Stuart Woods - Santa Fe Dead

“Has Timmons ever been in here before?”

“Not that I know of.”

“How about the airplane?”

“Could be; we get lots of Bonanzas-very popular airplane.”

“Is there anything else you can think of about Timmons? How was he dressed?”

“Like a cowboy: jeans, western shirt, cowboy boots. Alligator boots, come to think of it. Those things are expensive.”

Reese handed her his card. “If you remember anything else about the guy, will you give me a call? It’s very important.”

“Sure, be glad to.”

REESE LEFT THE airport and drove back to his office. He went online to the website of the Federal Aviation Administration and checked the tail number of the Bonanza: It was registered to an Anthony DeMarco, M.D., of a Brentwood address in L.A. He found the office number of the doctor and phoned him.

“Dr. DeMarco’s office,” a woman’s voice said.

“Good morning, may I speak with Dr. DeMarco, please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“This is Detective Alex Reese of the Santa Fe, New Mexico, police department.”

“I’m afraid Dr. De Marco is in surgery all day today,” she said. “I can take your number and ask him to call you when he gets a break.”

“Yes, please,” Reese said. He gave the woman his number and cell number. “Any time of day. By the way, what sort of medicine does Dr. DeMarco practice?”

“He’s a cosmetic surgeon; he operates three days a week, and this is one of them.”

“Thank you. I look forward to hearing from him.” Reese hung up and went back to work.

JACK CATO WAS shooting his first scene on a new movie, so he rose early, shaved and showered and had breakfast. The mailman arrived just as he was leaving the house, so Cato took the mail inside. A fat manila envelope was among the bills, and he took a peek inside. What he saw caused a wave of relief and elation to wash over him. He put the envelope into his briefcase and closed and locked it.

He was about to leave the house when the doorbell rang. He looked out the window and saw what appeared to be an unmarked police car. He put his briefcase into a drawer of a chest in the living room, then answered the door. A man and a woman stood there.

“Good morning,” the woman said. “I’m Detective Lucy Dixon, LAPD, and this is Detective Watts.” She handed him a document. “This is a federal search warrant to search your mailbox.”

Cato looked at the document. “Well, okay, but I’ve already taken the mail out. You want to see it?”

“Thank you, yes.”

“Then come inside.” He led them into his little home office and pointed to the desk. “There you go, that’s everything that came. You just missed the mailman.”

The woman went through all the envelopes. “Are you sure this is everything, Mr. Cato?”

“That’s it. Mostly bills, I’m afraid.”

Dixon opened each envelope and perused the contents. She was particularly interested in the bill from GMAC. “Mr. Cato, are you acquainted with a Mrs. Eleanor Keeler, widow of one Walter Keeler?”

“Nope. I mean, I know who Walter Keeler was, because I use some equipment he made, and I read about his car accident a while back.”

“You’ve never met Mrs. Keeler?”

“Not to my knowledge. A lot of people come on tours through the movie studio where I work, so I suppose she could have come through.”

“Which studio?”

“Centurion. That reminds me, I’m shooting this morning, so I gotta go. Anything else I can do to help you?”

“I guess not. We’ll be here again tomorrow morning, so don’t open your mailbox; we’ll do it for you.”

“Okay, no problem. Can you tell me what this is about?”

“I’m afraid not.” The two officers thanked him and left. He gave them a moment to get away, then retrieved his briefcase, put it into the toolbox bolted to his truck, locked it and drove to work.

Cato knew exactly what they were looking for: the money. How the hell could they know about that? He would have to be very careful with his spending. One good thing, though: Now he knew the name of the woman who had hired him. That might come in handy.

DIXON AND WATTS were driving back to their station, empty-handed.

“Anything of interest in his mail?” Watts asked.

“I thought it was interesting that there were no past-due balances on any of his bills,” she said, “and his bill from GMAC showed he had recently been three months behind on his truck payments, but he had brought the account up to date in the past week or so. Still, he had only a little over three hundred bucks in his bank account. I think we should pull a credit report on Mr. Cato.”

JACK CATO TOOK his golf cart over to the studio commissary at lunchtime. He looked around the dining room and spotted Tina López and Soledad Rivera at a table together. He went through the cafeteria line, took his tray over to their table and sat down.

“Hey, Jack,” Tina said.

“Hey, Tina, Soledad. How was Tijuana?”

“You tell me,” Tina said. “You were there, too.”

“Drunk, I guess.”

“You got something for me?”

He picked up her napkin, stuffed an envelope into it and put it in her lap.

She groped around, found the money and smiled.

“Need any help down there?” he asked, nodding at her lap.

“Thanks, but I’m all fixed up for that.”

“He’s back, huh?”

She shrugged.

“I’ll see him at poker tonight, then.”

Soledad spoke up. “Am I going to hear from that cop again?”

“What if you do?” Cato asked, digging into his lunch. “You know what to tell him.”

“Everything turn out all right this weekend?” Tina asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cato replied, shoving a chunk of meat loaf into his mouth.

LUCY DIXON SAT down at her sergeant’s desk. “Boss, we came up dry at Cato’s house; he got to the mailbox first.”

“Who?”

“Jack Cato. That’s his name. J.C.?”

He shuffled through some slips of paper in a tray on his desk. “No money, huh?”

“Well, I think it came, but like I said, he got to it first. The mailman comes early in Studio City; we were about a minute late. I went through what mail there was, mostly bills and a bank statement. All his bills are current, but he’s only got a few hundred bucks in the bank.”

“So what? That’s all I’ve got, too.”

“I pulled a credit report on him: very spotty, lots of payments a month or two late. And yet, everything is current now. What does that tell you?”

“You tell me.”

“It tells me that all his bills are paid because he came into some money.”

“That makes sense.”

“I checked with the studio. He’s on a base salary of fifty-two grand a year, but he gets paid for doing stunt work in movies on top of that.”

“So, if he makes two or three movies a year, he’s flush, huh?”

“He hasn’t worked on a film this year, until this morning, when he started one.”

“All this makes sense to me, Dixon, but you’ve got nothing that the D.A. would want to take to court. Stay on this woman, what’s her name?”

“Keeler.”

“Like Ruby Keeler. I liked her movies when I was a kid.”

“I’ll stay on her, boss.” Dixon went back to her patrol car and drove back to Beverly Hills.

CATO THOUGHT ABOUT it for a while, then he picked up the phone and called the cell number she had given him.

“Yes?”

“I got your package this morning,” Cato said. “Thanks.”

“Then we have nothing further to talk about. Good-bye.”

“Wait! I’ve got a heads-up for you.”

“What?”

“About a minute after I opened your envelope, two LAPD cops showed up with a federal warrant to search my mailbox. Fortunately, I had already put it away, but they opened all my mail. I think you can guess what they were looking for.”