Short Cut to Santa Fe (23 page)

And Teresa Suarez strode out of the bus, long-legged and beautiful, in spite of their forty-eight-hour ordeal. She waved merrily in the direction of the car just as its door flew open and Carl Deever burst out. “Who in hell is she?” he screamed. “That's not my wife.”

“There wasn't anyone else in the bus,” said the deputy. “And she's a tall blonde,” he added, as if he expected Deever to take another look at her and change his mind. Teresa glanced over at him and winked.

It was a curious dinner, one that Kate would remember for a long time. Roberto and Guillermo sat on either side of her and plied her with wine, which she accepted and didn't drink. They, on the other hand, were pouring generous quantities into their own glasses, and a sense of strain surfaced rapidly.

Consuelo sat quietly, eating little and watching her brothers. At the end of each course, she cleared away Kate's nearly full wineglass with rapid movement of the hand. “Let me help you,” said Kate, clearing plates filled with untouched casseroled chicken.

“You're Kate, aren't you?” said Consuelo, once the kitchen door was safely closed. “Fernando told me about you. Don't worry—I know how to keep quiet. But look—you have to watch my brothers. Don't say anything to them—well—you can see why. They get drunk and can't keep their mouths shut.” She sat down at the kitchen table as the voices rose in the dining room. “Have some more chicken,” she said. “Or I should say, have some chicken. It's really good, and I couldn't eat in there. I knew there was going to be an explosion. I could feel it building up as soon as I walked in the door. It's better to leave them.” She took down two clean plates, put a piece of chicken on each one, grabbed two knives and forks, and put one plate in front of Kate. “Bread?” she asked. “It's from our local bakery, fresh today. And salad.” She took a pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator and poured some for both of them. “Fernando told me about your injury and how you're not supposed to drink. He asked me to help get the booze out of your way so you wouldn't be embarrassed.”

What else has Fernando told you, I wonder? thought Kate, and tried the chicken. It was a revelation, like everything else she had eaten in this house. “Will they get anything to eat?” she asked, pointing at the dining room, worried about Fernando, who must have been starving at that point.

“Oh, sure. They'll come out eventually and get something in here, together. Or at least Antonia and Fernando will. And maybe the others if they're not too trashed to see their plates.”

“No wonder Fernando gets upset about drunks,” said Kate.

“Oh, yeah,” said Consuelo. “He's a real one-man band on the subject.” She grinned. “That dress looks great on you. I knew they wouldn't recognize it.”

“It's gorgeous,” said Kate, absently. “Did you have a cousin who was addicted to pills and alcohol?”

“A cousin? An addicted cousin? Here in Albuquerque?”

“I think so.”

“We don't have any cousins over the age of eight, except in Mexico, and we've never met any of them. Antonia doesn't speak to her family, except for her two younger brothers who live up here now. And their kids are all little. What are you laughing at?”

“Me. Believing your brother.” She saw the look on Consuelo's face and hastily reached over to pat her hand. “It's okay,” she said. “He was just trying to encourage me. Talking about people who had overcome worse problems, shall we say. It was probably an old girlfriend, and he turned her into a cousin.”

“I don't know,” said Consuelo, staring intently at her.

“What's wrong?” asked Kate. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing. I just wish I had blue eyes, that's all.”

“I don't see that I have anything to apologize for,” said Teresa Suarez. “A great big deputy came charging in here and accused me of stealing a whole lot of money or something from a man out there who claimed he was my husband. The deputy said I had to go with him, so I did. I didn't want to be accused of resisting arrest or something like that.”

A large state trooper, larger than the sheriff's deputy, was looking down at her appreciatively and nodding. “Sounds reasonable to me, miss. And we're very glad to find you folks here in good health. People have been worried about you.”

“Why thank you,” she said sweetly. “What a gracious thing to say. I'm afraid our bus is inoperable—”

“Did it crash, miss?”

