The Case of the Sin City Sister (33 page)

When it came time to leave, there were no charges made against either of the Divine sisters; however, the same thing couldn’t be said about Dorisanne’s husband. The FBI was still not completely forthcoming about whether or not he would be implicated in the credit card theft ring. Immunity was offered only to Dorisanne, not to Robbie, and because of the possible pending charges, he was not allowed to leave the state.

Eve blew out a breath and suddenly noticed Daniel stirring.
She watched him as he moved around a bit and then finally sat up and opened his eyes. He yawned and stretched.

“You okay?” she asked.

He just nodded. He stretched out his arms again and then reached up and touched the big knot on his head. He winced and then leaned back.

“You tired of driving?” he asked. “I can drive some.”

Eve shook her head. “No, I believe the doctor was very clear when he released you earlier than he wanted to: ‘You can go, but you cannot drive.’ Besides, I think those pain pills might make you a bit loopy.”

He closed his eyes without giving a response.

Eve waited, kept looking back at her passenger, and then couldn’t help herself. She had to ask the obvious question: “So, you okay?”

“You asked that already,” he answered. “It’s a headache, that’s all.”

She watched as he sat up a bit more. He leaned down and retrieved a drink from the cooler on the floor.

“I’m not talking about your head,” she replied. “I’m talking about your heart. I’m talking about Dorisanne and you.”

There was a long pause, no response, and then she saw him open the drink, take a swallow, and then turn his attention out the window.

“We talked a long time,” he finally noted. “All night, in fact.”

Eve nodded. She had seen her sister earlier at breakfast, her eyes swollen and red. There had not been much said, only that she wasn’t coming with them. And then, just like that, she was gone.

“It just doesn’t seem that it’s meant to be,” he said.

Eve hoped for more details. She kept looking at him and
waiting, but he seemed to have nothing more to say on the subject of her sister.

She turned her attention back to the highway.

“You talk to your dad?” he asked, breaking the silence and changing the subject.

“It’s not allergies,” she told him, understanding that he was asking about the cough. “It’s an infection. I’ll take him to the clinic when I get back.”

“You figured out how to tell that Caleb guy about his great-grandfather?”

“I have,” she answered. “I want to check out the family of the woman he married first, just to see if they know anything, but yes, I think I know how to break the bad news.”

“Yeah, I guess you Divine sisters know how to do that pretty well.”

Eve did not respond. She simply watched him from the rearview mirror and continued in the direction of home.

FIFTY-SIX

“Are you Ms. Gallegos?” Eve asked. She was standing on the porch of a home just outside Madrid, off Highway 14 heading south toward Albuquerque. She had found the address in the county records. After hearing the Divines’ investigative report, Caleb Alford had asked to join her.

“I’d like to go and meet my other family,” he had told her when he got the news, and Eve agreed to take him.

“Elizabeth,” the older woman answered, standing behind the screen door separating the homeowner from her visitors. “Elizabeth Gallegos.”

“Hello, Ms. Gallegos, I’m Evangeline Divine. I live in Madrid. This is my friend, Caleb, who is trying to find some information about his great-grandfather. We’re here because we think he may have married someone in your family.”

The woman didn’t respond at first, and Eve waited, uncertain if Ms. Gallegos was going to let them in.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Gallegos,” Caleb said.

There was a pause as a car passed behind them on the road. Eve watched as the old woman eyed the passing vehicle.

“Tourists,” was all she said as she opened the door to let the two inside her home. “Drive up and down around here looking for turquoise like it’s lying around everywhere.”

Eve smiled at the woman. She knew not all of the locals were very happy about the popularity the little town and the road going through Madrid and Cerrillos known as the Turquoise Trail had attained.

Eve looked around as the door closed behind her. It was a small adobe home, typical of many of the residences in northern New Mexico. There were stacks of newspapers along one side of the room and the furniture was old and sparse. Ms. Gallegos picked up some magazines and brushed off a place on the sofa, then pointed to Eve and Caleb to sit.

“Don’t get much company out here,” the old woman noted, taking a seat across from the two of them.

“You live here a long time?” Eve asked.

“All my life,” she answered. “If I live another two months, I’ll be eighty-five.”

Eve smiled. “How wonderful.”

“Nah, it ain’t all wonderful,” Ms. Gallegos commented. “Some days I would be happy not to make it to nightfall.” She shifted in her seat. “Old knees, old hips . . . hard to get around.”

Eve nodded.

“You from around here?”

“I’m from Madrid. My parents are the Divines.”

The old woman smiled, showing more than a few missing teeth. “You’re one of Mary Divine’s daughters?” She leaned closer to Eve to get a better look. “You’re the oldest,” she surmised. “Well, I’ll be. I used to watch you barrel race at the rodeo.”

“That’s me,” Eve replied.

“I thought you became a missionary or something.” She sat back in her seat.

“A nun,” Eve answered. “I joined the Benedictine Order in Pecos.”

“That right?” the old woman responded. “I thought they made all the women leave,” she added. “Wasn’t that what the papers said? That the nuns had to leave?”

Eve never enjoyed talking about the politics of the abbey where she had been in community for almost twenty years. “We just had to move out of the main building. They separated us from the monks,” she noted.

The old woman laughed and slapped her knee. “Too risky even for the celibates, huh?”

