* * *
About two months later, I got a call from Henry Wade. “Mondragón is back in New Mexico, Lily. He’s surfaced again, showing his hand by pulling another intimidation scheme on some investors. It’s his style. New Mexico’s gotta be where his money is. He’s trying to make the last dime before he pulls out. He must think we’re stupid. He knows we’re on his trail.”
“Arrogance is more like it,” I said.
“What tied him to this last one was what you told us about your friend’s nephew’s death. Mondragón makes it look like a Mexican drug killing to keep everybody confused and afraid. Now we know he had that young man Tomás killed to scare his Anglo employers into selling to him last year, and he’s using the same techniques again. We’ll run him to the ground. But be careful. He’s disappeared on us more than once.”
After Henry and I hung up, I went outside and sat on the back steps in the warm sun of a late January thaw. It was a weekend, so things were pretty quiet on my end of town, and I could hear geese on the other side of the river. Patsy Cline and Pecos Bill were with me, and they sniffed around the perimeter of the yard and under the trees. A mottled gray cat, a green-eyed, friendly one who’d come up on the porch when the dogs weren’t there, was sitting in the sun in a far corner of the bare garden. Patsy and Pecos hadn’t seen her, so she had the time to calmly stretch her back, and then slip undisturbed under the fence. I wished her a safe journey, as I sung off key with Lennon and McCartney on the outdoor speakers: “Get back, get back/Get back to where you once belonged/Get back Jojo, go home.” Patsy and Pecos, intent on another adventure, continued their way past the garden as if she hadn’t been there.
As I sat in my own patch of sun, I thought about the meaning of home and belonging somewhere; and then about the promise I’d made months before, and what I wanted to do. After a long time, I got up and went inside; the sun was about to set, and it was getting cold. As I stood at the kitchen sink windows, and looked out at the bare branches of the cottonwoods glowing in the last of the day’s light, the dogs squirmed around me, and their wagging tails beat against my legs. I picked up the phone, scrolled to a number in it, and dialed.
A cheerful, lilting voice answered, “Ee, Lily, you no good bum! ¿Que pasa?”
About the Author
Linda Seals is a writer and garden designer living in northern Colorado. She’s been writing much of her life but didn’t turn her attention to fiction until, early one winter morning, an amusing character danced out of a dream with stories to tell. Inevitably, Linda was compelled to give voice to fellow gardener and reluctant sleuth Lily Raffenport. She discovered that they both feel much of life is humorous.
A baby boomer from Dallas “raised up” in Oklahoma, Linda is a born storyteller, eager collector of the details of life, and grounded in a love of the land, giving her stories a true sense of place, and bringing her experiences in the Southwest evocatively to the page.
Linda has also worked in the publishing and newspaper industries as an art director; owned a graphic design firm; and been a warehouse worker packaging seeds until she found her calling in the plants and dirt of gardening that led to the words and world of writing.
Linda continues her work as a professional gardener as she happily writes the next Lily Raffenport mystery, Paid in Spades.
Contact Linda:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/linda.seals.391
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/LindaSealsBooks
Blog: https://www.wordsofweedsdom.blogspot.com
Gardening website: https://www.weedsgardening.com
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the first readers of the manuscript: Lynn Kendall, Sandy Salvhus, Laurie Delmerico, Connie Strayer, Dawn W. Petersen, Alice “Ori” Auer Connor, Cindy Savino, and Phyllis Dunn. Their encouragement helped me be a writer. Thank you, thank you.
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