Rode Hard, Put Away Dead Page 4

  7

  WHEN I DROVE BACK TO RANCH HEADQUARTERS JUST AFTER noon the red Mustang I'd seen earlier was parked in front of the bunkhouse where Martín and Cori Elena lived. It was wearing Sonora, Mexico, plates. Damn! Had someone come up from Mexico looking for Cori Elena? Instantly, I thought of the newspaper picture of the slaughter in Juárez.

  Martín's pickup was nowhere in sight and the only hopeful sign I saw was that Mrs. Fierce, Petunia and Blue were sleeping in the shade of the cottonwoods near the pond. Surely if there was a slaughter or a kidnapping going on, the dogs would be raising some kind of ruckus. Besides, I'd only seen one woman in the car, and although Cori Elena was little, she could be a real spitfire. I had no doubt that she could hold her own against most women.

  Still, it needed to be checked out.

  Outside the bunkhouse I stopped and listened. The evaporative cooler was running and that, plus the Mexican music Cori Elena was playing, made eavesdropping impossible. Finally, I knocked on the door.

  Cori Elena opened it almost immediately. She was barefoot and wearing a red tank top and very short white shorts, which only set off her flawless brown legs. Whatever bras Cori Elena had weren't getting much use, for she'd stopped wearing them around the time Jake Hatcher came sniffing around.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Sí, Trade. Pórqué?”

  “I saw the car drive in …” I was beginning to feel a bit foolish. “The plates …”

  Beyond Cori Elena I could see the woman from the Mustang sitting at the table. Dark-haired with a wide blond streak running up her right temple, she reminded me a bit of a skunk. Her silk blouse was wrinkled from the heat and she was wearing long black pants. The light from the open door hit her legs just right and I could see the sheen of her nylons. Definitely not from around here, I thought. Draped in gold necklaces and big hoop earrings, the woman was staring back at me.

  “It's my amiga, Carmen Orduño,” Cori Elena said with a wave of her manicured hand. This morning I saw that she had miniature boots and cowboy hats lacquered on each fake fingernail. Probably a concession to her new life as a ranch woman.

  I nodded at Carmen, not eager to stay now that I knew that everything was all right. I quickly said goodbye and headed to my own house.

  While I love knowing the temperature year round, it's never more important to me than in the summer. For this reason I have thermometers scattered all around the ranch, so it was no trick checking the one next to the screened porch: 105 degrees. And that was in the shade.

  As I walked in I found a basket of fresh vegetables that Juan Ortiz had gathered from the garden. After rinsing the produce, I pulled a chilled bowl of leftover gazpacho from the fridge, threw a couple of croutons and some chopped celery and avocado on top and called it lunch. It was just too damned hot to think about eating anything heavier than a bowl of cold soup. Of course Twinkies don't count, so I chased the gazpacho with a couple of my cellophane-wrapped darlings.

  Martín and I had talked about tackling the hay barn this afternoon in anticipation of tomorrow's big hay delivery. By the time I got to the corrals, I found my foreman and his daughter hard at it.

  “Floja,” Martín said. He was teasing me, for we both knew that I was not lazy. There was nothing lazy about Quinta either. Like all the Ortizes she had a healthy regard for hard work. Although she'd only been at the ranch for a short time, she'd already snagged a job as a fill-in bartender at the Riata Bar.

  She looked like an Ortiz with her gold-flecked brown eyes, pleasant face and perfectly aligned teeth. Like her grandfather Juan, she wore a perpetual smile. While this may have been aggravating to some people, it was very becoming on the Ortizes, since I knew the happy faces were sincere.

  Where Martín was tall and lean, his daughter was petite, like her mother, only rounder. Quinta was dressed in frayed, cutoff Levi's, and one of Martín's old work shirts hugged her plump, lush body with sweat.

  “Hi, Trade,” she grinned at me and went back to raking the fallen hay that littered the barn floor.

