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—
At the recommendationof the supermarket manager, Letty and Hawkins drove to the center of town and found a parking place in a public lot a block away from the plaza. They wandered around for a while, stopping at a bookstore, where Hawkins bought a tourist guide to New Mexico. Since it was August in New Mexico, and Hawkins didn’t have a hat, Letty bought him a pale straw Panama hat in a men’s store and caught him admiring himself in store windows.
“Forty-five dollars,” Hawkins marveled. “A hat like this, in London, would cost at least a hundred pounds, and maybe more.”
The plaza was surrounded by low adobe or adobe-look buildings, mostly selling stuff that nobody needed. Half of the grassy park of the plaza was torn up, another construction site.
“Maybe you could volunteer,” Letty suggested.
“No, in this heat, I’ve wilted,” Hawkins said. One side of the plaza was largely used up by a La Fonda Hotel, which looked pleasant. Although, he said, “We could check in there. We’ve got at least forty-five minutes to wait.”
“Check in for forty-five minutes?”
“Not going to take me long. Don’t know about you,” Hawkins said.
“You’re taking some things for granted, Alec,” Letty sniffed.
He smiled and said, “No. The way you kissed me back, I don’t think so. Let’s face it, youwantthe Hawkins.”
He said it just right and made her laugh. He added, considering himself in the hat, “Do you suppose they have a cowboy boot store here?”
“Cowboy boots wouldn’t go with the hat…but I’d be amazed if there wasn’t one somewhere in town,” Letty said.
They’d passed a couple of empty storefronts and Hawkins nodded across the plaza at one of them, that still had a sign advertising cowboy stuff. “Apparently their cowboy store closed. A shame.”
—
Greet called: “Italked to Lucas a minute ago. Therewasa silent alarm, it did go to a cell phone, and we’ve got your witch at the NSA trying to figure out where the phone was.”
“So they may be running again,” Letty said.
“Yes, but we needed to know what was at that house,” Greet said.
When Letty got off the phone, Hawkins looked at his watch: “We better get back to the Starbucks. Your father should about be here.”
As they walked back to the car, Hawkins said, quietly, “Two observations from vast experience: if you have two rock and gem stores, oreven one store selling seashells, in any given location, you’re in a tourist trap. Also, any place that advertises museum quality art doesn’t have any museum quality art.”
“Have a lot of seashells, do we?” Letty asked.
“A sufficient number, at any rate,” Hawkins said. “My parents put them in the garden.”
—
They got backto the Albertsons Market as Lucas and Rae were getting out of the SUV to stretch.
Lucas came around the back of the truck and asked Hawkins, “Where’d you get that hat?” and Letty said, “Easy, there. I bought it for him, and he looks terrific.” To Hawkins, she said, “Dad’s a clotheshorse. He’ll have a hat like that by the end of the week.”
“That’s true,” Rae said.
They all got coffee, looked at a map to the ski resort, and Letty called up a satellite view of the target house. A vibration between Hawkins and Letty got Lucas looking at him, and he eventually said, “Alec, glad to have you, but I don’t know exactly what you’re doing here.”
“My MI5 colleagues are researching Scott’s background, trying to pinpoint anyone who might be helping him. People he’s known in the past, who are now in the States. We’re also talking to the French DST, about contacts in Médecins Sans Frontières who might be here. I’m working as the liaison for that—passing information to people I trust on the ground. And since Scott’s British, you know…”
Lucas nodded, said, “Okay.” He glanced at Letty, who could read his mind, and who ignored him, and he added, “You guys lead.”
Back on the road, they fought their way through more roadconstruction and a tourist traffic jam, then drove north out of town, across a broad scrubby plain with mountains on both sides and up ahead. A few miles out, they branched to the east on a highway that cut across farmland and then into another small town, Arroyo Seco.
As they left town, Letty looked out the side window and said, “Wowsa. Look at that.”
