Mears closely examined the cast aluminum wheel, rotating the tire this way and that so the light caught the burnished metal finish.
“Like Tom says, nobody handles the wheel when they’re changin’ a tire,” Torrez observed. “That’s the whole trouble.”
Mears made a wry face and turned the tire so the tread faced him. “Few little things in the tread. Pebbles…tire stuff. And a pretty fair coating of road dust on the wheel.” He looked at Estelle. “We’ll give it a thorough dusting back at the shop, but it’s not going to tell us much.”
“It already has,” Estelle said eagerly. “I’m positive now that someone else used Kevin’s truck.” She glanced toward the approaching Hobie Tyler and lowered her voice. “It would be easy to dismiss what Doris Marens told me. She’s not my idea of a super-reliable witness. But no matter what he did, Kevin would have no reason to pitch this spare, wheel and all, up on that pile. Someone else did that.”
“Not to mention Zeigler not having the muscles,” Mitchell observed.
“Hobie,” Torrez greeted the yard foreman. “Does this look to you like the tire and wheel you saw on the county manager’s truck?”
Tyler paused, not eager to approach too close. He sidled up, and one hand reached out and took Chief Eddie Mitchell by the back of the arm as if he needed the support. “Sure as shit looks like it,” he said judiciously. “I can’t say as I paid a whole lot of attention, you know. I mean it could be the right one. It’s flat?”
“Yup,” Torrez said. He thumped the top of the tire.
“His truck’s right over there in your lockup,” Tyler said, as if Torrez might have forgotten the obvious
“Just wanted to hear you say it,” Torrez said with a grin.
“This is just about as goddamn strange as it gets,” Tyler said. “What was he thinkin’?”
“I don’t think he was,” Torrez said affably.
Chapter Twenty-five
“I heard the screen door open,” Teresa Reyes said. “You know, I’m not very fast.” She shifted position on her walker and watched Estelle pick up the package that had been slipped between the screen and the solid door. “I could see out the window, though. I saw this old outdoorsman.” She leaned hard on the fourth syllable of the Spanish word, naturalisto, as if it were some sort of disease. She shuffled back and gestured out the front window of the living room.
“He was wearing a checkered shirt?” Estelle asked.
“Maybe that’s what it was,” Teresa said, switching effortlessly to English. “He had on one of those…what do you call it…” She tugged at her own blouse. “A chaleco.”
“A vest,” Estelle offered.
“That’s what it was. One of those quilted ones, like the sheriff wears. When I looked outside, this man who didn’t have an extra minute to wait for an old lady was walking back down the sidewalk to his old truck. Like the one your Uncle Reuben used to drive.”
“An older-model Ford Bronco?” Estelle said.
“I don’t know one from the other. It was old and white. That’s all I know.”
“You didn’t happen to see the license, did you?” Estelle asked more to gently kid her mother than because she needed any further verification that the visitor to her home had been Milton Crowley.
“Ay, como soy menso!” Estelle’s mother sniffed with feigned injury. “Silly me. I should have run right out there. You think I have binoculars built right into these old eyes? You’re the famous detective who’s never home half the time. So who’s this old friend of yours, that leaves you things?”
“His name’s Milton Crowley, Mama. He lives way out, past the end of the mesa.”
“Well, he’s impolite, not to knock on the door and come in with his package.”
“Maybe you don’t want to talk with this one, Mama. He’s a little bit chiflado.”
“So if he’s so crazy, what are you doing with him?”
“I talked with him this morning,” Estelle said, and slipped the end of the plain brown envelope open. A single video cassette lay inside, and she smiled with delight. “I was trying to talk him into letting me borrow this.”
“I won’t ask,” Teresa said, and settled into her rocker. “Your husband took the boys somewhere and left me here.”
“Sorry, Mama. Where did they go?”
“The engineer needed about twenty-five miles of aluminum foil.” She shook her head in despair. “What they do in school nowadays.”
“Different, huh, Mama? ” Teresa had taught in the one-room school in Tres Santos, and Estelle could remember how stern and formidable this tiny woman had seemed to her then. “I hope you’ll go in with us tomorrow night.”
“Of course. I have to see what this one is doing.” She zipped her fingers across her lips. “I know I’m going to have to bite my tongue.”
“You’ll manage.” She slipped the cassette out of the envelope. None of the stick-on labels that came with blank tapes had been affixed, and there was no note in the envelope. “Thank you, Mr. Crowley,” she said.
“Sofia’s coming tomorrow.”
“For sure?”
“Francis said so.”
“Ah, that’s good,” Estelle said, with satisfaction. “You know what we need to do, Mama? ” Her mother lifted her dark eye-brows. “We’re going to buy a piano.” One of the eyebrows settled a little bit. “I talked to hijo’s teacher. You know what he does at lunch? He slips off to the music room and plays the piano. All by himself.”
“When did you find this out?”
“Yesterday. I saw him do it. All by himself. Ms. Delgado says that he’s been doing this for three weeks or more.”
“You’re just now noticing that music is in his heart?” The question came quietly, without the usual good-natured chiding, and it took Estelle by surprise-all the more so when Teresa added nothing to the question, but just let it hang there, waiting to be answered.
“No, I hadn’t noticed,” Estelle replied after a while. She tossed the video on to the end table beside the sofa and settled into the deep cushions.
“You watch his hands, mi corazan. And you watch him read when he thinks he’s alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“You may call me vieja chiflada, too. But I see it. The stories make music in his head when he reads.”
“You mean they remind him of songs?”
Teresa’s wrinkled face wrinkled a bit more. “I don’t know. I can’t see in there.” She tapped her forehead. “All I know is that when he reads, he makes music in his head. He does both-los dos — at the same time.” She shrugged. “What was he playing on that piano at school?”
“I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want to interrupt him.” Estelle leaned her head back and covered her eyes. “I didn’t want him to stop. It sounded like he was trying to work out chords, somehow. He didn’t know I was there.”
“You remember that old piano I had in the school?”
“Yes. Eighty-eight keys, and about forty of them worked.”
“Terrible old thing. No one could play it.” She yawned. “I think a piano is a good thing, hija. Where are you going to put it?” She turned and surveyed the living room of the small house. “In their bedroom?”
“I think right about where your chair is, Mama. If we put it in that corner, it won’t be too close to the fireplace.”
“Which you use so often,” Teresa said dryly. “And then where do I go?”
“Well, we’re going to have to shuffle things around some, I guess.”
“You want some advice?” Teresa mimed pulling on a hat. “I’m putting on my old teacher’s hat now,” she said. “Buy a good one. That’s all I know about it. You remember Pedro Arballo? He was that little fat one who was in love with you all through fourth grade.”