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Montoya explained the reason for his call, telling him about the murder, then about finding the card and the duffel bag full of clothes.
     
    “So…here’s my question,” Montoya asked. “Was there any question about Presley acting on his own? Did you ever suspect he had hired someone to kill his girlfriend?”
     
    Bradley frowned. “No. As far as we know, he acted alone. Believe me, if there had been someone else to blame, Presley would have done it. Why do you ask?”
     
    “We have information that Tutuola was carrying a very large amount of money on him before he was killed. I’m trying to figure out where it came from. Someone might have wanted it bad enough to kill for it, but I need to know who else knew Tutuola had it.”
     
    “What kind of money are you talking about?” Bradley asked.
     
    Montoya remembered the Realtor’s description of a “bagful of money” and took a wild guess. “We have reason to believe there could have been as much as a million dollars in American money, maybe more.”
     
    “Presley was worth a hell of a lot more than that,” Bradley said. “But when he was turned over to the American authorities at the border, he didn’t have anything on him.”
     
    Montoya’s heart skipped a beat. “He was arrested in Mexico?”
     
    “Technically, he wasn’t arrested there. It’s a little complicated, but here’s the deal. Mark Presley’s private secretary was a woman named Marsha Benton. Her best friend was a woman named Cat Dupree. When Benton went missing, it was Dupree who suspected foul play. We didn’t have any proof of Dupree’s accusations against Presley, so she made it her business to do some investigating on her own.”
     
    “What do you know about this Cat Dupree?” Montoya asked.
     
    “Oh, she’s sort of a local legend here in Dallas. She works as a bounty hunter for a Dallas bondsman named Art Ball.”
     
    “Really,” Montoya said, and made another notation.
     
    Bradley sighed. He remembered all too well how disgusted Dupree had been with them for not going after Presley sooner. He had to admit, the man could easily have gotten away with murder if she hadn’t been tracking him.
     
    “Yes. It all came out in Dupree’s statement when she turned him over to the Texas authorities at the border.”
     
    Now Montoya was impressed. “So it was this Cat Dupree who tracked Presley into Mexico?”
     
    “Yes. She and another bounty hunter trailed Presley to an abandoned hacienda outside Nuevo Laredo. If I remember correctly, there was an explosion and then a fire during a gun battle. I believe Dupree stated that there was another man on the premises, but that he was an unknown who’d died in the fire.”
     
    “Ah…the fire,” Montoya said, more to himself than to Bradley. That would have explained the healing burns that Realtor Chouie Garza had mentioned seeing when he sold Tutuola the property.
     
    “So do you know where I can reach this lady bounty hunter?” “Call Art Ball Bail Bonds. Hang on, I’ll give you the number,” Bradley said.
     
    Montoya waited, then wrote down the number, thanked Bradley for his help and disconnected. Just as he was about to make a second call to Dallas, all hell broke loose.
     
    There was a loud explosion; then the desk at which he was sitting actually moved a good foot across the floor. Outside, he could hear screaming, and then the sounds of sirens.
     
    “Madre de Dios!” he cried, as he ran to the windows.
     
    Even though he had a clear view of what had happened, he found it difficult to believe his eyes. Three buildings less than two blocks away were on fire, and the flames were already jumping to the adjoining rooftops. Something had blown up. Whether it was an accident, arson or an attack remained to be seen.
     
    He ran back to his desk, grabbed his gun from a drawer and headed out of the building as fast as he could run. Solomon Tutuola’s murder would have to wait.
     
    Three
     
    The morning dawned