Leaning Land (19 page)

“According to his log book, that was the trip he had scheduled for the seventeenth and eighteenth. But he never made it.”

She looked at Wager, puzzled. “He never said a thing about quitting that job. Or any other. He was always looking for work.”

“He met somebody at Mallard’s Garage, midmorning of the seventeenth, when he should have been well on his way to Phoenix.”

“Uncle Malcolm never said anything about that. Not one word!”

“Any idea at all who he might have been meeting?”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“I think that whoever he met had something to do with his death, Mrs. Del Ponte.”

“I don’t know who it could have been.” She spoke slowly, as well, and her eyes were on Wager, but they saw something else.

“Well,” Wager said, draining his cup, “we’ll find out sooner or later. We’ll find somebody who saw something, and then we’ll know.” He waited for her to respond in some way, but she was silent, looking out the window and across the play area toward the distant mountains. “Thanks for the coffee, ma’am. I’ll be in touch.”

Still silent, she followed him to the door. As he was going down the steps, she asked, “Was it a man or a woman?”

“Who?”

“That person Rubin went to meet. A man or a woman?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. Is there somebody you think he might have been meeting?”

Her hand rested on the tiny porcelain knob of the screen door; the skin over its knuckles was white from her grip. “Heidi Herrera. Jesse’s wife.”

T
HE
H
ERRERA HOUSE
, like the Del Pontes’, was a manufactured home set on a cinder-block foundation and fronted with a small elevated platform of a porch. About half a mile away from the Del Pontes’, it was placed among old and heavy cottonwoods whose bare branches blocked off the openness of the desert and, while giving welcome shade in the summer, must have made the long winter and slow spring even colder and damper.

Heidi Herrera was not cold and damp. Short and plump, with a round, warm figure, her gray eyes studied Wager with a gleam of humor, as if she saw something that he didn’t and would like to tease him about it.

“You’re the policeman who talked to my husband earlier?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I wondered how long it would take you to get here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Sharon. She told you I had an affair with her husband, didn’t she?”

Wager could be just as blunt. “Did you?”

Her eyes glanced past Wager’s shoulder toward the store, a small, dark rectangle far across the high grass of an unmown pasture. “Come on in.”

He did. The paneling in this house was light-colored, imitation pecan wood dotted with imitation worm holes. It held a dozen or so decorative tapestries of knotted brown twine—rosettes, geometrical designs, tightly woven bands alternating with large loops of dangling string. The room’s flat surfaces—paired stereo speakers, coffee table, low bookcase—held pottery tufted with dried weeds and flowers. The vases and pitchers were twisted awkwardly off center, the clay randomly dented here and there; their colors were faded shades of light green and blue and pale yellow that bled into each other like spreading puddles. The effect was one of contortion.

Mrs. Herrera saw him studying one of the vases. “I do a lot of handicraft work,” she said. “I sell through a gallery in Cortez.”

“It looks real nice,” said Wager. He wasn’t sure what else to say about it. And he guessed that since it was art, it wasn’t all that careless-looking or ugly.

“H Bar H: That’s me.” She held up the bottom of a pitcher in varying shades of dull pink to show the brand etched into the clay.

Wager sat in the chair she gestured toward and looked around the cramped room. “You work here?”

“Out back. My workshop’s out back—wheel and kiln. Are you interested in pottery?” Scraping magazines to one side of the small couch, she sat and curled her plump legs up beneath her and seemed to purr.

“More in you and Rubin Del Ponte.”

“Poor Rubin. He just couldn’t get over it.” She shook her head, gray eyes twinkling brightly. “He thought it was his irresistible charm; he never could understand it was just the time and the place—this god-awful place. The egotism of men!”

“You did have an affair with him?”

“Affair, no, a fling yes—a quick weekend. When Sharon went home to visit her mother or something. And Jesse was working in that damned store.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, God—a year ago, now. We’d been here almost two years. I didn’t want to come here in the first place. I didn’t want to leave LA. But Jesse said, ‘Oh, you’ll love it,’ ‘Oh, you can have your own studio,’ ‘Oh, if it doesn’t work out, we can always come back.’“ She snorted her contempt for the man or his words, or both. “Sure, we could. We sold our house out there at the bottom of the market and bought here at the top, and paid most of it for that damned store. We’re stuck here now. I guess that was when I first realized how really stuck I was.” She smiled again. “And Jesse’s really not that good in bed, not anymore. Before we got married, he was great, but as soon as he said ‘I do,’ man, he didn’t. You know the joke about how to cure a Jewish princess of nymphomania? If Jesse wasn’t Mexican, I’d say he was a Jewish prince, because marriage sure cured him.” She stretched a leg to place her bare foot on the table. It was soft-looking, with a high arch and bright red dots of color on the nails of the small toes, as round as grapes. “Maybe he’s Sephardic. Weren’t those the Spanish Jews? The Sephardics?”

