New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) (20 page)

After he was cranked up, Steve grabbed the box, handed it to
Ivy and helped the man out of the well.
 
“Good work spotting this!
 
A guess
on my part the Fuentes had stowed away personal items that might be important
to us.”

After cutting open the lock on the box, Steve pulled the lid
up.
 
In a sealed plastic bag, he found
four sets of forged passports and credit cards under various names for Cristo
and Eduardo.
 
The second bag contained
three flash drives, two removable hard drives and $100,000.00 in U.S.
cash.
 
The last one had two sets of bank
box keys, a sheet of paper with three phone numbers, three email addresses, and
a list of financial institutions with accounts.
 
At the end was a “J” and what might be a
toll-free
number.

“Bingo!”
 
Steve said
with his big toothy grin.
 
“I think we
found the missing links in the cash flow and additional contact info.
 
This box
contains
more than I hoped for.”

He cast a cautionary glance at Ivy, not wanting to disclose
any leads on Cruze or Julio prematurely, then he yelled
for the leader
to join them and gave pointed directives.
 
“I want scanned copies of every page,
front
and back, in this box.
 
Email them to me as soon as possible.
 
Do not put these discoveries in the case
files until I tell you to. Run those passports through the system to assess if
any
have
been
used
.
 
Get your people researching
these bank accounts and analyzing all
this
media.
 
I do not want a single
piece of proof neglected.
 
Do not attempt
to use the phone numbers or the email addresses.
 
I don’t want anyone tipped off.”

Receiving orders from a retired agent left the man abashed
by his failure.
 
His group had botched
unearthing this stash the previous year, which meant he had not led them to
success.
 
Steve watched him as he
swallowed his embarrassment and nodded, understanding he could only redeem
himself by being 100% this time.
 

“Yes, sir!” the team leader said.
 
“No wonder you are legendary at the
Bureau.
 
I will inform the D.C. office as
well.”

Steve stared at him a little hard.
 
“Delay putting anything into Sentinel or the
official records until I give my consent.
 
With three
moles
of the Fuentes
uncovered and arrested in the D.C. office last year and two more this year at
the DEA, I do not want any leaks.
 
What
if one or two are still in place?
 
Don’t
worry.
 
I
’ll
square this through the Chief.
 
Where’s
your boss at?”

“She’s on her way here,” the team leader said.
 
“Just had a text from her.”

“When she arrives, bring her to me.
 
I want to brief her too.”

Steve turned his attention again to the well while the man
finished his inspection.
 
Once done they
moved on to the modern well supplying the house and then went to another
abandoned well near the old mineshaft entrance.
 
His intuition told him more secrets of the Fuentes remained buried,
perhaps in the mine tunnel forming a passage from the vault in the basement to
ground level, several hundred yards from the house.
 
He glanced at his watch, noting the time was
after one.
 
They needed
to be
here the next day.
 
He called the number for the Bubird,
scheduling a flight for late the next afternoon and called Mule, the former
Chief.
 

Ivy took a headcount and called to order lunch from a burger
place in Madrid that Steve remembered Moll recommending
from eating there
the
previous
fall.
 
As she walked
to the car
to pick up the food, he heard her
reserving a hotel room for the two of them in nearby Santa Fe.
 

They each retained bad memories of this place from last
November when Cristo had fired two bullets at Steve’s chest, stilling his
heart.
 
While his protective vest
thwarted the projectiles, the impact shocked Steve’s heart into stopping.
 
After several unsuccessful attempts and just
as hope started to fade, expert work by two medics had resuscitated his heart
and restarted his breathing.
 
This
Fuentes place unnerved him.

Once in their room that night, Steve did a quick review
of the scans of the documents they found in the first well.
 
The assessment of the other two wells
revealed nothing.
 
At first
light
the team was scheduled to give the old
mine tunnel connected to the Fuentes house a foot-by-foot going over.
 
