Leaning Land (15 page)

“That’s one of the reasons she’s so worried.”

“You’ll be talking to her again, right?”

“We’re having lunch tomorrow. She needs some support.”

As if Liz didn’t have enough to do. But that was one of the reasons Wager liked her as a person: she thought of others and was willing to put her own interests aside to help them. “Ask her about her husband—about the Constitutional Posse, about any trouble he’s ever been in, about his friends—especially a Bradley Nichols.”

“Wait a minute, let me write that down.” Silence. “Why?”

“Their names have come up in this case I’m on. I just want to know more about them.”

“Is it anything that might help Evelyn’s custody hearing?”

“It might be worth looking at, but I can’t promise anything.”

An extra note of excitement came into her voice. “I’ll ask her!”

“Don’t get her hopes up. Or yours, either.”

“I won’t!” Then, “I miss you, Gabe. It’s only been a couple of days, but it seems like a lot longer.”

He missed her, too—at least he did now that he heard her voice and had a few minutes to think about her. He told her that, too—or part of it, anyway. When they finally said good night, she warned him to be careful.

“Hey, I can name a dozen streets in Denver more dangerous than this place.”

“I suppose. But you’re away, and that makes it seem scarier.”

“Since when are you scared of anything?”

“I’m not scared of, I’m scared for. Just take care of yourself.”

“No sweat.”

After dinner and after he had turned off the television and slipped into a heavy sleep, the telephone bored into his consciousness. At first, still mostly asleep, he thought it was Liz calling back: it was a woman’s voice. Then he realized that it wasn’t hers—it was different—it was nervous, muffled, with an attempt at disguise—possibly a handkerchief over the mouthpiece—and spoke quickly. “You’re in danger. They’re going to hurt you. Leave before they hurt you.”

“What? Who’s this?”

“They’re going to hurt you. You’ve got to go away!”

The line clicked into silence and Wager tapped the receiver’s cradle, getting an empty hum in return. He replaced the telephone, thoroughly awake now. Funny how death threats could wake a guy up. He stared at a ceiling dim from the light leaking around the window shade and realized he was half listening for sounds of a prowler around his car on the other side of the picture window.

Knowing it was pointless, he nonetheless gave in and peeked past the heavy roller shade. The car sat, tires full, isolated in the orange glow of the walkway light. No sounds came from the black world beyond.

A real threat? Or an attempt to scare him off? He sat on the bed and, wide awake, propped the pillows behind his back. The voice had been tense and muffled, but female. And disguised—which meant she did not want him to recognize her voice. Someone he had either already talked with or who expected to talk with him soon? The only women he had spoken with were Sharon Del Ponte, the sheriff’s dispatcher, and the clerk in Ray Qwana’tua’s office. The voice sounded as if it could belong to any of them. Or none. A real warning or a scare tactic? Either way, what the warning meant was that he had made someone nervous. Something he had done, someone he had talked to, one of his several aimless probes had made someone nervous. And it also meant that he was damned if he’d go.

H
IS ALARM WOKE
him, groggy from rolling and tossing half the night. He had been unable to get back to sleep until, feeling the chill of early morning, he had added the bedspread to the layer of blankets. Despite its smell of chemicals and heavy ironing, he had finally drifted into an uneasy rest.

The first thing after prying himself out of bed was to look through the window at the wheels on his car. Then he stood for a long time under the hot water and steamed the sleepiness from his mind. Shaving helped, too, though in scraping the whiskers around his mustache he nicked a corner of his nostril. That was a bad place and it always irritated him to be careless enough to cut himself there: the blood vessels were near the surface and the little scraps of toilet paper kept coming off wet and red from the nick. He didn’t want to go into the restaurant with either blood dripping down his face or a flag of paper waving from his nose, so he ignored the angry rumble of his stomach and started the first telephone call from the list he had formulated while tossing back and forth during the night.

It was to the Butte Springs Ranch, Rubin’s last known job. Wager figured a ranch family would be up and working this early, and he was right. A woman who sounded breathless from running to the telephone answered and Wager identified himself and asked for the ranch manager.

