8 Sweet Payback (6 page)

“So, we just have to think through
the list of who that might be.”

“We?” He grinned at her. “You want
your deputy status back?”

“Well, it sounds more appealing
than breaking into a house and spending the rest of the week cleaning.” She
told him about the call from Delbert Crow. “Which reminds me, this one’s out in
the country somewhere and I need to look it up on the map.”

She pulled the note from her pack
and stepped to the map on the wall.

“Looks like I have to drive
through Sembramos to get there,” she said, running her finger along the highway
that Crow had named.

Beau sat up straight, then stood
up and came to see her notes.

“See, it’s about another five
miles past town, then Delbert said there would be a driveway with a mailbox. He
gave me a number but it’s all rural addressing out there.”

“I don’t like this, Sam.” He chewed
at his lip.

“You said it was quiet when you
left. The people who’d gathered at the Starkey place weren’t roaming the
streets or anything, right?”

“Well, true.” His hesitation made
her look up at his face. Worry etched the space between his eyebrows. “Just
drive straight through town. Don’t stop and don’t talk to anyone, and you
should be okay.”

“What—I’ve lost my deputy status
already?” She kept her tone light, teasing, reaching toward his ticklish ribs.

He tussled with her a moment and
tickled right back, but the worry lines were still there.

Chapter
6

Habits—even the ones you don’t
like—are hard to break, Sam discovered, when she automatically awoke before
daylight. She rolled over and snuggled against Beau’s back, the warm quilt
around her shoulders, and managed to remain in a state of half-drowse until his
alarm went off and he turned toward her. A quick kiss; she could tell he was
preoccupied already.

Over his breakfast of Cheerios he
cautioned her again not to get involved if she saw signs of trouble as she
drove northward to the new job she’d been assigned yesterday. She chafed a
little at his overprotectiveness but kept a smile on her face as she assured
him she would be watchful.

Saturday’s weather front had blown
through quickly, leaving a clear sky and the promise of warmer temperatures but
Sam knew from experience that April could bring nearly anything. She took a
spare flannel shirt and tossed her all-weather jacket into the back seat of her
truck.

Acres of farmland rolled by,
interspersed with wooded patches where trees hugged the streams that flowed out
of the mountains. Sam consulted her notes and made the turns Delbert Crow had
described. The town of Sembramos appeared, noted by the fact that the speed
limit dropped from fifty-five to thirty-five and a rectangular, green highway
sign demarcated the town limit. She slowed accordingly and found herself paying
attention to little details.

The highway bisected the town lengthwise.
On her left stood a one-story school of red brick with a dozen cars in the
parking lot. A small bank sat a little farther on. To the right, a variety
store and ice cream parlor. A paved cross street led to residential areas of
unimposing little houses; the intersection was marked with brilliant yellow
signs warning motorists to stop for pedestrians and showing black silhouettes
of children.

Beyond the initial cluster of
businesses she spotted a small café and two boarded-up retail shops. All had
graveled parking lots and no curbs or sidewalks. A block over, in the spaces
between buildings, she could tell there were a few more shopping choices and a
small park. The entire trip took less than three minutes and she didn’t see a
living soul the entire time. Eerie for a Monday morning.

It’s still early in the day, she
reminded herself. The cars parked at the elementary school and the bank gave
proof that the town wasn’t deserted. But still . . . weird.

She consulted her notes and glanced
at her odometer. Crow had said that 5.1 miles beyond the town was a turnoff and
that’s where her newest break-in project awaited. Sam resumed her highway
speed, zipping past fields of alfalfa and apple orchards in full bloom, the
trees resembling rows of little old ladies with fluffy white hairdos. Beyond
the irrigated areas native sage and piñon dotted the foothills which rose to a
climax at Wheeler Peak in the distance. Snow still topped the state’s highest
mountain; patches of it would probably remain until July.

The orchards gave way to flat
fields where in a couple more months tufts of green would begin to show in
straight lines along the hundreds of neat rows. Sam began to watch for her
turnoff.

Crow hadn’t mentioned that the
terrain rose fairly steeply to the ten-acre property or that the house was
massive, dominating the rocky hill upon which it sat. She steered up a long
gravel driveway, topped the rise and pulled into a circular drive overgrown
with last winter’s dead weeds and the promise of this year’s new batch. She
killed the engine and stepped out of her truck into the vast silence of open
country.

