The Fourth Time is Murder pc-15

by Steven F Havill

  “Is someone trying to rip off the sweepstakes company?”

  “That’s a possibility, and I’ve thought about that. But I can’t imagine a legitimate publishing house doing business that way. Why would you use an unknown courier company, especially when so much money is involved, when you could choose one of the established firms? Anyway, you hit it exactly right. What bothers me is that if someone is trying to scam money out of Joe and Lucinda Baca, it makes sense to start small with a close friend-like Serafina here-to build confidence. That’s what I can’t put behind me.”

  She looked at the small shed where Serafina’s Jeep had been stored.…The big SUV would have been a snug fit. The door had been only partially closed.

  “I see smoke,” Madelyn said. Estelle turned quickly to look at her, and the writer quickly amended her remark. “I mean from your ears. You’re thinking so hard.”

  “Sure enough.” She started the car and backed out to the dirt lane. “I need to check one thing,” she said.

  “If you want my opinion,” Madelyn said, “so much winning in a tiny village would be enough to spook me, too.”

  “But when the winner wants to take the money so badly, it’s easy to say it’s just a freak of statistics,” Estelle said. “‘It’s just good fortune.’”

  “What are we after, then?”

  “If the sweepstakes thing is a scam, then that leads us down an interesting road. Serafina Roybal was the first one who won. I haven’t heard of anyone else…no one in Posadas, as far as we know. No one has called the sheriff’s office to complain about a possible scam, and we get calls all the time, complaining about this and that. How did Chris Marsh target Serafina, then? How would he know about her?”

  “You could drive through a village like this one, point at any little house, and say, ‘Let’s start with this one.’ That’s an easy thing to do.”

  “You could do that,” Estelle agreed. “And maybe that’s what happened. Especially after the publicity of Joe and Lucinda winning the state lottery. The snag there is that you don’t cruise through Regál, not with these little lanes and cow tracks. You can’t really see Serafina’s house from the main highway. That’s assuming that you find the village in the first place.”

  “That’s the new bumper sticker: ‘Where the hell is Regál?’” Madelyn quipped.

  “Everything else was too well planned, at least until that deer decided to run across the road. Someone was being very, very clever. Just very clever.”

  “Where to now?”

  “Serafina’s granddaughter is here for a visit. That’s who owns the Subaru.”

  “You know her?”

  “I met her once or twice a dozen years ago.”

  “What’s she going to tell you?”

  Estelle looked across at Madelyn and smiled. “The crash victim was from Las Cruces.”

  “Isn’t that a bit like meeting a stranger who says he’s from such and such city and you say, ‘Oh, I have a friend who lives there. Do you know so and so?’ Talk about long shots.”

  “The granddaughter is not only from Cruces. She’s also a student at the university there. So was Chris Marsh. There’s always a chance, no matter how slight.”

  “If that’s all you have,” Madelyn said philosophically.

  “That’s all we have. And I’ve never trusted coincidence.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The Riveras lived in the only home in Regál built after 1960-in this case, long after. The gray and white double-wide mobile home had been purchased on Fernando Rivera’s eightieth birthday. They probably wouldn’t have considered the snazzy new digs if their hot water heater hadn’t ignited the utility room of their historic home, resulting in a fire that burned the old adobe hollow.

  The couple, celebrating their seventy-fifth wedding anniversary this Sunday in February, were now both ninety-six years old, and looked seventy-five. Their only concession to advanced years was welcoming their grandson, Danny, to share their home.

  A fair collection of vehicles adorned the dirt yard, with a large metal shop building off to the east, its double door rolled all the way to one side. Two scruffy short-haired mutts bounced stiff legged out toward the road, barking frantically as the county car neared the driveway.

  “Oh, nice,” Madelyn muttered. “You don’t have to tell me to stay in the car.”

  A young man appeared in the door of the shop and whistled sharply. The dogs ignored him. When it became clear that the white county car was actually pulling into his yard rather than passing through, he shook his head and angled across toward the dogs.

