“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“He didn’t drive anywhere. His car’s here.”
There was another long pause. Then, “I’ll come right out. For the baby’s sake, don’t get overexcited. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation and Robert will be quite amused when he learns that the police were looking for him. Do you have any tranquilizers to take?”
“No.”
“I’ll bring some with me.”
“I don’t want any.” There was no need to tranquilize the stone mother of a marble cherub...
“...any more questions at this time,” Ford was saying. “You are excused for now, Mrs. Osborne.”
He watched with interest as she stepped down from the witness stand and went back to her place in the spectators’ benches. Long experience in probate work had taught Ford to be suspicious of meek little women. They had a tendency to inherit if not the earth, at least some large chunks of worldly goods.
“Call Mr. Secundo Estivar.”
Chapter Four
Ford said, “Please state your full name for the record.”
“Secundo Alvino Juan Estivar.”
“And your address?”
“Rancho Yerba Buena.”
“That is the area depicted on the map to your left?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re employed there?”
“Yes.”
“In what capacity?”
“Foreman.”
“You’re responsible for the operation of the ranch?”
“The court appointed young Mrs. Osborne boss during Mr. Osborne’s absence. I take orders from her. If there are no such orders, I do the best I can without them.” A suffusion of scarlet spread across Estivar’s cheeks and into the whites of his eyes. “When the ranch makes money, I don’t claim any credit; when there’s a robbery and a murder, I’m not about to take the blame.”
“No one is putting the blame on you.”
“Not in words. But I can smell it a mile away, so I think I’d better clear something up right now. I hire people in good faith. If it turns out their names and addresses are phony and their papers forged, that’s not my fault. I’m not a cop. How can I tell whether papers are forged or not?”
“Kindly simmer down, Mr. Estivar.”
“I’m in the hot seat, it’s not so easy to simmer down.”
“Suppose you try,” Ford said. “A couple of weeks ago, when you and I discussed your appearance here as a witness, I told you this proceeding is to establish the fact that a death has occurred, not to hold anyone responsible for the death.”
“You told me that. But—”
“Then please bear it in mind, will you?”
“Yes.”
“When did you first arrive at the Osborne ranch, Mr. Estivar?”
“In 1943.”
“From where?”
“A little village near Empalme.”
“And where is Empalme?”
“In Sonora, Mexico.”
“Were you carrying border-crossing papers?”
“No.”
“Did you have any trouble finding employment without such papers?”
“No. There was a war on. Growers needed help, they couldn’t afford to bother about little things like immigration laws. Hundreds of Mexicans like me walked across that border every week and found jobs.”
“A lot of them are still doing it, are they not?”
“Yes.”
“In fact, there’s a profitable underground business in Mexico which consists of supplying such men with forged papers and transportation.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“We’ll go into this subject more thoroughly a little later in the hearing,” Ford said. “Who hired you to work on the Osborne ranch in 1943?”
“Robert Osborne’s father, John.”
“Have you worked there steadily since then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So your relationship with Robert Osborne goes back a long time.”
“To the day he was born.”
“Was it a close relationship?”
“From the time he could walk he followed me around like a pup. I saw more of him than I did my own kids. He called me Tío — uncle.”
“Did this relationship continue throughout his life?”
“No. The summer he was fifteen his father was killed in an accident, and things changed after that. For all of us, I guess, but especially for the boy. In the fall he was sent off to a prep school in Arizona. His mother thought he needed the influence of men — she meant white men.” Estivar glanced briefly at Agnes Osborne as though he expected her to issue a public denial. But she had turned her head away and was looking out the window at a patch of sky. “He stayed at the school two years. When he returned he wasn’t a kid any more tagging along behind me asking questions or coming over to my house for meals. He was the boss and I was the hired man. And that’s the way it stayed until the day he died.”
“Was there any ill-will between Mr. Osborne and yourself?”
“We disagreed once in a while, about business, nothing personal. We had nothing personal between us any more, just the ranch. We both wanted to operate the ranch as profitably as we could, which meant that sometimes I had to take orders I didn’t like and Mr. Osborne had to accept advice he didn’t want.”
“Would you say there was mutual respect between you?”
“No, sir. Mutual interest. Mr. Osborne had no respect for me or any other members of my race. It was that school she sent — he was sent to. That’s what changed him. It taught him prejudice. I was used to prejudice, I’d learned to live with it. But how could I explain to my sons that their friend Robbie didn’t exist any more? I didn’t know the reason. I thought many times of asking her — his mother — but I never did. After he died it bothered me that I didn’t try harder to find out why he’d changed, maybe talked it over with him like in the old days. Deep down I kind of expected that eventually he’d tell me all about it on his own and I shouldn’t try to hurry it because there was lots of time. But there wasn’t.”
Estivar stopped to wipe the beads of sweat off his forehead. A hush had fallen over the courtroom, as if each person in it were straining to hear the sound of time running out, the slow drag of the minutes, the quick tick of years. Ford said, “On the morning of October thirteen,1967, did you see Robert Osborne?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What were the circumstances?”
“Very early, while it was still dark, I heard him whistling for his dog, Maxie. About half an hour later my wife and I were eating our breakfast when Mr. Osborne came to the back door and asked me to step outside. He sounded upset and mad, so I got out there fast as I could. The dog was lying on the ground with froth all around its mouth and its eyes kind of dazed-looking, like it might have been hit on the head or something.”
“You stated that Mr. Osborne was ‘upset and mad.’”
“Yes, sir. He said, ‘Some filthy so-and-so around here poisoned my dog.’ Only he didn’t say ‘so-and-so,’ he used a very insulting term meaning the lowest kind of Mexican. For myself, I don’t care about names. But my family heard it, my wife and my younger children who were still at the breakfast table. I ordered Mr. Osborne to go away and to stay away until he had his temper under control.”
“Did he do so?”
“Yes, sir. He picked the dog up in his arms and left.”
“Did you see Mr. Osborne again later?”
Estivar rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “No.”
“Will you please speak louder?”
“That was the last time I saw him, heading for the ranch house with the dog in his arms. The last words we spoke to each other were in anger. It weighs heavy on me, that goodbye.”