“He’s out on the range right now. He’s got a mobile phone, but I don’t know if you can reach him on it. Sometimes the phone doesn’t work, he gets down in those draws and canyons. Maybe I can help you.”

“Maybe you can. I understand Rubin Del Ponte hauled some cattle for you on the fifteenth of March. I wonder if you had a chance to talk with him.”

“Only at lunchtime. I read what happened to him. That was terrible—I feel so sorry for his family.”

“Yes, ma’am. Can you remember what you talked about?”

“Oh, that was so long ago … . It wasn’t anything important. You know, just how life was treating him, that kind of thing. He did have young children, didn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am. Did he seem in any way excited or nervous or behave differently in any way?”

“Differently? No. Not that I remember.” The telephone line crackled distantly. “He was in a hurry to get loaded—helped run the cattle up the chute. But I supposed that was because he had another job to get to.”

“Did the ranch manager notice anything about Del Ponte? Anything he mentioned to you?”

“He’s my husband. And no, he didn’t say anything to me.”

He thanked her and asked her to call him through the sheriff’s office if she or her husband remembered anything at all.

Most interviews went that way, Wager knew. Only on television did the detective get a clue every time he talked to a witness. But then they only had sixty minutes to solve the crime, and that included car crashes, love scenes, shoot-outs, and advertisements. Gently, Wager tugged at the shred of paper stuck to his nose and it peeled off; it was dry. That was the signal for breakfast—for which his stomach thanked him with a spasm of eagerness—and then more phone calls.

The store manager of the Lastwell Furniture Store in Grand Junction did not have much good to say about Rubin. “He was supposed to, yessir. But he never showed up. I didn’t hear a thing about that until late that afternoon—the afternoon of the seventeenth. The distributor in the Phoenix warehouse called to ask where our truck was. He had our load all ready to go but no one had come to load yet and he was getting ready to close.”

“Can you remember what time that was?”

“Certainly, I can. I glanced at the clock: four-thirty. Mr. Del Ponte usually arrived there between three and four. I supposed he had a breakdown, so I told the distributor not to worry, that Mr. Del Ponte would probably be there first thing in the a.m. But he wasn’t. The distributor called again the next day around ten and said he was still waiting.”

“No call from Del Ponte?”

“Not one word! I phoned his office, but the woman there didn’t know anything. Just said he’d left the previous morning. Didn’t have any idea where he was, and I haven’t heard from him since. Not one single word of explanation!”

“His office?”

“Well, I think it’s his home, really. I think he works out of his home. But it’s the only number I have for him—the one on the side of his truck. I tell you, I’ll never hire Mr. Del Ponte again—we almost had to cancel our April Fools’ Day sale. Would have, if I hadn’t been able to locate another trucker on short notice and pay extra for the trouble. No, sir. No more of our business for Mr. Del Ponte!”

“He’s out of business.”

“Good thing!”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh? Oh—is that why … ?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. When’s the last time you did see him or talk to him?”

“Oh, my … . It must have been February something. Early February, when we finalized our plans for the April Fools’ Day sale.”

“You didn’t talk to him after that?”

“No. I called his number and left a message for him, and he called back and we scheduled this run. That’s the way we usually did it, over the telephone. I’d tell him when to pick up our load, and what he usually did was to drive to the warehouse in Phoenix on one day and load up and get to the store the following afternoon. That’s when I’d see him. Supervise the unloading, check the invoice and the cargo for any shipping damage … Dead? Well, I didn’t hear about that. I mean, I wouldn’t have been so angry with him if I’d known that.”

“How often did he make a run for you?”

“Usually once a month. Sometimes twice, depending on how much inventory the sales staff moved.” The slightly lilting voice went on, “We had an on-call arrangement rather than a contract. That way we only paid him for actual work performed, and he was usually both available and reliable. Except, of course, for this last time … .”

“What time of the afternoon did he usually get in from Phoenix?”

“Between two and three. I wanted it no later than three, so our warehouse staff has time to unload before five. That way I don’t have to pay them overtime.”

“Did you pay Del Ponte in cash or by check?” The Lastwell Furniture Store was among those many names without the little star behind it.

