“Not…just…now,” she said, and I could hear the smile. “Tell you what. Give me half an hour. I’ll be down.”
“And I’ll be here,” I said, and hung up. “Christ,” I muttered. Leona Spears was an engineer in the state highway department’s district office, and how she’d managed to wrangle the Democratic Party’s endorsement for the third time to run in the sheriff’s race I didn’t know.
Before that she’d unsuccessfully chased a county commissioner’s spot a couple of times and before that had lost a narrow race for a seat on the village council. Mixed in with all those disappointing election nights was an attempt or two at the school board. I wasn’t sure what the voters didn’t like about her, but evidently there was something. We had damn good highways, though.
And whoever was writing the notes about Thomas Pasquale considered her a candidate serious enough to be included in the little game. One thing I did know about Leona Spears-and maybe the author of the notes did, too-she was a regular contributor to the “Letters to the Editor” column in the Posadas Register, eager to vent her opinions on everything from child care to foreign policy.
I glanced at my watch again, hesitated, and dialed long-distance. It was almost 11:00 p.m. in Minnesota, but both Estelle and her physician husband were night owls. The phone rang five times with no response from either human or answering machine, and I was beginning to imagine the young couple sitting out in the backyard of their neat two-story house in Westridge, watching the display of northern lights while their two kids snoozed in the upstairs garret, their bedroom curtains hanging limp in the humid air.
What Estelle and Francis probably didn’t need just then was an interruption from New Mexico or anywhere else, and on the seventh ring I had started to put the receiver back in the cradle when I heard the familiar voice, clipped and efficient as always.
“Hello.”
“Francis, this is Bill Gastner.”
“Hey, hey, padrino,” Francis Guzman said, and then I could hear a hand muffle the receiver as he turned and shouted, “Estelle…it’s Bill!” The hand was removed, and he added, “It’s good to hear your voice, you know that?”
“Thanks. I hope I didn’t haul you out of bed, but I was returning Estelle’s call. How are you folks doing?”
“Well…OK, all things considered. It’s been hot and muggy. I’m not sure we’re used to the muggy part yet. I keep checking to make sure I don’t have mold growing in my armpits.”
“Green chili is the cure for everything, Doctor. That’s a scientific fact.”
“Yep, I suppose. And by the way, that last CARE package you sent was appreciated.” I heard the mumble of another voice, and Francis said, “You been all right?”
“Well, as you say…all things considered, which I’d rather not do at this point.”
“No sleep, too much food from the Don Juan, and lots of stress. Is that about right?”
I laughed. “Close enough, Doctor. It seems to be the magic combination for me.”
“We should fly you up here so folks at the clinic can study you,” Francis said. “Find out how you do it.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
There was more mumbling in the background that brought a chuckle from Francis. “Here’s Estelle. She keeps trying to pull the receiver out of my hand. Take care of yourself, Bill.”
“You, too.” I leaned back in the chair, making myself comfortable.
“Sir.” Estelle’s voice was soft and alto. “I hope things are going better for you than what Ernie Wheeler described.”
“They’re not. In fact, probably a good deal worse. But what else is new, sweetheart? How are you doing? How’s your mother?”
Estelle laughed, and I found that was the easiest expression of hers to bring to mind-the way her face lit up around those enormous dark eyes. “Remarkable might be the best word,” she said. “She’s not using the walker anymore. And the humidity doesn’t seem to bother her as much as the rest of us. Who knows why?”
“Maybe she got so desiccated living those eighty years in the Mexican desert that she can soak up more humidity than the ordinary person,” I said.
“Now that’s an interesting theory.”
“My only one. But let me get right to the ‘it’s none of my business’ part. I noticed the sign was down over on Twelfth Street. Maggie Payson tells me that you guys took it off the market.”
“Yes.” The one word carried more than just a simple nod of the head, and I got the sense that Estelle was weighing carefully just what she wanted to say. “We did that last week, sir.”
