Sweet Hearts (27 page)

“Sam, I’d like you to meet Jimmy
McMichael and his wife, Callie. Jimmy was a good friend of Tito’s,” Beau said.

Sam didn’t recognize the name but
she registered a clean-cut Anglo man in his thirties, inexpensive blue suit and
patterned tie, short sandy hair, a straight nose and tiny gold stud in his
right earlobe. His wife wore a navy blue dress of thin fabric that was
inadequate for the weather and she shivered visibly in her cardigan jacket.
They both greeted Sam with warm smiles.

“We won’t be able to go out to
Mrs. Fresques’s house,” Jimmy said, running a finger around the collar of the
fitted shirt. “Work. You know how that is. But I’ve got something for her,
Tito’s mom. It’s a box of things Tito gave me that morning. The day he left.”

“You saw him that day?” Beau
asked with a sharper edge than usual.

“Well, yeah. He stopped by my
place. I remember I was working on my car. Had a gorgeous little Mustang back
then.” His wife gave him a quick smile.

“What did Tito say that day? Did
he seem worried or anything?”

Callie McMichael was clearly
freezing and she nudged her husband.

“Let’s walk toward the car. I can
get her out of this wind and I’ll give you the box of stuff.” They headed as a
group toward the parked cars.

“The conversation that day?” Beau
reminded.

“Oh yeah, well, not much that I
remember. He had this carton with him, just a box of stuff. Said I should see
that his mom got it if anything ever happened to him. I held onto it all this
time. Kinda forgot about it, really. It was in our garage and I did some
cleaning about six months ago and came across it. Meant to take it over there
before now, but things just got busy.”

He opened the passenger door and
Callie gratefully got inside and closed the door behind her.

“If you don’t mind taking it to
Mrs. Fresques . . .” He unlocked the trunk and raised the lid, then reached for
the box. It was a cardboard carton about twelve inches square. The top was
taped down with clear packing tape and the single word TITO was printed in
marker on one end. He held it out and Sam took it.

“Do you remember anything else
about that day?” Beau asked. “Tito’s exact words, anything he might have
mentioned about his plans?”

“Not really, man. Oh, he said he
might try to come by to watch the game with me the next day, but then he didn’t
come. I figured he’d just gotten busy with family.”

“But he seemed worried for his
safety? Did he say that?”

“Sort of. Something like ‘if
anything happens to me and I don’t come back’ . . . you know, words kind of
like that.”

Jimmy was starting to look a
little cold, himself. Beau thanked him for the box and asked Jimmy to call his
office if he thought of anything else. They watched the younger couple back out
of their parking spot as Sam and Beau walked to his cruiser.

“Do you think he’ll come up with
any new information later?” Sam asked as she fastened her seatbelt.

“Hard to say. But I definitely
think we need to check out this box before we give it to Marla. If it contains
personal mementos, that’s one thing. But if that were the case why wouldn’t he
have just left it at her house?”

“Exactly,” Sam said, picking at
the edge of the tape with a fingernail.

“Here.” Beau handed her a
pocketknife and she slit the cellophane.

She raised the cardboard flaps
and lifted out a sheet of crumpled newspaper. The page was dated the week Tito
disappeared. Her fingers trembled a little as she picked up the topmost item.
It was a folded sheet of lined paper.
Dearest Mama, If you are reading this
. . .

Sam looked up. “I’m not sure I
should read this. It’s private.”

Beau held his hand out and she
placed the page in it.

He quickly scanned the
handwritten lines. “I don’t see anything about his work or his feeling
threatened. It’s a goodbye.” He folded the page again and set it aside. “What
else is in there?”

Sam picked out a rubber-banded
packet of envelopes. Bank statements. Through the glassine windows she could
see that they were solely in Tito’s name. She pulled one out, unfolded it and
scanned to the bottom of the page. The savings account balance was a little
over a thousand dollars. The second one showed several CDs, to be automatically
reinvested. Ten years ago they had totaled about ten thousand dollars, back in
the time when interest rates were considerably higher than present day. She
handed each statement to Beau as she pulled out the next one.

