it didn’t really interrupt anything either.
“That was Eloy,” Drake said, hanging up. “He just happened to get to talking with some guy in the bar at the Sagebrush last night,
and this guy is a film producer doing a documentary. Wanted to know if there were any helicopters for charter around here.”
“And Eloy set it all up?”
“No, I still have to call the guy and make the arrangements.” He spent about forty-five minutes on the phone, with aeronautical charts spread over the kitchen table and a notepad rapidly being filled with numbers and scribbles.
“Okay,” he finally said, after hanging up. “They want a series of shots along the New Mexico-Colorado border, all the way from here to Trinidad.” He showed me the route he’d drawn on the map. “Looks like it’ll be good for at least two days of filming, because they want sunsets in both these places,” he said, pointing.
“That’s great. Should be worth some money, huh?”
He punched buttons on his calculator. “Not bad. And, they have all their own equipment, including the Tyler Mount so I don’t have to rent one.” The special helicopter camera mount that most professional film people used was so expensive that we’d not budgeted for one yet.
“If you’ll be gone for a couple of days, I may just use that time to go back to Albuquerque and check on our construction project again. Plus, I have a few more people I want to question about Eloy’s situation.”
He looked at me sideways. “Just don’t be taking a lot of chances for Eloy’s sake,” he cautioned. “That’s what he has a lawyer for. And I don’t want any of these desperate characters coming after you.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of confidence in Mike Ortiz,” I said. “He doesn’t seem to be doing anything to clear Eloy. He’s just snagging at loopholes in the law.” I hadn’t mentioned the midnight visitor the other night and didn’t do it now either.
Chapter 18
The traffic began building north of Santa Fe and became heavier and heavier between the capital city and Albuquerque. By the time I reached the outskirts of my home town, it was bumper-to-bumper at seventy-five miles an hour. I let loose with a curse as a blue sports car, tired of riding the tail of the pickup truck in the left lane, zipped in front of me with centimeters to spare. Albuquerque’s drivers are notorious for making frequent and rapid lane changes, the only apparent goal being to gain one or two car lengths and arrive at their destinations three or four seconds ahead of their rivals in traffic. The longer I stayed in the mountains, the less I liked driving in the city.
Although it was after five o’clock a sense of duty determined that my first stop would be the RJP offices. Just a few blocks from the downtown area, the gray and white Victorian waited with steady reassurance. The high-rise office buildings that sat in a small cluster around the cross comprised of the north-south railroad tracks and the east-west Central Avenue corridor which delineated the city’s four quadrants had emptied by now. Commuters were clogging the two interstate freeways, as I could attest, in their rush to swarm back to the suburbs.
Someone had once commented to me that Albuquerque has very little “city” atmosphere. In the traditional sense, where a city has tall buildings, mom and pop restaurants and shops, and easy availability of cabs, that’s true. It’s more like a dime-sized city centered on a tabletop of sprawling tract homes, strip shopping centers, and six-lane streets where fast food joints segregate themselves from the car dealerships who segregate themselves from the hotels. Sprawl is the modern name for it, but mainly it means that to accomplish five errands you have to drive ten or fifteen miles.
I parked behind the office and let Rusty run around the back yard while I unlocked the back door. Tammy’s car was gone but Ron’s convertible was still here. I called out to him as I entered.
His answering bellow led me upstairs where I found him carrying a cup of coffee toward his office. He set the cup on his desk and turned to give me a hug.
“How’s the honeymoon going?” he grinned.
“Just about perfect,” I told him. “It would be absolutely perfect if work didn’t keep interfering. But the tradeoff is that we get to be there three months instead of a week, like most couples get.”
“True. Here, I think I have some info for you on your murdered priest.” He reached across a remarkably neat desk to pluck a folder from the corner of it.
“Hey, what’s this?” I gaped. “Giving up your slovenly ways?”
“Tammy. The girl’s determined to reform me.”
“And you let her?” I’d been trying to impress the benefits of organization upon Ron for years.
“She came in here one day and made me start sorting things. Then she filed away all the old cases, brought the billing up to date, and organized the current cases by priority and set up a spreadsheet on the computer for them. She’s making me enter my time and expenses every day.” He looked slightly rueful as he said this. “Only thing is, I didn’t let her touch my Rolodex.”