“You’re keeping an old man in suspense, Estelle.”
“How so?”
“Well, my razor-sharp detective’s mind leaps to a logical conclusion. If a family doesn’t want to sell their house, maybe it means that they want to live in it. Again. Sometime.”
Estelle sounded amused. “Or that they have a poor relative who wants to use it. Or they want to use it for rental property.”
“You don’t have any relatives in this neck of the woods, poor or rich. And owning a single-family rental from two thousand miles away doesn’t make any sense, either, unless someone else is going to manage it for you. What’s up?”
“Nothing yet, sir. Really. We’re just not sure right now. It’s going to take some time. Maybe in a month or two, we’ll know more.”
I frowned, not liking the sound of that. “Cheer up,” I said. “In four months, the snow will be stacked up so deep around your front door that you’ll long for some Posadas dust. That’ll make up your mind for you.”
“It’s not really that, sir.”
“Then what is it?” I said with a trace of impatience. “You sound like something’s wrong.”
There was a short silence, and I could hear Estelle take a deep breath-more of a sigh of resignation. “I guess in part it depends on how Francis’s hand heals up, but in the past few days we’ve been thinking that isn’t it, either, really.”
“His hand?”
“I guess I didn’t tell you, sir.”
“No, I guess you didn’t.”
“Francis has been riding his bike to work. He enjoys that. Some klutz driving a van cut him a little close and smacked him in the shoulder with the wing mirror.”
“Ouch.”
“He lost his balance and crashed into a parked car. His left hand got cut up pretty badly. There was some tendon damage.”
“For God’s sakes. Permanent, you mean?”
“We don’t know for sure yet. The clinic has been wonderful, as you can imagine.” She made a little sound that was half laugh, half hum of reminiscence. “But what got us talking was something Mama said one evening, not too many days after the accident. We were talking about just the sheer number of people in a place like this. We’re six miles from where Francis works and our house here would probably be considered rural by most eastern standards, but there are always people. People, people, people. At any intersection it seems like there’s always a car or two, you know what I mean? And of course, downtown Rochester is a different universe altogether.”
“Like Posadas on a busy Friday night,” I said.
Estelle laughed. “Oh, sure.”
“What did your mother say?” I pictured the tiny, ancient woman, dark eyes darting this way and that, not missing a thing.
“It was more just a passing remark when one of us said something about the opportunities for Francis here. I think the way she put it was, ‘Es posible quemarse en su propia salsa dondequiera.’”
“That’s helpful,” I said.
“It translates roughly as something like, ‘You can stew in your own juice just about anywhere.’”
“And that means what? Did she elaborate?”
“Of course not,” Estelle laughed. “We just got the look, as the kids call it. You know, one eyebrow up a little bit, just a hint of disapproval. Anyway, we got to talking, and decided not to limit our options. To make a long story short, we took the Twelfth Street h
ouse off the market. And it felt like the right thing to do.”
“That’s good news,” I said.
“Well, I talked with Mama a lot after that. She’s pretty sharp. She’s enjoying the experience up here, but she’s afraid Francis is going to take his talents where the rich folks live.” Estelle did a fair imitation of her mother’s dry, cracked voice. “‘And then you’ll be just like them, hija.’” She laughed. “That’s her greatest fear, I guess.”
“She’s accepted the fact that she can’t take care of herself anymore? That she’s not going back to Tres Marias?”
“Oh sure. She’s a remarkable woman, sir. She’s very at ease with herself.”
“About the house here,” I said. “I can think of a couple renters, but I’m not sure I’d want to inflict them on your property, as nice as it is.”
“Who’s that?”
“Tom Pasquale and Linda Real. They’re having landlord trouble.”
“They? They’re living together now?”
“Ah…I’m glad to hear that someone else is out of the loop besides me,” I said. “I didn’t know until yesterday.”
