“Three-ten, Posadas.”
“Now what?” I muttered and fumbled the mike off the bracket. It was Gayle Sedillos on the air, sounding crisp and formal.
“Three-ten, cancel ten-nineteen. Subjects have left the office.”
“Ten-four,” I said, puzzled. Estelle slowed the car a bit and I looked at her. “She apparently didn’t want to talk to us very badly.”
As we passed the Posadas Municipal Airport on the outskirts of town, I saw activity near the hangar, but my attention was drawn away as a blue-over-white Jeep Wagoneer drove past us headed west.
“That’s Maxine Boyd,” Estelle said and slowed to pull onto the shoulder so she could do a U-turn. We had to wait for an oncoming pickup truck to pass before we could swing around. Johnny Boyd was at the wheel of the truck. As he drove by, he smiled and lifted a forefinger in greeting.
With a protest from the tires, Estelle turned around and accelerated, pulling in close behind Boyd’s truck. I could see a handful of oncoming traffic in the distance, and for almost a mile, Boyd drove as if he were unaware of our presence.
Finally, at a turnout for one of the State Highway Department’s stockpiles of crushed stone the brake lights on Boyd’s truck flashed and he pulled over. I expected Estelle to do the same, but instead, she accelerated past, and in another half mile, we were on Maxine Boyd’s back bumper. There we stayed for several minutes.
“She knows you’re here,” I said as the woman showed no inclination to stop.
Estelle nodded and looked in the rearview mirror. “And so does her husband.” Sure enough, Johnny Boyd’s truck trailed us by a dozen car lengths.
“If she doesn’t stop, we’ll just follow her back to the ranch,” Estelle said.
“Stop her right here, if you want to,” I said.
Estelle shook her head. “I don’t want to use the lights, sir. I want to keep this as friendly as possible.”
“The Boyds are friendly,” I said. “As long as it’s coincidence that they’re both downtown at the same time.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Estelle said. “Let’s just be patient and see what happens.”
What happened was that Maxine Boyd ignored us until we reached Newton. Then she pulled into the parking lot in front of Baca’s. Estelle parked on the far side of the Wagoneer, and Johnny Boyd swerved in so that he was angled toward the Wagoneer, fender to fender.
Mrs. Boyd didn’t get out of the Jeep, but her window was rolled down. Johnny Boyd eased himself out of the pickup and sauntered around the front end, then leaned an elbow on the hood of the Wagoneer. The body language wasn’t lost on me. If we wanted to talk to his wife, he’d have to move.
“How you doing?” I said. Without it being offered, I walked over and took up position with my elbow on the Jeep’s hood, too. Estelle was messing with paperwork in the patrol car and hadn’t gotten out.
“I hope you folks got more rest than we have,” I said and pushed my Stetson back on my head. “We needed to see if anything’s jogged your memory”-I turned and nodded at Maxine Boyd as well-“if you folks heard anything the afternoon of the crash. If you heard anything unusual. Even earlier in the day.”
“Unusual? Like how?” Johnny Boyd asked. He fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.
“Well, we’ve had at least one report saying the engine on that plane was backfiring pretty badly. That gives us a little something to go on. It looks like they might have been having trouble of some kind.”
“If they did, I never heard it,” Boyd said. “You know, I never saw that plane go down. I was up here in Newton just about that time. Right inside the store here. I didn’t know what all the ruckus was until the traffic started to show up and cut tracks through my pasture.”
“Was your wife home?” I asked. Estelle had gotten out of the car and had her clipboard in hand. The expression on her face was thoughtful as she walked around the back of the Wagoneer.
“Well, yes, she was home,” Boyd said and turned. By that time, Estelle was at the driver’s-side window of the Wagoneer. She unclipped a photograph from the board and handed it to Boyd, resting the clipboard on the windowsill as she waited for him to look at the photo.
“What’s this?” he asked and turned the photo against the glare from the sun.
“We were wondering if you could tell us where that windmill is,” Estelle said. “And, ma’am, if you were home, we need to know if you saw or heard anything unusual.”
Maxine Boyd shook her head. “I had that darn old television on,” she said. “And now I sure wish I hadn’t. But I did, you know.”
“So you didn’t hear the aircraft at all?” Estelle asked. Maxine glanced at the clipboard and shook her head.
“Well,” Johnny Boyd said, “this here is the windmill out by what we call the block house. It isn’t in this picture, but just off to the north”-he held the photo toward me and indicated with a stubby index finger-“there’s the remains of an old stone building. Damn thing was built to last forever, thick as those walls are.”
“From your place, where would that be?” I asked.
“East and a bit north. It’s over on the back side of Dick Finnegan’s place.” He shrugged and handed the photo back to Estelle. “There’re old windmills all over. Most of ’em have had the guts pulled off the tower. This one here, though, it still pumps from time to time.” He grinned ruefully. “There ain’t just a whole lot of water ’round about.” He glanced at his wife. “So what’s the significance of that? You want pictures of old windmills, I can show you a couple dozen.”
“We don’t know yet,” Estelle said. She hesitated as if weighing just how much she should say. “This photo was taken by Sheriff Holman during that flight Friday afternoon.”
Boyd grunted. “Maybe he was a collector of windmill pictures.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Estelle had handed the photo to Maxine Boyd, and the woman frowned as she studied it. “This is where Dick was trying to dig that pond, isn’t it?” she asked her husband.
“No, not there. He was thinkin’ of putting one in over at William’s Tank. But he gave up,” Johnny said shortly.
“Gave up?” I said.
Boyd shrugged and took the photo from his wife. He glanced at it briefly again and handed it to Estelle. “Dick wastes his time in all kinds of strange ways,” he said. “There wouldn’t have been any water to put in the tank even if he finished digging for it. I guess after a few hours on the dozer, he reached that same conclusion. The way this soil is, it would never have held water anyway. He’d have to line the tank somehow. Bentonite, or plastic, or something. Not worth the trouble for what little water that mill puts out.”
“Wasn’t he going to-” Maxine started to say, but Johnny Boyd cut her off.
“I understand that they’re going to put that plane back together,” he said. “Down in one of those hangars at the airport.”
“That’s right,” I said. “They’re transporting the wreckage this morning.” I grinned. “The detective and I thought it might be a good idea to stay out of their way.”
“What do they expect to find?”
“That’s just it,” I said. “None of us know what we’re looking for. We’d kind of like to have some woodcutter come out of the trees and say, ‘Hey, I saw the whole thing.’ But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Boyd snorted in derision and stamped out his cigarette. “If you found somebody who’d tell you that, nine times out of ten they’d get it all screwed up, anyways.”
“You’re right, but it’s more like ninety-nine out of a hundred,” I said.
“Who told you about the backfiring thing?” Boyd asked. “Or is that privileged information?” He smiled thinly and rummaged in his shirt pocket for another cigarette.
“Mrs. Finnegan,” I said, and Johnny Boyd’s reaction was immediate.
He looked heavenward, then at his wife and grinned. “Christ almighty,” he said and shook his head, chuckling. “She might have told you that the airplane was being chased by a squadron of UFOs, too. Her elevator don’t go all the way to the top floor, that’s for damn sure.” He pointed the cigarette at Estelle’s clipboard.