Short Cut to Santa Fe (26 page)

“But she's not a tall, leggy blonde,” said John.

“It only takes a couple of hours to turn a long-haired blonde into a short-haired brunette,” said Harriet. “And I bet if you put Suellen into better fitting clothes—remember on the trip she was wearing very bulky outfits that hid her shape—she'd be tall, and slender, and long-legged.”

“It's possible, I suppose,” said McDowell, grudgingly. “She's the only one to have disappeared. I wonder if he got rid of her?”

“She'll be at the cabin,” said Fernando. “Hiding.” He spoke softly, and his face had turned ashen in colour.

Everyone turned in his direction in silent astonishment.

“Cabin? What cabin?” said McDowell, at last.

“Deever's cabin,” said Fernando.

“Deever has a cabin,” said McDowell softly. “And why is this the first time anyone's heard about Deever's cabin? Since you seem to know about it. Whose side are you on?”

Fernando pushed his untasted beer to one side. “I haven't said anything partly because I only figured it out in the last twenty-four hours. And once I figured it out, it's taken me this long because my brother is probably there as well. Hiding.” He stopped, as if going on was causing him physical pain. “That's why I know about it. Because of my brother. He took me there once, fourteen—fifteen years ago. He said it belonged to a powerful and important and rich friend of his, and he was allowed to use it whenever he wanted. He had a key. Guillermo never had any powerful, rich, important friends except for Deever that I knew of.”

“Well—you'd know, Rodriguez,” said McDowell grimly. “Better than I would.”

“I thought he'd outgrown him, you know, gone on to other things. And that he had a real construction business, not just another Deever front operation.” Kate watched his hands. His nails were digging deeper and deeper into the flesh of his palms until she was afraid he would start to bleed. “But I never asked in case I found out—I was always very good at kidding myself when I wanted to.”

Fernando took four of them along the mesa road to the path, McDowell and three troopers from Santa Fe, including one who had been introduced merely as “being good with a weapon just in case.” “We could drive in much closer by going around and over the mesa,” he said. “But there's no cover that way. They'd be long gone before we got there. It's not that far by the path as long as the climb doesn't bother you.”

“Go on, Rodriguez, and stop trying to pretend you're the wild man of the woods,” said McDowell, looking at the slope and wondering if perhaps he should have sent someone in his place.

“Anyone bring a compass and emergency rations?” said a wit from behind, and the party began to scramble energetically up the hill.

Deever's beautiful new Piper Cheyenne IIIA had taken off from an abandoned section of county road—now his private airstrip—conveniently located behind the adobe mansion exactly ten minutes before another four men arrived at his gate with arrest and search warrants. Both birds had flown, leaving only a jaded and unsurprised Pedro and Maria behind. Jaded and unsurprised and ignorant.

Deever landed with more haste than elegance on the mesa and taxied bumpily along to the far end. Here—if one looked carefully—was a well-tended path not broad enough to show from the air. He climbed out and headed purposefully for the path.

Inside the cabin, Victoria Deever and Rick Kelleher sat on a camp bed, holding hands, and staring at Guillermo Rodriguez. He was sitting on a hard chair, with a clean handkerchief wrapped around the spot where the dog had marked him, and the blood was slowly oozing out and dripping onto the floor. In his hands and across his lap he was holding an assault rifle. “I don't see what good this is going to do you,” said Rick.

“Deever wants her,” said Guillermo simply. “He wants her so bad he was willing to have that whole goddamned bus hijacked to keep her out of the hands of the feds.”

“I wasn't going to the feds,” said Victoria. “Do you think I'm crazy? I was too scared to go to the feds. I just wanted to get out of there and settle down with Rick, that's all. They asked me, and I told them I'd never live long enough to testify for them, so what was the use?”

“They were there,” said Guillermo. “On the bus. I can smell cop. They were going to snatch you and force you to testify. Otherwise they'd charge you along with him.”

“Bastards,” said Victoria.

“I wouldn't necessarily believe everything he says, sweetheart.”

“Some of what he says is so obvious it can't help but be true,” she replied.

They sat and waited and looked at each other and at the rifle in Guillermo's hands.

“So now what?” asked Victoria. “You're gonna turn me over to Carl. He kills me, and then he kills you and Rick, and then where are we?”

“Come on, Mrs. Deever—”

“Whatever you do, just don't call me Mrs. Deever. It makes me sick.”

“Okay. Victoria. You didn't think that I'm stupid enough not to have a plan to get us all out of here, do you?”