  “Come here,” he shouted. The dogs did, ratty tails wagging. He grabbed the larger female by the collar, and the other dog followed along. In a moment, both were snapped onto a chain run beside the house. “They bite,” he said as Estelle got out of the car.

  “That’s nice to know,” she said.

  The young man wiped his hands on his jeans, which along with his sleeveless denim shirt were so dirty that they could have stood up by themselves. “What can I do for you, sheriff?” he asked. One green eye drifted out of coordination with the other as he glanced toward her car. With the dogs safely tethered, Madelyn had lowered her window. If the breeze was just right, she would have been able to smell the pungent aroma of grease and perspiration. Danny Rivera looked as if he’d crawled out from under a greasy truck on a hot August afternoon.

  “How have you been doing, Danny?” Estelle asked. “Are the folks all ready for their big day?”

  “We’re all fine,” he replied, and glanced at his watch, nestled in a crust of grease and dirt on his right wrist. “I figured to get a couple hours’ work done before gettin’ cleaned up, and then I got side-tracked.” His grandparents’ seventy-fifth wedding anniversary was occasion enough to slow down the young workaholic, who managed to put more miles on his county road grader than any other three county employees combined.

  “I just stopped by Serafina’s,” Estelle said.

  “She okay?” the young man asked quickly, before Estelle had a chance to continue.

  “She’s fine, Danny. She mentioned that Irene might be over here.”

  Daniel Rivera’s full blond eyebrows wrinkled with puzzlement, and his errant left eye drifted a bit, an altogether fetching expression, Estelle thought. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve known Irene since she was like so.” She held her hand three feet off the ground. “I just wanted to say hi. We were passing through, and saw her car at Serafina’s. Her grandma said we might catch her over here. You guys were working on the Jeep?”

  “Oh, that,” the young man said. He thrust his hands in his back pockets and nodded toward the shop. “Irene’s inside. Come on in.” He peered at the police car. “Your friend there’s welcome to come in, too. Grandpop and Grandmamá are in the house, if you want to say hello.”

  “I may see them this afternoon. My mother may want to come down, too.”

  “That’d be cool. She don’t have to drive all this way, though. There’s the main reception at the VFW in Posadas.” He turned toward the shop, but the sound of her cell phone stopped Estelle in her tracks.

  “Let me catch this, Danny. I’ll be along in just a second,” she said, and turned back toward the car as she opened the phone. “Guzman.”

  “Sorry to bother you,” Brent Sutherland said. “You clear?”

  “For a minute,” Estelle said. “I’m with Danny Rivera at his grandparents’ place.” A long pause followed, and Estelle could picture Brent leaning forward, staring at the huge county map on the wall in Dispatch. She heard a familiar voice in the background, and Sutherland said, “Are you clear for a call?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hang on a second.” In a moment County Manager Leona Spears’ voice warbled over the air.

  “Forgive the interruption,” Leona said, “but I wanted to tell you that I had a long conversation with, oh, what’s his name. Something Parker.”

  “Elliot
Parker?” Estelle asked. It was part of Leona’s fetching tact that she had taken the time to check with the Sheriff’s Department dispatch before contacting Estelle, even though the undersheriff’s personal cell phone number was one of the first on the county manager’s speed-dial list.

  “That’s the one. He with the beer bottle-pitching son. He called me at home, for mercy’s sakes. On a Sunday morning. That’s dedication to being a real nuisance.”

  “Well, ‘nuisance’ is a kind term, Leona,” Estelle observed.

  “I’m trying, I’m trying,” Leona chirped. “He wanted to make sure that we were going to fire Deputy Collins. Can you imagine that? We’re not going to do that, are we?” Her question raised all kinds of interesting turf questions, Estelle reflected, since the sheriff did his own hiring and firing-his was an elected office, not subject to approval or supervision by the county manager. Still, they had all come to value Leona’s input.

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Wonderful. Because that’s what I told Mr. Parker. That was my understanding after talking with Bobby late last night. Mr. Parker, bless his arrogant little soul, didn’t like hearing that. And for some reason, he didn’t want to talk to Master Robert. I can’t imagine why.” A little chuckle followed that. “The more Mr. Parker can deflect things away from his little boy, the better, apparently.”

