“Late at night?”
“Who knows. And we don’t know what time she was hit either. She could have been lying there for some time. It had to have taken her some time to crawl up to the highway.”
“It’s hard to imagine, the way she was hurt.”
“Sheriff Tate said that they’re still in the process of running a complete background on her. He’ll let me know.” She made a face of frustration and leaned forward in the chair. “Not a single piece of evidence to tie in a vehicle of any kind, Tate said. No paint chips, no nothing. And…”
“And what?”
“And that’s not what really bothers me.”
“What does, then?”
“Daisy bothers me, sir.”
I said nothing and watched Estelle’s face as her agile brain sifted the facts.
She shook her head after a minute. “I hate to think of her up there with those two creeps.”
“We don’t know anything about Finn, Estelle. He says he’s the girl’s uncle. If he really is, the Department of Social Services will never give you a court order unless you can prove abuse or neglect or something like that. And if Finn’s lying to us, it’ll still take a while for a court order. And there’s one other possibility, too.”
“What’s that?”
“We don’t know for certain that the child is Cecilia Burgess’s daughter. We’re making an assumption just because her name is Daisy.”
“Come on, sir,” Estelle said in a rare display of contention. “Who else would she be? Coincidence is one thing, but that would be ridiculous. She even looks like Cecilia.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “I couldn’t tell you. And little kids all look alike to me. I’m just tossing it out as another possibility, that’s all. Farfetched, but a possibility. And maybe Finn is telling the truth. But trust Tate to dig it out. He’s a ferret.” I sighed deeply and stretched. “I’m glad it’s not my worry.”
Estelle looked at me over the top of her coffee cup. “Give me another dozen hours, and you’ll be so tied up in this case you won’t be able to sleep at night, let alone go home.” She grinned. “Como dos y dos son quatro, as mi madre would say. And besides, I need your help.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Another hike like today’s and you’ll be attending my funeral. You’ve got Deputy Garcia. Walk his young legs off.”
“Exactly,” Estelle said. “We’re going to find an eyewitness if we have to talk with every soul in this valley. Everybody. I asked Paul to talk with as many folks as he could, to see if anyone remembers catching a glimpse of a vehicle late last night. Especially a pickup.”
“There’s thousands of pickups around here.”
“We have to start somewhere.”
I nodded and listened to a long, plaintive growl from my stomach. “And when do we eat?”
“As soon as Francis comes home.”
I groaned. “My God! We have to wait on a country doctor? It’s apt to be midnight. I’ll be dead by then.”
Estelle laughed. “I’ll get you a beer, some chips, and salsa. That’ll tide you over. Really, he won’t be long.”
She got up and said over her shoulder as she disappeared into the house, “And I need to ask you a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a second.” After a bit she returned and set the promised snacks on the porch floor beside my chair. She handed me the beer. “I need you to talk with somebody for me.”
“Who?”
“Father Nolan Parris. At the retreat house.”
I regarded Estelle with interest. “He’s the monk or friar or whatever you call ’em who was hanging out with Cecilia?”
“According to rumor.”
“He might know something. I wonder if he drives a truck.”
“A priest? No, I don’t think so.”
“Well,” I sighed, “it’s a place to start.”
Estelle grinned. “It’ll give you something to do.”
I shrugged, convinced for about thirty seconds that the reason Estelle Reyes-Guzman was asking me to talk with Parris was because of the vast years of experience I had under my belt. And then, looking across the porch in the failing light and seeing the last bits of summer sunshine play around the planes of her face, I realized Estelle’s request was astute. If she arrived at the Catholic retreat complex in uniform, there’d be talk. If she strolled in to visit in civvies, there’d be even more talk, all of the wrong kind. What could be more innocent than one old man visiting another?
“It’ll cost you several beers,” I said. I expected jocular agreement, but Estelle shook her head.
“We need to talk with Parris tonight.” She pulled a small photograph from her blouse pocket. It was a picture of Cecilia Burgess, the posed kind with the misty background that college yearbooks favor. “Make sure he looks at this.” She handed the picture to me. “See if you can get him to hold it just the way you are right now.”
I frowned. “Where’d you get this?”
“She lived in one of the small back rooms at the trading post when she wasn’t up at the springs with Finn. Garcia let me in. There wasn’t much there. Just some clothes and things. The picture was being used as a page marker in a children’s book.”
“And you want Parris’s prints?”
“I want a thumbprint.”
“Parris doesn’t have any kind of record where his prints were taken? Passport, anything like that?”
Estelle shook her head. “Not that we can find.”
“And what good will his prints do, anyway?”
“Remember the guardrail? The bloody prints, top and bottom? We assumed Cecilia Burgess somehow pulled herself over or under the rail.”
“You’re telling me the prints we saw aren’t hers…she had help?”
“That’s right. The prints aren’t hers. That’s what Sheriff Tate told me over the phone when he called to tell me Burgess died.”
“What about that guy who stopped and called on the CB radio? Maybe he tried to help her.”
“He said he didn’t. And he’s a state employee. Works in the Department of Revenue and Taxation. His prints were easy to doublecheck. He’s clean.”
“And no luck on what’s his name, with the Forest Service? He was there before you were.”
“Les Cook? He’s a cop. Not a chance.”
“Then someone else was there and split,” I said. Estelle nodded. “Might have been the driver of the vehicle, maybe someone else.” I cleaned off the photo with my handkerchief and carefully slid it in my pocket. “I’ll get Parris’s prints for you. And I suppose this means we’re going to have to walk all the way back up to the hot springs, too.”
“The prints don’t match Arajanian’s. Tate already checked for me. We don’t know about Finn. So yes, we need to go back.” I groaned at the thought of this exercise business becoming a habit.
Chapter 8
Estelle and I ate dinner without her hubby. Francis called from the clinic just about the time Estelle had to turn on some lights so we wouldn’t trip over the furniture. He’d been about to leave for home when an Indian woman walked through the door with a sick youngster.
The stoic little kid had been flinching from a middle ear infection for several days, and the infection had bloomed. When his temperature spiked through 104 degrees, the mother decided herbs weren’t enough. The kid had himself a fine case of infectious meningitis.
Estelle sighed with resignation when Francis told her he wouldn’t be home much before midnight. After the youngster was transferred to Albuquerque, Francis wanted to follow up with a visit to the pueblo to see with whom the kid had come in contact.
The two chatted for a few minutes, and when Estelle hung up I smiled. “Marry a doctor and you starve to death.”
“Usually, it’s me who gets called out at all hours,” Estelle replied.
I leaned against the refrigerator and watched her cook. The kitchen was as tiny and cramped as the rest of the house, and I took it in at a glance. The row of bottles on the narrow windowsill above the sink surprised me-a whole alphabet of vitamins, minerals, and human fuel treatments. I reached over and picked up the largest, a collection of vitamin E capsules.