Twenty-five minutes later, two patrol cars pulled up in front of the house with the garage with the BB hole in its window and another patrol car parked in back of it. An unmarked car, carrying the county attorney and the chief of police, also arrived. The chief of police rang the bell. When the door was opened he handed a man in pajamas a search warrant and nodded. A uniformed policeman went to the garage and returned with an overnight bag containing $30,000. The man in the pajamas left in one of the police cars.
Things didn’t quiet down at the Mendoza house until midnight. Hector and Norbert drove home from the northern foothills. Hector made Norbert a gift of the BB gun and went into his own house. The phone was ringing. It was the chief of police. Hector was to get down to police headquarters immediately. Helma got up.
“Who was it?” she asked.
“Oh, I got to go to Headquarters,” he said.
“Why? You’re not supposed to be on duty this Saturday.”
“I know, but they think they’ve got the person who took the Caldwell ransom money.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Caldwell.”
“Why would he take his own money?”
“I can’t tell you now. I got to get into uniform. Would you run a cloth over my service shoes? I didn’t get a chance to shine them.”
The phone ran again and Helma answered it. “It’s Mrs. Hernandez. She wants to know if you gave a BB gun to Norbert.”
“Tell her I did,” Hector shouted from the bathroom.
“How could you when you don’t have one?”
“Just tell her I did. I’ll explain later.”
Helma hung up and the phone rang again. “It’s for you, Hector. I think it’s the chief.”
Hector talked briefly on the phone, then started to get out of his uniform.
“What’s the matter?” Helma asked.
“Nothing. He’s just coming down here instead of me going there.”
“Will you tell me what’s going on, or do you want me to scream?”
“Well...”
The doorbell rang. It was Norbert Hernandez. He handed Helma the BB gun and said, “Here! My mom doesn’t want me to have it. She said I’m too young for one.”
Helma shut the door and said, “Hector, what is going on?”
The phone rang.
So it went on. The chief of police arrived in an official car. He talked with Hector for a while and then the county attorney arrived in another official car. Neighbors, curious about the visitors to the Mendoza home, called Hector’s parents. The senior Hector Mendozas paid a visit. Then Mrs. Hernandez came over to explain why she didn’t want Norbert to have a BB gun although no explanation was really necessary.
Officers Orozco and Salmi came with heartfelt thanks and a huge bottle of good champaign. Helma put the champaign in the refrigerator and answered the phone. Reporters had got wind of the story, and Hector gave them the standard working-cop’s referral to the department’s information director. Hector’s brother and sister-in-law came over with their kids.
Later, the Mayor paid a visit and talked in general terms about extraordinary merit promotions. Two council members of the opposition party came later and told Hector he was going to be promoted to sergeant Monday, that it was supposed to be a surprise and that since that windbag of a mayor spoiled it, he might as well know the opposition party made the motion. Detective Koertz paid a visit, along with Detective Lindblade and a lot of other well-wishers from the department.
Around midnight they shut off all the lights in the house except a small one in the kitchen, and Hector and Helma sat down at the table and popped open the bottle of champagne.
“I’ve heard every word that was said in this house today,” Helma said. “But I still don’t know why Mr. Caldwell took the money.”
“Mein Kind, there are things in this world that are no dreamed of in your detective stories,” Hector said in mock pompous tones.
“Hector, I’ll break this bottle over your head!”
“Okay, okay. Mrs. Caldwell had all the money in the family. Mr. Caldwell married a rich but suspicious widow. Under the community property laws of Arizona, a person keeps control over all the property he — in this case she — brings into a marriage. Mrs. Caldwell kept tight control over the pile she inherited from her first husband, and this bugged Caldwell.”
“But what has this to do with the kidnapping? We know he had nothing to do with the kidnappers.”
“Right. If there hadn’t been a kidnapping, he might have spent the rest of his life crabbing — to himself — about his cheapskate wife. Or he might have left her. But out of the blue, his wife is kidnapped. If this happened in one of your detective stories, you would say the plot was improbable and not a very good story.”
“Don’t get snotty, Hector.”
“Okay, Out of the blue, his wife gets kidnapped. And what does he do? He calls the police.”
“But Hector, that’s what you want people to do. Isn’t it?”
“Of course we do. But Caldwell did it for the wrong reason — he wanted his wife to get killed. He called us so fast it’s a wonder the kidnappers didn’t get a busy signal when they called him the second time. After we got in on the case, there wasn’t much he could do except hope the kidnappers would find out.”
“That lousy!” Helma uttered a two syllable German word that is a word-for-word translation of a common English term of contempt.
“Right you are,” Hector agreed. “If Mrs. Caldwell had been killed, he would have got everything. And as a kind of additional insurance he insisted on real money at the bank instead of fake stuff. If Mrs. Caldwell got free, he’d at least have the thirty thousand.”
“That lousy!”
“Helma, you’re repeating yourself,” Hector said.
“I don’t care,” she said. Indignation was radiating from her. “So he somehow got the money but of the bag?” Helma’s curiosity overcame her indignation. “How?”
“He just happened to have two identical overnight bags.” Hector’s “happened” captured the precise tone of voice of someone summarizing — and making fun of — a cheap detective movie. Helma ignored his sarcasm and Hector continued. “He put the bag of money under his car seat. At the drop, he pulled out the empty bag he’d put there before.”
“And what did he hope to get out of the schmutzerei?”
“Well, he would have thirty thousand to finance his escape from Mrs. Caldwell or to spend on the sly if he stayed with her. Or — what the hell do I know what a guy who’d married a woman for her money would do with thirty thousand?”
“You’d probably come up with some idea if it were you,” she said. “But what made you suspect him in the first place?”
“You. When you said there were only three possibilities — a crooked cop, a third kidnapper or an insomniac Tucsonian — you made me kind of angry, Helma. You made the case sound like a whodunit. Like something contrived by a writer. I decided to look for another explanation because I don’t think life’s a whodunit. Mr. Caldwell was one of a lot of possibilities.”
“And once you started with him, you kept after him until you got the evidence.”
“Helma, cops don’t keep after people.”
“Well, what did you do?”
“I just kept an open mind. And things that didn’t fit into other explanations made sense if you suspected Mr. Caldwell.”
“Such as?”
“He called the police right after his wife was kidnapped. We want people to do that. But most people don’t. He insisted on real money instead of the stuff I had made up at the bank. If we had nabbed one kidnapper at the drop and the other one found out, it would have been as bad for Mrs. Caldwell as if the money were fake. He told the newspapers he didn’t care who had the money as long as his wife was safe. Most people would be pretty mad about losing thirty thousand. He just didn’t act like a guy on the level.”