Steve planned to do
a thorough
walkthrough of the
house
and the underground vault, hunting for any recesses or indications of another
hidden stash.
 

Also
someplace the
Fuentes might have hidden away a vehicle, a small plane or both for emergency
transportation.
 
Last fall the stealth of
their operation had kept the Fuentes from being alerted when an arrest team
moved in, giving them no chance to run.
 
He called the head of the Albuquerque office and asked her to schedule
aerial videos for just after dawn the next morning.
 
He wanted shots of a
five-mile
radius around the Fuentes’ properties.
 
The shots would also reveal any
rustic
roads up into the rugged mesas
furnishing a promising way to flee their home.
 
He ended the call.
 

“Arroyos,” Ivy said.
 
“You were on the phone wanting aerial views.
 
After not finding any reports on caves in the
area, I searched for other geological formations and found arroyos – which
range from shallow to
steep-sided
canyons
with flat bottoms.
 
They should go over
them, especially if they have been dry for some years and don’t flash flood
anymore.
 
A vehicle could be disguised
under a ledge.”

Steve gazed at her the way he did when intrigued, raising
one eyebrow.
 
“Perfect for driving
unseen, as long as it leads to a way out.
 
We make a good pair of investigators.
 
We go down different tracks or take separate views of the same facts,”
he said, settling himself into bed next to his wife.
 

Ivy put her iPad on the nightstand and clicked off her
light.
 
“Hold me, Agent Nielson.
 
Being back at that house kept giving me
flashbacks.
 
Bad
recollections are crowding in.”

He gathered Ivy into his arms and enjoyed the warmth of
having her slip her arms around him.
 
While he kept quiet about his foreboding, poking around that place had
given him the
willies,
and he did not
tend to become edgy.
 
Was having
technically died in the house troubling him?
 
Did the whole Fuentes case and the brothers who kept popping back up
bother him?
 
Or did the region carry
whispers of old inhabitants, Caucasian or Native American?
 
Moll said the locals claimed Madrid to be
haunted with multiple sightings of ghosts.
 
When a shiver chilled him, Ivy pulled him nearer.
 
Steve wanted to return to Spook Hills where
the ghosts, like Casper, came from
jests
.

Right before bed, Mathew’s cell phone rang.
 
Expecting a call from Steve, he answered
without checking the incoming phone number and found his dad’s attorney on the
other end of the line.
 
After a few
preliminary pleasantries, the man mentioned Mathew’s family situation.
 
Now into his seventies, he had worked for Mathew’s
father for a long
time,
and he still
oversaw the remainder of his dad’s affairs, consisting of four trusts.
 
Mathew always found him responsive and loyal
to his
dad
’s wishes.

“Mathew, I will speak with the candor you deserve,” the
attorney said.
 
“This Alisha is a woman
whose charms ensured a life-long income while she maintained her flamboyant
lifestyle
.
 
Even now in her early sixties, she claims several so-called
admirers.
 
Her life is only about
herself.”

“What did my dad see in her, besides sex?” Mathew asked.

“That and being your birth mother is all I know.
 
Your father pursued her and supported
her.
 
When I coordinate with Alisha by
phone, I find her manipulative, cold and greedy.
 
Your
father
established a sizeable trust fund for her, restricted to only paying out the
interest unless the administrator approves an exceptional disbursement.
 
You should know that when Alisha dies, any
remaining money in the account reverts to you.”

“What you say coincides with what I heard from Laurel,”
Mathew said.
 
“
Nonetheless
I feel I should at least meet her.”

“Mathew, I caution you to think this over with care.
 
If
after due
consideration
you want to communicate with Alisha, I will ask her
approval to release her information.
 
Be aware that
I have a hunch she will try to
inveigle money out of you.
 
Be advised --
the woman is like an addictive drug and about as poisonous.”

From growing up with his cold and often absent stand-in
mother, Mathew had experienced enough pain in his early years.
 