“Wow.” Her voice echoed off
brilliant white stucco. The mansion reminded Sam of architecture she’d seen in
photos of Greece. High walls rose above her, capped by a domed roof and tiled
cupola. A pair of matching stairways with concrete balusters curved from the
second floor down to the ground, like graceful arms offering a hug to the
building. Above an impressive, arched front door, a balcony stretched across
the second story, with two sets of double doors opening to it. She pictured the
owner—a minor lord or very successful drug kingpin—stepping out to stare down
and see who was standing outside his estate.

But that was not going to happen.
The whole place resonated with an air of abandoned desolation. The glass doors
and windows were blank and dark; not a tire track marred the driveway or
parking area. As she studied it more closely she saw that planting beds had
been built but never filled and that the central part of the courtyard, where
normally there would be a lawn or at least some decorative rock, had never been
landscaped. Only weedy earth extended to the footing of the enormous house.

Sam set out to make her customary
initial check of the perimeter. An empty swimming pool and round hot tub—marred
by a crust of dirt and heaps of dead plant debris—waited behind the house to be
filled with water and enjoyed. An elaborate built-in barbeque with tile
backsplash and more counter space than Sam had in her kitchen sat coated in
dust. The stainless steel grill still had new-item stickers affixed. The
house’s glass double doors faced the pool and Sam had a momentary vision of
what the place would be like in full glory, a party with a few dozen people
milling about, the smell of steaks on the grill, the splashes of children
playing in clear blue water. A lone cottontail rabbit hopped across the walled
courtyard, emphasizing that no such gatherings had ever happened here.

She stepped to the doors and tried
the knob. Locked. Cupping her hands around her eyes, she saw that the huge great
room, which could have accommodated three or four seating areas or a
presidential inaugural ball, was empty. At the far end she saw a kitchen full
of appliances; a massive stone fireplace filled the west wall; stairs on the
east wall led to a mezzanine that overlooked the ballroom-sized living area,
with doors that probably led to bedrooms above.

Whatever the story behind it, her
job now was to get inside. It seemed a shame to drill the expensive lock on the
front door, but after circling the entire place and trying each door she came
to, it seemed the only way. She retrieved her tools from the truck and had
broken in within a few minutes.

She stepped into a wide foyer, her
sneakers making swishy sounds in the light layer of grit on the tile floor
leading to the big room she had viewed from the other side. Her breathing
echoed faintly from blank walls to the two-and-a-half story dome overhead. A
quick survey of the room showed the fireplace was as sterile and clean as the
day it was built; the high-end stainless steel appliances in the kitchen had
plastic bags with the operating instructions hanging by their handles; a layer
of construction dust powdered the beautifully laid custom tile, and every other
surface in the place. Was this a case where the owner had spent every cent to
build the structure but ran out of funds before he could furnish it? Perhaps it
had been a spec house that a builder had started in more prosperous times and
the perfect buyer had never come along. The space suddenly felt extremely
chilly.

She walked slowly up the stairs,
finding a massive master suite with two bathrooms and dressing rooms bigger
than their master bedroom at home. Her earlier chill vanished as she walked
into a bathroom where the temperature felt almost sauna-like. Despite a search
for a heat source Sam found no reason for the discrepancies between the rooms.
Odd. But she’d long ago learned that every house had its quirks.

Back downstairs, she followed a
passageway to two more suites, perfect places to entertain guests or spoil your
children in spacious accommodation. Beyond the foyer in the other direction
were a wine cellar and a series of other, unspecified rooms that could have
been intended as study, hobby room, library or maid’s quarters; maybe in this
league houses simply had places that no one knew what they were for. Sam made
her way back to the massive room (she had a hard time thinking of it as merely
‘great’) and stood there with the sound of her footsteps echoing back at her.

The nice thing about cleaning an
empty house was that she had no furniture to work around, no clutter to clean
up. The fans near the top of that domed ceiling would be tricky to dust, but
since that was a little beyond her obligation to make the place presentable
enough for sale she could see maybe two or three days to dust and vacuum, at
most. Not such a bad assignment, and she could still probably work in time to
visit that librarian Rupert had told her about in her quest to get answers
about the two odd wooden boxes.

She placed one of her standard
sign-in sheets on the dark granite countertop and went out to her truck for her
cleaning gear.

* *
*

Beau got off the phone with the
Office of the Medical Investigator in Albuquerque and sat at his desk, drumming
his pen against the file he’d started on the death of Jessie Starkey. He’d only
learned one new thing: the bullet that killed Jessie Starkey was a .357
caliber. One shot to the heart. Yes, they’d retrieved the bullet and it was in
good enough shape for matching—
if
he
found the weapon to compare to it.

