'I am most grateful.'
'It was nothing,' Kerney replied. Something about her made him take a formal tone.
'Would you rather I came to see you some other time?'
'No.' Cornelia's smile was thin-lipped.
'I would welcome some distraction. My husband cannot join me until this evening. He was in Argentina on business and is flying in from Buenos Aires.'
She sat at the small table in front of the window and asked Kerney to join her. The room was a standard motel box with a queen-size bed, television, and dresser. A mirror and several silk-screen prints of desert flowers were securely fastened to the walls.
'Have you found who killed my son?' she asked.
'Not yet. If I knew why your son and father came here it might be helpful.'
'How would that be helpful? The state police investigator who spoke to me at the hospital said that Hector was shot by a stranger. A poacher.'
'That is probably true,' Kerney allowed.
'But other possibilities cannot be ignored. Yesterday, I spoke to an older gentleman who said that he might have known your father many years ago. His name is Edgar Cox.'
'The name is not familiar to me.'
'Is there some reason for him to believe he knows your father?'
'It's possible. My father was born here. In the Mangas Valley. His ancestors settled the area. But he has lived in Mexico most of his life. Ever since he was a young man in medical school.'
'Dr. Padilla seemed to have had a specific destination in mind. Do you have any idea why he went to Elderman Meadows?'
'I never heard of Elderman Meadows until today.'
'How about a place called Mexican Hat?'
Cornelia frowned.
'I have heard him speak of such a place.'
'In what context?' Kerney asked.
She toyed with the band of her diamond wedding ring and wet her lips before answering.
'My father has an obsession. He believes his father was murdered at Mexican Hat.'
'What gave him that idea?' Kerney inquired.
'When my aunt died last year, he was the executor other estate. She had many of the old family papers.
Among them he found official letters from the American government to his father questioning the legal title to the land.'
'What suspicions did those letters raise?'
'I'm not sure. He was very secretive about it.'
'Why?'
'Because it opened an old wound between my parents. Long before I was born, my grandfather died and my parents traveled to New Mexico to attend the funeral. An argument developed between them. My father wished to drop out of medical school and remain in Mangas. Mother threatened to leave him if he did. They were newly married.
She was also a medical student, and they had planned to go into practice together. But she hated New Mexico. It was not her world. It was too isolated and unsophisticated. She was a city girl.
She made my father promise never to take her there again.'
'And he kept his word?'
'Yes. Until the day my mother died, three months ago. There was really nothing for him to go back to.
His brothers and sisters had scattered. The ranch was lost. The village abandoned.'
'Did she share his theory that Don Luis was murdered?'
'I don't think she cared, one way or the other.'
'So he returned with your son to uncover a murderer,' Kerney proposed.
'Real or imagined,' Cornelia agreed testily, her voice rising.
'My father is gravely ill. Possibly he will never get better. And do you know how I feel, Senor Kerney? Right now, I am angry with him. To the depths of my soul, I am angry. My son is dead because of an old man's obsession with the past. It is senseless.'
'I am truly sorry for your loss, senora,' Kerney said.
Cornelia Marquez did not hear him. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed.
Kerney stayed with her until she stopped crying.
When he left he took with him Senora Marquez's written permission to visit Jose Padilla in the hospital.
The house Jim Stiles lived in, a hundred-year-old adobe with a high-pitched tin roof and buttresses at the corners to hold the adobe walls in place, sat in the valley exactly halfway between Reserve and the old Spanish settlement known as Lower San Francisco Plaza.
With his feet propped on a chair, Jim lounged at the kitchen table with the back door open, reading the documents found in Padilla's travel trailer.
Omar Gatewood had given him permission to sign out the evidence and take it home.
The day had turned hot, but the thick walls kept the house cool. A slight breeze pulsed through the doorway, bringing with it the sound of the river gurgling over the rocky streambed two hundred yards away.
Stiles finished a document and turned it upside down on the stack he'd already read. The papers and letters were all written in Spanish, and while Stiles spoke the language pretty well, he was much less proficient at translating the written word. What he could make out was damn interesting stuff, although it didn't seem to have a bit of relevance to the murder of Hector Padilla.
Among the papers were the last will and testament of Don Luis Padilla and a plat of the village of Mangas that had been filed with the territorial government over a hundred years ago. There were a lot of personal letters to Don Luis from important New Mexicans of the day.
Solomon Luna and Thomas B. Catron, two political heavyweights during the first years of statehood, had written to Don Luis about investing in something called the American Valley Company, whatever the hell that was.
Until Stiles could find someone to do an adequate translation of the material, all he'd be able to tell Kerney was that Jose and Hector Padilla were descendants of the same clan that had settled the Mangas Valley, and that the government had challenged Padilla's title to his land holdings back in the early thirties.
The phone rang just as Stiles started in on another letter. He grabbed the receiver from the wallmounted telephone, hoping it was Kerney.
'Hombre,' Amador Ortiz said.
'I hear you've changed jobs.'
'What are you talking about, Amador?' 'The Silver City newspaper. Jimmy.
It says you and Kerney are working for the sheriff and the district attorney.'
'Shit! That story was supposed to be killed.'
Amador chuckled.
'You know you can't keep a secret around here. So is it true?'
'It's a temporary thing. I'm still with Game and Fish. What's up?'
'I've been thinking about Kerney wanting to know if I saw anything suspicious around Mangas Mountain.'
'What have you got?' Stiles tried to hold back the excitement from his voice.
'Maybe nothing. You know that old mine at the upper end of Padilla Canyon, north of the lookout tower? Last week I was with my crew barricading the road to the mine to keep hikers out of the canyon. I saw some tire tracks.'
'What kind of tire tracks?'
'Looked like an ATV to me. T1-; morning I got to thinking you can get to the meadows from the upper canyon, pretty easy. At least you could before we blocked the road. A game trail runs from the mine to the meadows. Elk use it a lot. I thought maybe you'd want to pass that on to Kerney.' 'Hell yes. Thanks, mano,' Stiles said.
