Three yellowed, ragged-edged maps of New Mexico lay on a small table in a corner. They were heavily marked with handwritten notations in pencil and various colors of ink. I arranged the maps on the desk and looked them over.
A Rand McNally 1897 Business Atlas of New Mexico was the most recent of the three. The others, an 1867 War Department map, and an 1879 U.S. Geographical Survey of New Mexico Territory were even older. Collector’s items, perhaps.
The surfaces of all three maps were covered with dated and numbered hand-traced routes. The dates ran along the right-hand margins. They began in the late 1880s and ran at two-year intervals up until 1921.
Thirty minutes later, I poured another drink and sat down in the big chair to give my aching side a break.
Otis had followed me into the library and now lay curled up on the ledge of the open window. He swatted at a large bee that buzzed around his head and then flew past him into the room. He jumped down and chased after it, sprang onto the desktop at full speed, and knocked my whiskey all over the maps. My glass fell to the floor. The bee escaped, Otis licked himself for a moment, and returned to the window ledge.
“Stupid cat.”
He ignored me.
I hustled to the linen closet as fast as the pain allowed, returned with towel in hand, and knelt to retrieve the glass that had rolled under the desk. Every breath taken hurt my side. I grabbed the glass and backed out, raised my head too soon, and smacked it against the underside of the desk. I rolled onto my back and squeezed my eyes shut as pain danced between my ears.
It passed. Then I noticed the small, metal box duct- taped to the underside of the center drawer. I ripped the box loose and slid it open. A small bronze key fell into my hand. I stood, put the whiskey glass back on the desk, and searched the room for any lock the key might fit. I didn’t find one.
The doorbell rang. Slipping the mystery key into my pocket, I dusted myself off and moved to the front door.
Carmen Flores wore a tank top, cut-off jeans, and brown sandals.
“Feeling any better?”
“I’m on the mend. Thanks for asking.” I stepped back as she swayed past me. “I don’t know if he told you,” I said, “but I called Detective Crawford before I left the hospital. Didn’t have more to tell him, but at least he was in a better mood.”
“Aren’t you glad you took care of that?”
“I guess.”
She stepped into the living room and I followed her.
“I read the incident report.”
“What did you think of it?”
She glanced around the room. “You didn’t give us a lot to go on. That just means it could take more time.”
“Will I have to deal with Crawford anymore?”
Carmen shrugged. “Homicide Detective Lieutenant Sam Archuleta was busy. That’s why he sent Crawford to question you. Archuleta is lead man on the investigation into the Ramos killing.”
I nodded. “Look, I’m sorry to have messed up with that anonymous phone call. That was wrong.”
She wagged her finger at me, but smiled.
“I just didn’t want to get involved, seeing as how I was about to leave for New York in two days. But all that’s changed. I’ve decided to stay.”
“Wonderful. We can see more of each other.”
I filed that comment away for later analysis. “Come on into the library for a minute, I want to show you something.”
I sat Carmen in the big desk chair and pointed to the maps. “What do you make of these?”
She studied them for a few minutes. “Anybody in your family do any prospecting?”
“Not that I know of. Prospecting for what?”
“Silver. Gold. Turquoise. Ancient artifacts.”
“Can’t see Aunt Nellie involved in that. No, these maps are just one more thing I don’t understand and don’t have time to figure out. I’ve been threatened and shot at for reasons unknown, by persons unknown. Compared to that, these maps are just a curiosity.”
“I wouldn’t dismiss them, Gabe. Your aunt kept them for a reason. She was a sharp, educated woman with a lot of different interests. I’d wager there’s something important about these maps that led her to keep them around. Maybe while you recover you can look them over and put that brain of yours to work. You’re a historian. Figure it out. Meanwhile, the A.P.D. will do all we can on both the Ramos homicide and the attempt on your life. Take some time off and relax. Look around and get to know your aunt again.”
“If only I had kept in touch with her all those years.”
“Water under the bridge,” she said.
I nodded. “Care for something to drink?”
“Only if you do,” she said.
“What’s your pleasure? I have some decent Irish whiskey.”
“With soda, over ice?”
She followed me into the kitchen where I pulled two glasses from the cabinet. After I poured the drinks, we carried them into the living room and sat together on the couch. Carmen kicked off her sandals. She was close enough that I smelled her perfume—a sparkling, floral fragrance, unlike anything Holly had worn. Wavy brown curls cascaded beyond her shoulders. When I’d finished looking her over, our eyes met.
“Here’s to health and good times.” She clinked my glass with hers.
I took a deep swig and felt its warmth all the way down.
She smiled at me and lightly touched my hand. “Be patient. We’ll get the bad guys and you’ll figure out what those maps are all about.”
Just as I wondered how much friendlier she intended to become, she finished her drink and set her glass down on the small table next to the couch.
“Gotta go. Thanks for the buzz,” she said. “I’ll stop by tomorrow to see how you’re feeling.”
She left. I glanced down at my wedding band. It still belonged there.
