Statute of Limitations pc-13 Page 23

  After a moment, he leaned back. “You don’t actually have anything that ties the two incidents together, though. Am I right?”

  “Nada.”

  “If you’re right-and I’ll be the first to admit that your intuition has a pretty good track record-you’re saying that somehow there’s a connection between Janet Tripp and myself. Something in common.”

  “It would appear so, sir.”

  “Well, you know my shadowy past pretty well, sweetheart. The next step is to find out what you can about Ms. Tripp. Some little thing. What’s Bobby say about all this?”

  “He comes home today, Padrino.”

  “Well, he’s got a good head on his shoulders, and he’s got a hell of a lot of good connections with all kinds of dark little corners around the county. Go poke around and see what you come up with.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  “Of course I’ll be all right.” He patted the smooth maple of the chopping-block counter. “I’m in my castle now.”

  “Maybe you’d like to come over for dinner later tonight?”

  “Sofía already invited me,” he said with a grin. “She promised something with a name about this long,” and he held his hands a yard apart. “Something that involves red snapper and chile. How bad can that be?”

  “Ah, huachinango a la veracruzana,” Estelle said. “She’s been planning that for a while. She complains that there’s no fresh red snapper in Posadas.”

  “This is surprising?” Gastner laughed. “Let’s see how the day goes, sweetheart. We all know what happens when we try to plan something.” He rose and stepped to the coffeepot to refill his cup, and Estelle slipped back into her jacket.

  “I’ll let you know what Bobby says.”

  “Do that,” Gastner said. “I’ll be home all day, and after that, I’ll be over at Twelfth Street as chief taste-tester for the chinchang.”

  “Huachinango, Padrino.” He accompanied her to the front door.

  “It’s a good thing you guys aren’t going to take her up on her suggestion to move down there. I can just imagine my North Carolina tongue trying to wrap itself around that Aztec language,” he said.

  “Mayan, Padrino.”

  “But you’re Aztec, aren’t you?” His warm eyes took in the outlines of her face with affection. “You wouldn’t fit in down there, anyway. Wise decision.”

  “Nos vemos,” she said with a resigned shrug. “There’s a whole world of things I have to think about. One step at a time. Right now I’m working on making it through to dinnertime.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The expression on Robert Torrez’s face jolted Estelle to a stop at the doorway of the sheriff’s tiny, bleak office. He was always master of the threatening glower, whether there was any bite behind it or not, and the dark storms on his broad, handsome face were now classic in their proportions.

  He looked up so slowly it appeared that his neck muscles were actually a set of smooth hydraulic pistons. His skull clicked to a stop as his eyes locked on Estelle’s.

  “Welcome back,” Estelle said, although she could plainly see that words of welcome were wasted on the sheriff. Whatever orders the Albuquerque physicians might have given to their patient, it didn’t surprise Estelle that the sheriff had headed for his office the moment he arrived home in Posadas.

  “Yeah,” Torrez said. He flipped a piece of peach-colored paper across his desk toward her. “What the fuck is this?” Almost never profane, especially when he knew that women were within hearing range, the sheriff startled Estelle with his word choice.

  She picked up the paper as she sat down on one of the military surplus steel folding chairs, immediately recognizing the style of the author. Leona Spears was adept at losing elections, true enough. She’d lost every one she’d tried, including the one against Bob Torrez years before. But Leona was a meticulous planner, never-ever-leaving something to the last moment if it could be planned out, organized, and strategy-checked beforehand.

  The paper, perfectly organized onto a single page for maximum effect, was titled “Preliminary Needs Assessment and Budgetary Planning, Posadas County Sheriff’s Department.”

  Torrez sat like a lump, glowering, while Estelle read the paper. She understood it immediately, and had to agree that Leona’s logic was unassailable. If Leona was to be considered for the county manager’s position, then it made sense to scope things out before she faced the county commission. What did each department manager or supervisor need or want in order to effectively manage his turf? Leona would have no way of knowing unless she first asked, and then later observed and judged performance for herself.