“Looks like he’d squirreled away
nearly fifty thousand dollars,” Beau said.

“Do you think it was legitimate
money?” Sam asked.

“I do. For one thing, there are
tons of rules about cash transactions with banks nowadays. And, I doubt he
would have opened accounts under his real name if he were dealing with stolen
money. Plus, it’s not a large enough amount to take that kind of risk against
the cartel.”

“How do you mean?”

“If a guy decides to cross the
bad guys, he’ll do it for a lot more than this. This whole box would be full of
hundred dollar bills, or there’d be a roomful of them somewhere.”

Sam stared down into the box. “I
don’t see any cash at all.”

“He probably just wanted Tricia
and Jolie to have a little nest egg, maybe a college fund.”

“I still don’t see why he didn’t
just hand this directly to them.” Sam pulled out a small box, like something
jewelry might come in. When she opened it, she discovered a military medal and
a key.

“Purple Heart.” Beau said,
stroking the medal with his finger. “I’m surprised no one’s mentioned this. But
then again, maybe he never made a big deal out of it.”

“There’s only one more thing,”
Sam said. She held up a yellow plastic floppy disk. “I’m thinking his mother is
not meant to be the beneficiary of this.” Across the front of the disk, written
in black marker, were the words:
Get this to the authorities

Beau took the disk and turned it
over but there were no other notations. “What authorities do you think he
meant? Jonathan told us that Tito had reason not to trust many people in his
own agency.”

“Well, you’re the sheriff of this
county,” she said. “That makes you qualified on some level, don’t you think?”

She could see common sense
fighting with the bureaucracy that governed Beau’s daily work life.

“You can’t very well know who you
should give it to until you know what it says,” she pointed out. “Besides, who
can read one of these old floppies anymore? Hint—my computer at home has that
drive.”

He looked up at her and chuckled.
“Okay, you’ve made a good case. Shall we?”

It took Sam about three seconds
while Beau started the cruiser and put it in gear to decide that it would be
okay to show up late for the gathering at Marla’s house.

“Hit the lights, would you?” she
said.

Getting through town went so much
faster with benefit of an official vehicle, she thought as they zoomed through
intersections and past lines of cars that pulled over for them. In under five
minutes they were walking through her kitchen, heading for the computer desk in
the corner of the living room. She set the cardboard box on the desk and pulled
out the floppy disk.

“This thing may be old but I knew
there was a reason I never fully upgraded.” She pressed the power button and
warned Beau that it might take a few minutes.

“Hey, it’s not any slower than
the stuff the county gives us.” He held out the disk and she inserted it into
the drive.

When the directory came up it
appeared to contain only one file, a very small Word document. “This can’t be
much,” Sam said as she opened it.

On the screen appeared two terse
sentences:

Find someone you can trust in law
enforcement. Have them go to 1800 Front Street NE in Albuquerque and retrieve
the items in Box 99.

Sam and Beau stared at each
other, each with the same
huh?
look on their faces.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Tito
obviously didn’t know who to trust or he would have named someone. The only
Feds I know are Jonathan and Rick.”

Sam stared at the screen. “Tito
reported to Rick Wells and yet he didn’t entrust him with this. I know—that was
then and this is now, but should we maybe check this out before getting anyone
in the agency involved?”

“How are—?” Beau’s eyes traveled
to the carton beside the monitor. “That key!”

Sam grabbed up the small box with
the Purple Heart in it. The key with it could belong to nearly anything and she
hadn’t thought to question it earlier. It made sense that Tito would put the
disk and the key close to each other but not so close that it was obvious they
went together. She took the key out and returned the medal to the box with the
other personal items.

“I’m thinking we need to make a
quick trip to Albuquerque,” she said. “Would it be a horrible breach of ethics
if we got there the same way we just now got here?”

Beau groaned at her sneaky little
grin. “Well, we’re dealing with information that got a man killed, and it
involves some pretty high levels of the federal government.”

