A Discount for Death Read online

  “I don’t think so. I’m sorry I got held up. I had the best intentions.”

  “Don’t give it a second thought. I know how these things go. Give my regards to Roberto.”

  “I’ll do that.” She turned to glance toward where Sheriff Robert Torrez had been standing talking to Perry Kenderman, and was startled to see that two additional figures had arrived and were hunkered over the motorcycle. “I’ll see you tomorrow, probably.”

  “Sounds good. Be careful.”

  Estelle switched off the phone. She looked across the intersection again and saw that District Attorney Daniel Schroeder had turned his attention from the bike to her. He regarded her thoughtfully from across Twelfth Street. If he was actually listening to what the man standing beside him was saying, he gave no indication. Estelle started across the street, and Schroeder reached out a hand to contact Chief Eddie Mitchell’s shoulder. Mitchell looked up and saw Estelle. The two men waited by the motorcycle as she approached.

  Mitchell stood with both hands on his hips, blunt jaw clamped askew as if daring his opponent to throw his best punch. At one point, both Estelle and Eddie Mitchell had been sheriff’s deputies before roads diverged. Mitchell had left to join the Sheriff’s Department in Bernalillo County, an area that included the huge metroplex of Albuquerque. He had passed the lieutenant’s exam and then abruptly quit to return to the village of Posadas to take the chief’s job when Eduardo Martínez retired.

  Whatever forces drew Mitchell, a native of Pittsburgh, to the tiny New Mexican village was anyone’s guess. Other than innocuous remarks like “Pretty country,” he’d never bothered to explain.

  A stocky bear of a man, Mitchell was as quick on his feet as a dancer. He waited, hands on his hips, brows furrowed.

  “Evening,” Schroeder offered. As usual, Schroeder’s suit was immaculate, and the light from the street lamp winked off the polished gold rims of his glasses. The same height as Mitchell, the district attorney gave up a good fifty pounds to the chief of police.

  “Hello, sir,” Estelle said. “Chief.” She nodded at Mitchell, and he extended his hand. His grip was firm, and he didn’t let go. His light blue eyes locked on Estelle’s, and for a long minute, he stood silently, as if trying to read her mind.

  “Bobby says he’s going to impound the patrol car,” Mitchell said finally. His voice was a light tenor. He released his grip.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is there something to make you think that there was contact between the car and the cycle?”

  “No. It’s just a very good possibility.”

  “A possibility?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mitchell searched Estelle’s impassive face for a moment. “Kenderman tells me that the cyclist ran a stop sign at Highland, right in front of him.”

  “That’s not true, sir.”

  “Tell me what’s true.”

  “She may well have run a stop sign, or half a dozen of them, during the time he was chasing her. But it didn’t happen the way he says it did.”

  Schroeder ran his right hand through thinning blond hair. “Did the Volvo lady see anything?”

  “Her name’s Maggie Archer. The bike crossed directly in front of her, but she had time to stop. There was no contact. Even as the bike hit the pavement and started somersaulting, the patrol car entered the intersection, right in front of Mrs. Archer’s car. She had a grandstand seat. Mears is talking with her right now.”

  “I see he is,” Schroeder said. He thrust his hands into his pockets. “Tell me what you think happened, Estelle.”

  Briefly, Estelle recounted what she had first heard, and then seen. “It was a chase over several blocks, sir. If Mrs. Archer traveled six blocks during the time that I heard the police car and the bike, then they could have covered twice that distance.”

  “You heard them turning this way and that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mitchell shook his head and gazed down at the bike. He toed the back tire with his boot. “So if Kenderman says that he initiated chase at the corner of Twelfth and Highland, he’d be lying.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you can’t see any way around that.”

  “No, sir.”

  Mitchell puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly. “And no lights or siren.”

  “No, sir.”

  “And no conversation with Dispatch.”

  “No, sir. The radio in the patrol car was turned off when I looked inside. Even if he had it on during the chase, he didn’t use it. The sheriff was home, monitoring the channel. He says that Kenderman wasn’t talking to Dispatch.”