  We all set to work shoveling the discarded alfalfa into Martín's battered pickup. Later, he'd drive the truck out into the pastures and dump the hay for the cows, a treat since we never supplement them. That's one of the good things about raising cattle in southern Arizona. While it takes a good deal more land to support a cow here—sixteen cows to the section in our area of the county, and that's one of the higher allotments—it's not like the colder climes where the cattle need hay to see them through the winter. The only time my cows get extra goodies is when they're in the holding pastures for roundup.

  We talked for a while about Abby's death, for Martín and Quinta had both heard the news from Juan, who had heard it at the Circle K in La Cienega. News, both kinds, travels quickly in a small town.

  Finally I asked what I was dying to know.

  “So, who's Carmen?”

  Quinta wrinkled her nose. “A friend of Cori Elena's. Yuck.”

  “Yuck?”

  “She's a real pain. But she loves her.”

  In her months with us, I'd noticed that Quinta only called her mother “Cori Elena” or “she.” Never anything more personal that that. As far as I knew, she was barely talking to her, the end result of Cori Elena having hid the truth of Quinta's paternity for twenty-two years.

  “Where's she from?” I tried to sound casual, but the Sonoran license plate was still bugging me.

  “Magdalena.”

  Martín and I stole a worried glance at one another. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. How in the hell had a woman from Magdalena found Cori Elena? There was only one explanation. Cori Elena had been in contact with her. Shit! Who else had she called or written, and who had Carmen told?

  “What's she do?” I asked while Martín continued loading the hay.

  “Do?” Quinta seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “Do. Like does she work? Or does she have a husband, that kind of thing.”

  “She's married to a real cabrón.”

  “Mihijita,” Martín warned.

  “Sorry, Dad. But the guy's a jerk. He has a nightclub in Magdalena.”

  The coincidences were getting to me. Lázaro Orantez, Cori Elena's husband, had also had a nightclub in Magdalena. And now he was dead.

  Martín's groan caught us both by surprise. Turning, I saw he had managed to step on the side of a fallen hay hook, and like a devil's claw it was wrapped around his ankle.

  “I wondered where that was,” he mused as he disentangled himself from the metal hook.

  “You're lucky you didn't step on it, “I said, placing it back on a nail on one of the wooden posts. The hay hooks were indispensable when we were moving hay bales around. You could hook a bale and drag it almost anywhere using the handy tools. “Where's the knife?”

  Martín reached up on a bale of hay and retrieved the survival knife that we use to cut open the alfalfa. This had been one of Juan's finds at the county dump. It used to be that the hay was baled with heavy wire that had to be popped open with pliers or wire cutters, but now since most of the growers are baling with colorful twine the knife has replaced the pliers.

  We'd run a long string through a hole in one end of the rubber haft and the knife was usually left hanging near the hay hooks. Sometimes, though, like the hooks, it had been known to get lost in the loose hay. I replaced it on the wooden post and went on about my work.

  When Quinta left to go get us all Diet Cokes, I turned to Martín. “What do two heads-up make?”

  “Nothing we want to tangle with, chiquita.”

  8

  BY MID-AFTERNOON, CARMEN ORDUÑO'S CAR WAS GONE. I'D given Priscilla, my truck, to Martín to put out the salt so he wouldn't have to move it from my pickup to his. He'd been gone about twenty minutes when I decided to go talk to Cori Elena.

  I was halfway to the bunkhouse before I heard her music, just like always. The peace and quiet of the ranch had definitely been affected by Cori Elena's arrival, for she
required that her audio entertainment be at a decibel level that even old Juan Ortiz could hear. But I'd kept my mouth shut, understanding that since I'd been adamant about her living here in relative seclusion her music could be her solace. With the appearance of Carmen Orduño however, Cori Elena had clearly breached her part of our treaty.

  The bunkhouse door was open and I could see Cori Elena dancing by herself to the music on the other side of the screen door, her short bobbed hair, like the rest of her body, bouncing in time with the music. When she saw me, she boogied up to the screen and opened it.

  “I need to talk to you,” I hollered, stepping into the room.

  “Qué?” She cupped a hand to her ear.

  “Turn off the damned music!” I hollered, pantomiming the turning of a dial with my hand.

