Leaning Land (28 page)

Wager called the BLM agent first.

“I don’t know how much I got from Holtzer’s wife, Gabe. She had no reason to keep paying rent on his office and threw away a lot of stuff when she cleaned it out. What she did keep were any legal documents and tax records. You know, pay slips, expenses, contracts, receipts for operating overhead, that kind of thing. Anyway, Holtzer received four payments from the Flying W Development Corporation, starting in November. The last one was a couple of weeks before he was killed, dated 3 January for what looked like ‘hydrology analysis.’ His handwriting was hard to read, but I think that’s what it said.”

“Any government work in January?”

“Not in his account book. He had pay slips for that—kept them separate from his freelance work. Probably because the tax and FICA and Medicare were withheld. Anyway, he did most of his government erosion surveys in November and December. Nothing for January.”

“Any other private jobs near the time of his death?”

“Nothing I could find in his records. Looked like the Flying W was it.”

Wager thought that over. “Do you know if he ever worked for the Ute tribal council on the reservation?”

“Matter of fact, he did, but it was over a year ago—last February or March, I think. I saw an entry, but I didn’t write down the date. I should have made copies of all those papers, I guess. What I did make copies of is a couple of legal documents that might interest you.”

He waited, apparently for the sake of drama, until Wager asked, “What?”

“Holtzer seems to’ve had a lawyer draw up a couple of contracts. I won’t read all the whereases, but what it boils down to is him providing his professional services and consultation in return for twenty-five percent of the future net income from any and all marketed water. They were both made out for signature, but only one was signed. One was for Walter Lawrence, the other—the signed and witnessed one—was for Rubin Del Ponte.”

“Who witnessed it?”

“A notary public in Grand Junction.”

“So Holtzer was Del Ponte’s partner?”

“That’s about it. He would provide the technical knowledge of how much water they should contract to sell and for what price, as well as the development and cost of the delivery systems. Del Ponte was the owner. No money up front—all for future income only if and when the water should be marketed—and then a percentage after expenses instead of out of the gross. All in all, it was a pretty fair contract. A hell of a lot better, I bet, than anything the Flying W would have wanted to offer.”

“Was Holtzer’s income a good one?”

“You mean for last year? Didn’t look too good—his taxable income was a little over twenty-five thousand. Most of that was from the USGS, but since he was a contract agent, he didn’t get any of the benefits. His wife’s a secretary for a building company up in Grand Junction, but she can’t be making all that much, not on hourly. And with three kids … .” Henderson asked, “Why? That something that might be important?”

“I’m not sure,” said Wager. “I’m just trying to make some sense of all of this.”

“Well, he cut himself in on one water deal. And tried for another one with Lawrence. That’s clear enough. I guess somebody on the Flying W side could’ve got pissed off and killed him for going over to the Indians, but that seems kind of extreme.”

Murder was always extreme—or should be. “What’s the date of the contracts?”

“Only one’s dated, the signed one—Del Ponte’s. Twenty-two January, this year.”

One, maybe two days before Holtzer was killed. Wager asked Henderson to make copies of the documents for him. “Thanks, Don. That’s a big help.”

“More to you than to me, it sounds like. But you’re welcome.”

Liz herself answered on the first ring. “Oh, good—I was afraid you’d think my last message was the old one. Turner had a list of all the investors in Ronald Pyne’s ranch—there aren’t that many. Bradley Nichols’s name was on it. And so was Stan Litvak’s.”

“Both?” That figured—they were buddies in everything else.

“That’s right. And it’s probably what Litvak meant when he told Evelyn he would have plenty of money to spend on their daughter. It wasn’t his new wife’s money he had in mind, but this deal. Is it important?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Will it help Evelyn?”

Wager didn’t know that, either, but he said he sure hoped so. Mostly because the other worries he had were increasingly sharper than the approaching custody battle of Liz’s friend, but he didn’t add that.

After Liz hung up, Wager’s train of thought was led back to familiar ground, and he wished he had asked Luther Del Ponte a few more questions. But maybe there were different roads to the same place. He ran through the Egnarville section of the small telephone book and dialed Sharon Del Ponte’s number, identifying himself when the woman answered. “Did your husband ever talk about a geologist or mention the name Buck Holtzer?”