  But Estelle knew that it wasn’t the planning that irked Robert Torrez. Being asked how many new patrol units he anticipated needing for the coming year was not radical. There was no implication that whatever he asked for, he was asking for too much. Asking what kind of units was perfectly logical. Asking the sheriff what he thought to be the weak spots in his organization was eminently practical, and just good management.

  Estelle read the paper again. Nowhere on the sheet was there the faintest hint of direction or suggestion from Ms. Leona Spears. It was impossible to judge what Leona thought by what she asked on the paper.

  “I got two and a half dead people on my hands,” Torrez said, but there was nothing amused in his tone. “First I find out that Eduardo died, then Janet Tripp gets herself killed, and then Bill Gastner has his skull split open by some whacko with a grudge. I get sidetracked up in the city while a hundred doctors jam needles into me and drain half my blood.”

  “Bobby, please…”

  “Jesus, Estelle. Leona Spears?” He fairly shouted the woman’s name. “What the hell is going through their little pointed heads?”

  “Whose heads?”

  “You know whose heads, damn it. The commission. Didn’t you go to the meetings?”

  “Yes.” There was nothing prevented him from attending as well.

  “Leona Spears…cannot be county manager,” Torrez said emphatically. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “She can and will be if the commissioners vote that way, Bobby.”

  “Bullshit.” He shifted his weight and rapped his shin against the unforgiving military surplus desk, and he slammed the offending drawer shut with one swift kick of a black boot. “I mean, look at this thing.” He picked up the paper again. “She’s got something against white paper, for Christ’s sakes?”

  “Maybe she ran out,” Estelle said, amused.

  “Why doesn’t she spray it with perfume while she’s at it. What are they thinking?”

  “Well, I talked with Dr. Gray a while ago…I don’t even remember when it was. But a majority of the board is leaning toward giving Leona the job. She has a final interview with them on Tuesday. I suppose that’s the rationale for this.” She nodded at the paper. “It won’t hurt her case if she does some preplanning-if she finds out what we want and need. How long has that been lying on your desk?”

  He ignored her question. “Gray said all that, or is that what you think?”

  Estelle hesitated, then shrugged. “Bobby, so far, it hasn’t mattered much to us who the county manager is. Kevin was good,” she said, referring to the previous manager, “but the one before him was an idiot. They come and they go. We both know that.”

  “Leona Spears needs to go, not come.”

  She laughed. “We’ll see, Bobby. Besides, Leona is local, for one thing.”

  “Loco, you mean.”

  “Well, maybe. But that’s important to the board, at this point. They don’t want some stranger coming in who doesn’t have some sympathy for the way we do things down here. Maybe they have a point. There’s no one who knows the county better than Leona does, except maybe yourself or Bill Gastner. I can see why they’re willing to give Leona a chance. She’s a professional planner, she’s good at working through budgetary matters, and she has to be pretty good at managing people, or she wouldn’t have been with the highw
ay department as long as she has.”

  “She’s nuts,” Torrez said.

  “Maybe. She cornered me last week sometime and asked me a couple questions that didn’t sound too crazy.”

  “Like what? She never talked to me.”

  Small wonder. “For one thing, she wanted some figures on how much it would cost to have enough vehicles for the deputies to take the units home when they were off-duty.”

  “You know we can’t afford that.”

  “Leona wants to investigate applying for grants. That’s one of her specialties, I guess. Anyway, Bobby, I liked the sound of what she wanted to do. With the county having to provide coverage for the village now, it made sense to me to have each deputy with immediate access to a vehicle. If Leona Spears can make that happen, I’m all for it.”

  Torrez flipped the paper off to one side in contempt.

  “You want me to go through that and write up some answers?” Estelle asked. “She isn’t asking a lot…and there’s only a day or two left now to put together an answer that might do us some good.” She refrained from adding, We could have talked about this last week.