“I wish I didn't,” she said. “But I do.”

Then the cabin was filled with the baby roar of the Piper Cheyenne. “That's Carl,” said Victoria. “Rick—I love you, and I wish you'd go out and hide in the bush somewhere. Because once he has me and Rocco, he'll stop looking.”

“No, sweetheart,” said Rick. “I'm staying.”

“They've landed,” said Victoria. “They'll be taxiing down to the path. That's that funny sound. Then it's just three or four minutes to here.”

“Not a hell of a good idea to meet them here,” said Guillermo. “Come on, friends. Out to the path.”

Deever walked with the arrogance of the invulnerable toward the path, resplendent in tooled leather boots and expensive checked shirt. But as he moved into the shadow of the woods, his stance altered; he became a part of his landscape, melting into the trees, with only his eyes, flickering back and forth in nervous haste, betraying his humanity. Ginger followed him to the beginning of the path, paused for a moment to consider the situation, and sat down to wait on a convenient piece of rock.

A flash of movement somewhere had caught Deever's attention; one jump and he was behind an inadequate tree, absolutely still. Whether the stillness was of watching predator or terrified prey was difficult to determine. The group of men at the top of the ridge observed him in silence, waiting.

Then a voice rang out, relaxed and half-amused. “I have her, Carlos,” said Guillermo. “With her boyfriend as a bonus. You can do what you like with them once I get the rest of my money.” He was standing in front of the cabin. “You can even come out from behind that tree,” he added, spreading his hands in a gesture of peace.

“That's great, Rocco,” said Deever, stepping back onto the path as soon as he had located the head of soft brown hair.

Guillermo moved closer to him, smiling confidently.

“You fucking idiot.” Deever fired before Guillermo had time to focus on his weapon, and caught him straight in the chest. The force of the blast threw him to the ground; he lay on his back on the soft forest floor, his body twisted slightly toward the west.

McDowell grabbed Fernando by the shoulder in a grip of steel. “Don't you move, Rodriguez,” he whispered in his ear. “If your brother's alive, we'll be there in time to help him. If he isn't, there's nothing you can do. But I want Deever alive and I want for us to be able to prosecute him. No matter how many expensive lawyers he has. So you behave yourself.” He beckoned to the slighter and faster of the two juniors with them. “See that guy?” he said, pointing. “His name is Ginger. Now you go up to him real careful and quiet and get him. And then hang onto him. Got that? You,” he added to the man beside him, “go along and make sure there aren't any surprises.”

Ginger was a realist. When the inevitable turned up, his creed had always been to accept fate with grace. A gun barrel next to his ear in the hands of a state trooper was, in Ginger's rule book, the inevitable. He spread his arms in a gesture of submission and sat tranquilly on his rock to watch the rest of the spectacle.

McDowell, Fernando, and the last trooper, armed with a sniper's rifle, had separated and were working their way down the slope as unobtrusively as they could. McDowell checked the positions of his two men, raised his pistol to slightly above firing position, and stepped out from behind the tree that sheltered him. “Drop your weapon, Deever,” he said, in a conversational tone. “We have you surrounded.”

Carl Deever whirled 180 degrees to face this new threat. As soon as he began his move, McDowell called out, “Now!”

The trooper who was good with weapons made a minute final adjustment to his aim and shot Carl Deever in the right shin, just above his beautiful boot. He screamed and dropped to the ground like a dead bird, crippled and impotent from the pain and shock of the blow. McDowell walked over and picked up his rifle before he had time to develop any ideas about reaching for it. “Good work, trooper,” he said. “A nicely placed shot. Carl Deever, I have right here in my pocket,” he went on, patting his chest, “a warrant for your arrest for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Miss Katherine Grosvenor. And just so's you know, when you're booked we'll be adding in the murder of Bill Rodriguez. You have the right—” And his voice droned on, scarcely audible over Deever's moans and curses.

Fernando Rodriguez stooped over his brother's body and gently closed his staring eyes, in defiance of all regulations and the established practices of his department.

“Where's his wife?” asked McDowell, after calling for a helicopter and medics. The quiet marksman had bound up the wound he had left in Deever's leg, and was standing over him until transport arrived.