The line made a faint hiss as the woman thought.

Wager nudged. “He may have been doing some business with him. Or waiting to get a report from him. Or perhaps planned to meet with him and maybe Luther … . Probably sometime last December or January … .”

“I’m not real sure. I think he was going to meet somebody like that a while back. I didn’t pay much attention, but I heard him talking to Luther on the telephone about a job he was working on for somebody who was doing some kind of drilling survey. But I can’t remember any names—like I said, it was a while back.”

“When, Mrs. Del Ponte?”

Another long silence. “Late last year maybe? Sometime around Christmas, anyway. But I can’t remember if it was before or after.”

“Did he say anything at that time about Ramey Many Coats?”

“No…But he could’ve. Him and Luther always talked about the reservation. But I don’t remember them talking about Ramey.”

Wager thanked the woman and started to hang up, but she had a question for him. “Have you told Uncle Malcolm anything about Rubin and—you know—Heidi Herrera?”

“No.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. Not unless you really have to.” She explained. “It wasn’t right of Rubin, but he’s dead now, so it don’t make any difference anymore. And that woman’s a slut anyway, and I’d just as soon Uncle Malcolm didn’t think of Rubin that way. You know.”

Wager guessed that he did know. “I have no reason to tell him, Mrs. Del Ponte.”

A few of the noon diners were still lingering over coffee, and layered cigarette smoke made a haze over a couple of the tables at the far end of the dining room. Paula smiled with shy excitement as Wager took a table beside one of the windows.

“I finally told Verdie I was thinking of moving to Denver.”

“What’d she say?”

“She says she doesn’t want to see me go. But she thinks it would be good for me and I ought to do it while I’m young enough. She says to just give her a couple of weeks’ notice and to write to her. She says she’ll write to anybody I want a job with and tell them how good I am.”

“What about your folks? How do they feel about it?”

She shook her head. “They’re worried at the idea. But my grandma says there’s nothing for me here except working for Verdie and marrying some cowboy, and then giving my paycheck to him instead of keeping it for myself. She says I should do it. Especially,” the young woman looked down at her order book and made a scratching motion with her pencil, “especially since I know somebody now who can kind of help me there.” Quickly, she went on, “I don’t mean like a grandfather or something—just somebody who could tell me where it would be best to live and I could call if I needed help or something. I told them you were a policeman there and you lived there all your life.” She became businesslike. “Can I take your order now?”

A grandfather? “What? Oh—ah, the chicken-fried steak. Coffee.”

She was gone before he could say anything more.

Well, his own grandfather would have been in his fifties when Wager joined the Marine Corps, so he guessed that from Paula’s view he might look that old, even if he wasn’t. It was a realization that brought with it the quiver of something lost, which, he guessed, was sort of what women meant by their “biological clock.” But the tick of Wager’s clock was a muted one, and you couldn’t stop time; as one of his uncles always said, time takes things from you or takes you from them, and that’s all there is to it. As for Paula coming to Denver, it wouldn’t be as if Wager were adopting the girl. And if she was as determined to go as it seemed, she would go whether he thought it was a good idea or not, or whether he offered any help or not. So he might as well do what little he could. Besides—and most important—he owed the girl: she had tried to do him a favor.

He was mopping up some gravy that had crawled out of its little cup of mashed potatoes when Paula came by with a refill of coffee. “Paula, tell me: Who did you overhear making threats against me?”

The muted aura of happiness and excitement she had shown when he first came in faded.

“You called me and warned me about being attacked. I need to know who it was.”

“I … I’d just as soon not say, Officer Wager. It’s not like I listen to what people are talking about—I’m not trying to eavesdrop. They just keep talking a lot of times like I’m not there.”

“I’m not going to let anyone know who told me. The reason I’m asking is it might help me solve Rubin’s murder.”

“He really was murdered, wasn’t he? I mean, it wasn’t an accident, was it?”

“I can’t prove it yet, but I think he was.” He held out his cup for her glass coffeepot. “Whatever you tell me, I will keep secret. But I need information—any little kind, and some of it might not even seem important. So I’d like to know: Who did you hear threatening me?”