“And it would be a lot quicker.
We could be there and back before dinner.”

He rolled his eyes at that
suggestion but didn’t argue.

“Let me call out to Marla’s house
real quick.” While Beau locked the back door, she dialed the number and told
Diane Milton that something had come up and that she would stop by with
something for Marla in the morning.

“That’s fine, Sam,” Diane said.
“She’s awfully tired right now anyway. It’s been a hard day.”

Never in her life had Sam
experienced the thrill of making the long highway drive in such record time,
but she took a deep breath and braced herself. A few times she squeezed her
eyes tightly shut. It was mid-afternoon when they hit the edge of the big city
and Beau took full advantage of his lights and siren to cut through the clog of
early rush hour. Fighting a queasy feeling in her stomach, Sam pushed the
buttons to program the address into his GPS and to study the little map that
came up.

He cut the emergency gear when
they got to the correct street, and Sam picked up the brass key as they
approached the mail drop location. It was one of those places where you could
rent a box for years at a stretch with no questions asked and no one clearing
the box and stamping “Return to Sender” on your stuff. The perfect place to
send things that you didn’t want anyone else to touch. They walked inside
together and it took only a minute to find Box 99 and unlock it.

“Good thing he rented the largest
box,” Beau said as he pulled open the door. The cubbyhole was stuffed full. As
he pulled out handfuls of envelopes, Sam cradled them in her arms. When the
metal compartment was completely empty, they carried everything out to the
cruiser.

“Let’s just make sure there isn’t
some kind of ‘more mail at the counter’ type of notice in here before we
leave,” Beau suggested.

Sam handed over half of the
unruly stack and they began straightening and organizing. Some of the envelopes
were a bit ragged and dirty, some felt thin as if they were nearly empty while
others were fat little packets. All were addressed in masculine writing, the
return address was the same as the delivery address, the one where they sat right
now, and the postmarks coincided with the ones she remembered from Marla’s
greeting cards.

“Looks like this is all of it,”
Beau said, handing his portion back to her.

“So, now what?” Sam said. “I
still don’t think you want to turn Tito’s secret information over to just
anyone. We really need to go through all of it and find out what it says before
we’ll know who to trust.”

“There’s at least a day’s worth
of reading here.”

She nodded. There went her Sunday
but she wasn’t about to drop her interest in the case at this point.

“I don’t really feel like staying
over in the city, finding a hotel or whatever. Do you?” he asked.

“Nah. I can’t handle these
clothes much longer either. So . . . home, James?”

He backed out and joined the flow
of traffic. As the evening rush became more oppressive he succumbed to the
temptation and switched the strobes on again. They arrived back in Taos, as Sam
had predicted, in time for dinner.

She’d called the bakery and made
sure Jen had things under control. Another call to Kelly let her daughter know
that she was heading to Beau’s for the night. They picked up a bucket of
chicken, retrieved her truck from the lot at the funeral home, and headed for
his place.

Once she’d changed into flannel
pajamas and they’d each polished off a couple pieces of chicken, Beau brought
out his pocket knife and began slitting open the envelopes. Sam automatically
began sorting the mail by postmark date and she soon had four neat stacks of
well-ordered mail.

Beau started with the first
envelope, which had been mailed about a week after Tito’s disappearance.

“Listen to this,” he said.
“Quote: ‘Can’t believe it. Close call. Espinosa knows something, not sure how
he found out. He nearly had me in Taos. Now I don’t dare contact anyone. The
only thing I can think to do is start documenting. Got this mailbox, will send
evidence as I get it. This way, if I’m dead someday, eventually someone will
come across my findings. I’ve rented the box for a year. Will renew it if
necessary. I listed my mother as the contact person but I don’t want her
involved.”

“What does that mean?” Sam asked.

“Probably had to fill out some
kind of rental contract and since he didn’t have a home address once he skipped
out, the company would send the remaining mail to Marla if the contract wasn’t
renewed and there was anything left in the box. I don’t know. That’s my guess.”