He had awakened late that morning, downed a cup of coffee and a sweet roll and hurried out to the airport. He took the note into the lounge, sat down at the phone and dialed, letting the memory of Elena's gentle touch, the softness of her body and the fragrance of the flower in her hair linger in his mind as intimately as a whispered confidence.
"I worried about you driving home so late," she said when she came on the line. "You should have stayed here. You could have had your choice of bedrooms."
Roddy grinned at the thought. "What would Manuel have said when I showed up for breakfast?"
"He's accustomed to looking askance at my unorthodox behavior. Anyway, I called to see if you could fly me up to one of the ranches? It's near Tequila."
Despite what he had said to the secretary, he had not really expected this. Now it made him wonder if she might have been serious about buying a helicopter.
"When did you want to go?" he asked.
"How does one o'clock sound?"
He had already checked the schedule and knew the chopper was available. "Sounds like a winner. Saves me looking for an excuse to lure you out of that castle."
"You don't need an excuse, Roddy," she said in a seductive tone.
After he hung up the phone, he stood and stared at his reflection in the glass door of a tall bookcase. An imperfection in the glass distorted his features comically. He realized that his feelings toward Elena Castillo Quintero were every bit as confused as that mirror image of his face. His natural inclination was to think relax and accept your good fortune. But he could not so easily dismiss Karen from his mind.
Elena wore a black bolero jacket over a yellow shirt. These were complemented by designer jeans and hand-tooled leather boots. She looked radiant. Roddy had to restrain the urge to plant a big kiss on her right there in the middle of the ramp. He strapped her into the chopper, climbed in beside her and soon lifted off for Tequila. When they were clear of the airport, he shoved an aeronautical chart in front of her and asked where the ranch was located. He got a disapproving frown in reply.
"I'm not a map person," she said. "It's to the north of the town."
That, he realized, would put it in the vicinity of the barranca he had flown over with Bryan Janney. Roddy had been unable to dismiss the doomed writer and his disturbing story. He was appalled at the idea of letting Adam Stern get away with murder, but he wasn't prepared to risk getting his head lopped off by poking his nose into the murky business until he knew a lot more about what was going on.
During the flight up, Elena told him about the family ranches, five large spreads, covering thousands of hectares and stocked with cattle that also numbered in the thousands.
As they were approaching the area of the ranch, which he had determined lay beyond the highway running north of Tequila, Roddy pointed toward the panorama of green mountains that spread off to the right side of the chopper. "Who owns the land over there?"
She glanced out the window. "I do, back about eight or ten kilometers."
"I was thinking in terms of a little farther out, say twenty-five kilometers."
"You must fly up this way quite a bit," she said, looking around curiously.
He shook his head. "Not really. But I had a passenger recently who wanted to look at some property in a canyon off in that direction."
She paused a moment, pondering. "With a large cabin by a stream? A few smaller buildings?"
"Yeah," he said, betraying his excitement, "that was it. Who's the owner?"
"Rafael Madero, a friend of my late husband. He's a big politician."
"That figures. It would make a dandy hideaway for a bunch of politicos to plot their strategy. Do you know if he rents it out?"
"I think so. Was your passenger interested in renting?"
"Possibly. He wasn't an easy one to figure out. A real weird character."
Her eyes twinkled. "Like me?"
"I wouldn't say that. The only thing weird about you is the company you keep."
"Meaning you?"
"Yeah. A guy like me could ruin a girl's reputation." Just then he spotted a sprawling hacienda ahead with a large central courtyard and stables and a cattle pen nearby. "Is that your place?"
"Yes. We can land wherever you think best. Just stay away from the horses and the livestock."
Roddy picked an open spot near a cluster of vehicles and maneuvered the chopper in for a landing, kicking up a cloud of reddish dust as they descended.
By the time he had shut down the engine and helped Elena out onto the ground, a burly, bearded man was walking toward them leading a pair of saddled horses. She glanced around at Roddy with an impish grin.
"I hope you like to ride."
"Lord, I haven't been on a horse in twenty years," he said, rubbing his chin uncertainly. "I hope the critter isn't too frisky."
"This is Paco," she said, hugging one of the sleek, brown animals. "He's as gentle as a lamb."
"Buenas tardes, Señora," the big man greeted her. His teeth glistened like ivory carvings. His dark face was shadowed beneath the wide-brimmed gray sombrero. The leathery skin marked him as a man who lived his life in the sun.
Elena introduced him. "Colonel Rodman, this is Miguel Cordero. Miguel is in charge of our cowboys here. I'm going to show Colonel Rodman around the ranch," she said. "Tell Rosa we'll be back in about an hour."
Miguel held the reins while Elena sprang deftly into the saddle. Then he helped Roddy maneuver himself onto Paco.
"Paco," said Roddy thoughtfully. "Isn't that short for Francisco?"
"Right," said Elena, nodding. "But he's like me. He doesn't stand much on ceremony."
The main part of the ranch sat on a plateau. As they rode over grassy fields that rolled up and down the low hills, the horses' hooves kicked up clods of red volcanic soil. In the distance, forested mountains rose in folds like mounds of dark green cake frosting. After about twenty minutes, they stopped and dismounted beneath a clump of oak trees, where an outcropping of rust-colored rock marked the edge of a small canyon. The view across to the mountains was like a photo from a travel brochure.
Roddy rubbed his backside and grinned. "I'll probably regret this tomorrow. But I can see why you like to come out here and ride. What a gorgeous view."
Elena perched on the edge of the rock formation. Roddy moved close to her. When he reached up to put an arm around her waist, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He pulled her face down and kissed her quite thoroughly on the lips.
"I feel like Eve," she said, breathing heavily, when he released her.
"Eve?"
"You're my forbidden fruit."
He thought back to the conversation with Dutch Schuler's father-in-law. "General Wackenhut told me you were ostracized for marrying outside your caste."
She gave him a bit of a pained frown. "I wouldn't call it a caste. But, maybe you're right. My parents had picked out a nice young man from one of our kindred families. I didn't want to have anything to do with him, though. I was determined to make my own decisions. But when I married Ramon, it was as though I had committed the cardinal sin. I was shunned like a leper."