  The chief rocked the cycle’s back tire back and forth against the small amount of slack in the drive chain. “I think we all need to confer with Officer Kenderman,” he said finally. “I’d like both you and the sheriff in on it.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Right now, Kenderman thinks that it’s his word against yours…and I assume he doesn’t know where you were standing when you heard the chase—or even if you heard it, for that matter. Is that correct?”

  “I don’t see how he could.”

  “Good. Then let’s leave it that way for a little while,” Mitchell said with a curt nod. “There’s always a chance that there’s a great big unknown in all this mess. We need to give Kenderman every opportunity.” He looked hard at Estelle. “After all, there is the possibility that what you heard wasn’t related to this accident.”

  “No, sir, that’s not a possibility,” Estelle replied, but Mitchell shrugged.

  “We’ll talk to the officer again and see. Is it all right if he rides down with me?”

  Estelle hesitated. She liked Eddie Mitchell and trusted him, but she wanted nothing to inadvertently bolster Perry Kenderman’s confidence. “I’d prefer that he rode in with one of the deputies, sir.”

  “In custody?”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “All right.” Mitchell pivoted at the waist to survey the intersection. “Let’s get this mess cleared up.”

  As the chief stepped away from the bike, Dan Schroeder held out a hand and touched Estelle on the arm. “I need to talk with you for a minute.” So far, he hadn’t said a word about the fatality, and it was evident to Estelle that he’d been patiently waiting for that business to be wrapped up.

  Schroeder watched Mitchell’s blocky form retreating across the intersection toward Bob Torrez and Perry Kenderman. For a moment he remained silent with his thoughts. “Are you ready for grand jury tomorrow?”

  Estelle sighed. “If I fall asleep on the stand, poke me.”

  Schroeder managed a tight smile. “Long day, eh.”

  “Very.”

  “I had a call from George Enriquez last night.”

  Estelle raised an eyebrow but said nothing. A long-time Posadas resident and owner of an insurance agency for more than twenty years, George Enriquez qualified as a town father as much as anyone. But beginning at nine o’clock Tuesday morning, a grand jury would start reviewing evidence that Enriquez had engaged in fraudulent insurance practices for more than a decade. District Attorney Schroeder would be seeking indictments on twenty-eight separate counts of insurance fraud, including one count that involved deputy Thomas Pasquale as a victim of the scam.

  “Enriquez wants to deal.”

  “Deal? I wouldn’t think he had much of a bargaining position, sir,” Estelle said.

  “In part, it’s the same old song and dance…give him a few weeks, and he’d clean up the mess, make financial amends—the same sort of nonsense that we’ve heard from him too many times before.”

  Estelle nodded and waited.

  “And then he said that he wanted to meet with me today.” Schroeder turned toward the utility pole and looked at his watch. “At two PM in my office in Deming. That was seven hours ago.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  Schroeder straightened his sleeve carefully over the watch. “He never showed.”

&nb
sp; “Maybe he changed his mind.”

  “That’s possible. But he’s not home, and the answering machine at his office says that they’ll be closed until Friday. It gives an 800 number for emergencies.”

  “You mean he skipped?” The idea of George Enriquez uprooting himself and fleeing Posadas was ludicrous. Whenever she saw him, Estelle thought of stuffed animals. Enriquez had the same hugability, the same sort of flannel personality, as a favorite old polyester pet. He wasn’t the kind to go furtive, slipping across the border to life on the gold coast. After state insurance investigators had finished pawing through his office files during the past months, there wasn’t much left to hide.

  Besides, nearly every incident of fraud that Estelle and state officers had investigated had been penny ante, the sort of incomprehensible crime for which the monetary rewards were counted in occasional hundreds. In Deputy Pasquale’s case, George Enriquez had told the young man that his motorcycle policy was held by a major company. Each month, the financially naive Pasquale had paid his premium directly to Enriquez. When Pasquale had made a minor claim, Enriquez had made prompt settlement with a personal check. Pasquale was pleased, and completely nonplussed to discover later that he had no policy, that in all likelihood his monthly insurance payment was going directly into Enriquez’s pocket. Other instances with other customers were sometimes lesser, sometimes greater in financial risk.

