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CHAPTER 9

      SOMEBODY WAS knocking on the door.

      Rand woke so suddenly he was disoriented for a moment. His watch said 9:15; he had slept almost ten hours.

      "Mr. Rand? Are you in there?" a voice called.

      He got the .32 and opened the door a crack. The manager, Samms, was already turning away.

      "What is it?" Rand asked.

      "You've got a telephone call. A lady."

      "Tell her I'm coming." He got dressed rapidly, stuck the gun in his boottop, and went into the office. He knew it would be Noreen Hood because she was the only person who knew where he was staying. He wondered how she would handle what happened - or didn't happen - last night, but she started off all business.

      "I called Len Pritchard and told him you dropped by last night. He wants us to go over to his office around ten, is that all right?"

      "Sure, how do I get there?"

      "It's on Main Street, above the Western Auto store. It won't take long. Len and his wife are driving me to the mortuary about 1:30." She hesitated, then in a more subdued voice said, "Sorry about last night. The waterworks . . . and all. . . ."

      "Huh? Oh that," Rand said, mildly, as though he had put it completely out of his mind. "That was nothing. You were missing your husband, that's all."

      "Yeah, that was it," she said. "That, and I was pie-eyed."

      He parked the Chevy on Main Street and had a quick cup of coffee at the Deluxe before he walked over to Pritchard's office. There were a lot of people on Main Street. Rand kept an eye on the pedestrians and people in cars, looking for Petrie. He had told Benedict that he'd be going to California in the morning. Maybe they thought he was gone, but he doubted it.

      He found the Western Auto store and went up the stairs past a short corridor and an accountant's office to a door that said "Pritchard and Melendrez, Attorneys at Law" on the frosted glass.

      Inside, the room's green-painted walls were covered with pictures of Pritchard with various people - some were New Mexico governors Rand recognized. There was an old leather-covered settee along one wall next to a table holding a goldfish bowl and a stack of magazines. File cabinets, glass-front oak bookcase and several worn-looking chairs lined the other walls. The place smelled comfortably of pipe tobacco smoke and coffee.

      A pleasant-looking Mexican woman in her fifties sat behind a typewriter at a desk cluttered with papers. She looked up at him inquiringly.

      "I'm John Rand."

      She smiled. "Go right in, they're expecting you."

      Pritchard's office looked out on the street. The same dark-green color walls, the same kind of pictures, more bookcases filled with heavy legal books. Books were stacked on the credenza behind his desk, where there was a big hand-tinted photo of a plump, nice-looking woman Rand took to be his wife. Beside it was a signed photo of a confident-looking Roosevelt.

      Noreen Hood, dressed in black, and looking pale and tired without makeup, sat on a settee that matched the one in the outer office. She gave Rand a polite, empty look, while Pritchard got up and squeezed Rand's hand in a bony handshake. "You're right on time. Want a cup of coffee?"

      "Just had one," Rand said. Across Main Street, he could see into the second floor windows of the Ben Franklin dime store, where a young woman was sitting at a rolltop desk staring back at him.

      Pritchard waited until Rand settled himself in a chair. "Noreen told me what happened. Two more men murdered - the gold stolen away from the man who stole it. . . ." He shook his head. "What do you intend to do now?"

      "I guess I'll hunt up the sheriff and tell him about it."

      Pritchard nodded. "Of course, that's the right thing to do. But don't forget, Brennan and the sheriff go back a ways . . . all of us do. And up here, you're just another damned Texan."

      "I've thought of that," Rand said. "And Brennan's probably going to try to implicate me in it. That's the only way he can cast doubt on my story."

      Pritchard's blue eyes hit Rand's directly. "Did you have anything to do with killing those men?"

      "No, but I was there. I saw it." Rand didn't like the lie. He was acutely aware that he had pulled the trigger that resulted in the Mexican's death.

      "Anybody else see any of this?"

      "Brennan's nephew, Tom Petrie - and there was a kid there who might have been the Mexican's son. There are people in cafes who can swear they saw me close to where the hay-truck driver was hanged.

      Pritchard looked thoughtful. "You know Brennan might think you know too much.

      "I told them I was going to California."

      "You got a gun?"

      Rand nodded.

      "Well, be careful." Pritchard said. "We didn't bring you up here to get kilt." He called to his secretary in the next room, "Maria, please get me a cup of coffee. Sure you won't have one Rand? Noreen?"

      They said no.

      Pritchard sat back down behind the desk. "You know our sheriff?"

      "José Navarette? No, but I've heard of him."

