“Not easily,” Andy said.
“It doesn’t have to be given priority,” Kerney said.
“Here’s what I’ll do,” Andy said after a pause. “You talk to Joe. Tell him what you know and what you want to know. If he’s interested and willing to peck away at it, then it’s okay with me. But don’t expect too much. He’s a busy man.”
Kerney smiled. “That went a lot smoother than I expected. Thanks.”
Andy paid the check and stood. “I know how you are, stubborn and bullheaded. Why should I waste my time letting you wear me down until I finally give you what you want?”
Kerney laughed and added some money to the tip. “Come on, admit it. This is worth taking a look at.”
“Either that, or you have an overactive imagination,” Andy replied with a grin.
Ramona Pino brought in a squad of four detectives to assist in the hunt for Dean and the search of his pharmacy and residence. She assigned two of them to work the pharmacy. The others followed her to Dean’s house in Canada de los Alamos, a small settlement in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains a few miles southeast of Santa Fe.
Once part of a land grant, Canada de los Alamos had remained a sleepy, forgotten place well into the 1960s. Situated next to the national forest in a protected valley, it held a mixture of mobile homes, small adobe houses, and a growing number of more upscale residences that had been built by newcomers over the past forty years. Anchored by a pretty church along a dirt road that cut through the center of the valley, the settlement had no businesses or stores.
Old fences, corrals, sheds, and outbuildings that bordered an arroyo still gave the area a rural feel. But the landscape was changing, and it wasn’t only because of a recent increase in population. Drought had so dried out the pinon and ponderosa forest that the trees could no longer stave off their longstanding enemy, the bark beetle. In wetter times, the trees suffocated the beetles by releasing sap. Now, the beetles had the upper hand and were killing whole stands of trees, sometimes turning their needles brown in a matter of days.
The die-off of the forest throughout the mountains and foothills of northern New Mexico was creating a major wildfire hazard. According to the forestry experts, not much could be done about it.
Kim Dean’s house, a solar adobe on five acres, overlooked the old settlement. Two huge dead pinon trees at the front of the property drooped burly barren branches over the driveway. On the off chance that Dean was home, Ramona blocked the driveway with her unit and, accompanied by the two detectives, went in on foot. A quick perimeter check of the house and horse barn turned up nothing other than Dean’s two geldings.
Dean’s flight to avoid arrest and the search warrant for his premises were all the justification needed to enter the house. They knocked first, waited a minute, then kicked in the front door with weapons at the ready, and cleared the house room by room.
In a workshop attached to the two-car garage, Ramona found a number of small knives and cutting tools on a table made of sawhorses and plywood, several of them coated with a thin layer of pale yellow dust. She bagged and tagged them right away.
Six-foot-high steel shelves filled with paint cans, bottles, coffee cans, and plastic storage bins lined one wall. Waist-high, built-in cabinets made from plywood and rough lumber ran along the opposite wall. Boxes of junk were strewn around the floor. From the looks of it, Dean was a total pack rat, which was an encouraging sign.
Ramona put the two detectives to work going through the shelves, the toolboxes, and cabinets. She cleared a space on the floor, covered it with clear plastic, and started emptying the trash basket next to the table piece by piece. She found a crumpled paper bag containing traces of yellow dust and a number of loose, oval-shaped, empty capsules.
Her cell phone rang, and the senior detective at the pharmacy search reported in. In Dean’s desk he’d found a full, unopened packet of the active thyroid ingredient and a copy of the wholesaler’s invoice showing that two packets, not one, had been delivered to Dean a month before Clifford Spalding’s last visit to Santa Fe.
“Describe the packet to me,” Ramona said.
“A small white box, two by three inches, sealed at both ends, with the name of the drug on a manufacturer ’s label.”
“Good deal,” Ramona said. “Make sure it’s dusted for prints.”
“Already done,” the detective replied.
Ramona disconnected, whistled at the two detectives, and told them what to start looking for. Then she called Sergeant Lowrey in California and gave her a status update.
“I hope you find that packet,” Lowrey said.
“If not, we still may come away with enough evidence to tie Dean to the crime.”
“You think Dean may be on his way out here?” Ellie asked.
“Possibly,” Ramona said. “Have you talked to Claudia?”
“Not yet. I’m on my way to her house right now,” Ellie said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Ramona put the cell phone away and went through the trash again until she was satisfied nothing had been overlooked. The two detectives were digging through the cabinets and pulling the plastic containers off the shelves. It would take time to go through everything, but they just might get lucky.
Ellie Lowrey found the Spalding estate no less mind-boggling on her second visit. In the past, she’d read newspaper articles about celebrities and their multimillion-dollar Montecito properties. But it had been impossible for her to imagine what that kind of money could buy until she’d seen it firsthand. In some ways, it still didn’t compute.
The solemn-looking secretary who met Ellie at the driveway took her through the vast living room, down a wide, long, arched corridor with tiny recessed ceiling lights that softly illuminated the paintings on the wall, and into a sunroom filled with exotic plants and wicker furniture that opened onto a patio at the rear of the house.
In the center of the patio were a large swimming pool and a separate hot tub surrounded by marble tile. Scattered around the pool was enough lawn furniture to accommodate forty or more people. Off to one side of the house stood an outdoor kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a built-in gas barbecue grill, and a work island protected by a freestanding pergola.
Beyond the swimming pool four cabanas sat near two tennis courts. A large swath of carefully groomed lawn in front of a low garden wall served as a putting green. At the bottom of a gently sloping hill, a gardener pruned shrubbery lining a pathway to a guesthouse three times the size of Ellie’s modest home.
Claudia Spalding stepped out of the guesthouse and paused along the pathway to speak to the gardener. She wore black slacks and a sleeveless black scooped top. At her neck a large solitary diamond glimmered in the sunlight.
“This is not a good time,” Spalding said stiffly when Ellie drew near. Her thin mouth was pinched, but her makeup, right down to the long lashes, eye shadow, and creamy red lip rouge, had been perfectly applied.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Ellie said.
“What do you want, Sergeant?”
“Have you spoken to Kim Dean recently?”
“Yes, I called him yesterday to tell him about Clifford’s death, as I have many other people. We’ve spoken several times since then.”
“Did he say anything to you about leaving Santa Fe?”
Spalding pushed a wisp of hair away from her cheek. “No.”
“An arrest warrant charging him with murder has been issued in Santa Fe,” Ellie said.
Spalding’s aloof expression vanished. She drew her head back sharply. “Impossible.”
“Why is that?”
“Kim is perfectly happy with our relationship as it is. He has no reason to harm my husband.”
“Can you think of any reason for him to leave work suddenly?”
“Perhaps he had an emergency of some sort at home,” Spalding said.
“He’s not at his house,” Ellie replied.