Bad Penny by Sharon Sala

only fly in the ointment was Conchita’s behavior. His absences were frequent but never long. This time his captain had given him a week to follow up on any leads he found, and after that they would either close the case or it would go cold.
     
    Montoya didn’t like unfinished business. He was hoping for a good ending. And along the way, he would find something nice to bring back to his wife as a peace offering. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the way his life worked.
     
    It was early evening when he drove into Agua Caliente. It had been at least four years since he’d been here, although he’d seen his tia Maria only last year at Christmas, when she’d come to Chihuahua to stay with his mother, her sister. It didn’t surprise him to see that very little had changed. Such was the way in the small villages of Mexico. With no way of supporting a family, fewer and fewer of the young people stayed in the places where they’d been born. They usually gravitated toward the cities or tried crossing the border into the United States.
     
    He drove up to the small adobe casa where his aunt and uncle had been living for the past forty-five years and got out. He stretched wearily, then reached inside the car to get the gifts he’d brought with him, before going to the door. Even though his uncle’s house had a fairly fresh coat of whitewash and, inside, wooden floors to walk on, their existence was at poverty level.
     
    A couple of chickens were pecking the ground a short distance away, and there was a goat tied to a stake. A blast of hot air hit him as he shut the car door and shifted his gifts more securely. He glanced around at the cluster of small adobe buildings and shook his head.
     
    Dios Mio…Agua Caliente is a blister on the face of the earth.
     
    Before he reached the door, it suddenly swung open. The little woman in the doorway threw up her hands in a gesture of delight, then hastened forward, talking a mile a minute.
     
    Luis laughed as he was led inside. For the moment, his quest, Conchita’s unhappiness with him and the demands of his job were forgotten. It wasn’t until they’d had their evening meal and were sitting around chatting about family occurrences that his uncle finally asked him what he was doing there. Luis began to explain.
     
    “A short time ago, a man was murdered in Chihuahua. We have few leads on the case, other than the fact that he was in possession of a large sum of money when he came to our city. We believe he was probably killed for it, and I’m backtracking his route. What we do know is that shortly before he came to Chihuahua, he was in a fire in Nuevo Laredo that nearly killed him, and that he had recently done business with a man from Dallas, Texas.”
     
    “Ah…so you will go to the United States?” his uncle asked.
     
    “Sì, but not for long, I hope. Conchita is not happy with me at the moment.”
     
    His uncle frowned in understanding. “It is difficult to do your job, is it not?”
     
    Luis nodded. “Unfortunately, crime does not wait on holidays and important family dates.”
     
    His tia Maria had been listening from the chair in front of her hand loom, where she was working on another serape to sell to her neighbor’s uncle, who came through Agua Caliente on an irregular basis and took their goods to the seaside resorts of Puerta Vallarta, Cozumel and even Mazatlan.
     
    “This man you seek. He is very bad?” Luis nodded. “Es verdad…El Diablo…muy mal.” She gasped. “El Diablo?”
     
    “I will show you a picture, then you will understand for yourselves,” Luis said, and ran outside to his car to get the file.
     
    He came back with the booking photo, and then handed it to his uncle, who looked at it and frowned, then handed it to his wife.
     
    “Dios Mio! A monster, for sure,” she said. She started to hand it back to Luis, then hesitated and looked at it again. “You know…my friend, Paloma Garcia, talked of a man she once knew with such