Nothing but Trouble (7 page)

“I’m crazy about you.”

Crystal finished the drink and stood. “Call me on my cell when you get off work.”

“Where are you going?”

Crystal opened her crocodile handbag and put a twenty on the bar without replying. The glint of the gun inside the purse gave her a rush of excitement, and Andy’s presence faded from her mind. The preview of the art-and-antiquities show at the convention center was about to begin and she didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

She left before Andy could question her further and headed quickly in the direction of the center.

Santa Fe’s convention center fell far short of the mark for a city that thrived on tourism. In fact, it was nothing more than a renovated public-school gymnasium located within a few steps of city hall. On the outside, the center had been fixed up to look like the real deal. But inside, the dimensions of the space gave away its architectural roots. Stairs from the lobby led to a partial mezzanine that looked down on the hall below and opened onto a few large meeting rooms off to one side. In the back, behind the stage, were kitchen facilities. Stark, small, and uninviting, the center failed to draw many conventions and was usually put to use for dances, regional trade shows, art fairs, and an occasional banquet.

Kerney stood on the mezzanine, watching Ramona Pino circulate among the booths that filled the hall. Petite, slender, and easy on the eyes, she blended in easily with all the well-groomed trophy wives and trust-funders.

There were sixty-five dealers set up on the convention-center floor, displaying a wide array of Western art, estate jewelry, rare books, collectible memorabilia, exquisite old Native American pottery, and antique Spanish colonial furniture.

After the doors had opened, people flooded in, some making a beeline to a particular booth, others wandering slowly down the aisles, pausing to examine a tray of jewelry, an oil painting, or a Navajo rug. Kerney left the mezzanine, wondering if he should have told Ramona to assign more detectives to the event. Given the size of the crowd, the two of them would have a hard time covering the floor by themselves.

He joined the throng, moving from booth to booth, stopping to glance at a pre-Colombian effigy pot, a nineteenth-century Apache woven basket, a Charles Russell pencil drawing, all the time watching the people around him.

It was a well-heeled crowd. Women in broomstick skirts wearing heavy turquoise-and-silver jewelry cruised by. Gray-headed men in designer jeans and expensive boots trailed along. Flashy matrons with big hair, dripping with diamonds, chatted up dealers with Texas twangs.

He strolled down an aisle and squeezed past a cluster of people who’d stopped to look at a glass case filled with vintage wristwatches. Some of the dealers appeared watchful, while others seemed distracted by the crowds. All in all there were easy pickings for any good shoplifter in attendance.

Kerney stopped briefly at a display of intricately carved nineteenth-century wood chests imported from Mexico to watch a young woman at an adjacent booth put her handbag on the counter next to a stack of rare books. Dressed in black slacks and a white blouse, the woman wore a hat that hid her face. She picked up a book, studied it for a moment, put it back, and moved on.

At the end of the aisle he saw Ramona Pino eyeballing the woman and wondered if he’d missed something. He stepped into the aisle, jockeying his way past a few people to get behind the woman as Ramona closed the gap from the opposite direction.

The woman paused in front of a booth filled with landscape paintings. Ramona sidled up to her, gave Kerney a slight nod, and said, “Crystal Hurley?”

The woman’s head snapped in Ramona’s direction. “What?”

“Are you Crystal Hurley?” Ramona asked.

“What if I am?”

Ramona flashed the shield she held in the palm of her hand and put it quickly in the pocket of her slacks. “I need to speak with you,” she said softly. “Please step away with me.”

“I will not.”

“You’re not in trouble, Ms. Hurley,” Ramona said reassuringly.

Hurley smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ramona held out her hand. Self-destructive or not, Hurley could be packing, and that upped the danger considerably. “Can I look inside your handbag?”

Hurley clutched it to her midriff, turned, and looked at Kerney, her blue eyes wide and frightened. Just then a woman stepped between Ramona and Hurley and a man jostled past Kerney, pushing him slightly off balance. Before he could react, Hurley bolted past him, knocked a woman to the floor, shoved a man into a display case, and ran down the aisle. People scattered as Ramona and Kerney forced their way through the spectators in hot pursuit. At the end of the aisle Hurley veered out of sight toward the lobby.

