Dana put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward to rest her chin on her hands. “I mean, if she wanted to leave her family, why not just take Ginger and the dog to the bank, drop ’em on Todd’s desk, and say, ‘I’m outta here’? Or leave ’em at home and give Todd a warning call. I mean, why?”
“Was that what you thought? That she might be meeting someone at the motel?”
“Well, the thought crossed my mind. I mean, that’s the cliché, isn’t it?”
“Do you think that’s what she was planning? To leave her family?”
“She wouldn’t say. But now that I’ve given it some thought, she really has been up and down in the past few weeks.” Dana frowned. “She’s preoccupied with something. I don’t know what.” She smiled painfully. “Life has been sort of a roller coaster for Stacie, if you know what I mean. Not always easy.”
“You sat with her during the game. Did she talk with anyone else during that time?”
“Sure. She knows a lot of people. And she and I sat right behind Coach Scott and Frank Dayan. It was fun hearing them talk. And I have to say…” She paused. “She’s never talked to me about it, but I know that she has a crush on him. I mean, you can see it. And it’s not a new thing, either.”
“No girl talk?”
Dana made a face. “Sure, some.”
“After the game last night, do you know if she went home right away?”
“I don’t know that.”
“Could she have gone back to the school?”
Dana looked puzzled. “Of course she could have. I mean…” She stopped. “She told me…” She stopped again. “Have you talked with Coach Scott?”
“No.”
“That might be a place to start. You know, the two of them have been sort of on-again, off-again?” She smiled, but with no humor. “Small-town romance sort of thing. She lived in Lubbock for almost ten years, and you’d think that would have cooled things down. But as soon as she came back here, boom. There she and Clint are, having their little affair again. Then the baby came, and she told me that she was going to break it off with Clint for good. But then again…”
“Then again what?”
“Well, she’d talked about her homelife now and then. She can’t stand that puppy, you know. That was Todd’s choice, and maybe good for Ginger, although I think that right now Ginger is really too young. The pup is spoiled, he’s nippy…but Todd thinks he’s wonderful. Of course, he’s at the bank all day, and doesn’t have to take care of the little squirt. If I take Ginger in for daycare, they’ll have to find a place for him. So there you go…” She shrugged and then paused.
Estelle waited patiently.
“She and Todd have never matched very well,” Dana said finally. “I mean, we make our choices, don’t we? Not that Eddie is the world’s most exciting person, but Todd Stewart always struck me as dull, dull, dull. And maybe that’s the attraction with Coach Scott, I suppose. Impossibly handsome, exciting—” She stopped quickly. “Well, I guess he might be exciting if you like talking about sports, huh? I mean, he’s the guy for whom the term one-track mind was invented.”
“You two talked about that a lot, then.”
“No, not a lot.”
“Stacie was looking for a way out, you think? Of that relationship with Scott?”
Dana mused about that for a moment. “I think so. Well no…” She held up a hand. “I know she was. At least that’s what she claimed.”
“I watched the game file. Stacie seemed comfortable with Scott. There was a clear shot of you all sitting in the bleachers, and at one point, Stacie props an elbow on Scott’s shoulder, from behind.”
“I remember that. I didn’t know the little rat with the camera was spying on us.” She smiled. “That’s Stacie, though. She’s a toucher, Sheriff. If she talks with you, she has to touch at the same time. So the arm on coach’s shoulder? I didn’t give it a thought. I suppose it made for a nice picture. That kid—Jim Kelly, I think it is—he does such a good job with the filming. And of course, he’s in love with Martha Grier, so he’s motivated. I’m surprised the whole video isn’t a portrait of her.” She frowned then. “Small towns are just wonderful, aren’t they?” She looked across at Estelle. “I keep wondering what will happen when Todd Stewart notices that as Ginger grows up, she starts to show some tallness genes that banker dad can’t account for.”
“You think so?”
