“Yes. Carmen said I should.”
“To make it more deadly, or what?” Estelle glanced at Roy Hurtado, who had fallen uncharacteristically silent. Maybe knowing how close his daughter and only child had come to imitating a shish kebab had diluted some of his bravado.
Deena shook her head quickly. “It’s easier to thread into the seam of the jeans if it’s pointy.” She leaned forward and slipped the photo taken at Great Notions toward Estelle. “They’re kind of blunt and stuff?”
“And it’s a better weapon when it’s sharp.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Mauro did this at home?” Deena nodded. “What, you bought the pin, then took it-or them-over to the Acostas’?” The girl nodded again. “When was that?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
“And then came the argument about Paul,” Estelle said.
“I guess.”
“Between the fight at the volleyball game and when I saw you yesterday at school, had you talked with Carmen? Phone calls, threats, anything like that?”
Deena shook her head sadly. “One of my friends said that Carmen was going to get me. But she doesn’t scare me.”
I bet, Estelle thought. “Going to get you-meaning she might jump you at school, or going and coming?”
“I guess.”
“But you never actually saw her?”
“No.”
Estelle rested her index finger on the photo of the hat pin. “But you wanted to be ready.”
“I guess.”
“Did you talk with Paul since the fight?”
Deena frowned in disgust. “No, I didn’t talk with him. This is so stupid. I didn’t even really like him.”
“Have you talked with Mauro recently?”
“No. Why would I talk with him?”
Estelle nodded sympathetically. “After you and I talked at the middle school yesterday…were you home all the rest of the day?”
That prompted Roy Hurtado out of his silence. “Now look, Deena didn’t have anything to do with what happened over at the Acostas’. That’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t think she had anything to do with it either, Mr. Hurtado,” Estelle said. “And that’s not what I asked her. I asked if she was home.”
“Of course she was home. She was grounded, for God’s sakes. And I mean grounded. She’s expressly forbidden to leave the house.”
“Deena?”
The girl slumped back in her chair. She picked at the cuticle of her left thumbnail. “After Mom went back to work, I went over to the store and stuff.”
“Which store is that?” Estelle ignored Roy Hurtado’s whispered expletive.
“Tommy’s. The convenience store.”
“What time, do you remember?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe around one.”
“Did you happen to see Mr. Acosta there?”
“No. But Mauro was there. Him and Tony.”
“That’s after the high school’s lunch hour, isn’t it?”
“I guess.” She shrugged. “But I left right away.”
“For where?”
Deena shifted uneasily and glanced at her father, then at Estelle. “I went to talk with Auntie.”
“MaryAnne Bustamonte?”
“Yes. She said that you’d come by the store and hassled her.”
Roy Hurtado let out a hiss of compressed air.
“That’s one way to look at it, I suppose,” Estelle said. “Did you buy any more of these, Deena?”
“No,” the girl said petulantly. She glared sideways at Estelle and then dropped her eyes.
“I have the others,” Roy said quickly. “She had four of ’em.” He glowered at his daughter. “In four different sizes.”
Estelle caught the trace of gloat in Deena’s eyes. And how many more, she thought. Taking her time, Estelle tidied the photos and slipped them back inside the briefcase. Before closing the lid, she removed the evidence bag that held the hat pin confiscated from Deena at the middle school.
“Deena,” she said, and slipped the hat pin out of the bag, removing the small rubber-tip protector, “I want you to look at this carefully. This is the one that you carried yesterday.” She laid it on the table directly in front of the girl, arranging it meticulously to parallel the table’s edge. “Someone broke into the Acostas’ house and attacked Carmen, Deena. They chased her through the house, and at some point in the fight, Carmen managed to pull a weapon just like this from the left inseam of her jeans.” She paused, watching the girl’s face carefully, no more than a dozen inches from her own.
“Now, you know how dangerous Carmen can be when she’s mad or threatened.” That earned the faintest nod. “As tough as she is, the person who attacked her tore the hat pin out of her hand, struggled some more, and then held her from behind while he drove that thing into her left ear.”
If either Ivana or Roy Hurtado were still breathing, Estelle couldn’t hear them.
“All the way through, Deena, until it bent against her jawbone on the other side of her head. And then whoever did that tossed her down on her own bed and bashed in the back of her skull with a truck lug wrench.” Estelle bent even closer and slipped her arm around Deena’s thin shoulders. “I know you didn’t do that. You couldn’t do that. But we’re going to find the person who did, Deena. You can help us.”
She remained motionless with her arm around the girl, watching the tears course down Deena’s cheeks.
“This isn’t something to play with,” Estelle whispered, and reached out to touch the hat pin, just enough to make it roll half a turn. “This isn’t a toy, and carrying it into a school full of children isn’t cool, or funny, or smart.”
She withdrew her arm, capped the hat pin, and slid it back into the bag. “If you have any more, get rid of them,” she said brusquely. “And if you’re not smart enough to do that, think very hard before you threaten someone with it. If you don’t, the odds are good you’ll be joining Carmen. And that would make me very sad indeed.”
“We were thinking that maybe she’ll go live with her sister up in Albuquerque,” Roy Hurtado said.
“That’s up to you,” Estelle said cryptically.
“Well, she can’t stay at home all day without someone watchin’ her. Both me and Ivana work, and I guess we just found out how good she minds.”
“How old is Samantha?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And she’s home all day?”
“Well, no, but…”
“You might want to rethink that idea, then,” Estelle said. She stood up and rested both hands on the briefcase, regarding Deena. “Now’s the time to prove how smart you really are, Deena,” she said.
Deena heaved a shuddering breath. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“What happens if she’s not, then?”
“If Carmen dies, we’ll be looking to charge someone with murder, Deena. It’s that simple.”
Chapter Sixteen
A brief stop at the high school confirmed that Mauro and Tony Acosta had enjoyed more than just an extended lunch. Both had been present in their morning classes; both walked out for lunch and hadn’t returned. The attendance records also provided an interesting portrait for the pair.
Margie Edwards, the principal’s secretary, beckoned Estelle around the end of her desk, and scooted her chair to one side so that the undersheriff could see the computer screen. The two student office aides had been sent on errands, the principal himself was somewhere out on campus, but Margie still talked as if the walls had ears.
“See here?” she said. “This is our ninth grader. What a pistol he is.”
Estelle scanned across the grid. “He’s been absent fourteen times since school started, if I’m reading this right.”
“That’s not counting today, by the way. Neither one of them are here today.”
“They’re up in Albuquerque with the family,” Estelle said. “I see that Mauro was absent yesterday afternoon.”