“I don't know,” said Fernando, pulling himself together and heading purposefully into the cabin. “Mrs. Deever? You in here?” he called. He looked around. It was smaller than he remembered, and very spartan in amenities for someone of Deever's wealth, but perhaps that was the idea. No one who stumbled across it would suspect that it belonged to a rich man, and that, no doubt, was why its existence had remained a secret. Except that Deever had given Guillermo a key on his sixteenth birthday. And Guillermo had taken him there. With a deliberate act of will, he put the memory of that day out of his mind, and concentrated on his task. A rear window was wide open, and Victoria Deever was not in the cabin.

“Mrs. Deever?” he called through the window. “It's safe to come out now,” he said. “Your husband is under arrest. So's Ginger.”

He was rewarded by a rustling in the bushes behind the cabin. He headed outside just as a tall woman with short, dark brown hair, followed by a broad-shouldered, sheepish-looking man, came around the corner. “Hi,” she said, brightly. “I'm Victoria Deever. I apologize for the disguise and hiding from you and all. And this is Rick Kelleher. He wanted to stay out here and tackle Carl, but I wouldn't let him.”

“Good decision,” said McDowell.

“Well—I'm glad y'all didn't get shot. I was worried for a while.” She caught sight of her husband, handcuffed and wounded, lying on the ground. “Hi, Carl, honey,” she said, with a broad grin that ill-suited her pale elegant features. “It's me, little Vicky,” she went on, nudging him sharply with her foot. “Your wife. Remember? And now, for just this one time in your life, you pay attention to what I'm going to say.”

“Get that fucking bitch away from me,” screamed Deever.

“Not yet, Carl, honey,” said Victoria. “You listen to me first. I never was going to testify. That's what gave me the guts to finish packing and go to the airport this time—so they couldn't pressure me into it. And I wanted to be with Rick. I just don't feel they ought to ask a wife to do that, no matter how much she hates her husband. 'Specially when she knows he'll have her murdered if she does. That was a real stupid move on your part, sweetheart. Hijacking a whole bus just to get rid of me. You should learn to trust people once in a while, you filthy little prick.” Her light, fluting voice had turned dark with hatred. “I hope your leg hurts like hell, asshole, and I'll see you in court.” And she turned and walked with great deliberation into the waiting arms of Mr. Kelleher.

The survivors of the hijacking who were availing themselves of Mr. Andreas's hospitality wandered one by one into the bar, as if the prospect of spending the evening alone with their thoughts was unpalatable. When John and Harriet came in after a late dinner, three of them were gathered around a low table, chatting quietly.

“May we join you? As honorary members of the tour?” asked Harriet.

“Surely,” said Rose Green. “Weren't you the ones who got us out, after all? Did you rescue your equipment from the van?”

“They say they've found some of it,” said Harriet. “I'll probably have to shoot the project over again, though. But that's okay. I like Kansas. Why are you people all still here?”

“When you've come all the way from New York on Friday for a vacation, it seems silly to go home on Monday,” said Teresa. “If the tour company comes up with something interesting for the rest of the week, I'll take it. Otherwise, they've promised me a rental car. Karen and I are going to kick around in New Mexico. It's about time she got acquainted with the Southwest if she's going to be conducting tours through it. Just think about it. The only Mexican food she's ever eaten was in bars in Maine.”

Karen smiled in confusion. “I haven't had enough money since I got out here to eat in restaurants,” she said. “I'd really like to see the pueblos, too. And some of the museums.”

“I'm doing the same thing,” said Rose. “Mr. Andreas of the tour company says he's going to arrange at least another week's holiday for me. I like the place.”

Harriet deduced that Mr. Andreas had spent the day energetically mending his public relation fences.

“How nice,” said Rose. “It's the Kellehers. I wonder where they've been?”

The arrival of Victoria Deever and Rick Kelleher altered the atmosphere. Out of her hiking-boot-and-heavy-sweater outdoorsy clothes and back into shimmering silks, she was a different woman. Teresa Suarez looked narrowly at her as if to satisfy herself of something and then sat back in her chair. “It is Victoria Deever, isn't it?” she asked. “I reckoned it was you Deever was searching for when he came out to the bus.”

“I don't know how to thank you,” said Victoria with a return of the nervous twitch that Deever induced in her, “but I surely do appreciate what you did out there at the bus. It gave us time to get away. Otherwise he'd have killed me.”

“Why?” asked Rose, more curious than shocked.

“Because the next time he's in court, I'll be up there in the witness box, testifying,” she said simply.

“Did your husband actually pay Gary and Wayne to kidnap you?” asked Karen.