I told her about Carla Champlin’s tiff, and Estelle said, “Let’s hold off on anything like that for a bit. Give us some time to decide what we want to do. In another couple of months we’ll know if Francis is going to recover some of the fine motor skills in his hand. If not, then he’s going to have to rethink a little.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I hope everything works out for him.”
“We’ll just have to see.”
“And you? What are you doing?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know just yet. I have to admit, I’ve enjoyed just being a mom the past couple of months. There’s a lot to do around here. The kids love it.”
“I bet they do.”
“I think I’ll just putter along until Francis makes up his mind. And speaking of people making up their minds, how’s the campaigning coming along? That’s what I wanted to ask you.”
“Bob is his usual taciturn self,” I said. “He’s making the Republicans and Democrats nervous.” I told Estelle about the Pasquale letters that I’d been handed and added, “Leona Spears is due here any minute. She’s the latest on the hit list.”
“Leona again, eh?” Estelle said. “That just about guarantees that the letters are a political stunt, then, sir. Somebody figures she’ll take the idea and run with it.”
“That’s what I thought. Tom’s not taking it all too well, though.”
“I would think not. The Sisson thing is interesting, by the way. Ernie brought me up to speed on that.”
“You have any suggestions or intuitions?” I asked.
“From fifteen hundred miles away? I don’t think so, sir. If it’s not money, it’s passion-that’s what the statistics say. Who’s Grace or Jim having an affair with these days?”
“I didn’t know that either of them was.”
“Well, sir, you know that the daughter was busy. That’s a start. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out what would make someone angry enough at Jim Sisson that they’d want to kill him.”
“You see? The folks around here need Francis Guzman’s medical expertise, and we need you. I’d love to see Sam Carter’s face when I told him that Estelle Reyes-Guzman was coming back as Bob Torrez’s undersheriff. He’d have a stroke.”
Estelle laughed. “Hang in there, sir. And when you see Leona Spears, give her my regards. That should be safe enough, from half a continent away.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “Although she’ll probably find something in our conversation that will serve as fuel for a scathing letter to the editor. About the community driving away its best and brightest. Something like that.”
We talked for a few more minutes about inconsequential things, and when I realized I was just jabbering away to keep from hanging up the phone, I said, “Give the keeeds a kick for me, will you?”
“They talk about you a lot, sir. Maybe you’d think about a Christmas visit.”
“Me visiting there or you visiting here?” I chuckled.
“We’ll talk about it,” Estelle said.
“Do that. And take care of yourself.”
I put the receiver back in the cradle. Christmas was almost six months away. That seemed like a couple of lifetimes.
Chapter Twenty
Like most of us, I suppose, Leona Spears had a variety of guises-but I wasn’t prepared for the one that walked into the Public Safety Building at 10:33 that Wednesday night.
I had just gotten a cup of fresh coffee and was headed back to my office when she appeared through the front door, sweeping down the short hallway toward Dispatch. Had the puddles still been standing on the tile, the hem of her garden dress would have soaked them up.
Pausing with cup in hand, I smiled at her as if she really were welcome. “Coffee?” I said.
“No thank you. Not at this hour,” she replied as she rolled her eyes and frowned, making it clear that she thought I shouldn’t be drinking the brew late at night, either. She was probably right, but what the hell.
“Nice outfit,” I said. The dress was bright yellow with large orange sunflowers, low at the neck, and long enough to hide whatever it was that she had on her feet. She darted a squint my way, as if unsure of my remark’s intent.
“You don’t like it?”
“I like it just fine,” I said, gesturing toward the door of my office. “Around here, we get so used to the dull utilitarian look that a burst of color is a nice change. Come on in.”
Leona was a heavy woman about my height. She was no stranger to dull utilitarian, either. I’d seen her often enough on various highway department job sites, clipboard in hand, hard hat firmly in place. I guess I had expected the same khaki or blue jeans that she had worn on the job.