That night, I looked out the front window of the house just as C.J. arrived in his hearse. Ten-thirty. In the moonlight he looked like a zombie as he dragged his right leg to my front door. He handed me a cold six-pack and a large, insulated bag with his restaurant logo decorating the side. I opened it in the kitchen and admired the platter of glistening baby-backs. I took down two plates and C.J. piled the still-warm ribs on them. I popped a beer and handed it to him, then grabbed one for myself. He took two flimsy-looking plastic forks out of the bag and handed me one.
“Nice touch,” I said, as I flexed it with my fingers. I snatched two real forks out of the utensil drawer.
“You got a Ph.D. in Wise-Ass?”
“Pre-Columbian History,” I corrected.
“We gonna eat or sing about your credentials?”
“Eat.”
We moved to the library. Otis followed us and sniffed the air. I told C.J. about Officer Flores’s visit and about the maps.
He wiped at some sauce with a red, white and blue paper napkin. “Just be careful, man. She’s a cop. Cops have been trouble all my life, first in Brooklyn and now here. You have no idea.” He chugged the rest of his beer and thumped the can on my desktop.
“I want to be able to trust somebody.”
C.J. picked at his front teeth. “Trust? You wouldn’t trust anyone if you’d been in the fight game as long as I was.”
“Is that a fact? Try to work with college faculty. In that arena, there’s no penalty for low blows.”
We attacked the ribs and bantered for ten minutes. When we were left with nothing but two plates of bones, I repaired to the kitchen and washed the grease and sauce off my hands. Then I joined C.J. in the library and arranged the maps on the big desk so all three could be viewed together. For the next half hour, we studied each map for some meaning, some pattern that might explain the purpose of the markings and dates.
We still hadn’t come up with anything as the clock struck twelve. Maybe Aunt Nellie just had a thing for old maps. Maybe the lines were just random Sunday drives. Who knows? Considering the dead body and the recent attempt on my life, it really didn’t matter to me tha
t much.
“At least the ribs were great,” I said. “What’s in that sauce?”
“Gabe, we’re not that close. If I told you, I’d have to kill you. It’s late. I gotta go.”
We walked to the kitchen where he retrieved the insulated bag.
“Before you leave, there’s something I want you to see.” I grabbed a flashlight from the drawer. “Follow me.”
I led C.J. out to the metal barn, flipped on the light, and took the tarp off the Hudson. “I want to have this beauty restored. Know the best place in town for that kind of thing?”
“You want the guy up in Rio Rancho who helped me with my Caddy. Name’s Jack Case. Restores cars and runs a classic car museum. He’s in the book.”
“Thanks, I’ll give him a call and let you know how it goes. And thanks again for the ribs. Nice to know that pig didn’t die in vain.”
C.J. nodded and drove off. I returned to the library, put the maps back on the small corner table, and started to think about my car.
CHAPTER TEN
April 8
I called my late wife’s brother in New York. I’d asked Dan to supervise the shipment of my books and personal belongings to New Mexico. “Has the moving van left yet?”
“Less than an hour ago,” he said. “Man, you have a lot of books. But we did cram everything into one small truck. Should arrive by the end of the week. You kind of surprised people here when you decided to stay in New Mexico.”
“Kind of surprised myself.” I told Dan about the Hudson in Aunt Nellie’s garage and my plans to put it back on the road. He asked me to send him a photo. I promised to call him when the van arrived and I was settled in. “One more thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m signing over my Taurus to Gerry. So he’s got wheels for college.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Dan said. “Hope he can afford to keep it on the road.”
“Maybe he can learn auto mechanics. It’ll give him a marketable trade to go along with his history degree.”
My second call was to Jack Case, a self-billed “World-Class Expert” on the restoration of classic cars. He worked out of a building complex in Rio Rancho, about eight miles north of Albuquerque. He sounded excited when I mentioned the old Hudson.
Case arrived less than an hour later in a black 1949 Mercury two-door coupe. He peered through thick, horn-rimmed glasses as we walked to the barn and slid open the door together.
“Damn.” He circled the Hudson the way a tourist in Florence might circle Michelangelo’s David. “She’s beautiful; the body is perfect.” He opened the driver’s door and popped the hood and then the trunk.
“Can you help me get this back on the road?”
“Professor, this is a car for special occasions. A pristine classic. All original. We’ll get her checked out, cleaned up, maybe install new wiring given her age, but she doesn’t need to be restored, not in the usual sense. How much you want for her? I’ll give you forty-five thousand. Cash.”
“It’s not about money,” I said. “This car belonged to my great-aunt. I want to keep it for personal reasons. Can you make it like new?”
“With less than three thousand miles on her? We found her complete service record in the glove compartment. She is new. I’ll take care of the plates, registration, and emissions test. Promise me you’ll treat her gently.”
We shook hands. Soon afterward, a flatbed pulled up and took my new “sweetheart” away for some professional spit and polish.
I took a cab over to a car rental agency on Fourth Street. They were out of armored vehicles, so I chose a large SUV to replace the Fiesta Hatchback I’d totaled. Around noon I met Rebecca Turner for lunch at the El Camino.
“It’s good to see you up and about, Professor.”
“It’s Gabe, remember?”