  “I don’t think Judge Hobart is deflectable,” Estelle said. “It’s in his hands, not ours. Anyway, as far as Dennis is concerned, the sheriff has a new training program in the works. I think it’s the right thing to do. Much more stringent qualifications for all of us.”

  “I heard about that. It’s going to cost us some money, but I think it’s worth it, and a wonderful, proactive notion. I tried to explain that to Mr. Parker, but it went in one ear and out the other. Anyway, to make a long story short, he’s threatening to sue us, for what, I don’t know. He made it an ultimatum, and that’s when I lost my patience, I’m afraid. He’ll probably call you, too, and I wanted you to hear it from the horse’s mouth…what I told him, I mean.”

  “And what’s that, Leona?”

  “I told him in no uncertain terms that it was going to be wonderfully entertaining watching this whole mess unfold in public court. I said we’ve needed to bring this underage drinking thing out in the open for a long time, and then I told him that I hoped he had a really good lawyer, because we do. A drunken young man throwing a full bottle of beer at an officer and damaging government property, and the officer injured by flying glass? My goodness.”

  The glass chip did draw a speck of blood, Estelle thought, but she didn’t interrupt Leona’s roll.

  “And selling liquor to minors, and on and on,” Leona continued. “Probably more than that. I was really wound up. I told him that it was going to be fun.” She sniffed. “I think at the moment I’m feeling a little ashamed of myself for losing my temper.”

  “Some people bring out the best in all of us, Leona. What did Parker say to all this?”

  “Well, now he’s angry with me, which is probably a good thing,” Leona laughed. “He hung up on me when I said, ‘Well, why don’t you sue me, then. Let’s just sue everyone, while we’re at it, if that’s the only way you can figure out how to make a living.’ I probably shouldn’t have been so melodramatic, but there it is.”

  “He’ll get over it,” Estelle said. “His son will get a slap on the wrist, maybe a little bit of probation, and that’ll be it, unless Hobart’s in a really foul mood.”

  “Except for the repair of the vehicle,” Leona said. “I plan to pursue that if Judge Hobart doesn’t order restitution. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’m his latest target, so not to worry.”

  “Thanks, Leona. I wasn’t worried, but I’m glad that things will work out. For Dennis’ sake.”

  “He’ll be the better police officer for it,” Leona said. Her voice took on a more serious tone. “He wasn’t even scheduled to work, was he? I mean, when the incident happened?”

  “No. He was finishing up some paperwork at the end of a long day. He took the call as a matter of convenience. He was headed home that way, and no one else was close. He volunteered, and I okayed it. So chalk it up to my mistake. I was tired, but I knew that he was, too. I let him go anyway. But at that moment, with the situation as it was, it seemed the expedient solution.”

  “Oh my. We are sooooo shorthanded, aren’t we,” Leona said. “Well, that’s one of my priorities. We’re going to do something about that. But you’re busy, and I’m rambling. Are we making progress with that horrible truck crash situation?”

  “‘Progress’ may be too optimistic a word, Leona.” She glanced at the shop, but Danny Rivera had disappeared inside.

  “Well, that’s my nature, dear. If there’s anything I can do to facilitate, let me know.”

  “I will, Leona. Thanks for all you do.”

  “Is that wonderful magazine reporter with you yet?”

  “She is.”

  “I look forward to having the chance to visit with her, if she wants.”

  “I’m sure she will, Leona. I’ll tell her you called.”

  “Thanks so much. Well, I’m out of your hair now. Ta, dear.” The phone went dead, and Estelle laughed.

  “Our county manager,” she said to Madelyn. “She’s one of a kind. She wants to talk with you sometime.”

  “She’s on my list,” Madelyn said. “I’ve heard so many different stories, I don’t know what to expect.”

