I stood for a while in the doorway of that bedroom, looking at the beasts while their ancient, wise button eyes stared back at me. One small black dog, fur worn by the years of roughhouse handling, had advanced halfway down the bedspread. He stood facing the doorway, small ears at attention.
They should have brought a smile to my face, I suppose. Instead, a great, crashing wave of melancholy swept over me, and I turned away. Part of the melancholy was that I didn’t know what Estelle and her husband planned. Despite our telephone and E-mail conversations since they’d moved to Minnesota the previous spring, I knew only that their stay in the northland had had its setbacks. A talented vascular surgeon, Francis Guzman had managed to severely injure his left hand in a biking accident while riding to work. Estelle had told me that much. Whether the young physician was now discovering that tying the tiny, intricate stitches in some patient’s ballooning aorta were beyond the limits of his crippled hand, I didn’t know.
And only when I’d pressed her about the missing FOR SALE sign had she told me that they’d taken their house on Twelfth Street in Posadas off the real estate market because they weren’t sure of their plans. My hopes soared, naturally, knowing that Posadas continued to be a possible option for them.
In one recent communication, Estelle had reported that Francis’ aunt, Sophia Tournal, was visiting from her home in Mexico. I’d met Ms. Tournal a time or two, and at the first meeting knew instantly why she was such a successful attorney in her home state of Veracruz.
All of that gave me reason to suspect that the Guzmans’ trip to Posadas that November was more than just the opportunity to watch election returns. After all, a card of congratulations or commiseration to Bob Torrez and a “Happy Retirement!” card for me would cover those bases.
Part of Estelle’s charm-and sometimes, when she’d been working for the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, what frustrated the hell out of the rest of us-was that the world, beyond mother, husband, and children, operated on a need-to-know basis.
I was godfather to the Guzman children. I knew that Estelle trusted me as unequivocably as I trusted her. I’d saved her life on more than one occasion, and she’d done the same for me. All of that, though, wasn’t an admission ticket to her inner circle. That’s just the way she was. Join the club with the rest of the six billion.
Shortly before eleven Sunday morning, Robert Torrez stopped by briefly to tell me that he was headed for Regal, and that his sister would be home by two that afternoon.
“I didn’t tell her too much when I talked to her on the phone,” Torrez said. “But she’s upset. I could tell.”
“You told her about the license?” We stood at the front door, the undersheriff refusing to come inside. I noticed that he was driving his “tank,” an ancient Chevy pickup truck burdened with several decades of junk that filled the back. Wrought-iron curlicues protected the back window from a shifting load. Unshaven and dressed in a bright red and yellow flannel shirt, down vest, and jeans, he looked like a hunter just finishing a week out in the bush.
He shook his head. “No.” He regarded Buddy’s Corvette impassively. “But she knows that I wouldn’t bother to call her like this if it wasn’t something important. You know how she gets.”
I didn’t, but nodded agreement anyway, figuring I’d find out soon enough.
“I asked her to meet us at the MVD office at three this afternoon.”
“That’ll work,” I said. “Do you mind if I bring Estelle along? If she’s here by then, that is?”
He grinned, started to say one thing, and then changed his mind. “No, I don’t mind.”
“That’s if she wants to,” I said. “She may be pooped from the trip. But I have a resident kid-sitter with my grandson being here, so Estelle could break away for a little while.”
“Sure, if she wants to.”
“I talked to Betty Contreras, by the way. She was being a good witness, telling us what we wanted to hear.”
Torrez frowned. “Sir?” he said, looking sideways at me.
“She admits that she isn’t sure that it was Scott Gutierrez who drove by at eight on Saturday morning. She isn’t sure who it was. In fact, she has no idea at all. She mentioned Scott’s name to me because she’d seen him drive by the night before. His name just came to mind. She didn’t mention him to Tony, like she told me she had.” I shrugged. “She’s embarrassed, needless to say.”
“Well, duh,” Torrez said with a straight face, sounding more like my grandson than the undersheriff. “What time did she see Scott Friday night, did she say?”
“About eight forty-five or so.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean squat,” he said. He turned to his truck, rested a hand on the hood, and kicked the left front tire pensively. “See you at three?”
“You got it,” I said. “And by the way, Judge Hobart asked me this. Are you planning on announcing who you’re going to name as undersheriff before Tuesday? Not that it’s any of my business-or his. But voters might like to know.”
Hand still on the truck, he twisted and looked at me, one eyebrow cocked. “You want the job?”
“Oh, sure.” I laughed.
He returned his scrutiny to the front tire, looking down at the gnarly tread, idly digging at one of the huge cleats with the toe of his boot. “It’s not something that I want to rush into,” he said. I couldn’t remember an occasion when Robert Torrez had rushed into anything. “Did you hear who Leona Spears asked?”
“No. But then again, I’m not on her ‘tell first’ list, either.”
“Eddie Mitchell called me from Bernalillo County. She gave him a buzz.”
“She has more brains than I thought,” I said. Mitchell had left Posadas the previous spring, and I knew he’d already passed his lieutenant’s exam in Bernalillo. “He’d do a fine job.”
“Yes, he would. I was thinking the same thing.” He sighed and straightened up, pushing away from the truck. “It’s a long four months until January, too. We’ll see what happens.”
“Let me know what I can do,” I said.
“I will. Right now, I’m just going to Uncle Sosimo’s place. Sit and think. There’s got to be something. There’s a couple other things I want to check out, too, while I’m down that way.”
I patted the faded fender of the Chevy. “We’re short of vehicles?”
He grinned. “Nah. It’s that time of year.”
I knew exactly what he meant. The scoped.308 rested in its back window rack, ready to train its sights on a trophy desert mule deer. “You be careful,” I said, and stepped back from the truck. I knew the cloud of fumes that would issue from it the moment he hit the starter. “Happy hunting.”
“We’ll see,” he said, and I knew from his expression that he wasn’t talking about mule deer.
Chapter Thirty-five
I had never been a hunter. Or a golfer. Or messed with model railroads or patiently fitted stained glass. I didn’t have the patience of a fisherman. At odd moments, I sat down with a book that had something to do with military history, but even then, the collection that overflowed my living-room shelves held many more volumes than I had actually completed…or ever would.
The nearest I came to a consuming hobby was consuming at the Don Juan-and my thoughtful grandson had made sure that wouldn’t be necessary for several hours.
Two o’clock on that Sunday afternoon seemed weeks away instead of hours, and that was only if the damn airlines were on time. Mercifully, Buddy and Tadd returned shortly before noon. “Do you think they’ll already have eaten?” Tadd asked even before he set the three heavy plastic bags on the kitchen counter. I grinned. The kid was a true Gastner in everything but appearance-and that part was just as well.