“What’s wrong, Officer?”
“May I talk with you for a few minutes?”
“Sure.” He got up and patted his wife on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
“How are you guys doing?” I asked as we passed the Guardsmen. They all nodded, mouths full.
Outside, Bronfeld and I walked toward the RV. As we approached, Mitchell got out of the patrol car.
“Deputy Mitchell, this is Niel Bronfeld.” Shaking hands with a fat old man dressed in a casual flannel shirt and chinos was one thing. Facing a uniformed, unsmiling deputy was another matter. Bronfeld didn’t offer to shake hands.
“What’s going on?” he said softly, and walked to the RV’s door. “Leigh?” He rapped a knuckle on the door, and after a moment it was opened by a rumpled, sleepy-eyed teenager who was a carbon copy of the woman in the restaurant. “Is David still asleep?”
“He’s awake,” the girl said, and looked at me and Deputy Mitchell. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Bronfeld said, and turned to us. I liked the guy already. “What can I do for you gentlemen?” He walked away from the RV and glanced down its mammoth flanks. “Did something fall off?”
I laughed. “No, sir. The deputy was making a routine check of the parking lot, and apparently a young child looked out at him through the window. The RV did not appear to be tended, and he wanted to double-check that everything was all right.”
“Oh my God,” Bronfeld said, and his shoulders slumped. “This is near where that youngster went missing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Mitchell said, and the tone of his voice made it clear that we were still interested in the contents of the camper.
“We read about that in the Sunday paper.” He stepped up into the doorway and Leigh backed out of the way. “Come on in, Officer.”
I followed him and instantly realized that RV living wasn’t for me. A family of six would have to love one another every minute of the day to avoid a homicide before the vacation was over.
“David is our youngest. We’re not sure if he’s just a little carsick, or what. Leigh was keeping him company. David?”
The child appeared from one of the cramped bunk units. From a distance, he could have passed for Cody Cole. Up close, I could see his mother’s pug nose and freckles. He was pale and sober, the way little kids get when they’re not feeling well.
“Mr. Bronfeld, I’m sorry for the intrusion, and we appreciate your cooperation,” I said, but he shook his head.
“No, no. No trouble at all. I’m sorry we gave you a start.”
I grinned wryly. “You folks have a good vacation.”
“Oh, I’m sure we will. Going on down to Tucson to see my parents. We pulled the kids out of school a few days early to give us a head start.”
Leigh tried to smile as I slid past her. “You’re the designated baby-sitter, eh?” I said pleasantly.
She made one of those teenaged “I’m cool, but the rest of my family’s not” faces, and I stepped back down to the parking lot.
“You folks have a nice day,” I called, and patted Deputy Mitchell on the arm as I walked by. “Good eyes,” I said. “Keep it up.”
I sounded confident, but other than giving the Bronfelds something to talk about during dull moments on their trip and pumping my blood pressure up, we hadn’t accomplished anything. And I knew damn well the odds of seeing little Cody Cole alive, sober-faced or not, were slim to none.
Chapter 18
Sam Preston looked from me to Camille and then back at me. I waited for Camille to say something-anything at all that would let me know what her first impressions of the Gonzalez place might be. We stood in the November sun, Sam Preston leaning on the hood of the Suburban, waiting.
“Can we look inside?” Camille finally said, and her tone was flatly neutral. Not “This house is perfect,” or even “Oh, how cute.” Just “Can we look inside?”
Sam glanced at me, and when the Realtor is skeptical, you know you’re in deep water.
He led the way down the dirt lane to the front door, the pathway dappled in shade by a grove of cottonwoods whose crackling brown leaves still clung stubbornly. The six rooms of the tiny adobe had been built one at a time, added as the need arose. Hector Gonzalez had built the first room, thirteen by thirteen feet, in 1890. He’d married Sara Montano the next year, and by the time the first child arrived, he had completed two more rooms. In 1920, when Sara’s elderly and ailing mother moved in with them, he added two more wings, one off each end. Shortly after, someone in the family decided that indoor plumbing was here to stay, and the final room was added as the bathroom.
“This is a storybook house,” Sam said as he opened the door for Camille.
“Some story,” she muttered. The place was clean enough, in its own dark way, about as clean as any place can stay when it stands vacant for half a dozen years.
“Hector Gonzalez’s son was the last one to live here,” I said to Camille. “Remember Rudy?”
“Is he the guy who used to sit in Pershing Park playing the guitar all the time?”
“That’s him,” Sam said heartily. “He’d walk up there every day. It’s what, two miles? Maybe a little less?”
Pershing Park was a grandiose name for a tiny triangle of land framed by the skewed intersection of Bustos, Grande, and Pershing. I could remember seeing Rudy Gonzalez sitting on the grass, leaning against the steel treads of a vintage army tank that was displayed there-the tank an olive drab testimonial to all the simpleminded ways the U.S. military had tried to catch the Mexican bandit, Pancho Villa. A bright yellow state historical marker implied that Villa had strayed into Posadas sometime in his checkered career.
Camille leaned against the bathroom doorjamb and surveyed the utilities, such as they were. The tub looked as if pack rats had been the last ones to use it. “What do you think?” I asked.
“I think it’s awful,” Camille said matter-of-factly. “You must be out of your mind. But then this part of the country is not featured regularly in Better Homes and Gardens anyway. What’s out back?”
We went out the kitchen door. As the trees shed their leaves, the view to the south and west was impressive, a great sweep of prairie and in the distance the San Cristobal Mountains. The cottonwood grove continued back to the irrigation ditch, a park of great thick-trunked trees whose crowns mingled and filtered the November sun through leaves turning to crisp brown.
“This part of the deal is impressive,” Camille said. “I love these trees.” She turned and looked at the dull brown of the little house. “I’m sure a couple of good contractors and about fifty thousand bucks could work wonders with the house, too.”
“Now there you go,” Sam Preston said. “This is a smart daughter you’ve raised, Bill.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of hiring a cleaning crew for a couple hundred,” I said, and Camille grimaced.
Sam Preston’s beeper shrieked at him, and he held up a hand. “Let me run and get that,” he said. “Don’t go away.”
Camille linked her arm through mine and lead me to one of the old wooden benches by the back door.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” she said.
“No.”
“And at least once when you were up at our house, you said you weren’t even sure you wanted to stay in Posadas when you retire.”
“I’m not.”
“And so…”
I took a deep breath. “The trouble is, I don’t have anywhere else in mind to go, either. I like Posadas as much as I like anyplace.”
“There isn’t a lot to do here.”
“And if there were, I probably wouldn’t do it.” I looked at Camille and grinned. “I’ve kind of gotten used to my own company over the years, sweetheart. If I get the urge to get up at three-thirty in the morning and roam the county, then that’s what I do. I’m not sure that’s something I want to change.”