Estelle nodded and glanced at me. “Thanks,” she said, and Robert almost said another word but thought better of it. “I think we’re finished here,” she told me, more for Robert’s benefit than mine.
When we were out of earshot, she added, “Blabby kid, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Estelle grinned at my imitation. “I’d be willing to bet another twenty bucks he knows lots more than he lets on.”
“He’d have to. And did you happen to notice what else was interesting?”
Estelle frowned, and I felt an unprofessional twinge of pride that I had seen something she hadn’t. “What do you mean?”
I stopped and looked back up the trail. “He was wearing a gun.”
“Oh, that. Yes, I saw the bulge under his T-shirt when he came around the rock.” She twisted around and put a hand on the small of her back, where the gun had been.
“When you asked him if he’d seen the accident, he turned a little to face you. That’s when I saw it,” I said.
Estelle shrugged. “Probably half the people in New Mexico carry guns.” She looked back up the trail. “That’s kind of interesting, though. A gun in one hand, a Bible in the other.”
“Is that what the book was?”
“Uh huh.”
“Couldn’t read the title,” I said lamely. I concentrated on where I put my feet. It was easier going downhill, but I was top-heavy and needed to watch my step.
“If the child is Cecilia’s daughter, it’s going to be a mess trying to work through the social services department to get that kid out of the woods,” Estelle said. “Paul Garcia is working on finding Burgess’s relatives, if there are any. He should have turned something up by the time we get back.”
“And if there aren’t any?”
“Then we’ll have to work a court order of some sort.”
I nodded. “You’re running on a lot of assumptions.”
Estelle held a branch so it wouldn’t whip me in the face. “You think she should be living up here? Without her mother?”
“She didn’t seem to mind.”
“No, maybe not. I do though.” She stopped and stood for a minute with her hands on her hips, staring off into space. “Do you think that either Finn or Robert knows who tossed Cecilia Burgess?”
“No, I don’t. They would have said something if they did.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“And by the way,” I said, “I hate to tell you your job, but you didn’t I.D. Robert of the Rock. It might have been handy to know who the hell he is.”
“I know who he is,” Estelle replied and started off on the trail once more. I had to puff a little to catch up.
Chapter 7
The sun rolled down the edge of Chuparrosa Mesa west of San Estevan, and the wash of evening light blushed the sandstone layers below the rimrock into a dozen hues. The ceramic chimes beside the Guzmans’ front door hung motionless.
I exhaled and watched the plume of smoke curl through the chimes, to fan out and then disappear into the savinos, the peeled and smooth juniper poles that lay diagonally across the vigas to form the small porch roof. I closed the file folder and tipped my chair back until I could lean against the adobe wall.
“Robert Arajanian,” I said and tapped my index finger on the cover of the folder. “And you say that the guy who owns the trading post-Orlando Garcia-he knows him?”
Estelle Reyes-Guzman returned from the kitchen and handed me a mug of coffee. “Yes, he knew him by name. He’d had the opportunity to cash a couple of checks for the kid.”
“What kind of checks?”
“The only one he remembered for sure was one made out to Cecilia Burgess. It was her tax refund check. For just a few dollars, as far as Garcia remembers. Burgess had signed it over to Arajanian. Orlando Garcia didn’t seem to approve much. I got the impression that he thought Cecilia Burgess was wasting her time with both Arajanian and Finn.”
I opened the folder once more. “That seems to be a generally held view around here. Odd that she signed the check to the kid instead of her boyfriend Finn. Maybe the trio shares everything.” I read the file. “And Arajanian has quite a record.”
The folder had been delivered from Albuquerque earlier that afternoon by a deputy. It had been on Estelle’s desk when we returned from the hot springs, and it made interesting reading.
Robert Arajanian had experimented with the law when he was just fourteen…an assault charge filed by the parents of another high school student. I noticed the other youngster involved had been seventeen-either he’d been small for his age or a complete wimp. Or young Robert had been spectacularly aggressive. Less than a year later a charge of vehicular homicide had landed Robert Arajanian in a youth detention home for two years.
“Interesting that he wasn’t drunk for the vehicular charge…or at least there’s no mention here that he was,” I said. “The implication is that he used the damn car as a weapon.”
“He was drag racing and bumped the competition into a grove of pine trees.”
“Where’s it say that?”
“It doesn’t. I called Albuquerque while you were in the shower.”
“You don’t waste a second, do you?” I looked at the file again. “So he gets just two years for what is essentially murder.”
Estelle moved her Kennedy rocker so that she could put her feet up on a big planter that supported one sorry-looking beaver-tail cactus. She shrugged at my comment. Under New Mexico law two years was the most detention any kid got, no matter what the crime, as long as he wasn’t tried as an adult. I grunted with disgust. Murder could come pretty cheap.
After his release from the detention home, Robert Arajanian had remained clear of the law for four years. Two days before his nineteenth birthday, and eight months previous to his playing lookout on the hot springs rock, the kid had been charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana and attempted burglary of an apartment in the Northeast Heights of Albuquerque. He’d pulled six months probation for the marijuana. The attempted burglary charge never went to court.
“Well, that’s neat,” I said. “He must be a slick talker, too, when the spirit moves him. The burglary complaint was withdrawn. His first chance at a good, solid felony as an adult and someone wimps out. So now he can possess a firearm legally. Otherwise, as a felon, he’d be in violation.”
“There probably wasn’t enough evidence to make the burglary charge stick. Who knows?”
“So,” I said. “All very interesting, but nothing yet on H. T. Finn.”
“Albuquerque didn’t have anything on him. It’s going to take a while to track him down, I suspect.” Estelle sounded disappointed-as always, hating unanswered questions.
“What do you think the odds are that either Arajanian or Finn or both pitched Cecilia Burgess over the embankment?”
Estelle grimaced impatiently. “Zero.”
“Really? Finn didn’t seem awash in grief at the news of the accident. In fact, he seemed to assume that she was already dead.”
She shrugged. “And he didn’t say anything about going into the city to visit her either, but what does that prove?”
“That he doesn’t like talking to strangers, especially the law, or that he doesn’t have a car.”
“He could hitchhike. The Indians do it all the time. Do you need more coffee?”
“No, thanks.” I sat silently as she got up and went inside. I heard the coffeepot clank against the stove burner, and she started talking before she was out of the kitchen.
“I don’t know why we’re even worrying about Finn and Arajanian anyway. What we need-” She was interrupted by the telephone. I heard her monosyllabic side of the conversation but what I heard was enough. When she hung up and returned to the porch, her face was sober.
“She died?”
Estelle nodded. “At six-sixteen p.m.” She glanced at her watch. “Twenty-two minutes ago.”
“What’s your next step then?”
She sat down in the rocker and gazed off toward Chuparrosa Mesa. “Someone must have seen her shortly before she was struck. Did someone pick her up in the village? Was she walking up to the hot springs?”