Now he had an opportunity to know Laurel as a
person without the barrier of her faked motherhood status.
 
She was not the loving mother he wanted, but
she was an ardent philanthropist.
 
His
birth mother sounded like
a bad
character.
 

“I’ll take your advice and think about it for a few
days.
 
Thanks for the call,” Mathew said
and hung up.

With his good life here at Spook Hills and the promise of a
relationship with Callie, he did not want to take on a problem with
Alisha.
 
On
the other hand
he felt obligated to meet her and draw his own
conclusions.
 

He smiled at the thought of Callie now spending time in
Sedona.
 
Rather than choosing one center
based on their website and literature, she opted first to evaluate them, making
him respect her caution.
 
He reconciled
himself to her reasons for this retreat and began to consider if he might
benefit from spiritual wanderings to free himself of any residual adolescent
hurts.
 
Perhaps with now knowing about
his two mothers, the usefulness of that healing process may have passed.

The next day Steve and Ivy reached the Fuentes property
just as the horizon showed the morning’s gloaming.
 
With the local FBI team readying itself to
explore the tunnel to the vault, Steve gave specific instructions, relying on
the agent who made the find the day before to be observant.
 
They were to search foot by foot, examining
floor,
sides
and top for any hiding
places.
 

Ivy worked with Steve to go
over
the vault in the basement where they probed for any hidden storage places.
 
Discovering nothing, they moved to the
adjoining room where the Eduardo had kept a computer center and entertainment
space.
 
From there they went room-
by-
room through the house.

Since only a couple of handguns appeared in the inventory,
Ivy worked with Steve to take measurements of the house outside and inside, to
see if they revealed a secret storage cupboard with a stash of weapons.
 
Now they returned to the big kitchen.
 
With stainless steel counters and appliances
and everything else in white, the room seemed sterile to Ivy rather than
inviting.
 
While Steve tallied up the
dimensions on his laptop, she rummaged in the cabinets and moved to the pantry
on the right.
 

Ivy paused by the pantry door, letting her eyes rove around
the shelves.
 
She glanced
up at the ceiling and took a step back.
 
The pantry
height
was a good three feet lower than in the rest of the kitchen.
 
She
stepped into the room to hunt for an outline of a trap door.
 
Finding nothing, she tugged at the line of
shelves on the left
wall,
but they stayed
hugged to the wall.
 
She rattled the ones
on the right and they shifted about half an inch.
 
Ivy knelt, running her hand under the bottom
shelf and discovered recessed casters.
 

“Steve, help me with this,” she said, craning her head
around the corner of the big pantry.

He hurried over, flattened himself on the floor, slid his
hand under the lowest board, groped around and found a locking mechanism.
 
After he
released
it, the unit
budged
a little more at the
base.
 
He extended an arm up, fished
around and undid a similar lock.
 
The
shelving rolled out to reveal a solid wall standing behind it.
 
Up above Ivy spotted an access panel in the
dropped ceiling.
 
Steve stretched his
long arms up to open it.
 
Even at his
height, he
needed a ladder.
 

After wrestling a stepladder out of the broom closet, Steve
put it in place while Ivy retrieved the flashlight she brought with her.

“Here Steve,” she said, handing it to him.

He took two steps up, poked his head into
the space
and shone the light around.
 
In front of him,
neat
stockpiles of guns, ammunition, gas masks,
night-vision
glasses
and explosives
were
organized with
precision and left undisturbed under a thin layer of dust.
 
A regular
agent would bring the weaponry down and secure it, as well as search for
anything else in the hiding space.

“Good work, Ivy.
 
How
did you spot that trapdoor?” Steve asked after he stepped off the ladder.

“Luck.
 
Noticed the
room height was lower when I walked in.”

His email
dinged,
and
the aerial images started to arrive.
 
About 25 yards from the exit of the old mine, an
arroyo
ran away from the Fuentes house, down to the town of
Madrid.
 