  “If you want to do that, go ahead,” Torrez said. He made no move to hand her the paper, and she reached across and retrieved it. “So fill me in. What’s going on, other than Leona Spears? Christ.”

  As succinctly as possible, Estelle reviewed their progress, and he listened without interruption, feet now propped up on his desk. When she’d finished, he let one leg slip off the desk, his boot thumping on the floor.

  “Mike stopped by,” he said abruptly. He picked up a 3 x 5 card. “Janet’s sister lives in Kentland, Kansas. Monica Tripp-Baylor. I was going to call her…give me something to do.”

  “Okay. When you do that, I’d like to know something about the parents.”

  “She died.”

  “The mother? So I’ve been told. But Mike says that Brad Tripp just sort of walked out on the family. I’d like to know what the real story is.”

  “That’s what happened,” Torrez said. “They didn’t get along, and he moved out. Lived in town for a while, then hit the road.”

  “I was trying to recall the incident of him on the stairway in the old building,” Estelle said.

  Torrez actually smiled. “He’d been tearin’ up Pike’s Saloon. Remember that place down past the Don Juan that burned a year or so later?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just a bar fight,” the sheriff said. “I happened to be cruisin’ by, and took the call. When I brought Tripp back to the office, he decided to take me on. Didn’t work,” he added with some satisfaction.

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.” He shrugged.

  “And after that incident?”

  “Don’t know. I didn’t see him all that often. Eduardo would know, but he ain’t talkin’,” Torrez said bluntly.

  “Well, sure, Bobby.”

  “No doubt about it. Probably wasn’t a soul in the whole town that Eduardo didn’t know.”

  “Agreed. But, as you say…”

  “We need to sit down and talk with Essie, if you think you need to know something about Brad Tripp.”

  Estelle mulled that for a moment. Essie Martinez was living through the least merry Christmas of her life. Digging through what she recalled of her husband’s tenure as police chief would be painful and, under the best of circumstances, of suspect accuracy anyway. But the sheriff was right. It was another angle, and at this point, any angle could help.

  “How about if I do that,” she said. “I’ll take Bill along-he and Eduardo worked together for years. He might think of something to nudge Essie’s memory.”

  Torrez glanced at his watch. “This afternoon?”

  “Sure. Why not? Bill was going to come over to the house for dinner anyway. We’ll swing by Essie’s first. You’ll be home?”

  “Home or here,” Torrez replied. “I got to pay attention to my therapy now, you know.” He said the word with so much venom that Estelle laughed, and that only deepened his glower.

  Chapter Thirty

  Less than an hour after Estelle left Sheriff Robert Torrez’s office early on that Sunday afternoon, her phone chirped. She had just parked the county car in her driveway after running several errands, and Francisco was halfway across the front yard toward her.

  “Guzman,” she said, and held out a hand to her son. She was surprised to hear the characteristic monosyllabic greeting from the sheriff.

  “Hey,” Torrez said, and the one word didn’t carry a flood of good will and holiday cheer. The intervening hour hadn’t improved his mood. “Where you at?”

  “I just pulled into my driveway,” she replied.

  “You got a few minutes?”

  No, I don’t, she almost said. I’m going to spend the rest of this Sunday with my family. “Sure.” She reached across the seat and grabbed the two plastic sacks of groceries with her right hand, and handed them to Francisco, whose small hands deftly twined around the tops. “Give those to tía, hijo,” she said.

  “We got us a problem,” Torrez said. “I’m in my office.” The connection broke.

  “I thought Padrino was coming,” Francisco said.

  Estelle sighed. “He is, hijo. After a little bit. Right now, Roberto el Gruñón needs to see me.”

  “He could come over here,” Francisco said. “Tía and abuela have been baking all day.” His face beamed, and she saw the trace of powdered sugar near the left corner of his mouth. “There’s lots to eat.”

