The Case of the Sin City Sister (11 page)
“Exactly,” Eve responded. “That makes it even safer for me.”
“Where do you plan on staying?” Jackson asked.
“There’s a shelter there run by the Catholic diocese of the city. Some of the monks told me about it. I’ll stay there.”
“In a homeless shelter?” Daniel was the one asking.
Eve nodded.
“In Vegas?”
“Yes, in Vegas,” she replied, incensed by their questions and their assumptions that she couldn’t manage this trip alone.
“Yeah, see, that ain’t happening,” Daniel replied. “I’ll make the hotel arrangements and I’ll pick you up first thing tomorrow. Pack for three or four days.”
Eve threw up her hands and slumped back into her seat.
Daniel turned to face Jackson. He patted the top of the box he had brought in. “So, here’s everything from the 1890s. There’s even some stuff from 1900 in there. I thought I’d give you an extra year. I didn’t look in them so I don’t know exactly what’s there. You think it’s still the same lawman?”
Jackson reached up, pulling the box of records toward him. “Sheriff Lawson Carson is the man of the times, and it appears as if he liked to write reports.”
“Yeah, what’s he reporting?”
“Who stole a horse, who shot a miner, who started a fight in the bar.”
“Sounds about the same as your reports.” Daniel grinned.
“You’re still a funny guy.” Jackson opened the box and pulled out some of the files.
“Are you not giving me any choice about going with me to Vegas?” Eve was still in shock that decisions were being made without her input.
Daniel turned around to answer her. “You can pick where we stop for lunch.” He turned back to the Captain. “So the man is coming back and you’re driving him out to the Martinez place?”
“What’s it been? A couple of weeks since they found the skeleton?” Jackson asked.
Daniel nodded. “It’s probably fine. But if you want, I can go over there and check it out first.”
“It’s all right. I’ll just drive out and see. If we can’t get to the scene at least I’ll have shown this guy the area around the old mine. He seems determined to check the place out.”
“Okay then,” Daniel said, “I’m heading back to Santa Fe and try to do some police business.” He knocked on the Captain’s desk, a gesture of farewell, and then walked over to Eve.
“Don’t worry, little sister. I’ll not get in the way of your drinking or gambling. See you in the morning.” He winked and before she could respond, Daniel was out the door.
“That’s all you’re taking?” Daniel took the small duffel bag from Eve’s hand and placed it in the open trunk of his car.
“Why? Should I have packed more?” She walked around to the trunk and immediately noticed Daniel’s large suitcase inside. “How long do you think we’re going to stay?” she asked.
Daniel shut the trunk. “I just like to have the right clothes,” he answered, heading over to the driver’s side. He opened the door.
Eve walked to the passenger’s side and then turned back toward the front door of the house. “Let me just make sure he’s okay,” she said and headed up the stairs.
She was met at the door by Jackson’s booming voice. “I have the insulin. I know there are meals in the freezer. I can drive myself to work and I will not drive out of town. I know how to call you on your cell phone. GET OUT OF HERE!” he bellowed.
“Don’t forget to feed Daisy and give her some milk. She likes milk,” she said as she backed away from the front porch, down
the steps, and got into the car. “He’s fine, by the way,” she said to Daniel, who was grinning.
He started the engine and they made their way down the driveway and out onto Highway 14. They headed south, where they would pick up Interstate 40 and drive west. It was early, just after dawn, and they knew they had a full day’s drive to get to Las Vegas. Eve took out her rosary and began to pray. Daniel turned to his passenger, saw what she was doing, faced the highway, and did not interrupt. After finishing her morning prayers, she wrapped her rosary around the rearview mirror and reached for the cup of coffee she had placed in the holder between the seats.
“When was the last time you were in Vegas?”
Daniel shrugged. “It’s been about six months. I usually go twice a year.”
Eve was surprised. She didn’t know her father’s former partner made the trip that often. “You like the tables or the ladies?” she asked, smiling.
He shook his head. “No, it isn’t for the gambling,” he answered. “Or for the women,” he added. “Well, maybe just one.” He turned to Eve and winked.
Eve didn’t respond. She thought about what he was saying and soon caught on. “I can’t believe it. You go out there to check on her,” she surmised.
Daniel glanced back in her direction. He didn’t respond at first.
“How long have you been doing this?” she asked.
He shrugged. “A while. It always worried Jackson that she was out there without anybody watching over her. And it worried him even more after she married that boy. So, I got nothing better to
do and I’ve always enjoyed a road trip. I figure Vegas is as good a place to visit as any.”
Eve placed her coffee back in the holder and leaned back in her seat. The news surprised her at first, but then it seemed exactly in the man’s character. She even wondered whether he had driven over to Pecos to check on her. “Do you visit with her when you go? Does she know you’re in town?”
“Sometimes,” he replied. “I used to take her out for dinner, give her a little extra money. She seemed to like the company. But a few years ago, after she got married, it seemed like she resented my trips. She said I was a spy and that I shouldn’t waste my money driving down there just to go back to Madrid and give a report to the Captain. By then I was sort of enjoying my little getaways and decided to keep going. I found a great hotel at the end of the Strip, a cheap dinner buffet that serves the best crab legs you can find in the Southwest, and a few stores where I like to shop. I relax when I’m there. I told her that, but she didn’t believe me. So since then I haven’t called her or tried to meet her for a meal. I just go to the lounge where she works, eyeball her, make sure she looks okay.”