  She must have gotten the charade, for she danced over to the kitchen counter and turned the radio off. Instantly the house was quiet, but for the hum of the swamp cooler.

  “I need to talk to you,” I repeated.

  “You want some lemonade or something?”

  I shook my head. There was no way I wanted her to think this was a social call so I cut to the chase. “How did Carmen Orduño know where to find you?”

  Cori Elena shrugged. “No sé.” She batted her big brown eyes at me in the little girl way she had perfected over the years. While it might turn Martín into hot nacho dip, it did nothing for me. Not for the first time did I wonder what he saw in this conniving bit of fluff.

  “You have no idea how she got to the Vaca Grande?”

  “Well, maybe one of my sisters told her.”

  “I thought your father was the only one who knew you were here.”

  “Mierda, Trade! I can't live here like some kind of prisoner or something.”

  “No,” I agreed. “You could live in Mexico like some kind of prisoner.”

  By the look on her face, I knew I had scored.

  “Mexico?” She gasped. “I can't go back to Mexico.”

  “And you can't have Mexico come here. Do you have any idea how serious this is?”

  She studied her hands. “Sí. Carmen sent that clipping to my father. She wanted me to know about Rafael Félix.”

  “Alberto would never tell anyone where you are.”

  She nodded her head in agreement. “No, I called her to talk about Félix.”

  “You called her,” I repeated, having trouble believing she was that stupid. “And told her where you were?”

  She nodded, but would not look at me.

  “Cori Elena, let me see if I understand this correctly. You called a woman whose husband is in the nightclub business in the same city where your husband was in the nightclub business and where, just coincidentally, your husband happened to get his throat slit. Now, have I got that right?”

  This was really incredible. Martín was convinced that she hadn't been talking to anyone in Sonora. Hell, she hadn't even had the clipping a week before she called her good buddy Carmen.

  She stared at the floor.

  “I'm not an international business expert, or anything, but let me just guess here. Could some of Señor Orduño's business associates possibly be the same as Lázaro's?”

  This time when she looked me full in the face the defiant spark was missing from her eyes. “Es posible. But we are comadres. Carmen's the best friend I have. She wouldn't tell anyone where I was.”

  Her faith in Carmen Orduño was stronger than mine. For one thing, I didn't trust anyone who wore pantyhose in June. Besides, Carmen's arrival could have been a fishing expedition by Rafael Félix.

  “And I suppose you want to tell me again that you don't have your husband's money.”

  “I already tole you I don't.”

  “Well, for all of our sakes, Cori Elena, I hope that's the truth.”

  “Es la verdad.” Her big brown eyes were trained on my face. “Tengo miedo, Trade. I'm scared.”

  This time I believed her. After all, she had every right to be terrified. The Mexican Mafia, like our own, doesn't take kindly to people they suspect of having ripped them off of large sums of money.

  “She swore to me on Our Lady that she told no one she was coming to see me.”

  If it came down to wits, I was betting that Carmen Orduño would be little match for the bad guys. I was sure that they also knew that she and Cori Elena were best friends. I wondered how many men it had taken to tail her to the Vaca Grande.

  “You've put us all at great risk,” I said. “These people will stop at nothing to get to you if they think you have Lázaro's money.”

  “Trade, I swear …” She clasped her hands in prayer.

  “Stop!” I didn't want to hear it. I didn't trust her and saw no need to hear her mantra yet another time. Even the cool air blowing on my face was doing little to calm me. This little bitch had thrown any security she had out the window by calling her friend. And now we were all in serious danger. The newspaper clipping that Martín had shown me wasn't the first one I'd seen. The local papers were full of drug-related Mexican killings.

  “Are you going to turn me in?” she asked.

  “I don't know,” I said. In reality, I did. Turn her in for what? Because the Mexican authorities wanted to question her? There was no extradition treaty on questioning. Even if I told what I suspected, that some of Félix's men might be up to southern Arizona to pay a call on the lovely Corazón Elena Figueroa de la Fuente Orantez, the DEA would just laugh at me. They had too many fish to fry and while they might love to get their hands on Félix, they'd know he'd send a couple of his flunkies for the job and he'd stay deep in Mexico were they could never get at him.