Eve simply nodded in response. She turned to Caleb, who was not participating in the conversation.

“What are you two here about?” Ms. Gallegos asked. “You looking for some information about family?”

Eve answered for Caleb. “I’m doing some work for this gentleman, who has come to New Mexico looking for information regarding his great-grandfather.”

“Why did he ask a nun to help him find his kin?”

Eve hesitated. Caleb didn’t answer.

The older woman asked another question before either of them could reply: “Wait, your daddy does that kind of work, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s a private investigator.”

“And he’s got you helping him?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Hmm . . . seems kinda strange, but okay.”

“It turns out,” Eve said, getting back to the purpose of her visit, “that in searching the records for my client’s great-grandfather, he was reported to have married someone in your family.” She stopped for a second, letting the older woman catch up. “A Katherine Gallegos.”

“Katherine Alford,” she replied, surprising Eve.

“My great-aunt Katherine married a miner. His last name was Alford.” She sat forward a bit. “Didn’t last long, but, wait a minute, where are my manners? Would the two of you like a cup of coffee?” She started to get up.

“No, no, that’s fine,” Eve replied, waving away the offer.

“So you do have a family member who has the last name Alford?” Finally, Caleb spoke up.

“Sure,” Elizabeth Gallegos replied. “It was Katherine’s first marriage. She married again, had four sons. They mostly moved over to Albuquerque and down south.” She looked at Caleb. “What did you say your name is again?”

He cleared his throat. “Caleb,” he responded. “My name is Caleb.”

She paused. “You’re kin to Caleb Alford?”

“He was my great-grandfather,” he answered.

Ms. Gallegos studied the man. “Well, I wouldn’t go around these parts making that claim,” she responded. “He married Katherine, took all of her money, and disappeared. Your great-granddaddy’s name is mud to most of the folks in the Gallegos family. How is it that you found me, anyway?”

Caleb turned to Eve, who took that to mean he needed her to answer their host’s questions.

“In the records at the courthouse,” Eve answered. “Caleb here thinks that his great-grandfather may have married your great-aunt Katherine while he was still married to a woman from the East Coast,” she explained.

Ms. Gallegos appeared to consider this bit of news. And then she just shook her head. “I ain’t never heard that story,” she responded. “But that don’t mean I don’t believe it. We got more than a few skeletons in our closets, and a scoundrel like Caleb probably had lots more than any one of us ever heard about. The way he did Katherine, wouldn’t surprise me a bit that he had several wives.”

Caleb looked down at his hands that were folded in his lap.

“Wait, East Coast?” Ms. Gallegos asked. “You say your family is from the East Coast?”

Caleb nodded. “North Carolina,” he answered.

Ms. Gallegos leaned forward, trying to pull herself up. It took two tries, but she soon was standing. She was shaking her head. “Caleb was from Texas,” she said. “Lubbock, I think.” She stood at her chair for a minute and then started walking out of the room. “Some of the men went looking for him when he disappeared. They went to Texas. Hold on, I got a picture of him,” she added. “I’ll get it.”

“Oh?” Eve started to get up as well and follow the woman. “Can I help you?”

The woman waved her hand in front of her face as she moved out of the room. “Nah, Sister, just sit back down and I’ll get it for you. It’s hanging in the hallway with the pictures of the others who
used to work the family mines. That Caleb could have made a fortune when he married into the Gallegos clan. Got greedy, though, and couldn’t wait.”

Eve leaned back in her seat on the sofa. She looked over at Caleb, wondering how he was doing hearing all this news about his great-grandfather, knowing that he was not only a polygamist but also a thief. They waited without speaking until Ms. Gallegos returned.

“Here it is,” the old woman announced as she walked back into the room. She blew dust off the old frame and handed the picture to Eve.

“Caleb Alford and Katherine Gallegos at a summer picnic. This was taken just after they got married. I remember my grandmother telling me about it.”

Eve took the photo and held it so that Caleb could see it as well. It was old, black-and-white, and looked like the pictures she had seen around the area all of her life. Ranchers, miners, the homesteaders from the late 1800s, this photograph of a New Mexican family reminded her of the pictures from her own grandmother’s photo album.

Caleb handed the picture back to Eve. “Ms. Gallegos, are you sure the man in this picture is Caleb Alford?” he asked.

She shuffled over to her seat and sat back down. “Yes, sir,” she answered. “That’s my great-uncle from Lubbock, Texas. He married Katherine, stole all her money, and then disappeared. Everybody thinks he went back east, back to Texas. Oh yeah, everybody in the family knows about Caleb.”

Caleb looked over at Eve, then to Ms. Gallegos, and then back
at the photograph. He handed it back to the old woman. “Well, he may have the same name as I do, and he may have told everyone that he was Caleb Alford, but based upon all the pictures I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure that is not my great-grandfather.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

“So what did you find on Epi’s land?”

Eve and Jackson were at the office, just sorting through a few files and closing up some loose ends before heading out to the doctor’s office in Santa Fe. They were going over both of the cases they’d been working on before she left for Las Vegas.

She had already told him about how things ended with Caleb Alford, about the visit at the Gallegos home and how he was convinced that the man who had married Katherine Gallegos in Madrid all those years ago was not his great-grandfather, that somehow this man from Texas had stolen the identity of his family member and that there just didn’t seem to be an answer to what had happened to Mr. Caleb Alford.