“Not really. It skidded and stalled, and when they started it up again, it ran out of fuel. It's probably not really damaged at all.”

“Now, is this everyone? We heard about Mr. Donovan and Mrs. Nicholls, and the five who went on ahead to get help were the ones who got in touch with us,” he said, turning to glare at the hapless deputy. “We can drive the three of you out right now and take you to your hotel. But weren't there two more people here at the bus?”

“Rick and Suellen,” said Teresa. “They were here just a minute ago.”

“There'll be lots of people coming out,” said the trooper. “We'll make sure they get back to the hotel as soon as they return to the bus.”

“Hotel?” said Teresa. “You mean a real hotel with bathrooms and running water? Oh, joy. I can't believe it.”

“We are apparently guests of a Mr. Andreas,” said John, as he dropped the duffle bag on the thickly carpeted floor and looked around their luxurious hotel room.

“Who's he?” said Harriet, as she pulled off her sweatshirt.

“The owner of the tour company, and a very good friend of Joe and Samantha, parents of Stuart and Caroline. He puts his tours in this hotel when they stop in Santa Fe.” He looked at Harriet, who was now standing stripped and beautiful in the middle of the room. An onrush of desire reminded him forcefully of how long they had been apart, and then, once together again, never alone. “Harriet,” he said thickly, reaching out his arms. She glided silently toward him over the yielding rug and buried herself in his grubby sweatshirt. “Harriet, this has been agony. God, how I've missed you. I don't know which was worse,” he said, kissing her, a long slow exploratory kiss.

“What do you mean worse?” she murmured when she finally broke away and looked up.

“Missing you when you were half a continent away from me, or when you were right at my fingertips,” he said, running his hands delicately over her back.

“And?”

“I decided I'd rather spend ten years in the same room with you with one of those swords between us than have you gone,” he said. “I really would. Life was very bleak without you.” He paused to nibble gently on her neck. “Of course, the perfect solution is the room without the sword . . .” He broke off and began pulling off his sweatshirt.

She stepped back. “I'm going to take a shower,” she said firmly, “before you make me forget what my name is. And rinse the sand and dust off me and my hair, and then I'm going to take a bath, and soak the stiffness out of my limbs. You want to join me? Maybe I can fit you in between the shower and the bath,” she added lasciviously and giggled.

“Showers for two,” he said, walking into the bathroom and turning on the water.

John ran his hands over Harriet's damp hair and then bent over and kissed her. She stretched luxuriously and curled up under his arm. “How about getting into the fluffy white robes supplied by the management and ordering something extravagant from room service?” he said. “And shall I shave? Or do you think I should grow a beard and horrify my colleagues?”

“Yes. And you can shave during my hot bath.” She ran her hand over his stubbly cheeks. “Although you do look dashingly tramp-like at the moment. What shall we have for dinner?”

“What about Kate?” said Harriet suddenly. She had finished shrimps in a garlic and hot pepper sauce, a filet stuffed with crab, vegetables, a large salad, and was now tackling the fruit bowl that arrived compliments of somebody.

“What about her?” asked John sleepily.

“Well—she was expecting us around eight on Friday. It is now well past eight on Sunday. Don't you think she might be a little worried?”

“No.”

“Why not? I would be.”

“Harriet, my love, we have been the hottest piece of news in this entire area for the past three days. She probably knows more about what's been happening to us than we do. She's been reading the papers and watching television. We were just living through it.”

“Of course. Do you think my brain has been permanently affected by this experience? I don't seem to be able to think anymore.”

“I believe it has more to do with lack of sleep and a definitely peculiar diet over the past few days. You'll recover. Now—if you've finished with all that food, I'll get them to come and take away the dirty plates. And then,” he said, leaning over the back of her chair and rubbing her shoulders, “we can pick up where we left off a couple of hours ago.”

“You mean you're willing to forgo watching yourself and your great adventures on the evening news?”

“You're damned right I am.”