She still hesitated, but Wager could not tell whether it was from fear or a community distrust of outsiders.

“Was it Bradley Nichols?”

A quick nod.

“When he was here with that man from Denver?”

“No. A couple days after. Him and Dave Turney and Stan Litvak. And one of the Many Coats. They were talking about you causing trouble and Bradley Nichols said they ought to give you more trouble than you could handle.”

“A Many Coats? Which one?”

“I don’t know, there’s so many of them. But they’re mostly all built with that squat look. You know, their heads are kind of too big and their bodies are real short and thick.”

“Could it have been Ramey?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. It was a Many Coats, is all.”

“What kind of trouble was I causing?”

“I don’t know. Asking questions, I suppose. Maybe finding things out that they didn’t want found out.”

That’s what detectives did, all right. “Did anyone else say anything?”

“Stan Litvak just said it was a good idea, and that’s all I heard.”

Wager nodded his thanks and the girl left quickly.

He was almost through with his coffee when Verdie poked her head around the door looking for him. “Got a message for you, Officer Wager. He said it was important.”

“Coming.”

He read the slip of paper as he paid his bill. Then he went to his room to make the call. “Ray? What’s the problem?”

“Cerise Del Ponte came into the office about an hour ago. I’m not sure what’s going on, Gabe, but somebody’s up to something. Anyway, Luther came home in a sweat this afternoon and grabbed what he could carry, then headed down Narraguinnep Wash. He said he was going to the Navajo reservation for some big medicine. Said if he didn’t come back, he wanted her to have Rubin’s land. If he didn’t come back, it was hers, he said, and he wrote out a piece of paper naming her as owner in case he died. He said she shouldn’t let anybody buy it or steal it from her. Said she should keep it no matter what and then hauled his tail out of there in a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Heigh-ho Silver’.”

“Did he say who’d want the land?”

“No. And she was too surprised and didn’t think to ask.”

“You think we have him worried? Scared him by naming his dead brother?”

“That could be it—he might have been visited by Rubin’s ghost.” It didn’t sound to Wager as if Ray were joking. “But something else happened, too: a few hours after Luther left, a white man came by, asking for him.”

“Did she recognize him?”

“No. A stranger to her, but he seemed to know Luther all right. Asked how the kids were doing, knew the names of a couple of them, that kind of thing. So, Cerise told him that Luther had gone to see his medicine man and she didn’t know when he’d be back. The man said OK and left. Then she got a call from Ramey Many Coats who said he had some money to give Luther—said Luther really wanted it and he—Ramey—had promised it as soon as possible. Did she know where Luther’s medicine man lived? Cerise figured Luther needed it to pay the medicine man, so she told Ramey Luther had gone down to the one on Montgomery Creek, and Ramey said thanks and hung up. Then Cerise began wondering if she should have told Ramey anything, and that got her more worried and upset, so she drove in to see me. At first I thought it was our talk about Rubin that scared Luther, but now I’m not sure.”

“Why?”

“It’s about two hours by fast horse from Knife Springs to Luther’s house, and it took us three hours to drive around. Which is about how long it was before the white man showed up behind Luther. I figure Luther might have seen that white man driving down the Wash toward the Springs and high-tailed it for home. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s possible Luther’s running from him and not from Rubin’s ghost.”

“Where’s Cerise now?”

“I just now sent her over to her mother’s house, but I think you’d better talk to her.”

That’s just what Wager was thinking. “I’m on my way.”

T
HE LOWERING SUN
caused Wager to squint as he drove the last miles toward the wall-like silhouette of Dark Mesa and the village at its foot. But it wasn’t only the glare that brought a frown. Events were moving into some kinds of patterns now, and a few of those patterns seemed to make some sense while others made no sense at all. With all of them, the reasons for killing one or another of the victims either multiplied or remained obscure. The rule of thumb that Wager and a lot of other cops used in most cases told him to go after the suspect who ran, and that’s what he’d do here. But if Luther had reason to kill his brother and perhaps even Holtzer because he had a contract with Rubin, Wager didn’t see any cause for him murdering the other two men. Which, of course, meant the probability of other perpetrators. The frown that deepened Wager’s squint came from trying to link the best motives and opportunities with the various names drifting through his thoughts.