“Okay. That’s what I needed to know.”
“Maybe they dip these things in curare.”
“That’s all we need,” Estelle said.
“We’re coming up on my Valencia County ride here in just a second. Anything else you need to know before I get there?”
“Are the Acostas settled down some? Did Freddy get there all right?”
“Yeah, he did. He even avoided all the radar somehow. Damn near drove that old car as fast as we flew. He found the two boys, and brought them up, too. That just leaves the two little girls. They’re staying with relatives, Bobby says.”
“We’ll want to talk with the boys,” Estelle said. “No one had a chance this afternoon. Did you have a minute to sit down with them?”
“Yep. I chatted with ’em a little at the hospital. Neither one of ’em knew anything about the hat pin, or where it might have come from.”
“If the hat pin was Carmen’s that’s hard to believe, too. We’ll see,” Estelle said. “I’ll have a talk with the girls. Maybe this evening, if I get a chance.”
“Whoa,” Mitchell said. “Here’s the next leg of my ride. Just a second.”
Estelle listened to the muffled conversation, then heard first one door slam, and then another.
“My new chauffeur is Deputy Melissa Gabaldon,” he said, and Estelle could hear the car accelerating hard for the run down through the center of Valencia County.
“Tell her thanks for me,” Estelle said.
“I’ll do that. Now, about this lug wrench thing…You still haven’t heard from Zeigler? No trace of the guy?”
“We haven’t found him yet, Eddie.”
“No shit?”
“Not a trace. His roommate from Socorro arrived not long ago. A guy by the name of William Page. Runs a computer design business up there. He doesn’t have a clue either. I believe him.”
“That’s the guy that Zeigler’s romancing at the moment?”
“I guess you could put it that way, Eddie.”
“I kinda thought so. I met the both of them a time or two. Interesting, interesting. Wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with an interesting scenario for that whole mess. Zeigler comes home just after Freddy leaves, Carmen sees something she’s not supposed to see, and old Kevin does a botched-up job. Then he runs. He’s smart enough not to take the county truck, and smart enough not to take his own car.”
“And goes where?”
“That’s what we have to be smart enough to figure out,” Mitchell said. “The only trouble is, I’ll bet my miniscule paycheck that’s not the way it happened at all.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“Zeigler’s not a lug wrench man.”
The last time Estelle had seen Zeigler, less than nine hours before, he’d been tending to county business, with a couple of errands to fill his lunch break. She could still see him brushing his chinos after leaning against the truck. What else had he been wearing? The sleeves of his dress shirt had been rolled up loosely, the diagonally striped red and black tie pulled away from an unbuttoned collar.
Her last memory of Zeigler had been of a neat, dapper young fellow who might have just stepped through the front door of his college fraternity house.
“No, sir. Kevin Zeigler isn’t the lug wrench type,” Estelle agreed.
“What’s the sheriff think?”
“He hasn’t said,” Estelle replied. “Ever since he saw there wasn’t a guest bed in Zeigler’s house, he didn’t say much. Apparently that came as a surprise to him.”
Mitchell chuckled. “I bet. What the hell. There’s probably half the county that doesn’t know. Bobby’s one of ’em. This whole thing probably touches his conservative nerves. Anything else you need at the moment?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll see you in a bit then, all right? You have this number if something comes up.”
“Thanks, Eddie.” She switched off the phone and walked back into the living room.
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” Tom Mears said, pushing himself to his feet. “How’s Carmen?”
She described the injuries, and Mears grimaced.
“It sounds like someone was wrestling her from behind,” Pasquale said. “That would take some strength.”
Estelle nodded. Once again, she tried to imagine Kevin Zeigler tussling with Carmen Acosta…first slugging her on the head with a lug wrench, then ramming a hat pin into her ear. It made no sense. Even if the hat pin had been jabbed first, followed by the savage blow to the back of the girl’s head, Estelle found it impossible to picture the county manager wielding either weapon.
“We have to find him, that’s all,” she said.
Chapter Eleven
The sheriff regarded the cuticle of his thumbnail for a long moment, glanced up at the wall clock, and then fixed William Page with his best heavy-lidded, unblinking gaze. Page shifted in the military-surplus straight chair that served as most of the furniture for guests in Bob Torrez’s Spartan office. The molded plastic seats in the Public Safety Building lobby would have been more comfortable.
Estelle closed the door of the sheriff’s office, feeling a stab of sympathy for Page. It wasn’t difficult to guess what was going through the sheriff’s mind, and it was equally obvious that Page was ill at ease and on the defensive.
“Mr. Page, thanks for being patient,” Estelle said. She pulled the remaining straight chair out of its corner where it had been wedged between a gray filing cabinet and a vertical heater duct. The sheriff’s office reminded her of a janitorial closet.
As far as she knew, Page had spent the last three hours sitting in the small lobby outside the dispatcher’s communications center, waiting for the clock hands to move. His only company had been the comings and goings of various Sheriff’s Department personnel, and the various visages captured in the large, framed portraits of the former sheriffs of Posadas County, mounted on the foyer wall. Most of the retired law officers in the photo gallery were either seated behind their mammoth desks or posed beside an American flag. The most recent photo showed Robert Torrez leaning against his patrol unit, binoculars poised. He had glanced at the camera just in time, his skeptical expression captured.
Estelle liked the sheriff’s gallery photo that Linda Real had captured. It showed Bobby Torrez doing what he did best: hunting.
“It’s been a long day for you, too,” Page said.
“And bound to be longer before we’re through,” Estelle added. Eons ago, she had anticipated the afternoon session of the county meeting as a way to pass the time until the school bus brought home her son. So close. She’d even managed to greet the salesman at the piano store before her telephone call was interrupted.
Now, at 9:45 PM on that Tuesday, they sat in Torrez’s stuffy little office, and Estelle was sure that each of them wanted to be somewhere else.
“Mr. Page, the sheriff and I need your help.”
“All right.” He lifted his hands off his thighs helplessly. “Whatever I can do.”
“First of all,” she began, and found herself hesitating. “It’s not reasonable to assume that Kevin Zeigler suddenly remembered he had an important errand out of town somewhere, and that he then left without any notice to his secretary, or to the County Commission who were expecting him to attend an afternoon session.”
“He would never walk out on a job,” Page said, shaking his head emphatically. “When someone is missing, don’t police post something? Like an APB or something like that?” He leaned forward. “Don’t you have to wait twenty-four hours or something?” Page asked, and immediately grimaced and rubbed his face with both hands in frustration. “That’s stupid, I know.”
“As far as anyone can determine, Mr. Zeigler has been missing since shortly after noon. It’s unreasonable to assume that in the normal activities of his day, he would disappear for almost ten hours without word to his office, especially in light of some of the important matters before the commission. So no…we don’t wait.” She paused, and Torrez relaxed back in his swivel chair, hands locked over his belly.