  “Bobby’s not hungry right now,” Estelle said, and almost added, and that’s not the way el gruñón works. “You save some for Padrino.” She closed the car door. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  The little boy stepped back. “Okay.” The resignation in his tone was heavy, and he didn’t turn toward the house, waiting as if there were a chance his mother might change her mind.

  “These things happen, hijo,” she said.

  Her son’s expression was almost comical. Had he been old enough to frame the right words, he would have muttered, “Don’t make it a habit.”

  As she drove back to the sheriff’s department, impatience prompted Estelle to run down her mental inventory of potential problems that might have reared their ugly heads, and she found herself centering on Mike Sisneros-if ever there was a lost soul, Mike was the very definition. With no clearcut direction for the case to go, nothing positive for him to pursue, all he could do was pace in circles and fume. The weekend even made it worse.

  The sheriff’s office door was open, but Estelle paused at the counter of the dispatch island, where Gayle Torrez was busy organizing and straightening after two days of unplanned absence. As if the sheriff had been lying in wait for the first sounds of his undersheriff’s footsteps, his voice interrupted her greeting for Gayle.

  “Hey?” His command was easy to interpret: If you’re there, get in here.

  “Neanderthal man summons,” Gayle said, and beamed at Estelle. “You want to go out for some late lunch and leave him?” She knew her husband too well to be intimidated by his moods.

  Estelle laughed. “Uh,” she grunted in reply, bending over and dangling one arm like an ape. She straightened up. “Did you see Jackie’s cartoon, by the way?”

  “The one with Leona visiting Bobby in the hospital?”

  “That’s the one. Has he seen it yet?”

  “Ah, no. Jackie showed it to me yesterday.” She made the okay sign with index finger and thumb. “Perfecto,” she said, and then glanced toward the sheriff’s office door and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Linda said we should save it for the calendar.”

  “That’s just what he needs,” Estelle agreed. The annual calendar project had become legendary, with photos of the sheriff’s department staff snapped during the year-some gorgeous portraits with stunning New Mexico scenery in the background, some loaded with pathos, some comic shots of deputies caught during unguarded, less than complimentary moments. “It
’ll make a great cover.”

  Torrez appeared in his office doorway, and for a moment his eyes narrowed at the tête-à-tête, obviously called at his expense. “Hey,” he said again, with somewhat less command.

  “Uh,” Gayle grunted, a fair imitation of Estelle’s first reply. She reached out and hugged Estelle’s shoulder. “You have a good day,” she said.

  “You bet.”

  “You seen this?” Torrez said by way of the only greeting Estelle could expect to hear. He held up a folded copy of a metro Sunday newspaper.

  “No. I forgot it was even Sunday,” Estelle said. “Are they giving Frank Dayan ulcers again?” The Posadas Register publisher lived in constant apprehension that the large metro dailies in the state would make his struggling weekly look foolish. Most of the time, it wasn’t difficult to do.

  “I don’t care about Dayan,” Torrez said, which Estelle knew was no understatement. In fact, she was surprised that Bobby had bothered to read anything but the sports pages and the comics of the Sunday paper. He turned to go back inside the office. Estelle glanced back at Gayle, and the sheriff’s wife waved a hand in dismissal. Estelle took the proffered newspaper as the sheriff settled carefully behind the desk, and Estelle saw a flinch of pain cross his face.

  “We made the front page,” he said. “Did you know he was going to do that?”

  “Who, and do what?” Estelle asked. She flipped the paper over and saw the headline, neatly centered over four columns at the bottom of the page.

  Posadas Not So Peaceful

  Murder, Assault Stalk Village Over Holiday

  She frowned at the byline. “Todd Willis. That’s interesting. He didn’t go to Tucson after all?”

  “Willis?”

  “The young man who played Joseph at the motel on Christmas Eve. Friday night. The reporter who wrote this whatever it is.”

  “I’m not worried about him and his dippy stories,” Torrez growled, and he grunted to his feet, crossed the small office, and closed the door. “What I want to know is who the ‘source’ is, if it ain’t you.”