Dana took her time answering. “I have no right to say that. So what do newspaper reporters say at a time like this? ‘Off the record.’ That’s what it is. I can think it, though.”
“And Todd doesn’t have a clue?”
“I seriously doubt it. “
“Stacie had given no hint to you that she was thinking of actually leaving Posadas?”
“None. I’d like to slap her a good one, right upside the head. This whole thing stretches the ‘What are friends for’ adage just a bit much.”
“Where did she go, did she say?”
Dana shook her head. “She wouldn’t tell me. She said that if she did, I’d tell somebody else, so it was better if I didn’t know.” She looked up at Estelle. “Well, duh. Yeah, I would. I’m worried about her, Sheriff. I really am.”
Dana looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve thought about it for the past few hours, and I’m thinking now that she wanted to leave everything behind. I suppose that everybody thinks about that, one time or another.” She shrugged. “Just like that. Everything. You could do that with a bottle of pills, or by just walking away. All she had with her was her handbag.”
“What was the deal at The Spree? How were you planning to handle that?”
“Oh, my God. That. I figured, hey, swing in, find the car, get Ginger and the little furry terror, and go from there. I was going to keep ’em until Todd came home from work…or maybe call him and ask him what the heck was going on with him and Stacie. But then I pulled into the lot, and there’s cop cars, and an ambulance, and the doors of the Volvo open…I even saw old Miss Barber overseeing the operation.”
She looked at Estelle, her face pained. “I should have stopped. I know. I should have. But I didn’t. For one thing, the sheriff was right in the middle of it, and I have to tell you, Bob Torrez scares me to death. I know it’s just his manner, Estelle, but my knees get weak just thinking that I might have to talk with him.”
And you still might, Estelle thought. “You’re not alone there, Dana. So you just drove on by.”
“Yes, ma’am. I just drove by, and I know I shouldn’t have. If I had seen your car there, I might have stopped.” She held her shoulders up, then sighed. “But probably not. I drove down here today, just so I wouldn’t have to be alone, with Eddie at work and all. And then Mom asked me to stay over, so I will. Her radar mind thinks something is wrong, so we’ll talk later tonight, when Dad goes to bed. And you know, thinking back on it, I decided that what was going on between Todd and Stacie was none of my business. And that’s what Mom will say, too. Kid and dog are safe, so…the easy route out of it.”
“I’ll ask you this again, Dana…do you think Stacie was going to the inn to meet someone?”
“I have no idea, Sheriff. Really, I don’t. If I knew, I think I’d tell you.”
“You think you would.” Estelle smiled.
“Yeah…I think. My brain’s a mess with all this.” Dana shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen Stace like that. Just switched off, you know? And up ’til now, everything seemed so serene, so…even happy, you know? At least content, if not ha-ha happy.”
“Someone was going to pick her up at the inn, maybe. Or she could have been catching the one-a-day bus.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. No long good-byes, either. She darn-near slammed the door in my face. And off she went, as if she had an appointment. Must have, I guess. She didn’t want to talk to me. And usually she really engages my little Adrianna, you know? But nothing. She asked if I’d pick up Ginger and the dog…that’s what she called
the puppy…the dog.”
“Did you actually see her enter the inn? She went inside?”
“I didn’t wait. I headed back toward the store parking lot. It was hot, and I was worried about Ginger, left in the car. You don’t just leave kids or pets to roast like that.” Dana picked up her glass again, but with no interest in its contents. “Could she be charged with something? Stacie, I mean?”
“Well, I’m not the district attorney,” Estelle started to say. “But…”
“But you’re undersheriff. You know the law. And you’ve seen this sort of thing happen before…and worse, probably.”
“Yes. Because Stacie made arrangements to have the child—and the dog—picked up, we’re not looking at child abandonment here, Dana. Less-than-perfect judgment, maybe. When you picked up Stacie, you didn’t know right away that she’d left her child and pet in the car. Why she didn’t direct you right then to the Volvo is a mystery to me, but she didn’t. Sometimes people make up their minds, and don’t want to be reminded of what they’re leaving behind. She didn’t want to hear one last ‘Mommy!’ wail from Ginger to break her resolve. We just don’t know.”
