“Some of each.”
He raised his eyebrows and held up the key.
“Number eight was rented with the furniture.” The baby in the background was really wailing away now, and the woman said she needed to go.
Beau and Walters walked nearly to the end of the little strip. Each apartment had a brown door and two windows, most curtained. Beau rapped at the one with the cheap brass 8 on the door and wasn’t the least bit surprised when no one answered. Using the key, they entered.
Despite the furniture, the apartment had an empty feel. The layout consisted of a living room with extension to a tiny galley kitchen and enough dining space for a small round table and two chairs; a bedroom with double bed and a bathroom smaller than those in most hotel rooms completed the picture. Brown carpet, tan sofa and chair. An empty TV stand. Double bed and an upright chest of drawers in the bedroom. The closet held women’s clothing in a size six, and on the floor was a large black suitcase.
When they investigated, they discovered it held three men’s suits, six dress shirts, four casual button-down shirts, a new package of black socks, a pair of good quality black shoes (male, size 9) and a paper sack full of cash.
The latter was neatly bundled in stacks and banded in paper wrappers, although the bills were not new.
“Looks like we may be able to make refunds to some of those folks who were fleeced,” Walters commented.
“I’ll need to log it in as evidence, and we need to take statements from the victims. I sure hate to see this thing get tangled up in court though, especially if Ramona shows up and insists this is money Percy legitimately won at the casino.” Before any of that happened, Beau knew he would need a warrant. Right now they were here unofficially, trying to learn more about their murder victim.
Walters grumbled a bit about how law enforcement used to be a lot simpler. He was a man who liked the old-school methods.
“Meanwhile, I’ll make the calls to get the paperwork started,” Beau said, “and I want somebody out here in a plain car to watch the place to be sure Missy or Ramona or whoever she really is doesn’t come back and clean the place out.”
He pulled out his phone and made a call to the judge most reasonable about search warrants. Walters continued to poke around in drawers. He came up with several lottery tickets and a business card.
“Isn’t this the same guy you already talked to?” he said, holding the card out to Beau as soon as he’d finished leaving a message for the judge.
Grant Mangle Enterprises. “Yes, indeed. More evidence that blows a hole in the guy’s story about a one-time meeting.”
Beau remembered the way Mangle had sweated over his questions. A little more background on the property manager could give Beau firmer footing for their next round.
“Look at this.” Walters held up a small paper envelope. It looked remarkably like the one Beau remembered seeing Percy receive at the casino. The tape hadn’t caught a lot of detail. Beau took the envelope and looked inside.
A diamond ring. It could be a twin sister to the one Missy had used as bait for Daisy Ruiz at the pawnshop.
Chapter 29
Judge Albright called back while Beau was debating about leaving the diamond ring, the cash, and the other evidence behind.
“Sheriff,” the judge said. “Your message said this warrant request was urgent?”
“We’ve got a suspect who’s tied to a number of con games, and she has already skipped from California and ended up here in Taos.” He didn’t want to mention that he’d basically ordered Ramona to leave town. “We’d like to search her apartment for evidence that would tie her to several of the victims who have lost their money. And since the woman’s husband died a few days ago under suspicious circumstances, we need to see whether his death can be explained by anything in the home, as well.”
“Two cases for the price of one warrant, it seems,” Albright said with a chuckle.
“Basically, yeah.”
The judge agreed to issue the warrant and reminded Beau he needed to have the document in hand when he entered the premises. Beau sensed the wink in Albright’s demeanor—here was a man who’d been known to look the other way a time or two—but knew he’d better play by the rules when dealing with someone as slippery as Ramona Lukinger.
He immediately called Rico and told him he could abandon the video footage long enough to run by the courthouse and bring the paperwork to the apartment, where he and Walters would meet him out front. Meanwhile, Beau remembered he’d been on the way to visit Grant Mangle again when the pawnshop call had come in yesterday.
Thirty long minutes passed while they stayed warm in the cruiser, keeping an eye on the apartment door in case Ramona should be so foolish as to pull into the lot with a department vehicle sitting there. Rico seemed happy to be out from behind his video monitor. He didn’t squawk a bit about presenting the warrant to the apartment manager and staying behind to help Walters bag evidence and finish searching the hidden crannies of the suspect’s residence.
Beau left the two deputies to handle the search while he drove back to the office of Grant Mangle Enterprises, toting with him the small envelope Walters had just discovered. He parked in the lot of a fast-food restaurant next to Mangle’s building and walked over. The man looked up from his computer screen when Beau pushed open the glass door, surprise registering on his face.
“Hey, Grant,” Beau said as he strolled toward the desk.
“Well, Sheriff, you’re back.” Mangle made no move to stand or shake hands.
“Yeah. Seems there was a little more to your encounter with Percy Lukinger that you forgot to mention.” He pulled out the bagged envelope from Missy Malone’s apartment.
Mangle’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he got his reaction under control.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Taos casino. December fifteenth.”
“Sheriff, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” His eyes couldn’t quite look straight at Beau.
