Wall of Glass (25 page)

I stood, took it.

“I'm glad we had this little talk,” he said.

A
FTER
L
EIGHTON LEFT
, I drove down to the police station to see Hector. I signed my second statement, the one I'd made after someone had shot at me and Felice Leighton, and then dictated a third, this one about my visit to Griego's gallery. Hector was right; I
had
been making more statements lately than a politician. And I'd made this last one about as honestly. There'd been no outright lies in it, at least none I could get called on; but there'd been a fair amount of equivocation. Had I seen the decedent at any time following the incident at her gallery? No. Telling myself that what I'd seen that night, lying in the bathtub, had not been Silvia Griego. And reminding myself that mentioning the visit to her house would only complicate life for everyone involved: the Leightons, Linda Sorenson, Peter Ricard. And, of course, me. It's a rare altruism that doesn't hide some self-concern.

Anyway, I had a few days grace before I actually had to sign it. Maybe I could get this whole thing cleared up before then, and I could tell Hector the truth.

Sure I could. I'd been making terrific progress so far.

After he turned off the tape recorder, Hector sat back away from his desk and linked his hands behind his neck, the light gray tattersall shirt tautening against his biceps. “I wish you'd tell me, Josh, who gave you the information about Biddle and Griego.”

“Sorry, Hector. But if it helps your conscience any, it was just someone who happened to see them together.”

“We got confirmation this morning,” he said, “from the girl who works in Griego's gallery. She says they were a number, off and on, for three or four years. She didn't mention it yesterday, she says, because they hadn't seen each other for a long time, and she didn't think it was important.”

“And you didn't ask her because you didn't know that Biddle and Griego were an item.”

He nodded. “She also says you talked to her last night.”

“Yeah. I was out and about last night, taking in the culture and art that Santa Fe offers us all. She tell you that Griego knew Killebrew?”

“She said he made a delivery to the gallery, a couple months ago.”

“Same thing she told me. You talked to Killebrew?”

“Not yet. He's not at his apartment, and he hasn't been hanging around that garage he owns over on Cerillos. No one's seen him for two or three days.”

“You figure him for Griego? You think the two killings are related?”

He nodded glumly. “I got two dead people in less than a week, and it turns out they both knew each other. Yeah, Sherlock, I'd have to say I think they're related.”

“Different M.O.,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “I'd bet that Stacey's capable of a little variety now and then.”

“If it actually was Stacey. And where's the motive? I don't think that Griego knew anything about the necklace.”

He shrugged. “You're the one has to worry about the necklace. Maybe the necklace doesn't have anything to do with this. Maybe Biddle got killed for something else.”

“I've been told that the thing hasn't been fenced.”

“Oh yeah? And who was it, exactly, told you that?”

“A reliable source.”

He snorted. He was still good at snorting, and this was one of his better efforts. “These sources of yours, they're so reliable, how come they don't have any names?”

“They're like the people who donate anonymously to the United Way. They're self-effacing.”

He snorted again.

I said, “You find anything at her house?”

He shook his head. “Nothing to let us know who killed her. And nothing connecting her to Killebrew. There were some financial records in a strongbox, hidden in her closet. She was working some kind of tax fiddle, looks like.”

“What kind of tax fiddle?”

He shrugged. “Don't know yet. The Fraud people are on it now, and the I.R.S. is sending someone up from Albuquerque to look over the stuff.”

I nodded. “Good. They're a great group, the I.R.S. Probably clear the whole thing right up for you.”

“Yeah. Maybe in our lifetime, too.” He unclasped his hands and leaned forward, stroked his mustache with finger and thumb. “You're not holding anything back on me, are you, Josh?”

“After all we've meant to each other?”

“I'm giving you a lot of rope here, and I'd hate to see you hang yourself with it.”

“So would I, Hector.”

He nodded. “You find anything more about Griego, you let me know.”

“I'll do that.”

“And give my regards to Rita.”

D
OWN THE HALL
, in Burglary, Sergeant Nolan was out, but I knew the uniformed cop manning the desk, Larry Baca, and after a call to Hector for approval, he used the computer to pull up the reports on the Killebrew burglaries.

There had been six of them, three art galleries and three private homes. As Nolan had told me, the phone wires had been cut in each case. The wires to the exterior siren had been bypassed at all three galleries, but not at the two houses which'd had sirens, the Garcias' and the Hammonds'.

I asked Baca if there had been any other burglaries since Killebrew left prison that matched his M.O. He said there'd been one possible—phone wires cut at a burglary out in La Tierra, an expensive subdivision on the west side—but that Killebrew had apparently been out of town when it occurred. Which, he said, had very seriously pissed off Sergeant Nolan, who'd been trying to get Killebrew back in jail since the day he got out.

I copied the reports into my notebook, then went across the street to the Public Library and called Rita. Maria answered and told me that Rita was in the pool. I said I'd call back later. I checked the phone book for John Lucero. He was listed, and I called the number. No answer.

L
UCERO LIVED ON
Camino Don Miguel, a dirt road on the east side of town. The yard was hedged in and the house was hidden, which suited my purposes just fine. I drove the Subaru about seventy-five yards past the driveway and parked it. I didn't know how long I'd be in there, and if Lucero or anyone else came along while I was occupied, I didn't want him blocking my way. Or getting my license number.

I walked back to the house, a clipboard tucked under my arm. The clipboard was supposed to make me invisible—anybody carrying one is clearly on the up-and-up. But there was no one fussing around in the yards or peering from the windows, and my cunning, as usual, went unnoticed.