If they had been watching, they would have heard that two people were still missing from what was now being referred to as the “fatal tour.” Searches had been organized to try to discover the whereabouts of Mr. and Mrs. Rick Kelleher of Amarillo, Texas.

Kate leaned heavily on the banister as she came down the stairs, trying hard to walk like a vigorous woman of twenty-nine instead of the very aged lady she felt like. Fernando had been gone since long before dawn, filled with worried exhortations instead of words of passion. When she eased herself out of bed, every muscle in her body had been stiff and sore, and a hot shower had done little to alleviate the chill in her soul or the acute discomfort in her body. But pride and the smell of coffee got her moving, and she forced her spine erect as she neared the kitchen. Two gigantic Rottweilers did what they could to help, converging on her, one on each side, as if they were trying ineptly to hold her up.

“Thanks, fellas,” she said, giving them a pat for their efforts. “But I don't think it'll work.” She had a sudden urge to get outside and walk until her muscles loosened up. Maybe if she took these two beasts with her . . . Probably not. Fernando had been very insistent that she stay indoors.

Antonia was in the kitchen, pencil in hand, reading something that looked like a student paper. “My dear,” she said, pushing it to one side and rising quickly. “Let me get you some breakfast. No protests. I promised my son that I would fatten you up. Have some coffee,” she added, getting another cup and filling it.

And Kate watched her once more move rapidly and smoothly through the process of putting a meal together. “You make me feel completely incompetent,” said Kate. “It seems impossible that anyone could be so good at so many things at once. I'm good at what I do, and I can actually cook a few things—but compared to you I'm a moose in a kitchen.”

“It's nice of you to say that,” said Antonia, her voice curiously neutral, “but it's not really a compliment. You might as well praise a slave for being good at working in the mines. At one time, I had no choice. I had to be competent and efficient, and since the old skills stay with you, you use them.”

“I don't understand,” said Kate. “When you say you had no choice. We can all choose to remain unskilled and ignorant, can't we?”

“Perhaps. It depends on what you expect from your life. I was married when I was sixteen,” she said, turning over the bacon and taking the eggs out of the refrigerator. “My parents were farmers—poor landowners—in Mexico. They believed they had come down in the world. We had little money and a lot of debt, and when our neighbour's rich American cousin turned up and said he wanted to marry me, they were completely dazzled.” She paused. “He was offering to buy me, if you want the truth,” she added reflectively. “He helped pay their debts in exchange for a wife.”

“Did you want to marry him?”

“Very difficult question.” She shook her head. “I don't know. How do you decide? Human beings are driven by so many different forces and desires that it's hard to isolate the most compelling one. It would be easy to say that my parents forced me into it, but that wasn't true. A sixteen-year-old girl always thinks it would be very nice to be rich, and have lots of clothes and to live in the promised land, and anyway, it made me feel important and beautiful that he had chosen me out of all the girls he could have had. Good for the ego. On the other side, I didn't love him, and I didn't want to marry anyone. I dreamed instead of going to university.” She stared out the window into the yard filled with dogs. “In those days, in my village, it was a fairly remote dream, but not impossible. Not at all impossible. But my parents were wildly anxious to get rid of me safely and prosperously, to have more money to spend on my brothers. I listened to them and married him. More coffee?”

“Please. Look—I can do my own eggs. Are you sure I'm not keeping you from your work?”

“No. No one can do
that
any longer,” she said, smiling with a hint of malicious triumph. “Although my husband tried, very hard. And marriage to him was as terrible as I ever could have imagined it in my gloomiest moments. At eighteen, I had three sons and a husband who was a pig and I thought my life was over. Clearly, he had come looking for a bride in his grandparents' village because he thought he could find someone who was so young and naive and ignorant that she would tolerate much more than any American girl ever would. But I had grown up in a village, after all, not a tower or a cave, and I had some ideas about a woman's rights in marriage. Then I discovered that the company he worked for was heavily involved in illegal operations—”

“What kind of company was it?”