“It’s on the casino’s video surveillance tape. You walked up to Percy Lukinger—you called him John Lukinger, if you’ll recall—and handed him this envelope. It contains a diamond ring. A man doesn’t usually give another man a diamond ring, unless it’s some kind of a business deal.”
Mangle took a deep breath and repeated his insistence that he didn’t know anything about the incident or the ring.
Beau knew when to back off. The guy clearly wasn’t about to blurt out an explanation that might prove to be his undoing, and this type was more likely to shut up and call his lawyer if pushed too hard.
“Okay, then. Thanks. If I think of anything else, we’ll be back in touch.”
“Fine.” Mangle picked up his coffee mug, trying to look nonchalant, but the liquid sloshed and he set it down again.
Beau suppressed a smile and walked out. Halfway across the parking lot, he turned and caught Mangle standing at his office window, staring. Beau got in his cruiser and pulled onto the street. Half a block later, he circled and found a spot where he could see the property manager’s vehicle parked behind his office.
Less than five minutes later Mangle emerged, got into the Cadillac, and drove northward out of the alley. Beau followed, staying two blocks behind. When they got into the congested area around the plaza, Mangle pulled into the public parking lot on Calle de la Placita, and Beau knew he would be spotted if he followed. He stopped on the street and watched the man drop coins in one of the meters and pull his coat tighter around himself as he set off walking toward the plaza shops. He was debating whether to follow on foot when a voice came over his radio.
“Sheriff, Travis here. You copy?”
Beau watched Mangle disappear around a corner as he answered. “Yeah, Travis.”
“Interesting stuff has come up about our suspect.”
Grant Mangle’s face popped into Beau’s mind, until he realized Travis had to be talking
about Ramona Lukinger.
“I’m only a block away. I’ll be right there,” Beau told his deputy, with a final glance toward the place where Mangle had last been seen.
He knew the man was hiding something, and it had to do with the diamond ring in the small envelope they’d found, but darned if he could figure out how it all fit together. He started the cruiser once again and was walking in the door of the squad room five minutes later.
“Look at this, boss,” Travis said, pointing at his computer monitor, before Beau had even removed his jacket.
Beau hooked the coat on the rack near the door and stepped to the deputy’s desk.
“Ramona and Percy Lukinger were living in San Diego until a few months ago. There’s a string of cases where they were questioned.”
“What about?”
“Well, let’s see … There’s a few street cons—three-card monte and the like—a few that happened in bars, one involving a lottery ticket …”
“Busy people,” Beau observed. “You said they were questioned—no arrests?”
“Looks like last October someone filed a complaint and the Lukingers were actually arrested. It’s about a missing diamond ring.”
Beau’s coincidence-alarm went into overdrive and he could practically feel the evidence bag in his shirt pocket.
“We got a contact number in San Diego?”
“A Detective Rodriguez. Here’s the number.”
Beau jotted the information from the screen onto a yellow note and carried it to his desk. The call was answered on the second ring.
“Bunco. Jorge Rodriguez speaking.”
Beau introduced himself. “Your department records showed up when we ran a background trace on a suspect we have here in Taos County, New Mexico. Her name’s Ramona Lukinger.”
“You have her in custody?”
“Unfortunately, no. She’s been operating here in town, but we only learned about your warrant on her after we had to release her.”
“She and her husband are a wily pair, I’ll tell you. We thought we had them on a string of Priceless Pooch cons on several local bartenders.”
Beau’s silence encouraged him to go on.
“The couple splits up and one of them enters a bar with a valuable item. Sometimes it’s actually a dog, which is how the con gets its name, but other times it’s a piece of jewelry or even a supposedly Stradivarius violin. Ramona would ask the bartender to keep an eye on the item because she has to run an errand in a sketchy part of town and doesn’t want to carry it with her. She leaves and almost immediately her accomplice walks in, spots the thing, comments how he’s been looking for one of those for a long time, and asks if the bartender wants to sell it. Usually names some outlandish price. Bartender has to admit it isn’t his, but can give the guy’s phone number to the owner when she returns. The guy—in this case Ramona’s husband—leaves his number and goes away. When Ramona gets back, the bartender offers to buy the item for half the amount the other guy said he’d pay, knowing all he has to do is make a phone call and double his money. Ramona reluctantly parts with the item because she needs the cash right now. When the bartender calls the number he was given, it’s a fake and the couple has made off with the bartender’s money.”
“I’m surprised the bartenders report the crime.”
“Usually, they don’t. We caught onto the Lukingers because one of our guys happened to be sitting in the bar one afternoon and witnessed the whole thing. We put the word out and a few came forward to admit what had happened. Timing is everything on that con—the husband and wife have to appear as strangers who have just barely missed each other each step of the way. Otherwise, the bartender has time to think about it or make a call to someone. Doesn’t always have to be a bartender. Once the Lukingers figured out we were watching them, they switched over to shop clerks. It can work on anyone in a relatively low-paying job, where there are not a lot of other customers around to witness what’s happening.”
“The lure of easy money, right?”
