Mrs. Lucero hadn’t simply taken her distraught daughter’s word and then called the police. She’d hustled over to Baca’s herself to make sure, adding her own shoe and fingerprints to the mix. And then she’d telephoned who to her was the logical choice…the formidable Clorinda Baca.
The hamlet politics of Mrs. Lucero’s choice were simple enough-and perfectly natural. If she had hot news, she didn’t call the newspaper. She called a favorite neighbor…and in this case, the closest relative of the deceased.
The police were the outsiders, those folks who clomp around for a while and then vanish, leaving the village to sort out the forced changes in social hierarchy. Mrs. Lucero hadn’t given her actions a second thought. After all the smoke cleared, she would have to live in the same village with Clorinda-not with us.
Ms. Clorinda Baca, a solidly built, square-shouldered woman in her late sixties, sat on one end of the old couch in her late brother’s living room. She wore khaki trousers and a blue denim workshirt, with a paisley bandanna forcing order on a full head of wiry, salt-and-pepper hair. It was a uniform that would serve equally well for a day spent pulling ragweed or baking apple pies.
She had deflated a bit from her earlier moments of brassy panic, and now sagged pale and trembly-lipped against a couple of pillows. She hugged one of them under her left arm, fingers fussing with one frayed corner.
I shifted forward in the single overstuffed chair in the opposite corner of the tiny room, just a couple of strides away. For a moment, the two of us were alone. The undersheriff had gone outside with Mandy Lucero and her mother, and I could hear his quiet voice beyond the closed door.
“Clorinda, I’m sorry about your brother,” I said.
She nodded absently, picking at the pillow. When she spoke, each word came slowly with careful enunciation, as if she were afraid I might misunderstand. “Sheriff, he was not… a bad …man.”
“I know he wasn’t, Clorinda,” I replied. “But there are some things we have to know. We need to move quickly, and I think maybe you can be of some help. You’ve been through a lot, but I want you to focus now…all right?” She either didn’t hear me, or didn’t care what I had said. Instead she smoothed the tassel on the pillow and repeated herself.
“Sosimo was not a bad man, Sheriff. I want you to know that.” Her implication was clear. We were not to think that her brother had suffered a heart attack as some sort of divine retribution for his actions, whatever they might have been. Clorinda and God were evidently in agreement about that.
“Clorinda, my first concern right now is the two girls. Tell me what you told the undersheriff earlier.”
“What did I tell him?” Her brow furrowed with either true confusion or a hell of a good act. I didn’t answer. “Now what happened,” she added, and clutched the pillow a little tighter, glaring at the floor as if the old carpet held the answers. “Their mother came and picked them up.”
“What time was that?”
“Maybe it was seven. Seven-thirty, maybe.”
“And you were here at the time? Here in this house?” She nodded, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips tightly together. “Clorinda, who called Josie? Who told her about Matt?”
“Lucinda did that,” the woman said, and I wasn’t able to tell from the tone of her voice just what she thought.
“Lucinda is the oldest daughter, right?”
“Yes. Thirteen, and such a good girl.”
“I’m sure they’ll both be all right,” I said. “We’ve got someone over in Lordsburg right now, making sure.”
“That Josie,” Clorinda said, but didn’t elaborate.
“And it was the oldest daughter who called you earlier this morning? To break the news? That was Lucinda?”
She looked heavenward. “When the telephone rang this morning, por Dios, I knew it was something awful. Lucinda told me that Father Anselmo and Bobby were at the house, and that Matthew had been killed. ” Clorinda heaved a great sigh. “And she said that her father was drunk, and she didn’t know what to do. And that I should come over right away.”
“And so you did.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what time that was?”
She shook her head. “It was still dark, you know. Pitch-dark. The middle of the night, sometime.”
“And so when you arrived, the undersheriff and Father Anselmo were here, along with your brother and the two girls. That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t bring anyone with you?”
“No. Who would I bring?”
I ignored the question, remembering that part of the joy of really good gossip was controlling the exclusivity of it. “Did the undersheriff explain to you what had happened?”
“Of course he did,” Clorinda snapped. “Bobby said that Matthew had been taken away because of something he did earlier in the night. Something about a car wreck. And then he said that somehow the boy broke loose or something, and got in the way of a truck.” Her eyes misted and her jaw muscles clenched. “That was just a matter of time, you know. Before something terrible happened. Como padre, como hijo.”
I nodded as if I understood completely. “Did Sosimo fight with his wife Josie?”
“What do you mean, fight?”
“Just that. Did the two of them get along? I understand that Josie walked out a couple of years ago.”
“So, they don’t fight,” Clorinda snapped. “She’s gone.”
“Did they fight before that?”
“I suppose so. Well, no, they didn’t. Sosimo didn’t fight with anybody. He just went his way, and figured that things would work out, you know. Josie was always after him to quit his drinking, to find some work, to do this, to do that.” She shrugged. “Sosimo, he just kind of liked to take things real easy, you know.”
Clorinda dabbed her left eye. “Josie was real…how do you call it…” Clorinda sat up straight and made a flourish with her hand, like a flamenco dancer. “She was so proud, you know.” She settled back against the sofa cushions. “I don’t know why she stayed as long as she did, if you want my honest opinion.”
“Who knows why folks do what they do,” I said. “So Lucinda, the oldest daughter, called Lordsburg to tell her mother about Matt’s death. Do you remember about what time that might have been?”
Clorinda’s brow furrowed again. “Sometime, I guess.”
“Had the undersheriff already left?”
“Oh, yes. He didn’t stay too long,” and the tone of her voice made it clear that perhaps Robert should have.
“Father Anselmo was still here?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “We…the father and me…we were pouring the coffee into Sosimo, trying to sober him up some more. The girls were crying. Por Dios, such a time. It was Father Anselmo who said that Josie should be notified and Lucinda, right away she was on the phone to her mother.”
“And Josie came right over from Lordsburg?”
“She must have come straight over. It wasn’t very long, you know.” She looked up quickly as the door behind me opened. The undersheriff closed it behind him and walked over to the sofa. Clorinda moved over and patted the cushion beside her.
“You sit here, sobrino.” Torrez did so, and Clorinda reached out and patted the back of his hand.
“Clorinda, did you call anyone? Did you ask anyone to come over?” I asked.
She glanced at Robert, but nothing in his expression gave her a clue about how she should answer. She drew her hand away from his and latched on to the pillow corner again. “I called Mary, because Raymond would want to know. They don’t see each other much, but he’d want to know, just the same.”
“That would be Mary Baca?” I asked.