  Surveillance? Protection? Ha. Cori Elena was a very small fish in a huge pond and the rest of us weren't even blips on the radar screen. If there was any protecting to be done, we'd all have to do it for ourselves. The problem was if they were coming, they'd come when we'd least expect it.

  I was on my way out the door when Cori Elena said, “I'm sorry, chiquita.”

  I spun on her like a mad dog. “Don't you ever,” I held up a threatening finger, “ever call me chiquita.”

  “But, Martín—”

  “Silencio! Martín is the only one who calls me that. Ever!”

  And with that, I stomped out.

  9

  IT WAS CLOSE TO EIGHT THE NEXT MORNING WHEN I SADDLED Gray. While some may think this late for a ride in the Arizona desert in June, I've learned over the years that this time of day, plus late afternoon, is the best time to ride. For years I'd head out at five A.M. hoping to beat the heat. The problem with this plan is that in June there really is no way to beat the heat. Hot and dry, that's the forecast, day after endless day, and there's no escape.

  When I rode that early I discovered that although the temperature might be a little lower than it would be a few hours later, there was also the dead calm of early morning. The only thing stirring was the animals, for there was never so much as a hint of a breeze. As for clouds, they were nonexistent and would be until much later in the month. But nine-fifteen or so there's usually a slight breeze that comes up, which in turn dries the sweating horse and rider.

  I'd left the dogs at home this morning, for it was just too hot for them. The horse and I could sweat in an effort to keep cool, but Mrs. Fierce and Blue were not equipped with this cooling mechanism and would be panting hard in an effort to cool themselves off. Besides, the two liters of water I was carrying would have gone to the dogs at the risk of my own dehydration. Gray would water at the cattle tanks.

  I rode out across the dry creek. The Cañada del Oro, Sutherland and all the smaller washes would remain dusty and dry now until the rains came next month. The animals had given up digging in the dry streambeds in what would have been a hopeless search for water. There just wasn't any to be had. Our last rain was two months ago and the monsoon season was yet a month away. Even the jackrabbits and ground squirrels were few this morning, preferring to hunker down in their burrows until late afternoon.
I didn't blame them. When the air temperature's 100 degrees, it can be another 40 to 50 degrees higher on the ground.

  Gray climbed slowly this morning and I didn't push him. His neck was shiny with sweat and I appreciated his effort.

  I rode part of the holding pasture fence line, and just as I suspected, there were no cows hanging around. There was no reason for them to be there since they all had been turned out with their babies.

  As I rode out of the pasture I noticed the full mesquite trees, their limbs heavy with green beans. That was a good sign, for the mesquite beans when they turn yellow, dry and drop, make a fine feed for the cattle. While ranchers in other parts of the country spend a lot of time and money trying to eradicate the mesquite tree from their pastures, mesquite is just a fact of life out here in the desert. I feel no such enmity for the plant since it sustains my cattle when there is no grass.

  Shiwóyé, my Apache grandmother who is also a medicine woman, had instilled a healthy respect for the tree in me. It's virtually a desert pharmacy. While many Indians still grind the beans into mesquite flour that they use in cooking, the gum of the tree can also be boiled and the liquid used for chapped lips, wounds, sore eyes, sunburn and even as a treatment for VD. All this and it's a sore throat gargle too. Mesquite leaf tea can be used to soothe headaches and upset stomachs. The bees make a wonderful honey from its flowers and the wood makes a fine fire. Unfortunately, New Yorkers have also discovered the excellent grilling qualities of mesquite, and now we're seeing a lot of our trees harvested, and the wood sent east.

  I rode down to the cottonwoods and dismounted for a few minutes, letting Gray graze on the old dry grass there. Just a few short months ago this area had been lush and green, and would be again once the rains began, but for now it was parched and unappealing. Gray, filling his mouth with the dry feed, obviously disagreed with me.

  As I took a long drink of water I thought about J.B. and Abby. What in the hell had happened out there in the Baboquivaris? Had Abby really been killed? While it didn't surprise me that J.B. was a suspect, I couldn't really imagine his killing anyone.