Her long blond hair, streaked by too much time out in the sun, was braided Heidi-fashion into a generous single braid on each side of her head. The two braids were drawn back and then arranged in a bun at the back. As she flowed past me into my office with a cloud of fragrance from her bubble bath following, I wondered how long the hairdo took her to construct.
“So,” I said, walking around behind my desk. “How’s politics?” I indicated one of the chairs. “Make yourself comfortable.” She was carrying a slim leather attache case, and she swung it into her lap as she settled.
“Politics is as usual, Sheriff,” she said. “As usual.” She lifted the leather case and set it on edge, as if she were about to open it. She paused. “So bring me up to speed on this Sisson mess,” she said.
I took my time sitting down, moving as if something might break if I landed too hard. “Bring you up to speed?”
“Yes. What’s with the investigation?”
I grinned, probably the wrong thing to do with Leona, since she would think I was grinning at her-which was correct in this case. “Leona, we generally don’t make the details of an ongoing homicide investigation public.”
“I’m not the public. I’m a candidate for sheriff. As such, I should be brought up to speed on current issues or concerns affecting the department.” She fired that out without a pause. Maybe she’d memorized it for just this occasion. I had a mental image of her lying in the tub, a great mound under the soap foam, practicing that very line until she had it just right. I was pleased I’d given her the opportunity.
“Well, I tell you what, Leona. As we get closer to the election, if I think there’s a need I’ll have both you and Mike Rhodes in for a familiarization session. Right now, the Sisson case is not open for discussion.”
Leona’s eyes narrowed again, this time at the sound of her Republican opponent’s name. She regarded me for a few seconds, no doubt assessing where my weaknesses lay. I’m sure that I had a sufficient number of those that the search wouldn’t take long.
“Robert Torrez is conducting the investigation?”
I nodded but said nothing.
“So one candidate has full in
formation and the other two are left out in the cold.”
“Leona, don’t be ridiculous.” It was the wrong thing to say, of course, but I just added it to my string. Leona bristled. For the first time, it began to dawn on me just how stupid this woman really was. I leaned forward and put on my most serious gunnery sergeant’s face. “Bob Torrez is undersheriff of Posadas County, Leona. That happens to be his job at the moment-what the taxpayers pay him for. He isn’t actively campaigning, and it wouldn’t make any difference if he were. The investigation is a team effort, and he’s one of the leaders of that team. In fact, he is the leader.”
I sat back. “If and when you win the election on November seventh, Leona, I’ll be happy to open our files to you on November eighth. One hundred percent. If you so choose, you’ll walk into this office in January knowing every dark nook and corner, all the dark and dirty little secrets. But until then, the way we run an investigation isn’t for public consumption.”
She pressed on doggedly. “So how close are you?”
“To what?”
With a grimace of impatience, she snapped, “To finding out who killed Jim Sisson.”
“I think the appropriate phrase that we give to the newspapers is that ‘investigation is continuing.’” I smiled helpfully.
“Isn’t it true that you’re basing your guess that Jim Sisson’s death was a homicide on some photographs taken by Linda Real?”
“No, that’s not true, Leona. Where did you hear that zinger?”
“I have my sources, too.” Smug wasn’t one of her more attractive expressions, since it scrunched up her plump cheeks and made her otherwise attractive blue eyes small and piggy.
“Well, trade ’em in for new ones.”
“You’re saying Linda Real didn’t take pictures?”
I sighed, trying to hold my temper. “I don’t think you heard me say that,” I said. “You asked me if we had based our decisions on Deputy Real’s photographs. I said we hadn’t. Deputy Real recorded evidence photographically. Any decisions we make are based, hopefully, on evidence.”
“Well, it’s the same thing,” Leona replied.
“No, it’s not,” I said gently, but it wasn’t a discussion I wished to pursue. “So…what did you bring to show me? A nice letter from a citizen concerned with the welfare of visiting travelers from south of the border?” I nodded at her attache case.
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