“I got so worried when I heard about your accident. I asked Mr. O’Connor if we should do something for you and he said okay. The roses were my idea.” She blushed and looked at her hands as they clasped and unclasped on top of our table.
We chatted our way through a couple of combination platters. She asked about my career before I came to New Mexico, but deflected the few personal questions I asked in return.
“It sure must feel good to have a lovely house like you do. Someday…”
I let her thoughts drift and assumed that the attention she showed me was at the behest of her employers. Still, I thanked her for the roses and enjoyed the view as I sat across the table. When she left for her office, Rebecca gave me the sort of hesitant hug you get when a woman isn’t sure what she wants or how she feels. It didn’t last long enough to get awkward.
I hadn’t fired a gun in anger since my days as an Army Ranger in Grenada. I used to be pretty good back then, even earned a Weapons Qualifications Badge, Marksman Level. But when I left the service and entered academia, my shooting days were essentially over. I sold my pump-action twelve-gauge less than a year after my discharge. In the years that followed, life with Holly subdued my aggressive tendencies. But the events of the past week convinced me I needed protection.
I stopped at the Fourth Street Gun and Knife Store and bought a box of ammo, a shoulder harness, and a used Colt Detective Special .38. I filled out all the pain-in-the-butt background forms and signed up for the classes New Mexico requires to carry concealed. The guy in the store said the whole rigmarole would take about a month, although I was able to take the revolver home with me.
I made it back around three-thirty. Otis lay asleep in the rocking chair on the front porch. But the front door was still locked, just as I’d left it. The cat had been inside when I’d gone out earlier.
I pressed the thumb latch on the left side of my .38 and swung the cylinder out. All the chambers were empty. I took six standard pressure .38 cartridges out of the box I’d just bought and loaded the gun as quietly as I could.
A soft breeze blew in from the library as I entered the vestibule, cut across to the library door and peered inside. The bay window drapes fluttered and cast a changing shadow across my desk. Someone had kicked in the window.
I checked every room in the house, every drawer, closet, and cupboard. They appeared undisturbed. All the books were still on the shelves; no sign that anyone had rummaged around. The only things missing, as far as I could tell, were the three old maps of New Mexico.
I called the cops.
A squad car arrived within five minutes and I showed a young officer inside. He couldn’t have weighed more than one twenty-five soaking wet. His protruding ears appeared to be the only attributes that kept his too-large hat from sliding down over his eyes. I led him to the library window.
“Glass on the inside,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “Some damage to the frame. Any idea when this occurred?”
“I’ve been out for the past two hours.”
“Anything taken?” He looked around the library and then at me.
“I’ve checked every room. The only things gone are three old maps of New Mexico that were over on that small table there.” I pointed to the corner table sitting to the right of the broken window.
“Maps? Something special or unusual about them?”
“They were all from the nineteenth century. Maybe they were collector’s items, I don’t know.”
“That’s it?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“I’ll file an incident report. We can send an alert out to dealers in rare books and keep an eye out online if anybody tries to sell them that way.”
“Thanks.”
“In the meantime, may I recommend that you get a home security system?”
“Right.”
I placed a call to a contractor to fix the window that afternoon. The home security system I’d ordered while in the hospital was to be installed the next morning. One day too late.
I put my .38 in the center drawer of the library desk before I poured out the last ounce of whiskey from the bottle in the lower desk drawer. The l
ate afternoon sky was cloudy, like my understanding of the recent events happening in my life. I put the whiskey down on the desktop, right where the maps had been that morning.
My cellphone rang. Carmen again.
“The police channel says you’ve had a break-in. I’m off duty in another hour. Would you like me to stop by?”
“Is it okay with your husband?”
“He’s away. What if I bring dinner?”
“Sure. Surprise me.”
“See you around seven-thirty.”
By the time the glass repair guy left two hours later, the right side of my head throbbed. I walked to the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom and popped a couple of aspirin, then returned to the library.
I swiveled in my chair, leaned back, and considered the lifetime of books that filled the surrounding shelves.
Most of Aunt Nellie’s books were historical, or historical fiction. She and I shared that common interest.
Ten tomes on the top shelf, similarly bound in dull gray leather, caught my eye, and I moved in for a closer look.
Bancroft’s History of the United States was a landmark work, the first multi-volume history of our country, not just of the individual states. My own copy, an 1866 twenty-first edition, had been a gift from my father on the day I earned my Ph.D. in history. It was now in the moving van on its way to New Mexico with all my other books, clothes, and valuables. If this was an 1834 first edition in good or better condition, it might be worth more than the entire house.
The bandages across my ribs pulled tight as I reached my hand up to touch Volume I. I pulled up Aunt Nellie’s footstool to gain some leverage, but felt sharp pain in my ribs when I stretched to clutch the book with both hands. It wouldn’t budge. A closer look told me why.
Each book on this part of the shelf was attached to the next, part of a ten-book façade. I grabbed all ten books and wiggled them out until the entire assemblage fell into my arms. I had to catch my breath as the books hit my ribcage. When the pain passed, it was an easier matter to carry everything over to the desk.
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