  “Expect a charming interview,” Estelle said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The sun was already baking the gravel in front of the shop as Estelle walked away from the car. As she neared the shop, she could smell the tang of hot steel. By afternoon, the uninsulated building would be toasty warm, as the February sun baked the expanse of roof and wall. She paused in the doorway. Off to the left, a huge red four-wheel-drive pickup rested on blocks, parts from its brakes and wheel hubs laid neatly on clean rags. A quick glance around the shop revealed another older truck with all of its guts removed, various collections of parts here and there, and, incongruously, a slick fiberglass bass boat on a new, white trailer. The cowling had been removed from the massive outboard motor on the boat’s transom.

  “We can get that oil changed while you’re here,” Danny said cheerfully. “County ain’t too good at keepin’ up with maintenance. I know that for a fact.”

  “That’s true,” Estelle said. She stepped carefully toward the four-by-four, mindful of the litter of tools and cords on the floor. Toward the back of the shop was an impressive collection of tires. Three of them were spread out on the floor, and Irene Salas turned from her inspection of them.

  Estelle wound her way through the litter, and Irene Salas approached to greet her. Stout-framed and athletic, Irene had poured herself into fresh blue jeans and a denim shirt whose tails were tied at her waist. “Irene, welcome home. I was just over talking with your grandmother, and she said you were visiting.”

  “Hi,” Irene said, clearly confused, even a bit guarded.

  “The last time I saw you, you were about like this,” Estelle said, indicating a small child. “I’m Estelle Guzman.”

  A flare of recognition touched Irene’s eyes. “Grandma Serafina talks about you all the time,” she said, and smiled warmly. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you when you drove up. That sun’s so bright. You’re sheriff now?”

  “Undersheriff,” Estelle said. “Bobby Torrez is sheriff. Remember him?”

  “The big scary guy who looks like he belongs in the movies…wow.”

  Estelle laughed. “That would be the one. Your grandmother is thrilled that you came over. Are you here for the anniversary?”

  “Isn’t that great?” Irene replied. “They’re so cute,” and she looked affectionately at Danny Rivera. “I can’t even imagine seventy-five years together.”

  “That’s a long, long time. Irene, your grandma said you’re a junior now?”

  “I’ll be a se
nior this fall.” She beamed. “Two more semesters and I get to be unemployed.”

  “There’s always grad school,” Danny offered.

  “Yeah, well,” Irene said. “There is. But I’m not sure yet.”

  “What are you majoring in?” Estelle asked.

  “Anthropology,” Irene said. “I think. It’s much, much harder than I thought, especially now that we’re into statistics and all that sort of thing. But I’m loving it…well, most of it, so it’ll work out.”

  “That’s an interesting road,” Estelle agreed. “When you’re finished, you’re headed off to Africa or Peru, or someplace like that?”

  “Actually, I don’t have to travel that far,” Irene laughed. “I’m really drawn to the border country.” She turned to look at Danny Rivera with undisguised affection. “People like Fernando and Maria? My grandma? I can’t even imagine what this country was like when they were young. No pavement, no RVs pouring through, no fence,” and she looked out the shop door. “Only the iglesia is the same.”

  “Until Emilio passes on,” Danny observed.

  “See,” Irene said, with a heartfelt intensity that impressed Estelle. For added emphasis, the girl reached out and punched Danny Rivera on the shoulder. “What’s going to happen then? You watch. Within a month of Emilio’s passing, I bet someone puts an electric light over the doorway. You watch.” She made a face. “That’s the first step.”

  “Well, I’m not the one who’s going to do it,” Danny said in self-defense.

  “You better not.” The pugnacious expression softened. “If I’m not around, you kick over their ladder for me.”

  “The ethnographics of the border country interest you, then,” Estelle said, and Irene Salas nodded vigorously.

  “Not the cities, though,” she said. “I could care less about the metro areas. But like Fernando and Maria? Or my grandma? Or your mom, Estelle? Serafina talks about her all the time, too. This was such a neat stretch of country before politicians ruined it. All the tiny little villages? I love it.” She grinned. “We have some rip-roaring arguments about it all in class,” she said.