At the entrance to the driveway, I checked Lucero's mailbox. Empty. Which meant that someone was picking up the mail, or that he wasn't getting any. But this was an election year, and political circulars were flooding the post office. I threw away at least three or four of the things every week.

I crunched up the gravel driveway. The air was warm and the smell of fresh-cut grass ran through it like fine silver wires. But the smell wasn't coming from Lucero's grass; his lawn was rocky and untended, overgrown with weeds. The house was a single story weather-beaten adobe, limp lilac bushes standing forlornly on either side of the entrance. I knocked on the front door. John Lucero didn't open it, hand me a diamond necklace, and tell me who had killed Frank Biddle and Silvia Griego. No one opened it.

I tried the handle. Locked. With a Medeco lock, a nasty piece of hardware to pick. There are people who can do it, but I'm not one of them. I went around to the back.

The back porch was screened in. The metal latch on the rickety wooden door was no match for my credit card, and neither was the slam-lock bolt on the door to the house. I've seen it before. People invest good money in a heavy-duty lock for the main entrance, and they ignore the rear. Hoping, apparently, that thieves will do the same. Or maybe there's a chain lock, and they figure that's enough, and, naturally, they forget to use it.

I was in the kitchen, and there was a chain lock; and, obviously, Lucero had forgotten to use it. Not a real careful guy, it seemed.

He was certainly a whole lot less finicky about housekeeping than Silvia Griego had been. He was one of those people who waited till all the dishes and silverware in the house are in the sink, dirty, before deciding to wash them. A decision that, in this particular cycle, hadn't yet been reached. The counters were littered with empty cans, torn wrappers, and discarded TV dinner cartons, and the floor beside the single brown paper garbage bag was strewn with still more junk. Which meant he probably lived alone; two people would be unlikely to share the same appreciation for squalor.

I started looking in there. Fifteen minutes later, hidden back toward the corner on the top shelf in one of the cabinets, I found a round red metal fruitcake tin. I opened it. The fruitcake had been replaced by a neat pile of hundred dollar bills. Forty-two of them. Four thousand, two hundred dollars. I put the bills back in the can, put the can back on the shelf.

I moved through the house. None of the other rooms were any neater than the kitchen. There was a living room, a bedroom, and a second bedroom that was being used as a studio. Smell of cut wood in the studio, and the sharp odor of turpentine, then two identical kachinas, unpainted, standing atop a stained drafting table covered with carving knives and paint brushes.

Now that I'd found his stash, I wasn't sure what I was looking for, and didn't know if I'd recognize it if I found it. Whatever it was, I didn't. Not in the studio, not in the bedroom.

In the living room, a phone answering machine sat on one of the end tables. I rewound the tape and played it back.

The first voice was a woman's. “
John. We've got to talk. Call
me.” A click and then a dial tone.

I rewound it, played it once more to make sure.

It was Silvia Griego, and there was an urgency in her tone that might have been fear.

I also recognized the next voice on the tape, the flat west Texas accent, the lack of emphasis in the words that somehow made them sound more threatening. Only one sentence. “
Just keep your mouth shut and stay outta sight.
”

Killebrew.

The next message was a woman, her voice unfamiliar and brittle with anger: “
Thanks a lot, Johnny. I waited there for an hour. Do me a favor and go fuck yourself.
”

The last message was the same voice, the anger gone, a pleading tone taking its place: “
Johnny, this is Bev again. Call me when you get a chance?
”

The last three messages on the tape were empty, each only a click and a dial tone as someone hung up. Bev, still trying to locate Lucero?

All right. Assume that the message from Griego came on the day I'd talked to her, Tuesday, two days ago. That meant that the next message, from Killebrew, could've come that night. After he'd killed her?

Killebrew tells Lucero to lie low. And Lucero does, even missing his date with Bev, whoever she is.

It fit, but only the assumption that Griego's call had come in on Tuesday. For all I knew, it could've been there on the tape, waiting, for a week.

I went back to searching.

Finally, under the sofa and pushed back all the way to the wall, I found a large blue-and-yellow beach towel, folded into a long flat rectangle. I tugged it out and opened it up.

Inside were a pair of wings. Bird wings.

They were big. I fanned them open, side by side. The feathers were dark brown streaked with stripes of lighter brown. The undersides were a still lighter brown, with stripes of creamy white. The longest feathers, at the wing-tip, were over two feet long. The wings had apparently come from the same bird, which meant that the thing had possessed a wingspread of over four feet. An eagle?

Was this what Montoya had meant up in Las Mujeres?

Birds of a feather?

SEVENTEEN

“You
WANNA KNOW
about eagle feathers, huh?” Winnifred Gail was in her mid-fifties, a big woman maybe six feet tall who needed that height to carry her weight, which had to be at least two hundred and fifty pounds. She was sitting back in her office chair, behind an eight-foot-wide slab of four-inch glass that served as her desk, and she was wearing a bright yellow dress printed with big bright red carnations. Her lipstick was the same color as the carnations, and her hair, piled up in a 1940's bouffant, was the color of steamed carrots. The one thing that kept her from looking like a cartoon was the intelligence, shrewd and hard, that glinted in her small eyes.

I nodded to her. “Rita said she'd call you.”

“Oh she did, she did. Talked to her a little over an hour ago.” She nodded, eyeing me. There was the hint of prairie in her voice, Oklahoma or Texas. “So you're the Croft fella works with her,” she said.

I nodded.

“Heard a lot about you,” she said. “You carryin' a torch for Rita, like they say?”

“We work together.”