“Check. He gave me a bill with the invoice and I paid at the end of the month. Made out to Del Ponte Trucking, through a bank in La Sal.” He said again, “It never crossed my mind Mr. Del Ponte might have died.”

Wager let the man make his apologies to the dead and then hung up to think over what he’d learned. According to Harvey Mallard, Rubin had arrived at the parking lot in Lewis Corners no earlier than mid-morning; according to Rubin’s wife, he’d left home early. According to Rubin’s routine, he should have been on the way to Phoenix in time to get there by afternoon … . Wager unfolded his road map of the western U.S. and found the mileage chart. Eight-eighteen from Denver to Phoenix … subtract the three-fifty or so from Denver to La Sal County. Figure about five hundred miles, and, according to the map, a lot of it on secondary roads. Rubin probably took 666 to Cortez, then 160 through Tuba City, Arizona, and 89 down to join I-17, running from Flagstaff to Phoenix. At least eight hours, with two-lane traffic and mountain passes slowing him down, probably ten hours. Then the return drive through the night, taking out five or six hours somewhere to sleep, and make it to Grand Junction by mid-afternoon of the next day. A fixed routine and guaranteed money once a month.

Something had happened to make Rubin kiss off a steady customer. No apology, no warning so the customer could hire a replacement vehicle, nothing. And that was what Wager had to find out about somehow: the morning of the seventeenth of March. Rubin, an informant for the FBI, a man careful enough to keep records even of his tax-dodging mileage, had broken his schedule without telling anyone. Had planned to meet someone when he should have been on the road. Apparently met them and then disappeared. Why? And who had he been waiting for at Lewis Corners? And—the thought came to Wager from a different angle—why did Sharon Del Ponte say she knew nothing of his business when all of her husband’s customers used her home phone to reach the man?

Deputy Sheriff Howie Morris’s small ranch was about three miles beyond Egnarville; he told Wager that he would wait until ten and, yes, his wife would be there, too. The deputy hadn’t sounded too pleased to hear from Wager, but he sounded a lot calmer than the last time they had talked. And when Wager parked in the weedy gravel in front of the low frame house, Morris even met him at the door with an offer of coffee.

“Sounds fine,” said Wager. He didn’t really want any more—Paula had filled and refilled his cup at breakfast—but a yes was friendlier than a no, and might lead to more information than a blunt question about Morris telephoning Nichols to warn him of Wager’s presence. “I appreciate you and your wife talking with me,” he said and smiled.

“I don’t know what good it’ll do, Wager. Anything she knows she’d’ve told me about already. And I haven’t found out anything more in the past two days.”

“You’re right. But other people have told me a few things that I’d like to get your opinions on.”

“Like what?” He led Wager through the formal-looking living room with its furniture covered in matching black-and-white cowhide design to a comfortable area off the kitchen. It was glassed in like a greenhouse and filled with enough potted plants to give the air an earthy, leafy smell. A gaunt woman with her hair in a single large braid down her back smiled a welcome. Despite the warmth of the room, she wore a flannel shirt tucked into Levi’s. The Levi’s were tucked into cowboy boots. “Rosemary, this is Officer Wager. He’s the one I told you about.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you. Coffee?”

Wager could imagine what she’d heard. “Please—just black.”

“Like what?” repeated Morris.

“Have either of you heard of any kind of trouble between Del Ponte and his wife?”

Morris’s eyebrows lifted and he turned to his wife. “I sure haven’t! Rosie?”

“No … .” She poured a cup for herself and rejoined them at the glass-and-metal garden table. It was shaded by a large climbing bougainvillea plant whose pink leaves made a waterfall of color down what had once been the outside wall of the house. “Does this have to do with his death?”

“I’m not sure. Right now, I’m just chasing down any and every rumor. I was told Sharon Del Ponte and Jesse Herrera might be seeing each other. Have you ever heard anyone mention that?”

“I’m not around town enough to know that. Rosie? Is there anything?”

She paused to sip gingerly at her steaming coffee before she answered. She was a dry-looking woman, the flesh taut across her prominent cheekbones, and her lips were thin, like a man’s. For some reason, Wager assumed the couple had no children. “Nothing definite. And I wouldn’t want to say anything that would cause trouble.”