“But she could be charged.”
“Yes. Child endangerment, perhaps. We’ll see. That’s not important now. Ginger is safe. What’s important is finding Stacie. We need to make sure she’s safe, too. We don’t know her frame of mind, other than what we can assume from your description of events.”
“Does this sort of thing point toward…?” and her face screwed up in anguish. “Toward suicide, maybe?”
“I can’t answer that. But her life right now is a mess, Dana. The best thing we can do is find her and talk with her. I don’t care if she hightails it to Peru. We’ll find her.”
Dana looked squarely at Estelle. “That’s not really the job of the Sheriff’s Department, though, is it? I mean, if no big, awful law has been broken, that’s a lot of resources spent just to talk with a mom who maybe had a breakdown of some kind.”
“If it were that simple,” Estelle said, “but tragically, it’s not. Not this time.”
“Meaning what?” Dana’s voice was small, apprehensive.
“Dana, I drove down here because I wanted you to hear this from me first.” She set her iced tea glass carefully on the end table, and shifted position on the couch so she could face Dana directly. “Dana, Coach Scott was murdered sometime late last night. He was discovered by one of the school’s custodians. He had been using the team shower in the girls’ locker room. Someone made their way into the school, and shot him.”
Dana’s jaw hung slack as all the color drained from her face. Her right hand fluttered almost to her mouth, then quivered in mid-air. “What?” she whispered.
Estelle repeated herself, and Dana’s head shook back and forth as if fending off the words. “You can’t mean that.”
“I’m afraid that I do, Dana.”
As if her spine had lost all its means of support, she sagged back against the sofa cushions. “Someone shot him?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
The girl executed a slow-motion roll to one side, feet drawing up, until she lay in a fetal position, her face hard against the cushions just inches from Estelle’s knee. She held that position for only a moment, then pushed herself upright.
“You can’t…” she started to say, then changed course. “You think Stacie could do something like that? Is that why you came down?”
“I don’t know what she could do, Dana. All I know is that you two were among the last people to see the victim alive.”
“But because you saw the two of us sitting with Coach Scott, you started thinking that she might be involved somehow?”
“We go with what we have, Dana. It’s urgent that I talk with Stacie.”
“Was there…was there evidence left at the scene that points to her?”
“At this time, we’re still sifting through what we have, Dana.”
“But you said Coach was shot. Stacie doesn’t even own a gun.” She frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe Todd does. But…”
Estelle watched the inner struggles play across the young woman’s face. The undersheriff stood up and fished a business card out of her breast pocket. “If you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to call me. Twenty-four/seven. I know you’ll have questions, but right now, I’ve told you all I can.” She held out a hand and took Dana’s, holding it for a long moment. “And thanks for talking with me today. I really appreciate it.”
“This is all so horrible. It makes me sick. I mean, all those poor kids at school.” She looked up at Estelle. “But Ginger is okay? I mean, for sure?”
“For sure. She’s with daddy.” Estelle nodded. “And the dog.”
Chapter Twenty-two
On the one hand, Estelle had a hard time imagining Stacie Stewart holding a large handgun steady enough to pump four bullets into a former boyfriend, especially with the last round a careful coup de grace at point-blank range. Certainly, jilted—or jilting—lovers had murdered before, with guns, kitchen knives, baseball bats, poisons, toasters, or automobiles.
But balancing that doubt was Stacie Stewart’s curious behavior. It was hard to imagine a mother simply leaving an adoring family, from all reports taking nothing along but a conservative purse. No suitcase of clothes thrown hastily together the way distraught women did in movies. Who was Stacie Stewart meeting at the Posadas Inn? And from there, bound for where? Mexico? Texas? Montana?
