“Eventually,” I said. Christine entered the kitchen and favored me with a wide smile.
“Hey, sir. I didn’t know you were back here.”
“Christine, I need to talk with the two men who are with Father Anselmo. They don’t need to know who I am, all right?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t call me sheriff, or anything else. Stay on the opposite side of the bar from them.”
She looked uneasy. “Sure, sir. They’re just grabbing a burger before heading on down the road. They’re hitching to Las Cruces. Father Bert is buying them some lunch.” She glanced at the clock. “Very late lunch.”
“That’s good,” I said. “You have some coffee?”
“Sure thing.”
“I’ll be out in a minute. Remember what I said.” I watched her leave the kitchen, passing Junior in the doorway. He nodded at me and finished it off with a shrug. I turned to Victor. “I don’t want any ruckus,” I said. “I want to make sure of that. Nobody gets hurt.” He didn’t reply, but pointed at the rack of buns. His son unzipped the first package and handed it to his father.
I walked through the swinging doors and down the length of the bar, nodding at two state highway employees who sat at a two-top by the juke box, and a young couple I didn’t know just inside the door. Father Bertrand Anselmo sat at the bar, right where an alcoholic shouldn’t have been, both rms resting on the polished surface. A cup of coffee nestled between his hands. To his right were the two hikers, and they didn’t even glance my way as I passed behind them.
As I did so, I touched Anselmo’s shoulder.
“Well, hello there,” he said brightly, turning to extend his hand. A big, bear-like guy with full beard that his Roman collar, Bertrand Anselmo would have looked at home in the seventeenth century. Always in black, his clothing was threadbare and his shoes on their last mile. “How have you been?”
“Just fine, Father.” How’s your day going?”
“Buying a couple of wayfarers the best burgers on the planet,” he said. “They’re headed on back from south of the border to college in Cruces.” He leaned forward and spread one hand. “Richard Zimmerman and…”
“Rory,” one of the boys said.
“Rory Hobbs,” Anselmo finished. “This is an old friend of mine, Bill Gastner.”
Well done, I thought. Zimmerman had a grip like a dead fish, but Hobbs shook my hand with vigor and interest.
“Down here?” Christine asked. She held up the coffee.
“Right at the end, there,” I said. That put me where I could see the two men without leaning past Anselmo. I settled on the stool and added two tubs of creamer to the coffee. By the time I’d done that, Christine had returned with three baskets of burgers.
I regarded the two travelers as I sipped the coffee. Slumped as they were, it was hard to judge height, but Zimmerman was the larger of the two, with long black hair pulled back in a pony tail. His baseball cap, with a logo I couldn’t read, was settled backward on his head. His bony features looked as if he needed more than a few burgers.
Rory Hobbs reminded me of one of those perfect child stars now grown into a young man without losing any of the magic. Large, luminous eyes looked through a thick, dark forest of lashes. A good, strong chin and finely sculpted, small ears were partially hidden by his copper-streaked brown hair-the kid was a publicist’s dream. As he leaned forward to sink perfect teeth into the burger, his expression of pleasure showed a hint of dimples.
“So, how’s Mexico these days?” I asked. “Lots of bad news out of that place.”
“I tell you,” Hobbs said, chewing industriously, “I could live there. I mean, it costs just about nothing, you know?”
“So I’ve heard.” I eyes him critically. His eating slowed as he realized that he was under scrutiny. I remembered Naranjo’s assessment. This was a young man entirely at ease. Deciding to try a tack that might prompt a little discomfiture, I asked, “Why do I think that I’ve seen you before?”
“Really?” Only mild interest slowed the food, and Zimmerman shot him a look that said something like, “you, not me.”
“Did you go down to Cruces for any of the college plays this past year?” Father Anselmo asked. “We have something of a celebrity on our hands, Bill. This young man tells me that he’s a drama major.”
I snapped my fingers, surprising even myself with how easy it was to invent plausible nonsense from a single dim memory. “The Shakespeare Festival this past summer. I saw the excerpts contest. You were in that, if I’m not mistaken.” I hadn’t seen the contest, but I’d read about it-two teams of five actors each, chosen at random from a roster of drama students, given only the time when the other team was on stage to prepare. “They gave you only ten minutes or so for each performance, the winner to be the last team standing, am I right?”
“Last man standing. I like that,” Hobbs grinned. “That’s how it was.”
“Did you make it down for any of the festival?” I asked the priest, and he shook his head.
“So…am I right?” I pursued. “You were in the short scenes?”
“I confess,” Hobbs said. “And maybe you saw the performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
“Didn’t see that,” I said, and smiled at him. If it was a trap, it was a clever one. “I was going to catch the Scottish play, but I missed that, too. So…what did you do for the contest? I don’t remember?”
“Ah.” He leaned far back and stared at the ceiling. “All kinds of stuff. And in a couple of things, I think we faked out the judges.” He smiled, altogether fetching.
“Well, it was remarkable,” I said. “What’s coming up? Anything interesting?”
He took a chunk out of the burger. “Heavy stuff,” he said. “I’m trying out for a couple of things.”
“Can I be nosy?”
He shot me another assessing look. “Like, one of the profs wants to do The Andersonville Trials. I thought I’d try for that.”
I held up both hands, framing his face with my fingers. “I see Wirz,” I said. His delicate eyebrows shot up. “A maligned commandant of a Civil War prison camp would be a challenging role.” But what I really saw was that, replacing the dark hair with a light wig, the kid’s visage could easily fool anyone.
“You’re a history buff?” Hobbs asked.
“Oh, boy!” Anselmo said, well aware of my hobby of tracking down tidbits of frontier legend. For a moment, I thought that he’d forgotten my note.
“Western military history,” I said quickly. “My one hobby, I’m afraid.”
“So you know the play, then.”
“Certainly do. Wirz was an interesting, conflicted character. Even tragic in some ways. You’re going to have a ball with that role.”
“That’s if I get the part.”
“Oh, no doubt about hat.” I grinned at Zimmerman, who didn’t seem to mind being left out of the conversation. “And what’s your story, son?”
He tucked the remains of the burger wrapper into the bottom of the baket. “I’m just in one of the pre-med programs.”
“Just?” I said. “Since when did medicine become a just? That’s a handful, son. Congratulations. I’m surprised that either one of you found time to break away from school for a trip to Mexico.”
“Sometimes you just have to get away,” Hobbs said easily. “The opportunity comes along…” and he finished with a shrug.
“You’re smart to recognize it.” I held my coffee mug while Christine refilled it. I cut her off at half. The trouble with this conversation was that I was enjoying the hell out of it, and enjoying the company of the two college kids. That conflicted with the sour thought that, if they were indeed the ones who assaulted Pat Gabaldon, they were carrying thousands of dollars in cash-and still were about to allow a parish priest without an extra two cents to his name to pick up the tab for lunch. They’d laugh about that, no doubt.
Victor Sanchez came out of the kitchen and stood with his hands on his hips, regarding us all as if it was an hour after closing and we should all vanish.