Gossip Can Be Murder (18 page)

“The full-time guy, Manny, or part-time Leo?” asked the desk guy, who wore a gray twill shirt with Marker Aviation logos on the sleeve and “Bob” embroidered over the chest pocket.

“Manuel Salazar,” Drake told him.

“Yeah, he’s back today.”

“Back? Was he out?” Drake asked.

“Had the flu the last couple days.”

Bob pointed toward a door that said Employees Only in bold red letters. Below the big lettering was another placard with all kinds of disclaimers about insurance regulations and such. Ron reappeared and the three of them walked past the few couches and chairs in the waiting area, pushing through into a large hangar.

“Manny!” Bob’s voice echoed amazingly large in the open space. “Somebody here for you!” He turned and went back inside, leaving Drake and Ron standing there.

Three planes pretty well filled the space. A small one, something aerobatic by the look of it, was tucked into the nearest corner. It looked like it probably stayed there most of the time, in storage until some rich daredevil type of guy came out and put it through its paces. The other two were in the midst of maintenance. Cowlings were off the closer one, an older Cessna 210, and hatches were open all over the other, a nice Piper 301. The rat-a-tat of an air wrench bleeped through the air and Drake began to wonder whether Salazar had heard Bob’s shout. He was about to call out again when a slender Hispanic man ducked beneath the wing of the Cessna and came toward them.

“Manual Salazar?” Ron asked.

The guy nodded hesitantly and paused, about twenty feet away. Even at that distance, Drake knew this wasn’t the man who’d pinned him against the side of his truck last night. This guy probably came up to Drake’s shoulder and underweighed him by thirty pounds. Salazar gave Drake and Ron wary looks as he wiped grease off his hands with a red rag.

Drake stepped forward. “Manny, I’m Drake Langston. This is Ron Parker.” He held out his hand and the other man took it. “We’re with the investigation firm that’s looking into the forest fire crash, last year. Do you have a minute?”

Salazar looked cautious. If he had a lawyer of his own, Drake knew this was when Salazar would have been advised not to talk. Even if he didn’t, the guy might have watched enough cop shows on TV to know better than to volunteer information. Still, he decided to give it a try.

“I just want to get a little bit more about your side of it,” he saying, keeping his voice gentle. “Can you take a break and chat for a couple minutes?” He nodded back toward the lobby.

“Can’t really tell you anything,” Salazar said. “I’ve been asked about it already.”

“I know. I just wanted to see if there was anything we might add to our own files.”

“I don’t think so,” Salazar said.

“Do you remember the day you performed that last inspection on Walters’s helicopter?”

“Not really. I mean, I didn’t until this came up and I had to go back through my logs. They showed me the aircraft log. Then I kinda did.” He glanced over his shoulder at the two airplanes. “But nothing specific.”

“You don’t recall replacing the nut on the engine? Whether you used safety wire on it or not?”

Manny began twisting the red rag and shifting from one foot to the other. “No. I don’t. We do a couple dozen inspections a month. That was way over a year ago.”

Drake nodded, giving him a moment longer. When Salazar didn’t volunteer anything more, he knew it was time to let the guy off the hook. “Okay, thanks. I understand.” No point in grilling the man; the lawyers would be doing plenty of that, if they hadn’t already.

“Well, I better . . .” Salazar again glanced back toward his work area.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks, man.” Drake watched him turn back, then looked at Ron.

“Guess that’s it,” Ron said. Under his breath he muttered, “Outside.”

Drake followed, refraining from saying anything at all until they were back in the car.

“I take it that wasn’t your assailant,” Ron said the minute the doors closed.

“Nope. Couldn’t have been. But he sure seemed nervous. Think it was just jitters over being questioned?”

“No way. He didn’t give any real information either, did he?”

“Not a scrap,” Drake agreed.

“Did you catch sight of the other guy?” Ron asked.

“Hunh-uh. Other than his legs. Bob said they had two mechanics. That must have been Leo.”

“At one point, when you were paying attention to Manny, this other guy peeked out from behind one of the planes. I got a pretty good look at him. Great big guy, closer to the size you described last night.”

“And . . .”

“And he sure was listening to our every word. You notice Manny didn’t want to come outside with us, where he could really talk? I got the impression he wanted this guy to know that he wasn’t giving us anything useful.”