“A year ago and nothing since?”

“One of my old boyfriends told me about them. He was Jewish. God, he had a schlong—and could he use it! I should have married him, except his mother kept calling me a shiksa; never called my by name, just ‘the shiksa,’ like I was this concubine or something. Good enough to be a goy toy for her boy, but not good enough to be his wife.” She finally answered, “Yeah, just that one time. It wasn’t any grand passion, you know? It was more get-to-know-your-neighbor, like.” She shrugged. “And I was really depressed; that was when I realized I wasn’t getting out of this hole.” A demure smile. “Having an affair’s a great cure for depression.”

If you don’t mind using other people. If you don’t mind hurting somebody else’s spouse or your kids. If all you think of is yourself. “Rubin didn’t want to call it off?”

“It wasn’t his to call off.”

“When did your husband and Sharon find out about it?”

“When Rubin told her, I suppose. But she’s never said anything to me directly. And Jesse doesn’t have the guts to ask me anything about it—he knows if he opens his mouth, I’m out of here. I’m making it now with my pottery and textiles—I don’t have to take any crap from him!” Another small smile. “Or anyone else.”

“Did your husband threaten Rubin?”

“Not to my knowledge. Rubin never said anything about being threatened, either. Like I say, Jesse’s smart enough not to ask questions.” The edge of contempt was back in her voice.

“Is it possible he and Mrs. Del Ponte were having an affair?”

The woman laughed outright, head back and eyes shut. “Maybe. I really don’t care. If it’s a get-even fuck she wants, she can have it.” The laugh faded, but the smile didn’t. “I’m not jealous of Jesse, Mr. Wager. There’s not a damn thing left to be jealous of. We don’t screw more than once every two or three months anyway, and then he’s like a rabbit—a little-bitty hot rabbit. In fact, I wish he and Sharon would get it on—I’ve got nothing against an open marriage.” Stretching an arm along the back of the small sofa, she straightened her back, pressing her full breasts against the cotton blouse. He could not tell whether she was wearing a thin bra or none at all.

“How often do you visit the gallery at Cortez?”

The question surprised her. “Once a week.”

“Do you have a lover there?”

“You are a detective, aren’t you! Sure, Pat Halverson—he owns the gallery.”

“Did Rubin know about him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. We never talked about it. Anyway,” she explained, “I met Pat after I told Rubin to cool it.”

“Was Rubin persistent? Did he keep after you?”

“Not very, what, ardently. Oh, he’d drop by now and then—just to say hello, you know—and hint about a quickie for old times’ sake. But he knew it wouldn’t do him any good. It was over—I didn’t need him anymore and that’s what I told him.”

“How did he take that?”

“He didn’t get upset, if that’s what you’re asking. I really don’t know if he took it home with him and whined to Sharon or not. And I don’t care.” Her eyes widened into a blink and her mouth made a little round O. “You mean, would Jesse have killed him? Or Sharon? Or me?”

“Is it possible?”

She gently stroked her arms with the fingertips of both hands and then ran her spread palms down her stomach and across her thighs. “Well, certainly I didn’t. Why should I? But Sharon or Jesse actually killing him … . Ooh, wouldn’t that be something!”

Wager asked her a few more questions: when she’d last seen Rubin—”Oh, I don’t know. Last month sometime; he wasn’t around that much”—if she knew he was an FBI informant—“He said he was. Tried to make me think he was some kind of James Bond”—if shortly before his death, he’d mentioned anything about a new scheme or a meeting with anyone—“I didn’t see him before he died, but he always did have all sorts of big plans. Trying to impress me.”

When he said good-bye at the door, Mrs. Herrera told him her phone number and asked him to keep in touch. “It would really be something, wouldn’t it? I mean, if Sharon or Jesse killed him over me!”

