The Case of the Sin City Sister (5 page)

And Caleb turned quickly to look her in the eye. He shook his head. “No, you’re right. That is not the one I have ever believed.”

SIX

“The story sounds logical enough to me,” the Captain noted. “Lots of families got the same story yours got. And it was the truth. Those boys dealt with explosives and rattlesnake dens, and that doesn’t even call into account all the thieves and robbers that showed up in the mining heyday. It was dangerous work. Well, you got the proof with that skeleton.” He studied the man sitting in front of him.

“What makes you think your great-grandfather’s story is different? What makes you think he didn’t come out to New Mexico, crawl into one of those shoddy mines, and get killed in some sort of accident?”

Caleb fidgeted in his chair, appearing as if he was trying to decide what to say, how to explain, and then he reached up and began to unbutton his shirt. Around his neck was a long strand of turquoise beads. Even from where Eve was sitting she could see how beautiful the blue stones were. He lifted the necklace over his head and placed it on the desk in front of Jackson.

“About forty years ago, not too long after my father died, in fact, just a year or so before my son was born, this came in the mail delivered to North Carolina, addressed to ‘The Family of Caleb Alford.’ At the time the Alford family farm was being tended to by my cousins. I was the only Caleb they knew, so they forwarded the package up to Norfolk to me.” He nodded at the beads. “This was in it. No note, no explanation, no return address, just this piece of jewelry, wrapped in a piece of old handkerchief that had the initials CA sewn into a corner. I kept it, and I never told anyone except my wife about it.” He watched as Jackson held up the necklace, eyeing the stones.

“It’s a nice strand,” the Captain commented. “Looks like the turquoise from around here, over at Cerrillos. Stones are a little greener. Where was the package postmarked?”

“Madrid, New Mexico,” he replied, mispronouncing it. “I mean, Madrid,” he corrected himself.

“CA?” Eve called out, joining the conversation. “Caleb Alford?”

The man turned to her and nodded. “Seems like it,” he replied. “I remember my great-grandmother was known for her embroidery work. She added a lot of intricate details. My grandfather had a set of pillowcases she made for him and my grandmother; the thread-work looked the same.”

“You still have the handkerchief?” Jackson asked.

Caleb nodded his head. “Yes, but it’s back at the hotel. I brought it along on this trip, just not with me today.”

“You said you have a son?” Eve phrased it more like a question than a complete sentence, even though she wasn’t really sure why she was asking.

“Richard,” he replied. “He’s thirty-nine.”

There was a pause.

“I don’t see much of him since his mother died six years ago.”

Jackson glanced up.

Caleb shook his head. “In fact, I’m not even sure I know where he is. Last time I heard from him he was working on a pipeline, somewhere off the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana or Texas, I’m not sure.”

Father and daughter looked at each other.

Caleb noticed the exchange. “I guess you think it’s weird that I’m searching for a long-dead great-grandfather and not my son.” He reached for the strand of beads that Jackson was holding out in his direction. He placed them back around his neck and began to roll the stones between his fingers.

Eve watched, noticing how he handled them much as she would the beads in a rosary, and she wondered if that was what this necklace was to him—some symbol, some form of prayer.

“I don’t think it’s weird at all,” Jackson noted.

“My son and I never really got along,” Caleb explained as if he had been asked. “He was more of a mother’s boy. And I, well, after coming back from Vietnam, I wasn’t much of a father.”

“You fought in Nam?” Jackson asked.

“Signed up for the Navy so I wouldn’t be drafted into the Army. That’s how I ended up in Norfolk.” He looked at Jackson. “You?”

“Frog, underwater demolition. Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado. But I got out in’59, before the war.”

“You guys were crazy,” Caleb responded.

“True, some of them were,” Jackson replied.

“You see any action back then?” Caleb asked.

“Nothing I really want to talk about,” Jackson replied, glancing over in his daughter’s direction.

Caleb nodded.

Eve didn’t comment. She knew her father had never talked much about his time in the service. He’d served a few years, met her mother, married and became a police officer, and settled in the Desert Southwest. She hardly remembered him talking about his time as a Navy UDT Frog as she was growing up. She had practically forgotten about it.

“But I never had to deal with what a lot of men dealt with. I consider myself pretty lucky.” Jackson began rubbing his leg, something Eve had noticed him doing since the amputation whenever he felt uncomfortable.

“War is hard,” Caleb responded. “Especially that one.” He shook his head. “It took me a while, but I got some help and I got better. I think it just came too late for my son. He mostly remembers me messed up.”

Jackson nodded and cleared his throat. “So you want us to find out what happened to your great-grandfather, a miner who was here mining for turquoise in the 1890s. You want to know how he died and where he’s buried.” He was guiding the conversation back to the business at hand.

“That’s what I want,” Caleb answered. He placed the beads back underneath his shirt and fastened the buttons. “And I’d like to know who sent the strand of turquoise. Forty years ago Caleb Alford had to be long gone. So, somebody here in”—he paused, hoping to pronounce the town name correctly this time—“Madrid . . .” He looked at Eve, who smiled. “Somebody
here sent this back to North Carolina, so somebody here knows something.”

“Where are you staying, Mr. Alford?” Eve wanted to know.