  “Skipped, schmipped,” Schroeder said with a shrug. “We don’t know. Neither does his wife. He left the house this morning. That was the last time she saw him.”

  Estelle had talked with Connie Enriquez several times and had found the woman an enigma. She wasn’t the kind who would sit home and twist rosary beads around her knuckles as her husband’s world fell apart. At one point in the investigation into her husband’s affairs, she had simply shrugged her gargantuan shoulders and said, “He made his bed. Let him lie in it.”

  “He didn’t give any hint about what else was on his mind? When he talked to you on the phone? You said ‘in part’ it was the same old story.”

  “Uh huh.” Schroeder made a face. “Let me just tell you what he said, word for word. First, I said that I didn’t see that we had anything to talk about, that he could ask to testify before the grand jury if he wanted to but that he didn’t have to. I made it clear to him that he didn’t need to be there, that his attorney didn’t need to be there. He understood all that. I told him that the grand jury session would probably take most of the week and that he had at least that much time to put all his ducks in a row. That’s when he said, ‘I can give you something.’ I said, ‘Something like what?’ And then he went off on this long song and dance about all his little shenanigans being so inconsequential.”

  “The Popes would have liked to have heard that when their house burned down,” Estelle said. “Had anyone survived to file a claim.”

  “I know, I know,” Schroeder said impatiently. “And we’ve been through that. When he finally wound down, I said again, ‘Something like what?’ And this time, he said, ‘I can give you Guzman.’ ”

  Estelle heard perfectly clearly, but out of stunned reflex said, “Give you what?”

  “ ‘I can give you Guzman.’ That’s what he said. ‘I can give you Guzman.’ ”

  “I can give you Guzman,” Estelle repeated.

  “Correct.”

  “And then what did he say?”

  “Nothing. He said he couldn’t talk on the phone. That he’d see me at two PM in my office in Deming. End of story. He never showed. Like I said, he’s not home now.” Schroeder looked at his watch again. “Or at least he wasn’t fifteen minutes ago.”

  “So what did he mean by that?” Estelle regretted the question as soon as it slipped out.

  “I don’t know,” Schroeder said. “I was hoping you could shed some light.”

  “I’m the leadoff witness tomorrow for the grand jury. He’d be able to figure that out.”

  “Of course. You’re the officer who put the case together before my office horned in.” Schroeder managed another half smile. “The implication is obvious—that he knows something about you that I need to know—something that throws your grand jury testimony into question.”

  “Or that he was just bluffing.”

  “That’s possible. Unlikely, but possible.” He took a deep breath and hitched up his slacks, then smoothed his suit coat back into perfection. “Keep me posted on what happens with Kenderman,” he said. “And we’ll take Mr. Enriquez one step at a time. Maybe he just buried himself in a hole somewhere with a good bottle. Being told that you’re the target of a grand jury investigation is a fearsome thing, Estelle. It shakes lots of scary things out of the tree. Run and hide isn’t an unusual reflex.”

  Estelle nodded, her empty stomach still clenched in a knot. She watched Deputy Tom Pasquale slide into the village police car, start it, and pull away, headed toward the county maintenance barn and the secure bay the sheriff’s department kept there. Perry Kenderman stood and watched, flanked on one side by Sheriff Robert Torrez and on the other by Chief Eddie Mitchell. The ambulance had already departed with the pathetic bundle that had been Colette Parker.

  “Shake the tree,” Estelle muttered as she stepped off the curb.

  Chapter Four

  Estelle glanced in the rearview mirror as she eased the county car to a stop just south of the Highland Court–Twelfth Street intersection. Chief Mitchell’s sedan idled up behind hers, followed by the sheriff’s rumbling, disreputable pickup truck. Kenderman rode with the sheriff, and Estelle knew that the village officer’s mood wouldn’t be soothed by comfortable small talk. Torrez favored silence.

