The Lies that Bind Read online

  The Lies That Bind

  A NEIL HAMEL MYSTERY, #5

  Judith Van Gieson

  THE LIES THAT BIND

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1993 Judith Van Gieson.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by other means, without permission.

  First ebook edition © 2013 by AudioGO.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-462-1

  Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9490-5

  Cover photo © Henryk84/iStock.com

  For Claire Zieger, my mother

  Never believe anything because probability is in its favor.

  —SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA

  There is one thing that is terrible,

  and that is that everyone has his reasons.

  —JEAN RENOIR, The Rules of the Game

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m grateful to Barbara Peters, Kevin Robinson, Dale Carter, Ph.D., and Dominick Abel for their help and advice. A special thanks to attorney Alan M. Uris for so generously sharing his knowledge of the law.

  Although many of the places depicted in this novel clearly exist, none of its characters represents or is based on any person, living or dead, and all the incidents described are imaginary.

  The Lies That Bind

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Free Preview of PARROT BLUES: A NEIL HAMEL MYSTERY, #6

  MORE MYSTERIES BY JUDITH VAN GIESON

  1

  I TOOK THE high road from Taos, speeding on the straightaways, hugging the curves, dropping down from Talpa to Nambe. The low road follows the Rio Grande. El Camino Alto, the high road, is the forest path; I was in the mood for trees and green. The cumulonimbus billowed in the big western sky; the sun reached deep into Carson National Forest and made every pine needle shimmer. A raven landed on the yellow line, flapped its wings and flew away. The tank was full of gas; the radials gripped the road. For the moment, me, my Japanese import and the highway were one. For the moment, I could almost believe that nature’s laws didn’t apply to me, that I’d never grow old, never get fat, never have to stop to buy gas or pee, never wake up in the night and turn on Love Connection, never drink Cuervo Gold, smoke Marlboros or mix up a batch of Jell-O shots ever again. I’d been in northern Rio Arriba County, the lawless county, to fight a custody battle, and I’d won. The tape that spins messages in the back of my brain spun. “You’ve got the power,” it said.

  It was the harvest season, the time of year when red chile ristras drip from the eaves, when you get rid of the old to make way for the new. I cruised through the high mountain villages of Peñasco, Las Trampas and Truchas, where time stopped a couple of hundred years ago and they still speak Cervantes Spanish, where the air is a cool clear stream, where stone houses mark one edge of the road and mountain drop-offs the other. Take a curve wide here, and you’ll end up in a living room or the cumulonimbus.

  I kept my hands on the wheel, my mind on the road, turned south on 84 at Nambe. In Pojoaque I passed the Indian restaurant that serves the best chalupa compuesta in Santa Fe County, but I didn’t pull in; carne adovada burritos were waiting at home. Below the Santa Fe Opera, the road began to rise again. Purple asters and yellow chamisa bloomed in the ditches beside the road. In the far distance the tip of Santa Fe Baldy was covered with snow; its lower elevations were streaked with aspen gold. At seventy-five hundred feet, La Villa Real de Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi opened up before me like a jewel box spilling precious stones. It was late afternoon, and the lights were twinkling on, one by one. I dropped down alongside the white crosses of the National Cemetery, cut across town on St. Francis, turned south on I-25, which follows the path of El Camino Real, the royal road, which once linked old Mexico to new.

  Between Santa Fe and Albuquerque I lost two thousand feet. Out here in the land that trees forgot, it’s down to basics: sky, rocks, dirt, distance. There are few wildflowers on this stretch of lonesome highway and only two distinct seasons—lots of wind and none. Fall is no wind, when the dirt stays put and tumbleweeds settle down and get an address. It was twilight, the hour, some say, between the dog and the wolf. The sun lit a fire over the Jemez. The southern sky got dark enough that Sirius came out and Venus too. In fifty miles I’d be home. The Kid would be at my apartment, waiting in the living room or my bed.

  I pulled a tape from the glove compartment and plugged it in. Van Morrison singing about “The Days Before Rock N’ Roll,” the days before America woke up from its sexual, sensual slumber. He named the early rockers: Fats, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Elvis, the guys whose songs come out of the radio at night from places like Harlingen, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, to stab you with memories. There were women in the early days of rock ’n’ roll too, but not often on the radio and not on this tape. Van Morrison’s heroes were all men. I remembered a singer I saw a couple of years before in L.A., a big black woman rocking her way into middle age without missing a beat, but I couldn’t remember her name. Two short words, and the first one began with an E. That was it.

  The tape played out in Bernalillo. Night fell, and Venus and Sirius got lost in Albuquerque’s ambient fluorescent glow. I turned off the interstate at Montgomery, got caught at a red light. It happened to be Halloween, El Día de los Muertos, when children dress up and pretend to be what they’re not. A bunch of tricksters and clowns crossed the street, carrying their loot and their cap guns in their hands on their way to a party in the Lujan School playground. Some kids playing tag beneath the playground lights cast long shadows. A blindfolded pirate was it and was trying to tag someone else by the sound of a voice. “Marco,” the kid yelled. “Polo,” the other kids answered. It’s a game that is usually played in swimming pools in the summer. Marco Polo is the background noise of summer, if you live in a complex with kids and a swimming pool. The pirate lunged at a bunch of grapes, the grapes sidestepped, the pirate fell on his face.

