Santa Fe Edge

27

Todd gunned his red Taurus and headed for the interstate. Teddy, if he wasn’t really going to Arkansas, would likely be headed for Las Vegas, the second of his airport guesses, and Lauren would be driving there to meet him. She had at least a half-hour head start-more like three-quarters of an hour. He turned onto the I-25 and set his cruise control at seventy-five. This was no time to get stopped by the state patrol.

TEDDY LANDED at Las Vegas after a forty-minute flight and taxied up to the little municipal terminal. He gave his fuel order to a lineman, then went inside to the front desk, where a man sat behind the counter. “Good afternoon,” he said.

“Hey,” the man replied. “You just refueling? Anything else we can do for you?”

“I’d like to hangar my airplane,” Teddy said. “Do you have any space?”

“I’ve got a T-hangar that might work for you,” the man said. “Let’s go take a look.” He led the way to an old Jeep, and they drove along a line of hangars and stopped at the last one. The man unlocked a padlock and pulled up the bifold door. “You’ve got power, but if you want heat, you’ll have to furnish your own heater.”

Teddy looked around. The hangar was ideal-clean and conveniently located.

“The price includes pull-out service when you need the airplane, or I’ll give you a key and you can pull it out yourself, if you feel like it.”

Teddy asked the price, negotiated and took the hangar for a three-month period. “I’d be grateful if you’d keep this confidential,” he said to the man. “The tax man might be around.”

“Sure thing,” the man replied, grinning.

They drove back to the terminal, and Teddy paid in cash for the rental and the fuel and collected his hangar key, then went over to the little airport restaurant to have a cheeseburger and to wait for Lauren to catch up. He looked at his watch and figured he had an hour to wait. When he had been there for forty-five minutes, he ordered a burger for her and had it put into a bag.

She arrived on time, and he drove back so that she could eat her burger on the way to Santa Fe.

TODD HAD PASSED Santa Fe and had been on the road for an hour and a half when he saw the tan Grand Cherokee approaching in the opposite lane, with a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat. He had just passed the exit for Serafina, and he didn’t know how far it was to the next exit. He was about to drive across the meridian of the four-lane highway when he checked his mirror and saw a car approaching from behind him with something on the roof. He switched off the cruise control and let his speed drop, while cursing his bad luck. It was a state patrol car, and it stayed behind him all the way to the Los Montoyas exit, where he was able to make a U-turn and head back toward Santa Fe. He put his foot down, then turned the cruise control on again at ninety. He hoped the police car was the only one in the sector.

TEDDY SAW THE TAURUS carrying Todd Bacon coming and watched him pass, then disappear in his rearview mirror. He got off the interstate at the next exit, opened the glove compartment and handed Lauren a map. “Navigate me to Santa Fe on the surface roads,” he said. “We just passed Bacon going the other way, and he saw me.”

She opened the map and told him to take the next right. When they got to Santa Fe, Teddy drove to the dealer where he had bought the Grand Cherokee, found the same salesman and made a deal to trade for a very nice, low-mileage Volvo station wagon with four-wheel drive and winter tires.

“I’m not going to let this guy run me out of Santa Fe,” he said to Lauren as they drove toward home. When they arrived there he went immediately to his computer and went through the Agency mainframe to access the New Mexico Department of Motor Vehicles and started making changes.

TODD GOT OFF the interstate at the Santa Fe exit, surprised that he had not caught up with Teddy’s Grand Cherokee. He drove into town on Old Pecos Trail, checking every parking lot for the SUV but not seeing it. He drove back to La Fonda, parked the car, went upstairs and got on his computer. He logged in to the Agency mainframe and accessed the New Mexico DMV. He did a search for tan Grand Cherokees and found four registered in Santa Fe. He looked away for a moment to find a pad to write on, and when he returned his attention to the computer screen there were only three Grand Cherokees. He could have sworn there had been four a moment before, but he wasn’t positive. He jotted down the names and addresses of the owners and went back to his car. He was going to start running them down now.

TEDDY HAD CHANGED the owner’s name and address to one in Albuquerque. Now he changed the name and address of the Volvo to a Taos owner, then exited the Agency mainframe.

Lauren, who had been watching over his shoulder, said, “That was very slick.” She kissed him on the neck.