“Trucking. He was a driver. Earning good money, as they say, but not the plutocrat of my parents' dreams. You can imagine how many different kinds of profitable traffic there could be between Mexico and the United States. I didn't like that. At home, we may have been poor, but my parents were at least fairly honest. I decided that independence was the only rational course. I tried to make sure that I did not get pregnant again, and I worked very hard to perfect my English. I finished high school and began to take a few courses at the University of New Mexico. My husband was furious—he didn't trust me around all those students—but he couldn't stop me unless he gave up his job and stayed home all the time to guard me and keep me indoors. I'd taken eight courses by the time Consuelo came along. I took two more after she was born—the boys were old enough to look after her—and then my husband was killed.”

“In an accident?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She paused, as if uncertain whether to go on. “He had some insurance money,” said Antonia, slipping the eggs into the frying pan, “which I used to buy this house. It was run down, but we repaired it, and I was able to go to university full time. That was when we started taking in people who needed to practice Spanish. The boys took care of Consuelo after school and helped around the house. I finished a Ph.D. and was hired at the university here. Guillermo was twenty by then, and chose not to go to college. Roberto and Fernando wanted to very much, and did. We had five more years of hard work and no cash, and suddenly, all the boys were working, we redid the house, and made it perfect.” She set Kate's plate in front of her.

“It is a beautiful house,” said Kate, giving her hostess a puzzled glance before tackling her breakfast.

“And now you are wondering why your comment produced this lecture. Aren't you?” Antonia filled their cups and sat down opposite Kate. She had not finished what she wanted to say.

“It was very interesting,” said Kate diplomatically, having forgotten by now what she had said to trigger Antonia's speech. “But yes, I was wondering a bit.”

“It's because my son has fallen in love with you,” said Antonia in clear, precise tones, looking directly across the table at her. Kate felt like a laboratory specimen whose mind was being probed and assessed by those dark, inquisitive, and slightly hostile eyes. “I thought you should know something about us and how we function before either one of you is too badly damaged by the experience. Fernando does not fall in love easily. He is very intelligent, the most intelligent of all my children, except perhaps for Consuelo. He is also very—what is the word—reserved, I think, or perhaps controlled. I'm afraid that he finds his family a terrible burden.”

“But he loves you all dearly,” said Kate, horrified. “Everything he says about you shows that.”

“I didn't say he didn't love us,” said Antonia impatiently. “I said that we are a burden—on his spirit, perhaps. Not his pocket. Not any longer. I have achieved my wildest dreams of independence now, with tenure and a real salary. I don't have to look to any man to help feed me and my children and no man can tell me what to do. I'm talking about his father's legacy to his sons—that still haunts him. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

“You mean your husband—his father—was a criminal as well,” said Kate, who was beginning to understand where this conversation was going. “He was more than just an innocent employee of a dishonest company.” She waited for a moment or two for a reply and then went on. “How did he actually die? Was he murdered?”

“In a sense. What you might call a legal murder. He was caught in a trap near the border and tried to shoot his way out of it. He was, in many ways, a stupid man.”

“Is that why Fernando joined a police force?”

“Oh yes. That was why.”

“All the rest of the passengers have had their clothes restored to them,” said Harriet. “That's why they look so much more elegant than I do. And I'll have
huevos rancheros
and a very large glass of fresh orange juice,” she added to the waitress without pausing.

“Sounds good,” said John. “Or at least I think it does.”

“Make it two.”

“To get back to all these people in suits,” he went on. “Have you forgotten that you didn't bring many clothes with you? Or at least that's what you told me. And if it bothers you, why not go out and buy a new pair of jeans? And even a sweatshirt. Unless you really want to eat breakfast in black high-heeled shoes and a white skirt. I'm sure you could get them here somewhere.” He raised his hand and waved in the direction of the entrance.

“Who's that?” said Harriet, not bothering to look behind her.

“The investigating team. They said they'd drop by and pick us up, and here they are.”