  The light turned green, and I stepped on the gas. Three more stoplights, and I was home. The Kid, my lover and friend, had let himself in and was sitting on my bed, drinking Tecate and watching football on TV. Realizing recently that in a woman’s life TV functions like romance novels, to induce sleep, I’d moved mine to the foot of the bed.

  “Hi, Kid,” I said, sitting down on the bed beside him.

  “Hola, Chiquita.” He gave me a kiss.

  “You’re watching football?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Monday night.” He shrugged. “Why not?”

  The function of TV in a man’s life is football. I’d always thought that one advantage to having a Latin American lover is that Latin Americans are not as obsessed with brute sports as American men. The Kid’s game—soccer—is more delicate and subtle. The players aren’t padded like gorillas, either, which makes it more fun to watch. The Kid has long, powerful soccer legs that are outstanding in shorts and were not bad stretched out in jeans on my bed. He’d been playing since he was a boy in Argentina and knew how to keep the ball in the air all aftern
oon if he wanted to. I watched him sometimes on the playing fields at Arroyo del Oso, bouncing the ball off his thighs and his head.

  I made myself comfortable, picked up the remote and zapped off the TV.

  “I was watching the game, Chiquita,” the Kid said.

  “I hate football,” said I.

  “I want to see if the Cowboys win.”

  “It’s a replay. The score is in the paper.”

  “That’s not the same as watching.”

  “I won,” I said. So it wasn’t the Supreme Court, but Ramona Chávez would get to keep her daughter and I had won. In Rio Arriba County too, where the law doesn’t win that often.

  “Good. I’m happy for you. Can I watch the game now?”

  “No.” I held tight to the remote.

  The look he gave me was semi-annoyed, but he was getting my drift. Power, it has been said, is the greatest aphrodisiac, and absolute power turns on absolutely. So does only a little bit. “You want to do that?” the Kid asked me.

  “Yup.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now.” I reached across the bed and took the phone off the hook.

  “Okay,” he said.

  ******

  Later we got up and ate the carne adovada burritos he’d brought. As usual these days, there were two extras in the bag. “For La Bailarina?” I asked, mentioning his favorite lost cause.

  “Claro,” said the Kid.

  While he took them outside to the parking lot, I got ready for bed.

  “I think it’s going to rain soon,” he said when he came back in.

  “Rain? In October?”

  He shrugged. “I think so.”

  As soon as we got into bed, the thunder cracked and drops began to pelt the window. Rainy nights are one of life’s great pleasures, especially when you’re in your bed. We don’t get many of them in the Duke City and hardly ever in October. I thought about the raindrops pounding the tin roof of the car that sheltered La Bailarina in the parking lot, but I didn’t feel guilty because I knew that even if the Kid had tried to coax her inside, she wouldn’t have come. The parking lot was where she chose to be—on the outside but near enough to be looking in. She’d stay dry, I thought, but the trick-or-treaters would get soaking wet. It would drive them indoors—the tamer ones anyway. The troublemakers would still be out there. The Kid’s breathing got slow and regular as he drifted into sleep. I punched his shoulder before he wandered too far down that lonesome highway.

  “You awake, Kid?”

  “Umm,” he mumbled.

  “I want to ask you something.”

  “Dígame.”

  “Do you think I’d be any happier if I had a big car? If I went to work for a prestigious firm and made real money?”

  “I think you’re happy just the way you are.”

  Lightning flashed, exposing one dark peak of the Sandias, then another. A large woman rocked her way across a stage in L.A.

  “Etta,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Etta James.” It was the name that had gotten lost in the back alleys of my brain, the name of the early woman rock-and-roller.

  “Who’s that?”

  One disadvantage of having a Latino lover, and one who is younger besides, is that you don’t know the same music. You can’t push a button and call up the past by naming a singer or a song.

  “Nada,” I said. “Forget it.”

  ******

  When the alarm went off at seven-thirty, my first thought was that Eddie Chávez had tested the law and I had won. My second thought was that I had the power all over again. “You awake, Kid?” I whispered. He wasn’t, but I kissed his shoulder and woke him. After that we slept again until the sun burst through the drapes and landed on my face. The red numbers on the digital clock flashed 8:45. “Shit,” I said, sitting upright. “I’ll be late for my nine o’clock.”

  The Kid jumped out of bed, climbed into his jeans and T-shirt and shook his curls into place. I put the telephone back on the hook, staggered into and out of the shower, dressed in some boring lawyer’s clothes and combed my hair. No time for breakfast sopapillas or Red Zinger tea.

  He waited in the living room for me. I kissed him good-bye, opened the door, stepped into La Vista’s hallway and found myself staring down at ninety pounds of disapproving mother.