      "Joe's a good man," Pritchard said. "Good friend of mine, but he's a politician first, then a lawman. Right now he doesn't know the gold even exists. When he finds out about it, he'll head right over to the Sun News and spill it to Mackey Collins. That could be a very big story - three men killed, a bunch of gold stolen, tons more of it in a lost cave in the mountains. Mackey will teletype it to AP and in no time we'll make national headlines. Life magazine might send a man down here to do a story, with pictures of Navarette, no doubt. A thousand people will come down here looking for the cave - and one of 'em might just find it."

      Maria came in with a cup of coffee on a small tray. Pritchard said, "My special coffee, Honey?"

      She smiled at him. "Would I forget that, Len?"

      After she left, he said softly, "After 17 years, she can read my mind. Other lawyers in this town would kill to get her. Sure you won't have some of this good coffee, Rand? It's got bourbon in it."

      Rand shook his head. "Where's Melendrez? The one with his name on the door."

      "He's been dead for ten years. We used to fight every day. Sometimes he'd win, sometimes me. Then one Sunday evening he dropped dead right in front of his wife and kids while he was pulling weeds in his garden. I just didn't have the heart to take him off the door. Besides, it reassures my Mexican clientele that I like and respect them - which I truly do."

      He sipped at his cup thoughtfully. "We are going ahead with the plan we all decided on before Nick died, aren't we, Noreen?"

      Noreen said, "My God, Len, we know the gold's out there! Of course I'm going to go ahead with it. Nick would want us to. And I want a lot of money, don't you?"

      "I sure do," Pritchard said. He turned to Rand. "Remember, we talked about it a little when you signed on with us? After Nick couldn't find the cave again, we decided to sell shares in a company that find it."

      "Don't you think his story about losing the cave is a little flimsy for investors to believe?" Rand asked.

      "Maybe so," Pritchard said. "But it's true, and we had more than two hundred pounds of gold ingots he took out of there. Lookin' at that would make anybody a believer."

      "Only now we don't have it," Noreen said unhappily.

      "Well, that's certainly a fact," Pritchard said. "Hell, we were all ready to go. A couple of weeks ago, we got some government maps of the Organs, and we marked it with grids to make the search more efficient. I even got us incorporated with the Secretary of State up in Santa Fe. The Coronado Corporation. Nick was the president; he had twenty-six percent of the stock. Noreen's got twenty-five percent and I've got seven percent. The rest we can split up any way we want among shareholders. We figured we could hire dozens of men to search the mountains grid by grid, and maybe get some airplanes, or a helium balloon, and we could find that cave in a couple of weeks. Then we'd split up what we found according to our percentage of ownership."

      His voice softened and he took a slug of the coffee. "I know that Nick being killed and the gold getting stolen puts us in a poor position to get investors. They might still believe us, because, after all, they know us - but we still need a convincer. And we'll need proof that they're real gold. We should get the two bars that's left assayed or certified, or whatever they call it, by some expert."

      "Who?" Noreen asked.

      "How about Ross Vandergaard?" Pritchard asked. "I know him a little. Calls himself a goldsmith. He's had a store around here for years . . . makes rings and stuff - and sells jewelry."

      Noreen grimaced. "He's a creep. When I took my ring to have it appraised for insurance, he said it was worth way less than what Nick paid for it. When I told him that, he got stiffnecked and wouldn't change it."

      "Well, he's inflexible all right. But that's what we want, isn't it - somebody who won't cave in? Somebody who's integrity is unimpeachable?"

      Rand watched them. Pritchard looked like a good father talking to his daughter. The lawyer seemed to have a knack for making people like him. His secretary, Maria, obviously was fond of him, too.

      Pritchard looked at his watch. "It's almost eleven. We should leave now and go over to my place and pick up Emma. She'll make some little sandwiches for us, and then we'll go over to the mortuary. He turned to Rand. "Soon as you tell the sheriff what happened, the world will know you're connected to us. So there's no reason why you can't come to the funeral, too, if you want. There will be quite a few people out there - a Masonic funeral. It'll start about 2:30."

      "I've got some stuff I want to do," Rand said. "Where are you going after the funeral?"

      "Back to Noreen's. They'll be some of her and Nick's friends from the college coming over. Emma baked a cake and she'll make some coffee. The women will all get together and comfort Noreen. They'll all cry - you know. The way women do."

      Rand saw that Noreen's eyes were already filling up. Pritchard patted her back clumsily, saying, "There, there." Rand saw tears in the old lawyers eyes, too.

      "When do you want to take those gold bars into the jeweler?"

      "Tomorrow. Stores here open up around 9 o'clock." Pritchard said, blowing his nose in a blue bandana handkerchief. "Meet us over at Noreen's place around then, and we'll go over together. You planning to go see the sheriff now?"

      "Thought about it."

      "Save your energy. Navarette will be at the funeral. Everybody there will be a voter and he'll have lots of hands to shake."

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