“And the last few times, was she okay?”
Daniel chewed on the inside of his bottom lip. He shook his head. “I couldn’t tell. She’s talked to me less and less in the last couple of years. She acts jumpy a lot of the time. That boy, Robbie, he’s a troublemaker, that’s for sure.”
Eve thought about her sister’s husband. The truth was that she didn’t know much about him. Dorisanne had met him when she moved to Las Vegas, and since Eve didn’t travel so much while living at the monastery and Dorisanne never came home, she had only
met her brother-in-law a couple of times. Once at the wedding and the other time at her mother’s funeral. He was polite in his conversations with the Divine family, but their interaction certainly wasn’t anything close to intimate.
“She told me once that he had money problems,” she said, as if to prove to herself that she knew a little bit about her sister’s life. It was the only thing she could say with certainty.
Daniel laughed. “That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Why?”
“He has a gambling problem, and he borrows from the wrong sort of people. Dorisanne keeps finding ways to bail him out.”
Eve thought about this and began to wonder how much money the Captain really had given to her. There were a lot of things about her sister’s relationship with their parents that she never knew.
“Of course I tried to tell her that she can’t keep doing that. And she told me that she gave him an ultimatum, but it’s like a woman in an abusive situation. She keeps making excuses for him, saying he’s getting help, that he’s stopped.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand you women.”
Eve looked in his direction. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, I’m not talking about you. I never worried about you getting hooked up with the wrong guy. You were always too smart for that.”
“How do you know that?”
“Girl, I’ve been watching you and your sister since the time you were in pigtails and braces.”
“Yeah, but how come you never worried about me?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t worry about you. I said I didn’t worry
about you getting hooked up with the wrong guy. You brought along your own set of issues for me to worry about.”
“Like what?” This conversation intrigued Eve.
“Like you on them horses and then on the bikes. You about drove your mama crazy with how fast you would go.”
She knew her mother’s concern, but hearing this made her wonder about something else. “What did the Captain think?”
Daniel smiled. “He worried a little, but for some reason he figured you would be okay. He thought you were more like him—strong, tough. He always thought you could handle the hard stuff.”
Eve considered this explanation regarding Jackson’s parenting. When her mother would complain about her recreational outings, when she would try to make her husband curb Eve’s enthusiasm for speed and danger, and when he would shrug off the worry, Eve had simply thought he was ignoring her, didn’t really care about her. Now she was hearing that he did notice what she was doing, that he did keep up with her activities, he just thought she was smart or not as vulnerable somehow as her sister. She felt surprised and a little pleased at learning this.
“What made you think I wouldn’t get all girly and date bad boys like Dorisanne?”
Daniel looked over at Eve. “I guess I was like Jackson. I could always see you were too smart for that kind of thing. You never seemed to care too much about what people thought about you.”
“I cared,” she responded.
“Yeah, I know. Everybody cares about that at some level. But you just always seemed to know yourself better than most kids. You always seemed to know what was important to you, what you
wanted, and you went for it. You never waited for somebody else’s approval. Barrel racing, dirt bike contests, going overseas for that semester, joining the convent—you always seem to know what’s right for you.”
Eve thought about her friend’s assessment and wondered if that’s how her life appeared to others. She also wondered, if that was true, when it had all changed. She was certainly not nearly so confident in her desires or choices at the present time. She wondered if Daniel could see that as well, and she was just about to ask when the phone in her pocket began to ring.
“Hello,” she answered as she flipped open the phone and took the call.
Daniel glanced over at Eve as he drove and then reached inside a plastic bag that had been placed between them. He took out a handful of trail mix and began snacking.
“It’s me,” came the loud and gruff response.
“Jackson?” Daniel asked.
Eve nodded. “Yes, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he yelled.
“You don’t have to talk so loud,” Eve explained. “I can hear you fine.”
“Right,” he yelled again.
“So why did you call?” she wanted to know.
“The files Daniel brought,” came the answer.
“Yes, what about them?” She’d gone to bed reading the files from 1891 but had not found any mention of the miner Caleb
Alford. She had put those back in the box and left the box on the kitchen counter. She told the Captain that before she left. He must have started his reading of them right away.
“I found something,” he reported.
“Is it a police report?” she asked.
“No, not anything like that. This was in a different set of files, a book, a county record book.”
“Okay,” she responded, waiting for the rest of the news.
“The record book of marriage licenses,” he explained.
“Caleb Alford was already married,” she responded.
“Yep.”
“So what did you find in the book?”
There was a pause. Eve realized he was waiting for her to figure it out on her own. And in a few seconds she did.
“You found his name in there?”
“Yep.”
Eve considered this bit of news. “So he came to Madrid telling his family back in North Carolina that he would send for them, and instead he came out here and married somebody else.”
“Yep,” was the repeated answer.