“Would you drink some coffee if I made it?” I asked, and apparently Holman was more astute than I gave him credit for.
“Sure,” he said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
Camille grinned and shook her head in resignation. “I’ll make it, Dad,” she said.
“So what’s up?” I lead the sheriff into the kitchen.
“This is a nice place,” he said, repeating the same line he had uttered every one of the dozen or so times he had been in my home.
“Thanks. Any news on the youngster?”
He shook his head. “But what’s interesting is that the deputies couldn’t find Paul Cole.”
“What do you mean, couldn’t find him?”
“Just that. First, a detective went to his home. He lives in one of those new developments down by the bosque.” Holman pulled a small notebook out of the inside pocket of his suit coat and thumbed pages. “Neither he nor his wife were home.”
“He’s married again?”
“Less than a year ago. One of the neighbors said that she thought the wife went to Santa Fe with a girlfriend for a couple of days of shopping.”
“A couple of days? Wow. And Cole?”
“Well, that’s the interesting part,” Holman said. “Paul Cole has two vehicles registered to him. One is a 1996 Pontiac Grand Am, custom tag that says BEAT ’EM. Is he a coach, or what?” Holman grinned. “The other vehicle is a 1972 GMC four-by-four pickup that’s missing an engine.”
“And both were parked in his driveway,” I said. Holman looked up sharply, and I added, “Just a guess.”
“They were. So the detectives figured he was out for an evening run or something. They checked again an hour later, and still no sign of him.”
“There could be a thousand explanations for that,” Camille said.
“Sure could be,” Holman agreed. “But.” He held up the notebook for emphasis. “The Bernalillo detectives contacted the principal of the school where Paul Cole works, figuring that, with the way coaches hang out at school all the time, she might have some information. You know what she said?”
“I have no idea,” I murmured, watching the coffee beginning its rapid drip. Camille had cleaned the pot so that it actually looked like glass instead of crusted concrete.
“Paul Cole took five days’ professional leave to attend a coaching clinic and conference in Anaheim, California.”
“This past week, you mean?”
“From Monday through Friday. The principal said that she thought he was scheduled to fly out last Sunday, and that he was planning to return yesterday or the day before.”
“Football must be even more important than I thought,” I said. “But let me guess again. He hasn’t returned yet.” I shrugged. “What did the airline have to say?”
Holman grinned, and I got the impression that he was distinctly proud of himself. “He was never booked out of Albuquerque-on any airline that goes anywhere close to Anaheim.”
“Or booked back to Albuquerque, either?”
Holman shook his head. “They have no record of him flying anywhere.”
“Maybe he drove out with friends,” Camille said. “It’s only a twenty-hour drive nonstop.”
“If he rode with someone else, that would explain both his vehicles being left at home,” Holman said, “but no one else from the school was scheduled to attend the conference. The principal said that as far as she knew, no one else went.”
“Other schools going?” I said. “Did he ride out with coaches from other schools?”
Holman leaned forward across the kitchen table, his voice lowered conspiratorially. “There was no conference in Anaheim.”
“Why did I think that might be coming?” I muttered.
“But it gets even more interesting,” Holman said. “The detective-his name’s Richard Steinberg, by the way-he chatted with a couple of neighbors. One of them, and she’s an elementary school teacher in the same district, said that Cole was excited because he’d been able to get an elk permit in Wyoming.”
“A what?”
“He drew an elk permit for a hunt in Wyoming. She thought that he was planning to go but that he was worried about taking that kind of leave from school. She said there was a stink a couple of years ago when a teacher took a week off to go deer hunting. And she said that Cole’s wife was petrified that he’d get in trouble.”
I leaned back and watched Camille pour the brew into first Holman’s cup and then mine. The coffee looked a few shades weaker than I would have liked, but what the hell. There it was.
“So he either flew up to Wyoming or drove up with a friend,” I said.
“He didn’t fly up.”
I sipped the coffee and couldn’t resist a grimace at the wan bouquet of decaf. “You’ve been busy,” I said, and set the cup down.
Holman grinned his best used-car salesman’s grin. “What I figure is that he either skipped out from school to go elk hunting or he skipped out to do something else.”
I was tempted to say, “Well, duh,” but instead I asked, “What was his football team’s record this year?”
Holman looked puzzled. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
“In any event, the season should have been over. I don’t know when the state championship was, but if his team wasn’t a contender, then that’s a complication out of the way. I don’t care what he’s up to, but no football coach is going to miss a play-off, elk or no elk.”
“Do you think he might have taken his own son?” Camille said, and I realized it was the first time anyone had come right out and said it.
“I don’t know. My first guess would be that he didn’t,” and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, Martin Holman looked disappointed. “For a couple of reasons. For one thing, if he just wanted his son, he could have driven down almost anytime, picked the kid up, and gone back home, all in a single day. Making a week-long conspiracy out of it would just attract attention. I know the kid’s only three years old, but there must be a thousand opportunities during the course of an average day when the father could slip in, grab the youngster, and be gone. And there’s always this: The boy’s mother said that Cole isn’t interested in the kid. He won’t even take him for visits when there’s the opportunity.”
“So it doesn’t really make sense that he would do the bit up on the mesa, at night,” Holman said.
“No, it doesn’t. What makes sense is that Paul Cole went hunting with buddies on school time, and made up the conference nonsense to cover his ass. Did you happen to check with the Wyoming Department of Fish and Game to find out if there was an elk season in progress?”
Holman nodded vigorously. “I checked the net. There is an elk hunt in several parts of the state. Stretches to the end of the month.”
“Checked the net?” I said. “Meaning what?”
“Computer, Bill. They have a Web site. You need to join the twenty-first century.”
“No, I don’t. And the next step is to call Wyoming and find out if he actually has a license issued in that state. Cole’s principal is a woman, you said?”
Holman consulted his notes. “Dorothy Nusburger.”
“Then Dorothy Nusburger needs to get a little tighter grip on her staff,” Camille muttered.
“If she’s like any other principal in this state, there’s some pressure to have a winning team,” I said. “It’s the American way of life, let’s face it. So if her head coach says he wants to go to an important conference, then she’ll send him. Athletics might be an area that isn’t her field of expertise. If she trusted Cole, maybe she didn’t look too closely or ask too many questions.”
“Then that fits,” Holman said quietly.
“What fits?”
“Nusburger told the detectives that the school couldn’t afford to pay for Cole’s travel, and that he then agreed to pay his own way. He told her that the school board would probably think the conference was a luxury but that it was important enough that he was willing to pay his own way.”
“And that makes it simple,” Camille said. She sat down at the table opposite Holman. “He doesn’t have the problem of turning in receipts, or per diem, or any of those other things schools would require for bookkeeping.” She looked at me. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Nusburger knew where he was going all along.”