In the other direction, the
gulch
ran up into the rough, dry
prominences.
 
Ivy walked over to see the
image.

“You up to meandering out to this gulley with me?” Steve
asked.

“A walk outdoors would be a relief,” Ivy said.
 
“This house creeps me out.”
 

They gathered up their belongings and stepped outside. After
stowing their gear, Ivy and Steve walked hand-in-hand out towards the
arroyo
.
 
Even though the survey team scanned the area the day before, Steve
wanted to scrutinize the length of the
arroyo
himself.
 
The gravelly arroyo bed lay
shallow and flat in front of them, making an unpromising den for a
vehicle.
 

“Let’s follow it,” he said, nodding to where the shallow
chasm bent to the right.

“Lucky the day is sunny.
 
Dangerous in a rain storm if a flash flood came rushing at us,” Ivy
said, as they strolled along into the gorge about half a mile to where it
deepened and became narrower.
 

After another half
mile,
the fissure split.
 
While the
left-hand
branch widened only enough to hold an
automobile, the right one remained broader.
 
Steve chose the left one, wanting to see how the narrow ravine might
change.
 
They walked about two hundred
paces to where the tapered canyon opened into
a
wide
chamber.
 

“You take the right wall,” Steve said.
 
“Be careful.
 
Inspect the walls, methodically and deliberately.
 
I’ll go left and hook up with you at the far
end.”

Ivy nodded.
 
As
bone-dry as the cavity looked, sparse, scruffy sage struggled along.
 
Continuing deeper into the narrow rift, Ivy
stopped to appreciate the way the walls rose on either side of the brown and
gray arroyo.
 
What had started as a
shallow gravely wash, now had sides of carved rock that ran back into the hills
with the
walls
becoming higher as they
advanced back.

When she reached the far end where the
arroyo
narrowed again, a bolt of electrical
current
threw
her backward, forcing out a
short scream of surprise.

Steve ran over, sweeping her off the ground in a protective
embrace.
 
“Snake?”

“An electric shock.”

He raked the walls with his eyes.
 
“Not likely.
 
You sure?”

“I can recognize jolt of electricity when one hits me,” Ivy said,
pushing away from him to get her feet back on the ground.

He let her go and took a step forward, then
leapt
back with a yell of astonishment.
 
“Force field.
 
Wired from the house?”

“Perhaps solar panels to storage batteries?”

“Something is stored here for sure.
 
Even I am smart enough to keep away from this
and bring experts in.”
 
Steve got on his
phone,
but the weak signal prevented a
call.
 
They walked back out until the
reception strengthened.

An hour later, an agent skilled in handling high voltage
disabled the source driven by sunshine receptors and batteries tucked among the
brush.
 
They unearthed an armored SUV
secreted away by the back wall of the chamber, protected by power fields as
well as camouflaged by colored canvas.
 
The rugged Land Rover was an unregistered 2014 model, likely obscured
there not long before their assault on the site last fall.
 

With their Bubird due to fly out of Santa Fe at five, Steve
met with the man in charge of the investigation and with the head of the
Albuquerque office, giving strict instructions for the remaining work in the
mineshaft, on the land and in the house.
 
While they could stay longer to oversee the work, the tone Steve used to
deliver his directives gave the two agents no doubt of his lack of tolerance
for any more substandard casework.

Ivy turned away from her husband to hide a smile when he
ended with, “Ivy and I came up with three ideas and made three significant
discoveries.
 
I do not expect anything –
stone, closet, wall, or
arroyo
-- to be
left untouched.
 
If you are meticulous
about your work, you will find more.
 
Become creative and be thorough this time.”

Steve spun on his heel and hastened to their rental
car.
 
From the annoyance on his face, Ivy
knew she did not want to be on the receiving end of his lecture.
 
As they settled into the car, she said, “We
can
stay
if you want.”

“No need.
 
Made my
point.
 