That was the kicker. In a county
where half the people hunted and even those who didn’t probably owned guns, it
wasn’t going to be easy to find the right one. The pen tapped and he debated.

As he’d told Sam last night, the
most likely motive was revenge by one of Angela Cayne’s friends or relatives,
someone who believed the guilty men had been wrongly let go. He tried to
remember if she’d had a boyfriend when she died. He didn’t recall one being
interrogated during the investigation of her death. She’d lived at home with
her parents. He turned to the credenza in his office, pulled one of their basic
information files and flipped through it. Jotted her address on a scrap of
paper. It was a start.

Making his way through the traffic
in the center of Taos and heading north on open road, he daydreamed of the
possibility that talking with Angela’s father would simply get the man to turn
over the weapon and tearfully admit that he’d taken it upon himself to rid society
of Jessie Starkey. The likelihood was practically nil. He knew that. With a
sigh, he drove on.

It was midmorning when he slowed
to the speed limit at the edge of Sembramos. Outside the bank, a man getting
into a pickup truck paused to stare at the Sheriff’s Department cruiser, giving
Beau the eye. Beau gave a smile and a nod. The man turned away.

Better take the temperature of the
town, he decided, cruising the length of the main drag and turning to travel
back along the dirt road parallel to it. A few faces turned at the sight of his
vehicle, a couple abruptly changed direction. Sophie Garcia’s place looked the
same as yesterday, her compact Ford and Jessie’s motorcycle out front. A woman
coming out of one of the other apartments glanced up, stepped back inside and
closed her door.

People were nervous. Had something
more happened overnight? If so, no one had reported it.

He decided to make the rounds of
the few places he knew. A few cars were parked outside Joe and Helen Starkey’s
house, but he didn’t see anyone in the dirt yard or peering out the windows.
The Rodarte’s old house was similarly quiet, no vehicle in sight. Gina Staples
and her husband didn’t appear to be home but the garden had been watered this
morning, he could tell by the damp trenches between the rows. He consulted his
note and realized the Cayne family had lived right next door. Had Gina
mentioned that? He didn’t think so, and wondered if she was hiding something. Somehow
he hadn’t quite gotten to that part of the old case file in his brief scan of
it, and now he was feeling even more out of the loop.

No wonder it was easy for everyone
to make the connection between Lee Rodarte and Angela Cayne—they’d been
next-door neighbors.

He pulled over to the edge of the
road, got out and walked up to the place that looked like a modified
double-wide with its white siding and aluminum screen door. It seemed neatly
kept, but there were no vehicles or other signs of life at the moment. He was
about to tap on the front door anyway when he spotted a little placard,
something done by a craft painter. “The Smiths Live Here!” it proclaimed. His
knock went unanswered.

He went back to the cruiser and
punched up the address finder on his GPS, chiding himself for not doing that in
the first place. When he entered the name Cayne only one name in Sembramos came
up, a Sally Cayne on Pine Street. It had to be a relative.

Sally Cayne answered the door of
her small bungalow, holding a fluffy little brown dog whose high-pitched
yipping Beau had heard the moment he stopped the cruiser. The gray-haired woman
stood less than five feet tall, with a pronounced hunch to her upper spine, and
she had to adjust her hearing aids a couple of times before she got Beau’s
explanation of why he was there.

“Well, come on in, Sheriff. Bitsy
won’t bite. She’s just real protective, you know.” She limped arthritically
aside to let him in.

It was usually the protective ones
that
did
bite, Beau thought as he
edged into an overly-warm living room. Sally reached into her apron pocket,
slipped the dog some little nugget of a treat and deposited the fuzzy creature on
the couch.

“Now, what can I do for you?”
Sally asked after he declined an offer of coffee.

Beau gave the quick version—he was
contacting the Cayne family to touch base and make sure there wouldn’t be any
problem between them and the Starkeys or the Rodartes. It seemed a more benign
way to approach the subject than to start with suspicions about Jessie
Starkey’s death.

“Well, Sheriff, as the young ones
might say, I think that boat already sailed.” She sank down onto the couch
beside the dog, and Beau perched on the seat of an armchair. “The problems
between the three families started on June twenty-second, seven years ago. The
night our Angela got taken and killed. My son never recovered. Alan blamed
himself for not looking after her better, so badly that he lost his job. Used
to teach at the school, fourth grade kids. Loved that job. Tracy was an
accountant. She had to cut back her hours to take care of Alan. Then Matthew
started having trouble in school. A year or so later, right after the trial,
they moved away. Went to Houston, thinking a big city would be a place to get
lost in, a place with no memories, if you know what I mean.”