Steven Havill - Red, Green, or Murder

Since this enormous, ponderous unit drove over the highways and bore a commercial license plate, there should have been a registration in the dash box. Should have been. I climbed down and surveyed the rig and walked around behind. The license plate was mud encrusted, torn and battered, and carried a two year-old tag. Knowing that it meant nothing to me, but still in my busybody mode, I jotted the license number down in a small pocket notebook, and then strolled back to my vehicle.

Gayle Torrez was working toward the final hours of her day shift and certainly wouldn’t mind something to do.

“Gayle,” I said when she answered the phone, “do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” she said. “What do you need?”

“I’d like a ten-twenty-eight on New Mexico alpha bravo kilo niner one zero one, if you’ll run that plate for me.”

“Sure. Do I dare ask what you’re up to this afternoon, sir?”

“Being nosy.”

“Ah, good.” She didn’t pursue the matter but sounded satisfied. I could hear the tappety-tap of computer keys in the background. After another thirty seconds, Gayle came back on the line. “Alpha bravo kilo niner one zero one should appear on a 1971 gray Brockway registered to Scott Paulson, 101 Commercial Avenue, Lordsburg. No wants or warrants.”

“Expired?”

“No sir. Current. Expires in October.”

“He keeps the new sticky tags in his pocket, I guess,” I said. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Are you behaving yourself?”

“As much as possible,” I said. “Is his nibs sleeping in his office?”

“I think he’s out by the fuel pumps with Tom Mears. You want me to haul him in here?”

“No. Just ask him for me when you see him next. I should remember, but I don’t. Who owns the property just north of Herb’s place on 14? It looks like a long, narrow strip that runs right along the back side of San Patricio Mesa? I didn’t see any boundary fences, so it goes all the way from the road back to this new well site where I’m parked at the moment. It’d be the piece immediately adjacent to Herb’s.”

“That’s easy enough. Bobby has his cell with him, if you want to talk with him. Thirty-nine hundred.”

“No, that’s all right. It’s not that important. If I had any gumption I’d stop at the assessor’s office and do it myself. I guess I was wondering if this was one of those parcels that the BLM picked up in that land swap with George Payton.”

“Bobby will know,” Gayle said cheerfully.

“That’s what I figured.” There had been a blizzard of land titles when the feds purchased the land that included the newly discovered limestone caves not far north of Reuben’s place. No Carlsbad Caverns, the discovery was still of some local interest, and there was the promise of a decent tourist attraction if anything was ever developed. When her great-uncle had died, Estelle Reyes-Guzman had missed out on inheriting something spectacular by about a thousand yards, give or take. The Bureau of Land Management had snapped up the parcel to protect it, and now plans for the feature were plodding through the federal labyrinth.

I took a few minutes to scribble a bunch of notes to myself, including the information on Scott Paulson. No livestock appeared to be involved, so none of it was any of my business. Still, sitting there and jotting log entries felt good and proper.

Posadas County was split east-west by three state highways. County Road 14 ran north and south over on the west side of the county, like a wriggly noodle laced through the tines of a fork. I continued north on the county road until it intersected with NM17, the old route made obsolete by the interstate that paralleled it. Entering the village of Posadas from the west, NM17 became Bustos Avenue, and as I cruised into town, a stomach grumble reminded me that it had been altogether too long since breakfast.

Any small amount of discipline at that moment-and it was fast approaching five o’clock-would have prompted me to pull in my belt a notch and wait for dinner at the Guzmans’. But even an hour is a long time to wait. I pulled into the parking lot of the Don Juan de Oñate Restaurant, determined to have just a small jolt of coffee and wee bit of the aromatic magic for which the place was justly famous. Just an appetizer, so to speak.

There had once been a time when Fernando Aragon’s restaurant would have closed between two to five each day, giving them time to prep for the dinner rush. But those days were as long gone as the copper mines and the rush of travelers, and the restaurant remained open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week, working to catch any stray customer.

When I walked in that day, the place was quiet as a tomb. No maitre d’ greeted me, and I could have slipped away with the cash register, although no doubt it didn’t hold much. I headed for my favorite haunt, a booth far in the back with a view to the southwest and the San Cristóbal mountains that separated us from old Mexico.

The kitchen door opened and Aileen Aragon, Fernando’s daughter, waved at me. I thought her expression was a little less cheerful than usual. A rotund woman who wore T-shirts that didn’t flatter her figure, Aileen was on the down slope past forty. During the decades I’d lived in Posadas, I could count on one hand the times I’d seen Aileen anywhere but at the Don Juan. Her parents had built the place, and she would work herself to death to keep it.

“JanaLynn will be with you in a sec. Sheriff,” she called, and I slid into the booth. Aileen was one of many Posadas County residents who had become so used to my tenure that they just found it easier to continue using the title rather than my name. In a moment JanaLynn Torrez pushed through the kitchen door carrying a two-foot stack of brass baskets for the tortillas and dinner rolls. The sheriff’s youngest sister had worked at the Don Juan for a dozen years, and I think that I favored the place as much for her cheerful, attractive demeanor as for the food.

She stashed the baskets, filled a tall, green-tinted glass with iced tea, and as she approached, her dark, dramatic features were sympathetic. “We heard about Mr. Payton,” she said, setting down the glass. She reached out both hands to take mine. “We’re so sorry.”

“Yes,” I said. “Not the best day.”

“His heart?”

“I would guess so,” I sighed.

She looked down at me for a long, empathetic moment, gave my hands a final squeeze, and knowing that comfort lay with good food, asked, “What can I get for you?”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to ruin my dinner, so I was thinking of just a piece of pie, maybe.”

“Would you like to try one of the tostadas? Aileen’s been prepping those, and they’re going to be really good.”

“Oh, gosh.” I twisted my left arm behind my back and feigned a pained grimace. “Okay, you win.”

“The plate is going to include two, but if you’re having dinner soon, you might want half a serving.”

“What’s the world coming to,” I muttered, but nodded agreement.

“And green, of course.”

“Sure enough.” I loved red chile, but it didn’t love me-a tragedy I had shared with George Payton. If I hadn’t planned to spend the evening in polite company, I might have risked it.

She bent down to give my shoulders a hug. “Back in a minute.”

“No rush.” The booth offered the same familiar, comfortable lumps and bumps, even the same old strap of duct tape that sutured a rip in the plastic. I settled back, arm across the back, fingers tapping on the windowsill. The iced tea was good, although almost too fresh to have any real character. JanaLynn hadn’t suggested pulling the blinds, and the sun that blasted in was soothing. The restaurant’s air conditioning hammered, but they could have saved the electricity as far as I was concerned. For the past week, temperatures hadn’t broken eighty-five degrees during the heat of the day-a perfect September in southern New Mexico.