Unless
those agents
are total screw-ups, they will be diligent about
searching for more case artifacts.
 
I
think we made the biggest finds.
 
We are
one hell of a pair.”

“Not bad as a married couple either.”

“First class as husband and wife,” he said, his expression
softening back into the Steve she loved.
 
“Let’s make time for each other soon.
 
How about we go up to Portland in a week or two, dine again at Urban
Farmer and take a walk around town like we did on our first
dinner date
?”

“A little smooching in the Park?” Ivy asked, with a
seductive sideward glance at him as she pointed the car down the driveway.

“Why only a little?” Steve asked, matching her playful
humor.

 
“When we are there, I
will take you out to breakfast.”

“Unlike our first
date,
we
will sleep together this time.”

Steve pulled out his cell, twirled through his contacts and
dialed, humming “The Very Thought of You,” while waiting for the hotel in
Portland to answer.
 

Three days later, Mathew hesitated and then stepped into
the dining room of a swanky restaurant in Bangkok where the maître d’ seated
him next to an indoor aviary surrounded by palms.
 
Fifteen minutes later, the click of heels
told him a woman approached.
 
Even with
skin tanned by years in the sun and hair bleached to a white blonde, she could
only be Laurel’s sister.
 
Where Laurel’s
skin stayed pale and her hair a glowing auburn, the years of sun exposure made
Alisha appear older than Laurel, although in years she was younger.

He stood to greet
her,
and she held out a cheek for a kiss.
 
She
wore a loose, long white cotton dress with a translucent quality and a large
red straw hat with matching lipstick, nails,
handbag
and sandals.
 
The slit up the side of the
skirt ended near her hip where she pinned a red hibiscus flower made for a
counter-maternal effect.
 
The woman might
be out for a lunch of seduction with some old codger, not greeting her birth
son of forty-one years.
 

Mathew also saw the remnants of the woman who drew his
father to her.
 
Alisha remained striking,
with navy blue eyes set in
a long elegant
face with attenuated features

“You are a replica of your
father
,”
Alisha said, as he pulled out a chair for her.
 
“You might not have any of my genes at all.”

The waiter strutted over with a bottle of the 2009
Puligny-Montrachet Les Purcell’s arranged by Alisha.
 
Mathew waited in silence while the waiter
poured the wine.
 
While Alisha’s hand
shook a little when she picked up her glass, her expression communicated
confidence.
 

“When my dear sister hit you with the bombshell that she
only stood in as your mother, did the news astonish you?” Alisha asked.

“Yes and no.
 
She
seemed distant even when I was a small child.
 
Her revelation explained why she kept her
distance from me,” Mathew said, fiddling with his silverware.

“Your father insisted on the masquerade.
 
Perhaps if he had dangled an engagement ring
as a temptation . . .
 
But he did not
leave Laurel.
 
I
suppose he loved
her, although I dominated his passion.
 
He said he owed her his allegiance.”
 
Alisha sniggered, sounding more wicked than
amused.
 
“How strong is a commitment
where he kept sneaking away to my bed?”

“Alisha, I am not here to discuss your affair with my
father,” Mathew said.
 
“I am here to meet
you and find out why you gave me up.”

When the waiter came for their orders, Mathew was too
nervous with this woman to be hungry, yet he
ordered
to be polite.
 
Alisha asked for the most
expensive dish on the menu, a chilled poached lobster on a bed of greens with
dots of caviar.

She drained her glass of
exquisite
white burgundy and paused for Mathew to refill it.

“I could not raise a child on my own,” she said.
 
“I wanted an abortion.
 
Your father refused to let me have
one.
 
H
e
threatened never to come near me again if I did.
 
After years of trying to conceive with my
barren sister, he had the prospect of a child and an heir.
 
The way he went on about you every time he
arrived out here to be with me!
 
As if
you descended like a mythical god from the heavens!
 
He often sent me pictures of you.”