Then I dropped the big one on him. “Did you know that someone murdered Marian Brown last night?”
From the stunned look on his face, I could see this was the first he’d heard of it.
“Shot three times in the chest while she was standing in her living room.”
He stared at me, speechless.
“The money that kept you afloat, Frank, the money you bought all that additional land with, the money you say came from Jayne’s savvy investments, could it have come from somewhere else?”
Two and two were adding up in his mind, but he didn’t want to accept the sum. “From Marian Brown? Is that what you’re saying? That my wife was somehow in cahoots with Marian Brown?”
“I think they were both working with someone else, Frank, someone much wealthier and fully capable of murder. Someone who needed them to help launder his money.”
“Who?”
I didn’t answer. I just waited while he worked that one out for himself.
“Carlos Rodriguez? My wife and Carlos Rodriguez? No.”
Peter was looking at me with disbelief on his face as well. “Jayne?”
“I’m just considering the evidence. Someone leaked the information about your rendezvous with the Guatemalans, Peter. You say you trust everyone you recruited. Jayne refused to be a part of the Desert Angels, but Frank admits he confides in her.”
Peter said, “If what you say is true, Jayne would have had to know the location of my rendezvous that night. Even Frank couldn’t have given her that.” He looked toward Harris for confirmation, but the man was silent. “Frank?”
“Jayne could have known the coordinates,” Harris finally admitted.
“How?”
“You and Nikki usually sit together in church, same pew every Sunday. Jayne and me, we sit behind you.”
“You what? Overheard us?”
Frank shrugged. “Enough to guess correctly about Nikki using her radio program to broadcast the coordinates. But that doesn’t mean Jayne sold you out to Rodriguez.”
“I’m sure Marian Brown sold her soul to the man,” I said. “And she and Jayne were apparently quite tight, involved in conversations that seem to have been held in a way meant to exclude you, Frank. From what I know, sounds to me like they both enjoyed handling money, large amounts especially.”
Peter shook his head. “But if Jayne sold me out to Rodriguez, who killed his son in the desert that night? And how did they know I’d be there, and Rodriguez?”
“I believe Jayne told Marian about the rendezvous, and Marian used White Horse in that ambush. I think she and Jayne were trying to cut themselves loose from Carlos Rodriguez. I think they were planning on Rodriguez being killed out there, maybe even hoping for a clean sweep, both Carlos and Miguel.”
“And me?” Peter said.
“You and the Guatemalans? Just collateral damage.”
“No,” Frank said, shaking his head and looking at me with dark, angry eyes. “Not Jayne. Hell, Rodriguez grabbed her as a hostage.”
“Maybe it only appears that way,” I said.
“Goddamn you, O’Connor. Who are you to be making this kind of accusation? You don’t know anything about us. You don’t know this land. You’re a stranger here.”
“Let me ask you one more thing, Frank. Jocko told me that his father and your grandfather prospected together a long time ago and mined a little. He said it was somewhere in the Sonora Hills. You know where?”
“Of course. I own the land. But I haven’t gone there in forever.”
“Does Jayne know where?”
“I’m sure she does. Why?”
Peter looked at me, understanding slowly coming into his eyes. “Rodriguez’s stash.”
“What are you talking about?” Frank said.
I explained to him about the cache of drugs that had been moved from the mine where Rodriguez had been storing them awaiting transport.
“You think Jayne moved them?” Frank said.
“Jayne or Marian or someone working with them. Your grandfather’s old diggings would be a pretty good place to hide all that product. It’s on private land, in a place the public isn’t likely to stumble onto. Close to Jocko’s strip, if plans are to fly it out eventually. And in spitting distance from the border.”
“No,” he said, denying it with an even more vigorous shake of his head. “I can’t believe that.”
“There’s an easy way to find out.” I looked through the window at the coming storm. “But we’ll have to move fast.”
*
We took Peter’s Jeep, which he’d left in Jocko’s hangar the day he went to meet the Guatemalans. Because of Peter’s wounded leg, I drove. Frank directed us south several miles, then we followed a dry wash that wove into the Sonora Hills. The sky was a cauldron filled with black, and a strong wind ran beneath, bringing with it the sweet, heavy scent of rain.
We rounded a bend and Frank pointed to the right toward a fold in the hillside. I pulled out of the wash just as the first fat raindrops hit the windshield. In front of us was the opening to an old excavation.
“Granddad called it the Jezebel,” Frank said. “He told me it kept teasing him but never gave him much in the end.”
We got out of the Jeep as the rain began to come down in earnest, and we ran for the mine. We’d brought flashlights, and inside, we thumbed them on. There it was. Wrapped bricks rising like a false wall from tunnel floor to tunnel ceiling, God knew how many layers thick. I guessed it was cocaine, millions and millions in illegal product.
All this illicit wealth, I thought, and men like Rodriguez still preyed on the poor who were trying to get to freedom, still stole from them what few pesos they had left.
In the backsplash from the flashlights, Frank Harris’s face was as expressionless as a dead man’s. “It’s true then,” he said. “It’s all true.” He continued to stare, but silently, because what more was there to say?
Outside, the storm poured down rain and lit the Sonora Hills with brilliant, blinding flashes of lightning. I stood looking through a steady stream that cascaded down the hillside above and formed a ragged waterfall over the mine entrance. The wash we’d driven was no longer dry. We needed to get to the ranch house to meet Rainy and Mondragón, who would be bringing Joaquin Rodriguez with them, but I could see that we wouldn’t be going back anytime soon, at least by that route.
“Is there another way back to the ranch house?” I asked Harris.
He seemed not to hear.
“Frank,” I said.
He shook his head. “Walking, I suppose. It would be hours back to Jocko’s that way. Best just to wait.”
I pulled out my cell phone. In the cover of the cave, I got no reception. “I’m going to make a run for the Jeep, try to call Mondragón.”
I looked at Peter, then nodded toward Harris, who seemed so lost. Peter gave me a nod in return.
I sprinted to the Jeep, jumped inside, and checked my phone. Two bars. Not great, but enough. I punched in Mondragón’s cell phone number. On the other end, his phone rang and rang and finally went to voice mail.
“It’s Cork. We’re not at the ranch house. Give me a call when you get this message.”
I returned to the mine and told Peter and Harris what was up.