McDowell and Rodriguez threaded their way through the tables until they were standing over them, like a pair of grizzly bears watching a picnic. “Good morning, gentlemen,” said Harriet. “Join us.”

“We've already had breakfast,” said McDowell. “Are you folks ready?” he asked abruptly. Now that he knew from the previous evening's interview that they weren't your ordinary rich civilians, he didn't feel he had to be excessively attentive to their tender feelings.

“You can't have too many breakfasts,” said Harriet. “More coffee and one of those baskets of sticky things,” she said to the waitress who wandered by to see what was happening. “You might as well sit down. We've only just ordered, and it's a much more comfortable way to drink coffee and eat Danishes.”

“This is Sergeant Rodriguez,” said McDowell, tacitly accepting their invitation by pulling out a chair. “He's been in charge of several aspects of the investigation, and I felt I should bring him in at this point.”

Rodriguez sat down as well, and drew a deep breath. “There's just one small point where I think you can help me,” he said politely. “Miss Jeffries, can you tell me when your friend Miss Grosvenor invited you to visit her in Denver? Precisely?”

“Precisely when?” said Harriet, looking oddly at him. “Are you sure you want the entire history?”

He nodded. “The whole thing.”

“Okay. Don't blame me if you fall asleep. When she inherited that house in Denver about three years ago she invited me to come stay with her. Then every time she wrote, she repeated the invitation.”

“So she didn't specifically invite you for a certain time?”

“Hang on a minute.” Harriet, frowning in concentration, held up a hand to keep him from interrupting. “After she was injured, she sent me a postcard saying how much she needed company. I had been thinking about the Kansas project for a long time, vaguely, and it all fell together. I had nothing else to do. John was tied up with a case, and things are slow at home. I didn't write Kate that I was coming, because I hate tying myself down to specific times and places when I'm on a shoot in case I'm held up by the weather, and besides, I'm criminally disorganized about my personal correspondence. We set things up after I reached Kansas. Got that? After I got to Kate's, we organized the Taos expedition. All very last minute.”

“So the dates and the times—when you were coming, when you were meeting her in Taos—they were
your
dates and times.”

“Ah—I see what you're driving at. Yes, they were,” said Harriet, with a hostile edge to her voice. “For the first time in her life, Kate had absolutely nothing to do, and she was perfectly happy to fall in with my schedule. Perfectly happy. She made no attempt to maneuver me into being at a certain place at a certain time.” By now, Harriet was glaring at Rodriguez.

John offered him the basket filled with muffins and pastries; he took a particularly large and sticky Danish with a cheerful smile. “That's great, Miss Jeffries,” he said, sounding both gleeful and triumphant. “I mean, thank you very much. It clarifies a few things for us.” He turned to grin at McDowell, who glared back at him.

Obviously Harriet had just helped Rodriguez score a point in some epic battle between these two men. Maybe they had bets laid on who organized the hijacking. Bastards. “How is Diana Morris?” she asked, opting for a change in topic before she was arrested for cop assault.

“I beg your pardon?” asked McDowell. “Who's that?”

“The person on the bus we all knew as Diana Morris,” said John impatiently. “The one we dragged, bullied, and carried for three miles or more out to the highway. We were just wondering if she was okay. When you've put all that work into someone, you like to know.”

“I'm afraid we don't have any information on her,” said McDowell stiffly.

“Look,” said Harriet. “We all knew she was a cop. And either she was awful shy—which she didn't seem to be—or she was working undercover. She tried to tell us she was a librarian from Virginia. I suppose that means she was Washington-based.”

“How did you all know—what made you all think she was a cop?” asked McDowell.

“Only because when the bus driver pulled out a weapon and started firing, instead of hiding under the seat, she took a round or two while casually saving the tour guide's life,” said John. “I'm not sure I would have done that, but maybe she's better trained than I am. At any rate, it's not the automatic reaction of your average librarian.”

“Sounds more like a royal bodyguard,” said Harriet.