The Big Gamble - Michael Mcgarrity [9]
“Such as?”
“Parties, beer busts, a make-out place?”
Page Seton looked upward as if to seek divine relief from stupid questions. “Not by me, Deputy, and certainly not by any member of the family that I know of.”
“I’ll need those family names and phone numbers,” Clayton said.
While Seton assembled the information, Clayton asked a few more questions. He left knowing that the Tully ranch and farm had been a family business for over a hundred and twenty years, that Page Seton was the financial officer of the company, and that the ranch operation was headquartered on the east side of the Capitan Mountains, where her parents, Morris and Lily Tully Seton, were staying while the spring works, a semiannual cattle roundup and calf-branding event, took place.
Clayton also learned that Hiram Tully’s stroke had not hampered his ability to communicate. He decided to interview Tully first and then swing by the ranch on the back road to Capitan. In his unit, a four-by-four Ford Explorer, Clayton keyed the microphone and checked dispatch for messages. No calls had come in from either the Santa Fe PD or Chief Kerney, but the state police crime scene supervisor reported that a match had been made with the skeleton found in the cellar and Anna Marie Montoya’s dental records.
Clayton’s interviews with Hiram Tully and Morris and Lily Seton served only to confirm what Page Seton had told him. He came away thinking that he’d accomplished nothing more than eliminating some highly unlikely suspects. The chances of solving an eleven-year-old homicide were slim at best. If no creditable leads materialized, background investigations on everyone in the Tully family would need to be done.
He looked over the list of family members Page Seton had provided. Excluding the four people already interviewed, another eight would need to be contacted. He’d ask Quinones and Dillingham to start the ball rolling if they came up empty on the field interviews near the crime scene.
Even without any tangible progress, Clayton remained pumped about his assignment. He was particularly eager to go to Santa Fe and do some real digging into Anna Marie Montoya’s past. Besides, it would be a kick to clear a case that had stymied Kerney. He smiled at the prospect of it.
The day was more than halfway gone. With all that was left to do, Clayton figured he had another full day or two of work before he could leave for Santa Fe. He called the tribal day-care center where Grace worked as a teacher and told her that he wasn’t going out of town right away.
“When will you go?” Grace asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Clayton said. “Maybe the day after tomorrow.
“Sometime soon, I think all of us should go to Santa Fe.”
“I can’t take you and the kids with me.”
“I know that,” Grace said. “I’m thinking of a weekend family outing.”
“If we left early in the morning, we could make it a day trip,” Clayton said, thinking about how pricy Santa Fe could be.
“That wouldn’t be enough time,” Grace replied.
Since neither Clayton nor Grace worked in high-paying professions, Clayton constantly worried about family finances. “I thought we were saving money to build the addition,” he said.
“A weekend trip to Santa Fe won’t bankrupt us, Clayton.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Will you be home for dinner?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I’ll see you then,” Grace said before hanging up.
He checked in with dispatch. Kerney still hadn’t called back. He gave his ETA to Carrizozo and told the dispatcher he’d be at John Foley’s real estate office when he got into town.
The office was in an old building where Central Avenue curved and became E Avenue. One of the town’s first permanent structures, it had started out as a tin shop in the early part of the twentieth century. Foley’s late-model Cadillac was parked at the side of the building.
Inside, Foley pressed a cup of coffee into Clayton’s hands and sat with him, making small talk. A big man in his late seventies, Foley had slightly hunched shoulders and carried some extra pounds around his midsection that spilled over his