“Santa Fe,” he replied. “And please, it’s Caleb.”

“Okay, Caleb,” she responded.

“So, Caleb, Eve here will go over the fees for our service. If it’s all right, I’ll keep these letters for now.” Jackson held up the stack Caleb had taken from his front pocket earlier in the conversation. “I can make copies and then I’ll give them back.”

He nodded. “That’s fine. If you can’t trust a Frog, I don’t know who you can trust.” He smiled at the Captain and turned to Eve. “And I can see that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The two of you seem to make a good pair.”

Eve began sorting through the papers, found a contract, and slid it over to their newest client. As she did that she glanced over at the Captain and, for a second, thought she saw him smile.

SEVEN

“I’m home.” Eve placed the bags of groceries on the counter in the kitchen of her childhood home. She pulled out a few things and placed them in the old refrigerator near the row of dark cabinets the Captain had built when her parents first moved in. She yelled toward the back of the house. “Captain? I said I’m home.”

Trooper, her father’s dog, an aging but cheerful yellow Lab, hurried in to give the proper welcome and began dancing around Eve’s legs.

“Hello, girl.” She bent down and gave the dog a good rub on the top of the head. Trooper sat, enjoying the attention.

When Eve stood up, the Captain was making his way up the hall. He was on his crutches, having already taken off his prosthetic leg. He said the leg still bothered him, that it bit into the skin where it was attached, so he took it off when he was home and just got around the house without it.

“You got anything else to bring in?”

Eve studied her father. She wondered how he expected to go
down the front steps, take the other bag from the passenger side of the truck, and walk back up the steps and into the kitchen, this act performed entirely on crutches, but she didn’t dare ask. He would do that very thing just to prove he could. “I’ll get it,” she replied, proud of herself for avoiding a fight.

Things had eased between them lately. He didn’t pester her anymore about when she was going back to the Benedictine monastery she had taken a leave of absence from, and she didn’t nag him about the desserts he sometimes ate, taking his medicines, or getting the rest she thought he needed. It wasn’t a perfect setup with the two of them, father and daughter, living and working together, but it was no longer difficult and had actually become comfortable. It was as if they had both made a decision to steer away from the subjects that created tension and conflict and enjoy instead those matters and things about which they agreed and that they shared. For Eve, the years she had spent living in community had taught her more than she’d realized about finding harmony at home.

Eve headed out the front door to retrieve the last bag of groceries. When she returned the Captain had taken a seat on the sofa with Trooper resting on the floor beside him.

“Epi Salazar called again,” she said, remembering the message she’d taken before she left the office to run errands. “Does he still live out there on that big ranch by himself?”

“Yep, he’s lived there since he was a boy. His father bought all that property from a mining company, paid them cash. Nobody ever figured out where Mr. Salazar made that kind of money, but some folks think he did a little mining on his own before he got the deed for the land. Epi still wanting to hire us?”

Eve placed the bag on the kitchen counter next to the others. She waited before answering. It was the first time she had ever heard her father use the word
us
when speaking about his private detective business. The significance of the chosen pronoun made her smile.

“He’s convinced somebody buried gold up there. I told him he didn’t need a private detective, he needed a handyman or one of those metal detectors.”

Jackson grinned. “What did he say?”

“He claims you’re better than a metal detector. He said that you had the best nose for missing items in all of Santa Fe County.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what he thinks I can find walking around his property with one leg. And if I remember the old Mr. Salazar right, he would never have allowed any gold to stay underground on his property. He would have dug up anything he found and gotten the money. He lost a fortune trying to keep cattle up there on that hillside.”

She started unpacking the bags, putting things away. She put the canned foods in the cabinet next to the sink, bread in the bread box on the counter beside the refrigerator, and two cereal boxes, Cheerios for her, Grape-Nuts for him, on a shelf in the pantry next to the kitchen. “Well, he found some papers, a map or something. He said he wants you to have it; he says with this you can definitely figure out where the gold was hidden.”

“Did you tell him what we charge for locating missing stuff?”

Eve took out the milk and placed it in the refrigerator along with the yogurt and butter. She turned toward her father. “I’ve never billed for locating a missing treasure. Is it the same as for a person?”

He stretched out his leg in front of him. “Same hourly rate,
same success percentage. Buried gold or a dead miner, they cost the same for me to dig up.”

Eve finished putting away the groceries and headed into the room where her father was sitting. She carried two cans of diet soda and a bag of grapes. She handed him one of the drinks and sat down in the chair across from the sofa. She held the bag of fruit up, an offer to share, but he shook his head and opened the can of pop.

“I’m worried about Dorisanne,” she said, taking out a grape.

“I know you are,” he responded.

“Well, do you think I should try to call someone else to make sure she’s okay?”

He took a drink of his soda and set the can down on the table. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Eve. Since she left home twenty years ago she’s been out of touch more than in touch. I figure she’s busy and she doesn’t need us right now. I wouldn’t be too concerned about her just yet. Give her a few more days, another week, and then we’ll start calling neighbors and casinos.”

Eve nodded. “You’re probably right. She isn’t one to check in on a regular basis. I know that.” She waited, ate another grape, and sat back.