If she had caught the one bus that stopped in Posadas each day, she could have ridden to El Paso, Albuquerque, Denver, or a dozen other destinations. She could have made a connection at any of the airports. She had had all afternoon to do so while authorities flogged around in the shower, photographing bullet holes.
Dana was right. As long as Stacie wasn’t involved in the murder, any other law violated would go down as a slap on the wrist, if that. Expending all-too-scarce department resources to satisfy a charge of endangerment of a child—especially since the child was essentially uninjured—was chasing a misdemeanor. That could be stretched to include felony abuse, in a case where the abandonment actually resulted in harm to the child.
Stacie, no matter how her unstable mental condition had been shaken up, had made arrangements with Dana to pick up the child and puppy. Dana was on her way back to The Spree parking lot when she was spooked. The undersheriff could easily imagine the district attorney stifling a broad yawn and dismissing the whole episode…unless the young woman could be tied to Clint Scott’s horrific murder.
Estelle tried to relax in the driver’s seat, letting the cruise control keep a smooth eighty-five in the passing lane of the interstate. If one of the deputies hadn’t done so already, she would get a recent photo of Stacie Stewart from Todd, and see if anyone at the Posadas Inn could shed light. After all, Stacie might not have even gone inside that motel—Dana had been too flustered to notice or remember. But the closer she drove to Posadas, the more difficult it was to concentrate on the case.
From brand new black asphalt so smooth that it lulled, her car flashed through a section where the tar strips, temporary stop-gap measures to hold the road together, beat a steady rhythm under the tires. As the Posadas, 12 miles sign approached, she thought of the hours and hours the two teenagers had spent in their high-powered sports car, flogging it toward this tiny village.
However the mileage was sliced, roughly a thousand miles separated Edgarton, Missouri, from Posadas, New Mexico. Edgarton, the quiet, picturesque town that was home to Leister Academy, was truly in the middle of nowhere, a good description for Posadas as well. Add to that some more miles—long miles—to Miss Trevino’s home in Castleton, Kansas. Sixteen hours at eighty miles an hour? No one did that, not even in the thundering Corvette. It had to be fueled, and just one stop blew the average. The kids had to eat, although a big bag of Cheetos and six-pack of Coke could take a teenager a long way. Estelle grimaced. And on the inter
state, state cops with finely tuned radar abounded. Touch even eighty-five, and they’d check the kids out, especially for the love of stopping a hot rod.
In a few more moments, she took the Posadas exit, amusing herself by pulling the Charger to a solid halt at the stop sign at the bottom of the ramp. The dash clock flashed 8:02 p.m., and she turned onto Grande northbound. The village, so small that a mile hike would take a pedestrian anywhere in town, was quiet for a Friday night, although The Spree’s parking lot hosted a fair crowd, shoppers reveling in the twenty-four/seven schedule the new store boasted.
The village’s seven bars and saloons would have ramped up as well. The huge crews working out at NightZone had bolstered the county’s economy in a spectacular fashion, and they would have come into town for a little noisy R and R.
For the first time since the closing of Consolidated Mining decades ago, there were moments when business actually bustled…enough that County Manager Leona Spears chortled over the increased tax revenues.
All of that vanished from Estelle’s mind as she turned south on Twelfth Street. A block ahead, haloed by the light on the other side of the street and catching the last glints from the setting sun, the low, lean profile of a maroon Corvette crouched at the curb in front of the Guzman residence. The hood was up, the rear hatch open, and the yawning passenger door faced the sidewalk. As she pulled up behind the rocket, a small head appeared to one side of the headrest, and in a moment Carlos shrugged out of the car, a huge grin on his face.
“Mamá, Francisco and a friend are here!” he shouted as she stepped onto the sidewalk. He stroked a hand along the swell of the back fender. “Isn’t this amazing? It’s hers!”
She reached out and tousled the thatch of black hair, then folded him into a hug. “Some surprise, huh? You’re going to spend the whole night out here, guarding it?”
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