“Thirty ought six. That’s easy enough to remember,” I said. “Thanks.”
“He’s not there, though. At least I don’t think he is. He and Tom Mears were planning to do something with Tom’s car. I don’t remember what. But he was going over there. Do you want Tom’s number too?” I said I did and he read that off as well. I hung up, rolling the number around in my head enough times that I’d remember it.
I started to push the buttons and then hesitated. Both Tony Abeyta and Tom Mears were married, Tony for less than a year. I hated to haul a spouse out of bed in the middle of the night with the harsh ringing of a phone if it wasn’t an emergency.
I hung up and sat in the dark for a few minutes, mulling over what my memory had told me, trying to decide if I was just imagining connections that weren’t really there. In five minutes, I knew I’d never fall back to sleep. I got up, showered, shaved, and slipped into my favorite red-checkered lumberjack shirt and corduroy trousers.
In the kitchen, I glanced out the window at the thermometer. The temperatures were taking November seriously, touching twenty-seven degrees. There would be frost on the car, but by midmorning it might be fifty degrees. A light breeze rocked and rattled the few cottonwood leaves that clung to the tree just off the back deck.
While I waited for the coffeemaker to do its thing, I rummaged in the front hall closet and found my down vest. I slipped it on and was in the process of running my belt through the hi-rise pancake holster when I damn near collided with my bathrobe-clad son.
“Well, good morning,” I said.
“Just barely morning,” Buddy replied. He watched as I slid the pair of handcuffs off the kitchen counter and hooked them through my belt at the small of my back. “You don’t have enough seniority yet to avoid working the graveyard shift?”
I sighed. “The mind,” I said, tracing circles around my right ear. “The mind won’t shut up.”
“I know how that goes,” Buddy said.
I set two cups on the counter, poured, and slid one across to my son. “I hope you haven’t inherited my sleeping habits,” I said. “Or lack thereof.”
He grinned. “I think I’m working on it.”
The coffee did the trick. I could feel the rest of my senses spooling up to speed. “You want to go along?”
He raised an eyebrow. “To where?”
“I need to talk to one of my deputies,” I said. I set the cup down on the counter and drew irregular patterns on the wood. “It’s like a big puzzle.” I looked up at Buddy and lifted a finger. “I woke up thinking that maybe I’d been shown another little piece and just didn’t recognize it.”
“Ooookay,” Buddy said slowly. “If you can give me a minute to get dressed. And I’ll leave a note for Tadd.”
“Oh, we’ll be home long before he gets up,” I said, but Buddy shook his head.
“You’d be amazed.”
While Buddy got dressed, I refilled my cup and snapped the coffeemaker off, then went outside. The air was crisp and clear, the great star-wash of the Milky Way so bright that it rivaled even the pervasive glow from the interstate exchange over to the northwest.
I had no outside lights around my home, figuring that all they did was make life easy for burglars. On more than one occasion, when I’d nearly tripped over a skunk at night, I’d briefly considered a simple entryway light over the door. I’d never done anything about it, preferring the darkness.
My son stepped out and closed the door. “Nippy,” he said. “Want to take my car?”
I almost refused, then shrugged. “Why not, if I can get in it.”
With the tiny door of the Corvette open, I regarded the challenge dubiously. “It’s easiest to slide your left leg in first,” Buddy instructed. “All the way. And then just kind of slide down into the seat.”
“This may not be such a good idea,” I said as I did as instructed. With plenty of grunting, I settled in place, the seat hugging me in a dozen spots and the center console under my left elbow. I slammed the door and regarded the interior with interest. “Not much room for radios,” I said. “And you’re going to have to carve out half the dash and punch a hole in the roof for the shotgun rack.”
Buddy laughed and fished the ignition keys out of his jacket pocket. “A real pisser for high-speed chases, though.” The massive engine cranked half a cylinder before erupting into a gruff idle that shook the entire car. He blipped the throttle gently as the beast warmed up, and I could feel the whole thing twist with the torque.
“What engine?”
Buddy grinned. “That’s worth more than the rest of the car. It’s a four twenty-seven that a friend of mine on the base had. It’s actually from a ’68 ’Vette that mated with a telephone pole. He salvaged the engine, and I bought it from him. She’s been tweaked, too. We figure somewhere around four-thirty horses, give or take.”
“I’m impressed.”
“It’s a hell of a lot of fun,” Buddy said. He pulled up the hypodermic-shaped lifter on the gear lever and found reverse. He idled the sports car around the back of the unmarked county car and then we headed out the winding driveway through the trees to Guadalupe and Escondido. Buddy drove the thing as if it were made of handblown glass, letting the idle carry us along in first gear.
At the stop sign on Grande, he glanced over at me. “Where to?”
“Just up the street to the second right. MacArthur.”
I lowered the window, enjoying the icy air on my face. The curb passed by just below head level, the pavement only inches under my rump. “This isn’t so bad,” I said. “There’s even room in here for a wallet and maybe some spare change.”
We turned onto MacArthur and I pointed up ahead. “The street just this side of the middle school.”
“Crosby.”
“Right. When was the last time you were in Posadas, anyway?”
Buddy sighed. “I guess about ten years ago. Not much has changed, that’s for sure.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Turn left here.” We swung north on Crosby, a narrow macadam street that skirted the dilapidated middle school building. I looked across at the building’s hulk.
“Did you go there? I can’t remember.”
“Eighth grade,” Buddy said without pausing to calculate. “We moved here in the fall of ’66.” He slowed the car to a crawl. “Lots of places out behind that building to do stuff,” he added.
“Stuff,” I mused. “They still do stuff. Just more of it.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to think about how long ago that was.” I craned my neck to see over the long, sloping hood. “There’s a little side street about a block up here on the right. It’ll go right behind the athletic field. We’ll want to try the fourth house on the left. There’ll be a race car on a trailer parked in the driveway.”
We turned onto Ithaca Place. The little concrete-block houses looked as if they’d been poured from the same mold, rectangular two-bedroom units that had been built in the late fifties in response to the mining boom. Each had been dinked with and added to over the years, but there was no hiding their pedigree.
A blaze of lights marked Deputy Tom Mears’ home. Sure enough, number 18 squatted on its white trailer. Huge fat tires were enclosed by bodywork whose every square inch was rumpled, dinged, or torn. Mandy Mears’ red Honda was parked at the curb, with her husband’s old Suburban in front and Tony Abeyta’s yellow Camaro behind.
The garage door was up, and inside I could see the two young men leaning over the front suspension of yet another race car, this one an open-wheeled thing with a monstrous wing on the back and a stack of polished chrome carburetors thrusting up through the hood.
“This is it,” I said, and Buddy let the Corvette idle to the opposite curb. The engine died with a final whump and shake. Mears and Abeyta had straightened up and were watching us with rapt attention.
“I could use an ejection seat,” I mumbled, and Buddy laughed. There was no easy way, but by swinging a leg out and then pretending I was going to fall on my face in the gutter only to save myself at the last moment, I managed to exit the beast.