“Well, you’ll nail ’em. Anyway, if you want to tell if the plastic is Unicoat, just get a modeler’s iron and turn it to the highest heat setting. If it takes all the iron’s got to make it stick, it’s Unicoat.” He hesitated. “But now that I think about it, five gets you ten it’s not. If you are ironing a covering onto foam, you don’t want to melt the foam. You’d need low heat. So it wouldn’t be Unicoat, then. Probably not. You’d want a low-heat cover of some kind. I don’t know what they are, ’cause we never use ’em. Something like Colorfab. I think that’s one. I don’t know the others. Kendal would. And the other thing I’ve noticed is that they all have favorite shades. What color is it?”
“Sky-blue.”
“That should be an easy match. And a dumb color for radio-controlled airplanes, too.”
“Why?”
“Get it up against the New Mexico sky, and you can’t see it.”
“That makes sense.”
“Everybody around here seems to be stuck in the yellow-red rut. High visibility if it gets a little far away.”
I didn’t say anything, because my brain was kicking into high gear. The silence went on so long that eventually Buddy said, “You still there?”
“Yes. Let me ask you a question. Suppose the victim came upon the crash site of a big model airplane. What could there be about it that would be so incriminating as to prompt the kid to pick up a piece of the wreckage? And then a murder follows?”
“Where was the murder?”
“Up at the Consolidated Mine boneyard. You remember where that is?”
“Sure, but what have you got that suggests a connection between airplane and murder?”
“Not a damn thing. Except the junk was in the kid’s pocket, and there was no reason for it to be there.”
“One thing I’m not is a detective, Pop. But like I said, you and all your staff will figure it out. Sounds like you got it on the run. Say, keep me posted, will you?”
“You bet. And sorry about the night call. How was Spain, by the way?”
“I never saw it,” my son said with a laugh. “Got there at night, left early. What little ground I saw was brown…just like Posadas County.”
“You home for a while now?”
“About a week, I think. Anyhow, if I think of anything else, or if Kendal does, I’ll make sure we get right back to you. You want to talk to Edie?”
I heard her say, “Of course he does,” in the background.
“Buddy, take care,” I said, and then my effervescent daughter-in-law was on the line.
“When did you get out of ICU?” she asked, and like a fool, I told her. The lecture I got seemed to last ten minutes. There was no point in arguing. I finally mollified her by lying like a rug, promising faithfully to take all the medications as prescribed, and to visit them in Texas as soon as I could. Part of all that was true, at least. I was planning to make some visits, all right…but not to Texas.
Chapter 24
Despite the ideas whirling around inside my head, I fell back asleep almost instantly, and woke to the telephone trying to rattle itself off the nightstand.
It was Holman, and if he didn’t sound angry, he certainly wasn’t his usual blabby, politic self.
“You going to be home in a few minutes?” he said without preamble.
“Yes.” I looked at the glowing dial of the clock radio and saw that outside the sun already would be blistering the east side of the adobe. “Come on over. I’ll put the coffee on.”
Holman grunted something that I didn’t catch and hung up. I lay still for a minute, then swung my feet down to the cool brick floor. I took inventory and decided I felt almost human. Holman’s fist thudded on the door just as I was finishing shaving. With a towel around my neck, my bathrobe cinched up tight, and my slippers scuffing the tiles, I must have looked the part of a goddamn invalid when I opened the door and motioned him inside.
“Give me just a minute,” I said. “The coffee’s in the kitchen on the counter, and should be just about ready. Cups are up above on the right.” When I finished dressing and entered the kitchen, I found Martin Holman sitting at the table, a steaming coffee mug in front of him. He looked up at me, rose, and poured another cup.
“You allowed to drink this stuff?” he said, handing me the cup.
“Hell, yes,” I said and grinned. Holman scowled.
“I didn’t come over yesterday because I was too damn mad, Bill. Jesus H. Christ.” He sat down heavily, took a sip of coffee, and grimaced. “You behaved like a damn five-year-old, you know that.”
“I didn’t see it that way,” I snapped. I might take a lecture from my daughter-in-law, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to hear it from Martin Holman.
“Yeah, well,” he said, understanding the edge in my voice. “If we lose you, this whole case is going to fall apart.”
“That’s unlikely.”
“I don’t want a bunch of strangers laying this town wide open, Bill.”
“That’s not going to happen. Estelle Reyes is the best there is. I guarantee it.”
“She’s young, and you know it. And this morning she told me herself that she was just your legs, running errands, taking care of lab work.” Holman saw the surprise on my face. “That’s what she said. She said she didn’t have the handle on this that you did.”
“Bullshit. She’s worth five of me,” I snapped. “And the hours she puts in, we should be paying her five times what she’s getting. Is that what you came over for, to chew my ass about not letting a couple doctors cut me up?”
Holman lifted an eyebrow at me over the coffee cup. “I saw Harlan Sprague late yesterday afternoon.”
“So?”
“He wanted to know if he could come over and see you. I said he should call you first.”
“That’s thoughtful. I don’t need mothering. I need to see some son of a bitch in jail. That’s all the medicine I need.”
Holman took a deep breath. “I can see that asking you to lay off would be a waste of breath.” I started to say something I would have probably regretted, but Holman held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong. I want this case solved as much as you do…as much as anyone in the department.” He looked at me for a minute. “I’m not sure what sacrifices I’m willing to make to solve it tomorrow, though…or even next week. I think we need to understand all the angles…even the long-range picture.”
“What are you saying, Sheriff?”
“I’m saying that there’s nothing I can do to force you to relax and take care of yourself.” He smiled faintly. “Short of handcuffs. Kidding aside, I’m pleading with you to use good sense.”
“I am.”
“Uh-huh. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one man in this department who really understands the entire picture. That’s you. And you know it, damn it. I’m no lawman. I’m an executive…an administrator. I depend on you to make sure this department is as efficient as it can be. I don’t want the county legislature to have a single excuse to say, ‘Hell, let the state police run the county.’ Or worse, customs. Or the DEA. I want us to do it, Bill. Us.”
“I guess I should feel complimented.”
“Yes,” Holman said simply. “What it boils down to is that if you don’t do it, nobody in this department does. And speaking of the DEA, their aircraft are working the border about twenty-five hours a day. Found nothing. State police made a decent drug bust on the interstate north of Las Cruces yesterday. They nailed two jerks who were driving a pickup truck, trying to move a couple of kilos inside a dog house they had in the back. The dog was inside the house.” He chuckled, and then his face went serious. “Chief White called from Gallup. I told him we’d have something concrete by the end of the week.”
“No problem.”
Holman stood up and set the coffee cup in the sink. “‘No problem,’ he says. I wish I had your confidence. Is there anything you need?”
“No. Nothing.”
“You’ll keep it slow?”
“Sure.”
“Then I’ll get out of your hair.” He gave me a long look, then said, “Thanks for the wake-up.” As soon as I heard his car spitting gravel out of the driveway, I picked up the phone. It rang once.