“Makes sense. He sure got antsy when I asked specifically about the nut.” Drake put his hand on the door handle. “Maybe it’s the other guy I really should be talking to.”

“Let’s wait on that,” Ron said. “This is one of those times when we might learn more by watching than by asking a direct question. The guy’s guilty, he’s just gonna clam up. Probably worse than Manny did.”

He started the car and backed out of the lot. “Let’s just see what happens. We’re not in any big hurry, are we?”

A short half-block away was a light-industrial area of small warehouses, the kind of area where shipping companies and home-grown manufacturers were often located. Ron pulled into a parking slot beside a place with “Navajo Candles” painted on a sign at the door. He made sure he had a good view of the side street.

“It’s nearly lunch time. I’d be curious to see whether either Manny or Leo take a break.”

Of the three slots marked Employee Parking Only at the airport, one had held a Marker Aviation vehicle, the other two had pickup trucks—one red Nissan and one white Dodge Ram. Drake was willing to guess which one belonged to Leo.

Within fifteen minutes the white Ram with its bulky driver drove past. Speed limit on the street was only thirty-five, so they had no trouble getting to the driveway before Leo made it to the stop sign at the next intersection. He made a left turn and Ron quickly got to the stop, where they could watch his next move. Leaving a couple of vehicles between them, they stayed behind until he took the entry ramp onto I-40, eastbound.

They stayed close, allowing no more than two cars between them, until it became apparent that Leo wasn’t pulling off at any of the Gallup exits for lunch. Within ten minutes they’d bypassed the whole town. Ron let a couple of big rigs get between them and paced himself so Leo never got much farther ahead. Once they’d cruised past Grants, an hour later, it became obvious that Leo was probably going all the way to Albuquerque.

“Shit, it’s going to be hard to track him if we get into city traffic,” Ron said, “without being spotted.”

“What do you want to do?”

“About all we can do is see how it plays out.”

As they passed the casinos on the city’s western edge, Ron closed the distance between them, back to the requisite two cars. Keeping the big Ram in sight had, so far, not been too difficult. Keeping Ron’s Mustang out of Leo’s sight could prove more chancy. After another fifteen minutes, Drake tapped Ron’s arm.

“He’s signaling.” Sure enough, the Ram slowed for the ramp at 98
^th
Street.

“This is where it’s going to get tricky,” Ron muttered.

He slowed and exited but now there were no other cars between them and their quarry. The Ram stayed to the right and pulled into a truck stop.

“Whew. Lucky for us,” Ron said. He steered the Mustang to the car-sized gas pumps, watching as the Ram whipped to a quick stop in the parking slots in front of the convenience store.

“What now?”

“He’s not getting out. Let’s just watch.”

The pumps weren’t busy and no one was yet clamoring for their spot so they held tight. Within minutes a silver BMW pulled in beside the Ram. A slim man got out and walked over to the driver’s side of the Ram. He spoke with Leo through the open window, then went inside.

“I can’t be sure from here,” Drake said, “but that looks like David Ratwill, one of the opposing attorneys.”

“David Ratwill? Charlie had me check that name—his ex was just killed in Santa Fe.”

Chapter 23

The office had a hollow, unoccupied feel when Drake and Ron arrived. Something in the kitchen trash was going bad, Drake noted, along with a scum of old coffee in the bottom of the pot that always sat on the counter. Little touches that betrayed the fact that Charlie hadn’t been here in several days.

Ron glanced at his watch. “Rick ought to be here any minute,” he said. They’d phoned the lawyer from the truck stop and asked him to stop by. A lot of unanswered questions remained, about Salazar and Leo and how it all related.

Almost in answer to Ron’s statement, a firm knock sounded at the front door. They traversed the long hall from kitchen to reception area and Ron opened the door to Rick Valdez.

“Let’s go up to my office,” Ron suggested.

“Maybe Charlie’s would be better,” Drake said after one peek into Ron’s den of uncontrolled paperwork.

He ushered Valdez across the hall while Ron retrieved the files. The lawyer took a seat on the couch near the bay window and Drake grabbed a side chair by the desk, leaving Ron the desktop to spread out the papers.

