“I thought that maybe I could talk her around to my way of thinking.”
“Were things different between the two of you once upon a time?”
Kenderman grimaced. “A whole lot different.”
Estelle shifted position ever so slightly, watching the light play on Perry Kenderman’s eyes. The rest of him wasn’t much to look at, at least not now, with all the steel taken out of his spine. His eyes, though…
She reached out a hand and rested it on his shoulder. He was taller than her by a good six inches, but slumped half off the curb, his butt resting on the car, the two of them were eye to eye. He started to twist away, and she dug her thumb in just above his right collarbone-not enough to hurt, but enough to weld them together for that brief moment.
“Perry,” she said. “I need to know one more thing.” She jogged her grip on his shoulder until his eyes met hers.
“Nothing you or me has got to say is going to bring her back,” he said.
“No, it’s not. But you and I both know there’s some unfinished business, or you wouldn’t be standing here right now.” Perry Kenderman didn’t respond, and Estelle released her grip on his shoulder. “Ryan’s your son, isn’t he.”
She watched his throat work, but no sound came out. Up the street, another car backed out from a driveway and drove off. The neighbor’s dog had returned and taken up his sentry post under one of the elms, patient and watchful.
“I think so,” Perry said finally.
“You think so?”
“That’s right.”
“You of all people should know how simple it would be to establish paternity, Perry.”
“I just…” and he shrugged helplessly.
“Let me lay it out for you in a nutshell, Perry,” Estelle said. “If you are Ryan’s father, that gives you some rights in this whole mess. Not to mention a few minor responsibilities.” He heard the acid in her tone and met her gaze. “That’s important,” she continued. She held out her hands. “Just as your brother’s paternity of Mindi gives him some legal leverage. Unless both of you agree to leave Ryan and Mindi with their grandmother, the courts are going to have to decide who gets custody of whom.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“That’s the simple part,” Estelle said. “The kids are fine with their grandmother. They stay with her until you have time to unsnarl the rest of the knot. There’s a possibility that your brother isn’t the least bit interested in the kids.”
The young man looked pained.
“And we don’t know what Perry Kenderman wants to do either, do we?” she added. He didn’t reply. “What I want you to do right now is go home. Go about your business. Hash things out in your mind so you know where you stand…so you know what you want to do.”
“I want what’s best for those two kids.”
For an instant, a half smile of sympathy softened Estelle’s face. “That’s easily said, Perry. It’s the doing of it that’s the hard part.” She reached out again and lightly punched his arm. “You decide what you want to do. And work up a plan for how you’re going to do it. Judge Hobart will want answers, Perry. It would be a good idea to find yourself a lawyer.”
“I can’t afford that.”
“You don’t have much choice, Perry.”
“What about last night?”
“I don’t know,” Estelle said. “I’m going to talk with the sheriff, and I’ll be seeing the district attorney in about…” She glanced at her watch. “…thirty minutes. He was there last night, too. We’ll have a chat and see what he wants to do. And I’ll almost guarantee, from the way they were talking last night, that your lawyer’s going to be doing double duty. You made some mistakes, Perry. It’s that simple. That’s the fairest answer I can give you.”
“If it was up to you…”
Estelle could see the agony in Perry Kenderman’s eyes. “Just hang in there, Perry,” she said. “I’m not promising anything. You made some mistakes, and there’s no way to brush them under the rug. Right now, go home, get yourself together, and be thankful for grandmothers.”
Chapter Ten
The district attorney hesitated in mid-sentence, one hand poised in the air as if his orchestra was locked in a pause before the next movement. His other hand shuffled the notes on the lectern. Estelle Reyes-Guzman waited, aware that District Attorney Daniel R. Schroeder knew exactly what he wanted to ask, that the notes he wanted were right there on top of the heap. The grand jurors sat silent and watchful, eager to hear secret testimony that was better than the juiciest gossip.
Schroeder finally looked up, his hand still raised. He looked at the jurors as if surprised to find them still in attendance, grimaced, and dropped his hand.
“Undersheriff Guzman, when did your department commence its investigation into the affairs of Mr. George Enriquez?”
“In early February of this year, sir.”
“Would you explain for the jury what it was that prompted that investigation?”
“We were in the process of investigating the circumstances of a fatal fire that destroyed the home of Eleanor Pope. Mrs. Pope’s son, Denton, died in that fire.”
“And in that case,” Schroeder interrupted, “you had reason to believe that Denton Pope might have tried to set that house on fire so that he could collect on the home-owner’s policy held by his mother. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you describe how the fire occurred.”
Estelle took a deep breath and looked at the jury. A heavy-set, elderly woman in front was either jotting notes or writing a letter to a relative. When the courtroom fell silent, the woman looked up. “It appeared that Denton Pope punched a small hole in the propane line to the wall furnace,” Estelle said. “That caused a massive leak of propane fumes into the house. He also placed a pan of gasoline under the stove, apparently to act as an accelerant. When the thermostat was turned up and triggered the furnace igniter, the whole thing blew up.”
“The plan being that his mother-or someone-would come home and turn up the thermostat in the chilly house, and the furnace would explode.”
“It appears so, sir.”
“And there is some evidence that the late Mr. Denton Pope actually turned up the thermostat himself. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why would he do that?”
“It appears to have been a mistake, sir.”
Schroeder looked at the jury, the crow’s-feet around his eyes deepening. “So he blew himself up. But that wasn’t his intention, was it.” The question was phrased as an aside, and Estelle didn’t respond. There was no need for the grand jury to indict a dead man. The district attorney shifted his papers again. “Eleanor Pope subsequently died from stroke complications. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not from fire-related injuries?”
“No, sir. She wasn’t home at the time.”
“Were you at any time able to interview Mrs. Pope after the fire that killed her son?”
“No, sir.”
“Why is that?”
“She suffered a stroke that night, shortly after receiving news of the fire. She slipped into a coma and never recovered.”
“During the routine investigation that followed the fatal fire…” and Schroeder paused again. Estelle wondered if he was reflecting on the word routine, since nothing about the Pope case had been “routine.”
“Would you tell the grand jury what you discovered after the fire relative to the Popes’ home-owner’s insurance.”
“We could find no record of a home-owner’s policy, sir.”
“No written record at all?”
“No, sir.”
“So such a policy did not exist. Is that correct?”
“We did not find one, sir.”
The half smile again touched Schroeder’s face. “It’s possible that the paperwork burned in the fire?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you make enquiries with various insurance agents to that effect?”