Kerney turned the corner in a crouch. Up ahead he spotted Hurley making for the exit. Ramona darted past him, caught Hurley at the door, and slammed her against it.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Hurley yelled as Ramona cuffed her.

Kerney covered the takedown with his weapon at the ready.

Ramona spun Hurley around. “Calm down,” she said softly. “Everything will be all right. We’re going to get you some help.”

Kerney holstered his weapon and picked up the handbag Hurley had dropped on the floor. It contained a wallet, a cosmetic case, a nickel-plated. 22 semiautomatic, and an old silver-and-turquoise Navajo bracelet with the dealer’s tag still attached.

Kerney held up the bracelet. “She may also need a lawyer.”

Hurley looked at the bracelet and then smiled seductively at Kerney. “I’ll give you a blow job if you’ll let me go.”

“Not today, thank you,” Kerney replied.

Ramona grinned at Kerney’s response as she pushed Hurley out the door.

Three hours later Crystal Hurley sat in an observation room at the hospital, sedated and under guard, while Ramona and Kerney cleared all of the recent art-theft cases.

Ramona loaded the last of the evidence from the guesthouse into her unit and looked down on the lights of Santa Fe that shimmered across the plateau. “Do you think she’s crazy?”

“Not crazy would be my guess,” Kerney said.

“Then what?” Ramona asked, glancing around at the hilltop estate. “The woman has been given everything.”

Kerney shrugged. “Not everything. Maybe she feels unloved. There’s nothing worse than that.”

Thinking about her ex-boyfriend and the emptiness she now felt about her personal life, Ramona stared off into the night sky and nodded solemnly.

July and August were the busiest months in the summer tourist season and placed a heavy burden on the Santa Fe Police Department. Early in July, before things heated up, Crystal Hurley was arraigned on multiple felony charges, including carrying a concealed weapon, and entered a not-guilty plea. She paid a hefty cash bond, surrendered her passport, agreed to remain in the state, and underwent a court-ordered psychological evaluation. Immediately thereafter she entered a private psychiatric hospital for treatment.

If convicted on all counts Hurley faced the possibility of fifteen to twenty years in prison, although Kerney doubted such a sentence would be handed down. According to Ramona Pino, who was doing follow-up legwork for the prosecutors, Hurley’s lawyers and shrinks were busy building a case based on their client’s long-standing emotional problems.

Although in principal everyone was equal before the law, the scales of justice always seemed to tip in favor of those people with money, power, or influence. Kerney had seen it played out time and again during his law-enforcement career. Hurley’s money might not buy her love, happiness, or peace of mind, but it could go a hell of a long way to lessen the legal consequences of her criminal behavior.

During the last weekend in July the annual Spanish Market was held on the Plaza. The largest exhibition of traditional and contemporary Hispanic arts in the country, it remained one of the few major events in the city that still drew the locals downtown. It had grown in size and scope over the past thirty-odd years, but from a policing standpoint the crowds and the congestion remained manageable.

For the major Plaza events Kerney put on his uniform and worked side by side with his officers. Throughout the weekend mariachi bands played, flamenco dancers whirled, politicians made speeches, processions circled the Plaza, arts-and-crafts people sold their wares, and folks lined up at the food booths, drawn by the spicy aromas of New Mexico cuisine.

August brought Indian Market, an event where upwards of a hundred thousand people converged on Santa Fe. To manage the congestion and chaos Kerney saturated the downtown area with all available officers. When time allowed, he would relinquish his command responsibilities to his deputy chief, Larry Otero, and spend an hour or two on foot patrol, relieving his supervisors for meal breaks or walking a beat through the hundreds of white tents that ringed the Plaza and spread down the side streets. It was a weekend of extra shifts for every officer on duty.