  The intersection was illuminated by a single streetlight on the northwest corner. Estelle switched off the ignition and sat quietly. If Colette Parker had been westbound on Highland Court, racing pell mell toward the intersection, she would have clearly seen Kenderman’s village patrol car head on across Twelfth Street. That the girl would blast right through the intersection, ignoring the village patrol car and inviting a chase, was not beyond the realm of possibility. But that didn’t jibe with what Estelle had heard.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the huge form of Sheriff Torrez, followed by Kenderman’s slender shadow. Estelle got out of her car and closed the door. Chief Mitchell had been jotting something on his clipboard, but after a moment he tossed it on the seat. He glanced at Kenderman as he stepped out of his car but said nothing. “This is as good a place to start as any,” Estelle said.

  Across the street, a porch light flicked off. “That’s nice,” Mitchell muttered but didn’t elaborate.

  “Show us exactly where you were when you first saw the motorcycle,” Estelle said to Kenderman.

  His gaze shifted across the intersection, flicking this way and that as if he was uncertain about which version of the incident to embrace. “Right there,” he said. He walked to the middle of the street and pointed at the eastbound lane of Highland Court. “I was just pulling up to the stop sign here.”

  “You hadn’t stopped completely yet when you saw the bike?”

  “Well, hell…I guess I was just comin’ to a stop. I was putting on the brakes when I saw it.”

  “And where was she?”

  Kenderman turned and looked over his right shoulder. “Comin’ that way.”

  “So she ran the stop on the east side of the intersection?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then?”

  “Well,” Kenderman said, “she turned on down this way,” he pivoted in place, looking back down Twelfth Street the way they had come. “Right for the bridge.”

  “And that’s when you initiated the chase?”

  “Well, I wasn’t pushin’ it too hard,” Kenderman said lamely. He glanced at Chief Mitchell.

  “How well do you know Colette Parker?” Torrez asked. He tossed the question out casually, as if he really didn’t want to know.

  “I know who she is, all right.”

  “B
ut you didn’t know it was her when you started the chase?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t recognize her bike, or anything like that?”

  “No. The light wasn’t all that good, and she was movin’ kind of fast, anyways.”

  “I see,” Torrez said, sounding as if he clearly didn’t see.

  Estelle’s telephone chirped. “Guzman.”

  “Estelle,” Sergeant Mears’ matter-of-fact voice said. “We’ve got us a little tangle here. I’ve been talking with Marion Archer, and she tells me that she knows Colette Parker. In fact, Colette was one of her students about five years ago.”

  “Okay.” She turned her back on her three companions and walked toward the rear of her car.

  “The thing is that according to Mrs. Archer, Colette has two little kids.”

  Estelle groaned. “Where are they, Tom.”

  “With the grandmother, apparently.”

  “The grandmother?”

  “Colette’s mother. Her name’s Barbara Parker. Lives over on Third Street, north of the park. That’s the address on Colette’s license, too. They all live there together, apparently. Mrs. Archer said that she’s known the Parker woman for years. She’s got some counseling job at the school.”

  “You’re going over there now?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How old are the two kids, did Mrs. Archer know?”

  “She guessed that the oldest might be four. Something like that. Maybe four. Colette had the first one the spring of her senior year of high school. That’s when she dropped out.”

  Estelle sighed. “Small favors.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I was thinking that at least the kids are with someone right now, Tom. That’s all. Let me know when you’ve talked with Mrs. Parker, all right?”

  “Yep. Linda and I are headed that way right now.”

  “What’s the street address?”

  “Just a second.” After a brief rustling, Mears said, “Seven oh nine Third Street.”

  “Thanks.” Estelle switched off the phone. She didn’t turn around immediately but stood silently, leaning against the back fender of the unmarked car. She closed her eyes, allowing the memory of the distant chase to replay. The Third Street address for Barbara and Colette Parker would be in the distance to the north, approximately where car and cycle were when she first heard them.