Wow. Maybe Tammy would work out after all. She’d certainly gotten more accomplished in this room than I’d ever seen.
Ron took a sip from his coffee and offered to get me a cup.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “I really need one of Pedro’s margaritas. Let’s get some dinner there and you can fill me in. Later, when I get back, I’ll read through the file.”
Salty margaritas, along with chicken enchiladas smothered in cheese and green chile are more of a staple in my diet than bread, and Pedro and his wife Concha make them like no one else. We found a spot in the tiny parking area in front of their adobe restaurant where they live in the apartment upstairs, just a block off the touristy Old Town Plaza. Two vehicles I didn’t recognize were parked there, along with the familiar battered pickup truck of Manny, another regular. Manny is a man of few words. He always sits at a corner table, the opposite corner of our usual spot, and downs tequila shooters like he has the insides of a teenager. He lifted his grizzled chin in greeting as we walked in.
“Hey! There’s our Charlie!” Concha greeted me with more than her usual exuberance, pulling me into a hug against her pillowlike front. “Where have you been?”
Obviously, I’m such a regular here that not showing up for a couple of weeks created cause for great concern.
“On my honeymoon, remember?”
She beamed at me slyly. “And where is that handsome groom of yours?”
“I had to leave him.” I placed my hand solemnly on her forearm.
“No!” Her deep brown face almost went white.
I relaxed my expression. “Not forever, silly. He had a charter and I needed to come back to town to see how our house is coming along.”
“Don’t you tease me like that,” she scolded.
I got the feeling that if Concha hadn’t already been married to wiry little Pedro, she might have tried to give me some serious competition for Drake. From the moment I’d brought him here, she had fawned over him completely. Of course, she also fawned over me and Ron, like we’re just a few more in the brood she and Pedro raised.
“Margaritas!” Pedro’s voice announced the arrival of our favorite libation. He set them down on our usual table with ceremony, then put his tray aside to give me a hug. “It’s good to see you again, chiquita.”
“Now, you get back in that kitchen and make their enchiladas,” Concha instructed him. She bustled off to check on her other tables.
Ron and I clicked glasses before I slurped mine, taking a good lick of salt off the rim. We munched on tortilla chips and Pedro’s special salsa until the enchiladas arrived.
“So, what did APD have to say about the Ramon Romero murder?” I asked.
“They chalked it up to a drive-by gone wrong. Back when it happened they interviewed just about everyone in the neighborhood. It happened on an autumn evening, weather was nice, and services at the church had been over for thirty minutes or so. The church is Our Lady of Lourdes, down in the north valley, on Fourth Street, I think, but you’d have to check the file on that.”
Fourth and Second are both commercial streets with a fair amount of daytime traffic but much quieter in the evenings. Surely the area was
well-lit and not isolated.
“The parishioners of Lourdes live mostly within a five mile radius, but there aren’t any residences directly around it. The closest homes are a block or two off Fourth, on the side streets. So there weren’t any eyewitnesses, no one really close enough to identify the shots or what direction they came from.
“The shots, three of them, were fired from some distance away. That is, there was no evidence of a close-range shot. The first supposition was that someone may have knocked on the door of the church to lure Father Romero out, then shot him. Flaws in that theory are, one, why would they knock? The church is unlocked and they could have gone in and done the dirty deed much more privately. Two, they would have had to knock on the door then run down to the street to fire the shots. Seems like it would have attracted less attention and been less chance of missing their shot if they’d stayed close up.”
Pedro arrived with our plates just then and we waited until he was again out of earshot.
“So, instead, the police settled on a drive-by?” I mumbled with my mouth half full.
“There’s also been gang activity in the area,” Ron continued. “It’s a part of town where there have been rumbles for decades, but until recent years the weapons of choice were usually limited to brass knuckles and chains. Now it’s spray paint and automatic weapons.
“Lourdes had been a target of some graffiti tagging and Father Romero had been vocal in his declarations against it. Probably wasn’t the most popular guy in the neighborhood.”
Honeymoons Can Be Murder: The Sixth Charlie Parker Mystery (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) Page 15