  The sun had crept in through an open archway and was picking out the stains on the indoor/outdoor carpet and highlighting the cracks in the peeling stucco. The woman stood in front of my door with a finger poised in preparation for pressing the bell. About five feet two, she balanced carefully on her high-heeled shoes. Her purse was suspended from a gold chain, and she clutched it to her side with a pointed elbow. Her sprayed-in-place hairdo was the color of a hard frost. She wore a powder-blue suit with gold buttons and navy-blue trim. Her eyes, a critical blue, implied that good grooming and designer clothes gave her the right to decide who was right and who wrong. I hadn’t even left my apartment yet, but I was already among the wrong. While she’d been drinking her morning tea, the Kid and I had been getting laid. Our just-had-sex aura gave us away. She knew we’d been doing it. We knew that she knew, and she knew that we knew. She looked at us; we looked back. Disapproval was thick as the dust in La Vista’s hallway.

  “Are you Neil Hamel?” she asked.

  “Yup.”

  “The … attorney?” An attorney, her tone implied, didn’t have sex in the morning, or at any time of day or night with someone who is younger, darker and better-looking. Unless, of course, the attorney was a man.

  “My office is on Lead,” I replied. I was prepared to add, But don’t bother coming because wills are not my cup of tea and neither are you, only she spoke first.

  She took a deep breath, aligned her vertebrae, clutched her purse, cleared her throat. “I’ve been accused of killing Justine Virga,” she said.

  2

  SHE’D GOTTEN MY attention. The phone started ringing inside my apartment, telling me I was late for my appointment. I already knew that, so I let it ring. I don’t do wills, but I do do murder cases when I can get them, and she looked like the rare suspect who could afford to pay. “Tell me about it,” I said.

  She looked around La Vista’s hallway, at the cracks in the stucco and the closed doors that might be concealing eavesdroppers. Her eyes lingered suspiciously on the Kid as if he was a street dog who’d been trying to get into her trash. While she scrutinized him from top to bottom—his uncombed mop of hair, his T-shirt and jeans—she tightened her grip on her purse. My lover and my hallway did not please her, but if she thought I was going to invite her into my apartment and let her disapprove of that too, she was wrong.

  The Kid got her message. “I go now, Chiquita,” he said, his grammar clunkier and his accent thicker than it had been in recent memory.

  “Bueno.” I kissed him again. “See you tonight?”

  “Sure. Hasta luego,” he said to me. To the woman he added with exaggerated Mexican politeness, “Buenos días. Mucho gusto.” There’s a fine line between politeness and insult, and Mexicans know how to walk it. Actually, the Kid’s Spanish wasn’t Mexican, or New Mexican either. It was South American, but the subtleties were wasted on the woman, and so was the gusto. She didn’t bother to answer the Kid, and he didn’t waste his time waiting. He tossed his head and walked down the hallway. I watched his long legs turn the corner and listened to the phone ringing. It had become obvious I wasn’t going to answer it or ask my visitor in, but just in case she had any doubts, I inserted my key into the dead bolt and snapped it shut. The woman hesitated, and then she said, “Could you give me a ride home? We can talk there.”

  “Where’s your car?” I asked.

  “The police took it.”

  It had the sound of vehicular homicide, a common enough form of murder in New Mexico, where a car is a loaded weapon too.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “Taxi.”

  “Why didn’t you ask the driver to wait?
”

  “Because I wanted to talk to you.”

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll take you home, but first I need to know who you are and why you came to me.”

  “I am Martha Conover.”

  It had a familiar ring, but I couldn’t place her.

  “You know my daughter,” she continued. “Cynthia Reid.”

  That was it. Cindy and I went to high school together in Ithaca, New York. Martha Conover had been widowed and was the rare single mother back then, I remembered. It gave her full responsibility for Cindy, and she took it seriously. She had Cindy late in life and was older than the other mothers—older than mine anyway—and conspicuous by her presence in her daughter’s life. She was into real estate investment and seemed to have a need in those days that only real estate could fill. When Cindy got knocked up by Emilio Velásquez, a Spanish exchange student, Martha wouldn’t let her marry him. Cindy had the baby. Emilio joined the army and went to Vietnam. A few years later Cindy married Whitney J. Reid III, a man Martha approved of, who was about ten years older and whose political views, even back then, were to the right of Attila the Hun. Whit took on Cindy’s child, and people thought she was lucky to get him. I wondered if she still thought that, if she’d ever thought that. Last I’d heard, they were living in Phoenix. She’d written me once to tell me her mother had moved to Albuquerque and to suggest I look her up, but I didn’t. Martha hadn’t approved of me when I was in high school—I was Cindy’s hippie friend—which made me wonder what she was doing at my doorstep now. Did she think a license to practice law had made me respectable?

  I led the way across the parking lot to my yellow Nissan, which was loaded with bumper stickers from the previous owner, stickers I’d been meaning to scrape off but hadn’t yet. McDonald’s recycled brown bags decomposed slowly in the compost heap the floor on the passenger side had become. The files from the Chávez case were sitting on the seat. I put the files in the trunk, picked the litter off the floor, took it to the Dumpster and dumped it in. I got in my side, Martha Conover got in the other. She straightened her back, placed her purse square in her lap and fastened her seat belt with a metallic click.