Without a specific time of death, there was little use in asking either the cuckold or the widow for their alibis; Wager turned his Plymouth west on State 181, the car’s shadow rippling on the often patched tarmac ahead of him. Food. His stomach was telling him that not only was coffee insufficient, it was a dirty trick to play on a poor and unsuspecting organ. They would both be happy to reach the Gypsum Motel, and both disappointed if the kitchen were closed.

At last Wager crested a slight rise and saw, far down the slope of the highway ahead, the scatter of buildings and the few trees that marked the metropolis of Gypsum. The broad, shallow bowl that surrounded the crossroads was starting to gather that dusky look of sunset, though the distant ridge on the horizon behind it was still sharp and bright with glare. As Wager approached the pink glow of the motel’s sign, four vehicles pulled out of its parking lot, leaving a thin cloud of dust in the quiet air. One of them, a dark sedan, came Wager’s way, still accelerating as it flashed past. Its plates, Wager automatically noted, were the same Denver plates he had seen on the Lexus parked at the motel earlier this morning—AZW 3818; the blurred face behind the wheel looked like a white male in his fifties or so—gray hair, clean-shaven, meaty features—but that was about all Wager could make out in the instant of passing. The other vehicles were pickup trucks, two of which headed north on 666. The third took the unpaved county road west and left a tall trail of gray dust hovering behind it.

Wager once more placed his car in front of the picture window of his unit—a nod at security—and stopped off at the bathroom before walking down to the office and restaurant. The kitchen, his stomach was joyful to hear, was open, and Paula was already serving a handful of early diners.

“Verdie says you have a couple of messages, Officer Wager, if you want to stop by the office after supper.”

He smiled his thanks and studied a dinner menu that he already knew by heart. A little later he chewed through a thick slice of beef from a cut that probably had provided a few of his previous meals.

Verdie, counting out his change, asked Wager to wait a minute while she got his messages. The first, a little pink form that had spaces for caller, room number, time, and message, was marked 5:25 and had a single word from Durkin: “Report.” Wager expected the second to be from Sheriff Spurlock and saying the same thing. But it was from Ray: “Call,” followed by two telephone numbers, one of which Wager recognized as the office of the tribal police.

After he glanced at them, Verdie said, “I hear you’re working for Sheriff Spurlock? Looking into Rubin Del Ponte’s death, that right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Did you know him?”

“Just to say hello to. He stopped by now and then, but not often. Mostly he was off trucking.”

“How about Walter Lawrence or the two government men? Did you know either of them?”

“No, sir, I didn’t.”

“Does Mrs. Del Ponte ever stay here?”

“Never has. What for? They live just over in Egnarville, don’t they?”

Wager nodded. “Does she ever stop by for a drink—meet a friend?”

“Could, I suppose. I wouldn’t know her. I knew Rubin, but I never met her.”

“Did Rubin meet anyone here?”

She lifted her chin in thought. “I don’t know about meet. He said hello to whoever he knew. Sat down and had a cup of coffee with them, sometimes.”

“Was there anyone in particular he’d visit with?”

“No. He knew all the ranchers around here. Worked for most of them at one time or another. Just sat and talked with whoever.”

Wager thanked her and folded the messages into his pocket. The outside air was chill with night losing its heat quickly at this altitude; along the walkway, the yellow lights beside each door made a tunnel of glare that deepened the surrounding darkness and made the small cluster of window lights across the highway seem even lonelier. Down near his room, blocking his view of his car, sat an oversized pickup truck backed toward the motel. It had dual wheels in the rear and high, slatted sides around the bed, for carrying livestock.

As Wager drew near and could glance past it at his own car, partially shadowed by the truck, he saw a figure squatting beside his front wheel.

“Hey!” Wager darted toward the shape, but it did not move. “Hey—what—”

A hard thud from something solid caught him on the back of the head and exploded his vision into swirls and blossoms of yellow and orange. He felt his body get hit again, somewhere on the upper back, but there was no pain in that blow, just a lurch that drove him to his knees. Then his face was hit with something and his head snapped back as his mouth and nose went numb and coppery with hurt. Hands grabbed his weakly flailing arms and twisted them up behind his back. A heavy punch drove into his stomach and knocked the wind from his lungs with a flash of sharp, hot pain.