“Do you know whether this mechanic Leo . . .” Ron searched for the last name, “well, Leo somebody, has some connection to our case?”

“I haven’t heard of him before,” Valdez said.

“Big guy, hairy arms, bad breath,” Drake said. “I had close contact with him last night.” He gave Valdez the quick version of the attack.

Valdez shook his head.

“He’s up to something. We went out to talk with Salazar this morning and I got the distinct feeling that he wasn’t talking because Leo was there in the hangar. Probably afraid of being overheard. Then Leo zoomed off to Albuquerque and had a little rendezvous with David Ratwill, a sly-feeling meeting at a truck stop on the west side.” Ron was flipping through pages in the file as he talked.

“I don’t know what,” said Valdez. “But if he’s talking to the opposing attorneys and passing information along, I want to know about it.”

“Not to mention threatening your witness,” Drake reminded him. “This wasn’t just a friendly suggestion to quit the case.”

Ron pulled a page from the folder. “Let me make some calls,” he said. “This is Salazar’s employment record.”

“How about something from the kitchen?” Drake asked. “Soda, beer? Whatever we have down there.”

Both men asked for Cokes and Drake headed down the stairs. Through the back window, he spotted Charlie’s Jeep in the small parking area. The driver’s door stood open and one jean-clad leg stuck out.

 He quickly put the encrusted coffee pot to soak in the sink and pulled the smelly trash bag from the kitchen waste can, yanking the ties together and heading for the back door with it.

“Hey, you’re back!” he greeted as she approached the back steps.

She gave a quick glance toward the bulging trash bag and grinned. “You could have let Ron take the heat for that, you know.”

He shrugged. “He’s been pretty busy.”

They shared a long kiss before he ushered her into the kitchen.

“Whose car, out front?” she asked.

He explained about the meeting with Rick Valdez and gathered the soft drinks for which he’d originally come downstairs. When he and Charlie entered her office, Ron was ending a call. He raised an eyebrow in greeting to Charlie, while Drake introduced her to Rick Valdez. She shook hands with the lawyer and answered politely, but he noticed she was eyeing the stack of mail on her desk.

“Okay, thanks. Appreciate the information,” Ron said to the receiver. Hanging up, he turned to Valdez. “Damn employment regs. Can’t get anything good out of people anymore.”

As soon as it became apparent that Ron’s phone call was winding down she shooed him out of the chair. The three men began to drift across the hall toward Ron’s office as she switched on her computer and began sorting mail with a vengeance.

Valdez shrugged and Drake chuckled. “So, anything useful at all?”

“Actually, yeah. Interesting coincidence that both Leo Malone and Manuel Salazar worked for the operator in our case, at the same time. At the time of the accident.”

“So, you’re thinking maybe Leo had more to do with the nut not being tightened than Manny did?”

“Seems logical.”

“But Manny has admitted that he’s the one who did that particular part of the inspection,” Valdez reminded them.

“Manny also says that he was called away partway through the work,” Ron said, consulting the notes, “and he can’t specifically remember attaching the safety wire.”

“They use checklists,” Drake said. “My question would be whether the safety wire step was checked off.”

“My money says that it is now,” Ron said. “Whether it was checked off that day or not.”

“So, where does that leave us?” Valdez asked.

“With diddly squat unless we can get that original checklist,” Drake said. “We might be able to have it analyzed for changes made after the fact. Do we have that?”

Ron pawed through the file again. “I don’t. How about at your office?” he said looking at Valdez.

“Probably a copy, if anything. I’ll have to check. This case has filled about five file boxes so far.” He shifted on the couch. “But I have a secretary who’s a marvel of organization. Let me ask her.”

He pulled a cell phone from his inner jacket pocket and speed dialed, speaking to someone named Jen. He quickly explained what they needed and asked her to call back if she could locate it.

“What do we do if she doesn’t come up with it?” Ron asked.

Drake piped up. “The operator has to have those records. You can subpoena them, can’t you?”

“Time consuming.” Valdez didn’t look happy. “But yeah, we can.” He stood up. “You ready for your next session in the deposition room tomorrow, Drake? Or do you want to spend a little more time going over things together?”

“Unless you know what they’ll ask and can provide me easy answers, or unless you can give me a note from mom to get me out of this, I guess I’m ready.”