“Gets ’em every time.” Rodriguez cleared his throat. “The lottery ticket is a real favorite. Guy approaches someone and says he has the winning lottery ticket from last night’s drawing, but he can’t appear in person to claim it because his ex is after all his money. A lot of people are suspicious, but the mark who sees an opportunity will offer to buy the ticket for a fraction of its value. He thinks he can cash it in himself for big bucks. If he decides to verify that these are the winning numbers, he calls the lottery office and, yep, those are the right numbers. Only problem is, the ticket in his hand was purchased this morning and is for next week’s drawing. By the time he figures that out, the con man and the money have disappeared.”
Beau had to wonder whether the very same scams had been going on here in Taos, right under his nose.
“You mentioned questioning Ramona Lukinger. What about the husband, Percy Lukinger?” Rodriguez asked.
“He was here in town, too. Unfortunately, now deceased.” Beau covered the basics. He could hear Rodriguez tapping computer keys in the background.
“Any chance you could pick up Ramona Lukinger again?” the San Diego bunco detective asked.
“We’ll try. The pair of them had two residences and we’ve just now discovered Ramona’s place, rented under an assumed name. My deputies are searching it for evidence right now. So far, the most shiny clue has been a diamond ring. I’m heading out to have a jeweler verify whether it’s real.”
“There’s probably a real and a fake. It’s a variation on the pigeon drop. Con places the ring in an envelope after proving to the victim’s satisfaction it’s real. Places the envelope in his pocket, when it comes out again, it’s an identical-looking envelope but the ring inside is the fake. Or they hand it over to the victim’s custody—maybe the glovebox of their car—but make the switch as the envelope goes inside, so the vic only ends up with the fake. Watch out for those—it’s another favorite con of the Lukingers.”
Beau made a note to revisit the pawn shop and chat with Robert Nieto about the ring Missy Malone had tried to pass there.
“Will do. Thanks for the info. Of course, the bigger crime I have to solve here is the murder of Percy Lukinger. Do you think any of his victims from your area were angry enough to track him all the way to New Mexico?”
“Somebody with some medical knowledge and the means to get hold of enough benzos to kill a guy? Right off hand, I can’t think of any but I’ll review the cases and see if anything jumps out at me. I’ll give you a call if it does.”
Beau thanked the detective and hung up. A new thought hit him. What if Percy had somehow double-crossed his wife and Ramona was the one who killed him?
Chapter 30
Sam grumbled about Delbert Crow’s phone call from the moment he interrupted her research on exotic flavors, right up to the point when she pulled into the driveway at the abandoned house he wanted her to check. Her assurances that the plumber was still planning to come in a few days to fix the broken pipes didn’t suffice. Delbert wanted her to be sure the house was in shape for the real estate agent who would be showing up today to take pictures and write up the listing.
She got out of her van and gave the yard a quick perusal as she walked toward the front-porch flowerpot which concealed the key to the door. Everything looked as one would expect a place to look in January—bare and frosty.
The shaded half of the front yard held onto its six inches of snow from the storm that had passed through. Where the sun hit the ground, the grass showed, dry and winter-brown. Deciduous trees waved their bare sticks in the air, while the evergreens hunkered down, ready for the next onslaught. They somehow knew spring was still a good four months away. The wise ones knew there would be a fake-out in late February, when the temperatures would rise just enough to catch the unwary before the next winter blast hit them. Those who sprouted fresh greenery would be goners. The old ones would stay wary and live to see summer.
&nb
sp; Raised voices caught Sam’s attention as she was unlocking the front door. Instinctively, she glanced toward the house next door, the only one on the block where she’d noticed activity. Arnold Zuckerman seemed to be demanding that someone in the house follow him toward his car, but the voice of the unseen female was adamantly not going along.
Sam wondered if the old man’s daughter was visiting again. Dolores had told her the two of them clashed a lot. But if the subject was that of nursing homes, it seemed more likely Arnold would be the one sticking close to home. Besides, it wasn’t the daughter’s blue minivan parked in the driveway. She started to wave toward the neighbor, but his attention never strayed from the front door of his own home; Sam decided to attend to her duties and get back to work before she could be pulled into some other family’s spat. She ducked inside before Zuckerman could turn his attention to her.
The interior of the place felt colder than her walk-in fridge at the bakery, but Sam didn’t see any sign of further water damage. She spent a few minutes sweeping up bits of debris she’d missed the last time and left a note for the Realtor about the situation with the pipes, suggesting a later date would work better to get optimal photos inside the house. Delbert Crow’s insistence that the place be spotless and the real estate listing be finalized right this minute still made no sense to Sam.
She called Beau and was pleased to hear he hadn’t eaten lunch yet. They agreed to meet at the deli on the plaza, where the soup was guaranteed to take the chill off any winter day. She rechecked all the windows and door locks, then stooped to re-hide the key on the front porch. A man’s voice caught her attention and she saw Arnold Zuckerman. It appeared he was casting some ice-melt granules over the frozen parts of his driveway.
Well, there was no avoiding him. She had to get to her van if she hoped to meet Beau on time.
“You still here?” Zuckerman said when he spotted Sam.
She waved and pretended she hadn’t heard his words.
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