“It looks like it,” she said, trying to smile. “I thought I'd been so clever. Making reservations and all for a week in New Orleans, while Rick signed us up for this tour, but Carl found out anyway. Only one person besides us knew, and I guess that was one person too many. I'm sorry for ruining your vacations. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”

“Don't worry, my dear,” said Rose. “It wasn't your fault, I'm sure. But it is getting late, and I'm too old a woman to sit up all night in bars. We'll meet at breakfast.”

Karen and Teresa exchanged glances and rose to their feet. “We have planning to do if we're to hit the road tomorrow,” said Teresa. “See you at breakfast.”

“I certainly cleared the room in a hurry,” said Victoria wryly.

“They've figured out from experience that you're dangerous to sit beside,” said Rick, his face in its usual deadpan expression. Whether that was intended to comfort her or not, Harriet was not quite sure.

But Victoria laughed, a hearty, earthy laugh, and ordered a margarita.

In the pause that followed, Kate came in, half-rushing, half-limping, and eased herself into one of the chairs recently abandoned by the tour victims. “Am I glad to get away from there,” she said.

“From where?” asked Victoria.

“The police station. Cop shop. Whatever. Where I have been giving evidence, deposing, witnessing, all those things, while people slowly recorded everything I said, and checked it, and double-checked it, and sent out for sandwiches, and checked it some more. Tomorrow—the FBI,” she added, in thrilling tones. “And I'll have mineral water with a twist,” she said to the waitress. “Is there anything to eat here?”

“Sure thing,” said the waitress and disappeared.

“I'm Kate Grosvenor,” she said leaning over the table and shaking hands with Victoria and Rick. “Girl photographer extraordinaire. Since no one is going to introduce us.”

“Victoria Deever,” she murmured. Rick added his own name and leaned back again. He looked like a man who was enjoying himself immensely.

“Actually, I knew that,” admitted Kate. “I've taken and developed an awful lot of pictures of you. Can't miss those fabulous cheekbones even under that weird hairdo.”

“It was the best I could manage at short notice,” she said apologetically. “But you know, between the hair, and wearing jeans, and sort of changing the way I moved, I think I fooled just about everybody.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Kate, settling in for an interesting gossip. “Back to experimental dance?”

“I don't think so,” she said. “To be brutally honest, my career was stalling out when I met Carl. Rick has a wonderful spread up in Colorado, and a business in Texas, and I think I'll just settle in and help him.”

“Victoria has a fine head for business and accounting,” said Rick admiringly. “And a great memory for figures. That's what makes Deever so nervous.”

It was very late when Fernando Rodriguez, drained by now of all feeling, walked into the hotel to find Kate. His heart sank when he saw who was with her. He'd expected Harriet and John, but to discover her in the middle of an animated conversation with Victoria Deever was a shock. Kate caught sight of him wavering in the entrance, and beckoned. He moved a chair next to her and sat down. “Were you waiting long?” he murmured.

“A while,” she acknowledged. “I was hoping they might let you off early—”

“It's better this way. Roberto has gone to Albuquerque. He'll stay with Antonia.”

“How is she?”

“She said on the phone that Guillermo died ten years ago, and that she's been waiting a long time to bury him. Don't ask me what she meant.”

“You know damn well what she meant,” said Kate.

“Okay,” he said. “I know what she meant. For me it was fifteen years ago. But for Roberto it only happened today. He's taking it hard. They were still pals.” He was desperately tired. He wanted more than anything else to climb into bed, clutching Kate to him as hard as he could, and sleep until he was ready to face the world again.

Victoria Deever leaned across the table, looking intently at him. “Sergeant Rodriguez,” she said. “I want you to know how sorry I am. I only realized Rocco was your brother a few minutes ago. That must have been hard for you,” she added with delicacy.

He nodded, too tired for words.

“He hated being called Rocco,” said Kate. “Why did Deever insist on doing that to people?”

“Carl invented names for everybody. I was lucky to get Vicky, which I hate. Of course, if I hadn't minded, he'd have called me something worse. He said Mr. Rodriguez had a body like a fighter and so he called him Rocco. After Rocky. God knows where poor Ginger's name comes from. Someone told me he used to have a guy named Fred around as a general watchdog. You know, Fred and Ginger? That sounds disgusting enough for Carl. Scotty he named from
Star Trek
—and so on. And tough shit if you didn't like what he called you. He claimed it had something to do with his phones being tapped all the time. I think he liked forcing people to answer to any name he wanted.” She finished her drink with a grimace, as if the thought of Deever had spoiled its taste. “A power thing.”