She slipped into the county car and stabbed the key into the ignition. There was no way that the killer would lean the Ranger’s passenger seat forward and unscrew the wing nut and clamp that held the lug wrench in place. The tool had to have been a weapon of opportunity.
What did fit was seeing Zeigler, intent on being four places at once, changing a flat tire in a fury, tossing the wrench and jack back into the cab, to be properly stowed later when time permitted. The flat tire had been tossed somewhere, too-but not into the most logical place, the bed of the truck.
Chapter Nineteen
Simple things. The ideas tumbled inside Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s head as she paused at the front door of Kevin Zeigler’s home on Candelaria Court. Jackie Taber’s county vehicle was parked in the driveway, immediately behind Zeigler’s pickup.
The deputy opened the door and greeted Estelle with a sober nod, then looked at her more closely, eyes narrowing. “What’d you find out?” she asked, then added, “Come on in.”
“I was just over at the county barns,” Estelle said. “Zeigler stopped there early yesterday morning with a soft tire. He added some air, but didn’t take time to change the tire. At least not then.”
“Really.” Taber settled against the arm of the sofa, her latex-gloved hands held away from her clothes. Technically off duty, she’d traded her uniform for an aging pair of army trousers and a brown T-shirt, neither of which did anything to flatter her powerful, stocky figure. “Now that’s interesting,” she said.
“If the tire went flat later in the day, like maybe when he was running errands at noon, that could explain why the wrench and jack were loose. He changed the tire, and didn’t want to take time to stow them properly.”
“Well, they’re a pain in the ass,” Jackie said. “So where’s the flat tire? It wasn’t in the truck.”
“That’s right-it wasn’t. And I don’t know where it is. But if Zeigler changed the tire, the most logical thing to do would be to clean up a little before he returned to the county meeting.” She held out her hands. “I mean, what’s anybody do after changing a tire? You can’tdo it and stay clean.”
“Huh,” Jackie grunted. “I see where you’re going. That would be a good reason for Kevin to stop back here. Clean up a little. Maybe.” She looked at Estelle skeptically.
“But there’s a simple reason he might have come here, rather than just use the restroom at the county building. If he just wanted to wash his hands, a sink is pretty easy to find. There’s one or two in the restroom right beside his office.”
“Maybe he needed to change his clothes,” Jackie said.
“That’s exactly right. I picture him kneeling down to put that jack in place, or scrunching down to lower the spare tire out from under the back, drag it out, put it in place, swing the old dead tire up into the truck.” She stopped. “And at some point, what if he gets dirty, or tears his trousers or catches his shirt on something-it’s almost bound to happen. Especially if he’s in a hurry and not paying attention.”
Jackie gazed off toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “Okay. If that’s what happened, then there are some soiled clothes to show for it.”
“Maybe. We need to check.”
“That still doesn’t tell us much, though.”
“Jackie, it tells us something, and that’s a lot more than we had.”
The deputy regarded her quietly for a moment. “You don’t like the idea a whole lot, do you?”
“No, I don’t. What I’m seeing puts a truck lug wrench in Kevin Zeigler’s hand. It puts him here sometime yesterday.”
“None of that means that he swung the wrench against the back of Carmen Acosta’s head,” Jackie said.
“He didn’t do that,” Estelle said vehemently. “I know that as surely as I don’t know what actually happened.”
“And there’s another possibility, too. What if Zeigler wasn’t driving the truck?”
Estelle nodded. “I think it’s going to come around to that, Jackie. I sat in that truck yesterday. I could smell Zeigler’s cologne, or aftershave-whatever it is. When Bobby and I went through this place yesterday, it’s the same smell, right from that bottle on the bathroom vanity.”
“Leatherworks.”
“That’s it.”
“Nice stuff.”
“Yes, it is. But I also smelled cigarette smoke, and maybe something else, too. I’m not sure. Bobby thought it might be booze, and I think he’s right. Kevin doesn’t smoke; neither does William Page. Someone was in that truck who did-and it couldn’t have been long before, or it would have faded pretty quickly.”
“Too bad the aroma won’t fit in an evidence bag.”
“The assumption is that it’s Kevin’s truck, so he was driving it.” Estelle shrugged. “Maybe not so.”
“Or someone was with him.”
Estelle ran her hand through her hair in frustration.
“Caramba,” she muttered. “Too many directions. I came over to check his clothes, Jackie. Let’s do that. Then I want to talk with Doris Marens again.”
“And she is…”
“The lady who lives up the street. Right at the intersection with MacArthur. She told Mike that she didn’t see a thing, but it wouldn’t hurt to put the thumbscrews on her a little. There might be something. It’s beginning to look as if she’s the only person who was home on the entire street at the time-other than Carmen. We don’t have ourselves a whole herd of willing witnesses.”
“In the meantime, there’s a dirty-clothes hamper in the master bedroom,” Jackie said. She stood up and beckoned. “Linda’s back there now, riffling through his drawers. Sounds kinky, huh?”
In the bedroom, Linda Real was sitting cross-legged on the floor with the bottom dresser drawer open in front of her.
“Hey there,” she said as Estelle and Jackie entered the room. She paused, one hand resting on the edge of the drawer.
“Anything?”
“A ton of slides,” Linda said, indicating the yellow boxes that filled a third of the wide drawer, “I checked a few at random. They appear to be what the box labels say they are. Vacations, bike races, that sort of thing. None of them are newer than 2000, the year before he moved here. And these”-and she tapped two large scrapbooks-“are family stuff, newspaper clippings, those sorts of things. I learned some interesting stuff that maybe I don’t need to know.”
“For example?”
“Well,” Linda said, “for example, I didn’t know that Kevin Zeigler was married before. His son is in second grade in Socorro.”
“Ay,” Estelle breathed. “I didn’t know that either.”
“I always thought he was the swinging bachelor type since day one. Apparently not. Anyway, that and a few other old things.” Linda reached up and ran a hand down the three upper drawers. “These are clothes, and this one is memories.”
“We need to rummage through his dirty clothes,” Jackie said.
The scarred eyebrow over Linda’s blind left eye lifted a fraction. “Ooookay. Maybe better you than me, kid. The basket’s in the bathroom.”
“I’ll get it,” Jackie said, and in a moment she returned with a small wicker hamper. “We might as well use the bed.” They removed each article of clothing from the hamper, shook it out, and laid it on the bedspread.
“This would be a good time for Kevin to show up,” Estelle said. “Come home to find three women riffling through his underwear.”
“‘But I just had a meeting in Deming,’” Jackie said, doing a fair imitation of the county manager. “‘Did I forget to tell you?’” She glanced at Estelle, not smiling. “Don’t we wish.”