Michael McGarity - Mexican Hat

She dropped her attention to the papers in her attache case and arranged them in order.

"Okay, here it is. Calvin Cox owned the local bank that carried the mortgage on the Padilla ranch. Before the property went on the auction block for back taxes. Cox bought it and immediately resold it to Elderman at an inflated price. Elderman passed the price increase on to the Forest Service. Both men made a chunk of money on the deal."

"What have you learned about Eugene's hunting accident?"

"He was out alone when he got shot. When he didn't come home, Edgar went searching for him and brought him down the mountain."

Molly flipped over a paper and studied her notes.

"When Eugene recovered enough to be questioned, he said he never saw who shot him. The state police speculated that whoever rustled Padilla's sheep shot Eugene."

"Eugene wasn't a suspect in the rustling?"

"Nope. He was back home with a bullet in his spine the day before Don Luis left the hacienda for the meadows."

"According to whom?"

"Calvin Cox, Edgar, and the doctor who treated Eugene."

"What about Eugene's wife? Any leads?"

Molly shook her head.

"Vanished without a trace, but Jim's looking." She put her notes away and got up.

"That's all I've got. Can I tell Jim my research assignment is over, please? I need to get back to my real job."

"Only if you tell me something."

"What is it?"

"Are you going to marry him?"

"Probably, but don't you dare tell him. I want to soften him up a bit more."

Kerney grinned.

"I promise I won't."

Molly stepped over to Kerney and kissed him on the cheek.

"Thanks for saving him for me, Mr. Kerney."

Kerney blushed and patted her on the shoulder.

"No thanks are necessary. Call me Kerney. Most of my friends do."

Molly tossed her hair out of her face and smiled.

"Okay, Kerney, you've got a deal. Jim gets to go home tomorrow morning.

Actually he's staying with me, so I can nurse him back to health." She wrote her address on a piece of paper and handed it over.

"You'd better stop by to see him. He likes you a lot.

So do I."

"The feeling is mutual on both counts," Kerney replied.

"Give Jim my best."

"I'll do it."

When Karen returned from her meeting with Kerney, Edgar carried Cody and Elizabeth up to the old house-Cody sitting on Grandfather's shoulders-to tuck them into bed. Margaret and Karen waited for him to return. When he didn't come back they looked for him out the living-room window. The light was on in the horse barn, and they saw his shadow through the open door as he moved around inside.

"He'll be fine," Margaret predicted.

"He always putters when he's worried."

"I'm worried too," Karen admitted.

"It will all be over soon." The surgery was scheduled for eight o'clock in the morning.

"I plan to breeze right through it," Margaret said, patting her daughter's cheek.

"See that you do."

When Karen left, Margaret turned out the livingroom lights and waited for Edgar to come back inside. Ten minutes passed before the kitchen door squeaked and Edgar walked quietly into the living room. She turned on the reading lamp next to the couch, and Edgar looked at her in surprise.

"Didn't the doctor tell you to get a good night's sleep?" he asked.

"He did. I will. Sit down, Edgar, I need to talk to you."

Edgar's expression grew grim.

"It's not about the surgery," Margaret reassured him.

He walked to his chair and eased his long frame down, his face still gloomy.

"What is it?"

"I want you to promise me something," she said.

"Anything you want."

Margaret held back a smile.

"I want you to tell Karen what happened on Elderman Meadows."

"I can't do that."

"Yes, you can. It's time, Edgar. I've kept your secret for over forty years, and I've seen it eat at you from the day we were married. Tell Karen and let her help you. A promise is a promise, and you've always been a man who kept his word."

Edgar, stunned by the request, knew he was trapped by a woman who wouldn't let him off the hook. He tried anyway.

"It's a hard thing you're asking me to do."

"But you will do it."

"When?"

"Soon. Very soon."

"You know what it may mean," he countered.

"Yes. A burden will be lifted and we can get on with our lives."

Edgar took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Margaret, still waiting for his answer, would keep him rooted in his chair until she got what she wanted. Maybe she was right and the time had come.

"I'll tell her," he said.

"Before you come back home."

Margaret went to him, sank down on his lap, and pulled his arms around her. Her wet eyes smiled.

"Thank you, Edgar."

He held her tightly, and neither spoke for a very long time.

Kerney spent a hot, long day in El Paso checking out the last two smugglers on Juan's list. Both seemed to operate legitimate businesses, which made Kerney's snooping by necessity discreet. After posing as a customer in each establishment, he staked-out the buildings until it became clear that he would need a surveillance team to help him and a lot of luck to catch any kind of a break. Frustrated, he gave it up late in the afternoon, wondering how far he could get going it alone with limited resources.

The only bright spot to the day was leaving El Paso. Big cities made no sense to Kerney at all. After the clutter of the strip malls, gas stations, and fastfood restaurants on the main drag out of town, he reached the desert that spread out like a vast ocean of glistening sandy breaks rising to steep-walled mountains on the western horizon. He cranked the air-conditioning up a notch, flipped down the visor, and headed west toward the enormous pale pink sun hovering at the horizon.

It was a two-hour haul from El Paso to Silver City. If he made good time, he might arrive early enough in the evening to pay a social call on the convalescing Jim Stiles and his lovely nurse.

Kerney's unknown traveling companion was back, and had been with him all day. Whoever was driving used a different car each time and tailed him like a pro. Kerney checked the rearview mirror and shrugged it off. Up ahead, the sun had vanished before it could set. A shroud of yellow dust came straight at him, pushed along by crosswise gusts that buffeted the truck. He turned on the headlights and reduced his speed. The cars coming at him were nothing more than floating beams of dull lights as the dust cloud boiled over the highway.

The storm blew through quickly, leaving a clear evening sky in the west and a huge sand cloud billowing to the east behind him. Drivers parked on the shoulder of the road, heading in Kerney's direction, pulled back into traffic. He watched for the car tailing him to emerge from the storm that still swallowed up the asphalt ribbon of highway in his rearview mirror. Nothing. Smiling, he increased his speed, fairly certain he had shaken the tail with the help of Mother Nature.

In Kerney's mind. Silver City had two redeeming characteristics: the foothills where the town sat, and the historic district, slowly coming back to life after years of neglect. The old hospital on the main drag, abandoned after the new medical center opened, looked like a relic from a World War II bombing raid. And the growth along the strip was a checkerboard of vacant land alternating with commercial enterprises surrounded by parking lots that appeared large enough to accommodate the cars of the entire city population at one time.

But downtown Silver City appealed to Kerney, with its long row of brick and stone storefronts with rounded second-story windows and elegant parapets, substantial old warehouses in back alleys still showing the faded letters of failed enterprises, the Big Ditch Park where Main Street once stood until a flood early in the century washed it away, and Victorian houses that climbed the hills on narrow streets.