The population of Santa Fe more than doubled during Indian Market and stretched his department’s resources to the limit. The number of sworn personnel Kerney had was barely adequate to cope with the resident population of Santa Fe, and the possibility of a disaster or major crime during Indian Market always worried him. Fortunately, the weekend wound down with nothing more than a few purse snatchings, several cases of heatstroke, some lost children safely returned to their parents, one shoplifting arrest, and a few fender benders.

In late August the mayor publicly announced that he would not stand for reelection in March. As the candidates lined up to announce their intention to run for the office, a stream of concerned, curious, and ambitious senior commanders sought Kerney out to question him about his plans. He made it clear to all that he would step down and retire, although he didn’t say when. He needed to discuss it with Sara first, and not by telephone.

On a Friday morning Kerney took an early flight from Albuquerque to Washington, D.C., where Sara was to meet him at the airport. After he arrived, he spotted her outside the passenger screening area with Patrick at her side. His son, now three, had grown again and looked more and more like his mother each time Kerney saw him. The same strawberry-blond hair, eyes more green than blue, the same line of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and a smile that melted Kerney’s heart.

Patrick broke away from his mother and ran to Kerney, who picked him up and gave him a bear hug.

“Can I have a pony?” Patrick asked, after Kerney smooched him.

“What does your mother say?” Kerney asked as Sara stepped up, gave him a kiss, stroked his cheek, and smiled her wonderful smile. She was wearing her Class A army uniform, which surprised Kerney. On the phone last night she’d said she was taking the day off.

Patrick raised four fingers. “I have to be this old.”

“How old are you now?”

Patrick glumly held up three fingers.

“You’ll be four soon enough,” Kerney said.

Patrick shook his head, as though such a day was an eternity away.

“Don’t pout,” Kerney said. “Soon you’ll be back in New Mexico and you can ride with me every day.”

Patrick’s eyes lit up. “Every day, forever?”

Kerney laughed. “How long is that?”

Patrick pondered the question seriously and spread his arms wide. “This much is forever.”

“Forever it is,” Kerney agreed with a laugh. “Are you working?” he asked Sara.

Sara nodded. “I’ll tell you about it on the ride home.”

In her SUV, Sara explained that she’d been called a few hours ago and told to report to her Pentagon boss at sixteen hundred hours.

“I don’t know why,” she added. “But my orders for embassy duty have been rescinded. I’m to remain at the Pentagon until further notice.”

“In the same job?” Kerney asked.

“God, I hope not,” Sara said. For three years she’d worked for a one-star general, a petty tyrant who’d given her nothing but grief. It was a distinct possibility that her orders had been canceled as a payback for standing up to him time and time again.

“So we’re in limbo,” Kerney said.

“For now. Have you officially resigned?”

“Not yet,” Kerney replied. “The mayor asked me to stay on until the end of his term. I wanted to talk to you about it before I gave him my answer.”

Sara sighed.

“What?” Kerney asked.

“It seems like reality is again interfering in our lives.”

“I will retire, Sara. In fact, I’ve already announced it.”

“Well, that’s one piece of the puzzle.”

“What are the other pieces?”

They’d reached Arlington, Virginia, where Sara and Patrick lived in the house Kerney had bought as an investment when Sara had started her tour of duty at the Pentagon. She turned onto the street that led to the Cape Cod-style cottage and pulled into the driveway.

“Will we ever get to the point where we can live together as a family?” Sara asked as she killed the engine.

Kerney avoided Sara’s questioning look, removed Patrick from his child’s seat, hoisted him into the front of the SUV, and put him on his lap. The last thing he wanted was to start the weekend with an argument.

Sara put the SUV into reverse and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not picking a fight. Patrick has a brand-new book he’s been saving for you to read to him, and guess what? It’s about a horse.”

Patrick grinned and tugged Kerney’s hand. “It’s about a pony,” he said emphatically, “not a horse. I’ll show it to you.”

Kerney opened the door. “Let’s go, champ. I’ve got to see this book.”

As Sara drove away, Patrick scooted toward the cottage, urging Kerney to hurry. He followed Patrick up the path, delighted by his smart, self-confident son and disconcerted about Sara’s situation. Would new orders place her in harm’s way, separated from Kerney and Patrick for the duration?