Had the horse not been there, Estelle would have enveloped the girl in a long hug, but the mare served the purpose. “Did Freddy show you anything else that he found in the cave?”
“No. I don’t know what else he found, if anything. Or what else he thought was there. He didn’t tell me. Maybe it was nothing. But he was excited about the skull. He wanted to make sure that he carried it back without breaking it up any more than it already was.”
“Did he actually say that he wanted to return to the site?”
“No. He didn’t say. But I figured out that he would. I mean, why else would he make up that story about Borracho Springs? That’s what I decided. There was something there, and he didn’t want anyone else knowing.”
“Not even you.”
That brought a grimace and more tears, and Casey Prescott shrugged helplessly.
“Would you have gone back out there with him?”
Casey shook her head. She patted the mare’s neck. “He skips school. I won’t. And I didn’t want to ride on the four-wheeler any more. Not double, anyway. And that’s what Freddy was always pestering me to do.” The tears flooded out despite her best efforts. “I mean, I drive one all the time around here when we’re working, but I don’t like ’em much. And riding double is really uncomfortable. Freddy, I mean…he won’t…” Her face crumpled up again, and she fought for composure. “Always so fast. I mean, that’s fun sometimes, but not hanging on to the back.” She looked at Estelle. “I wanted Freddy to ride horseback with me, but he’s afraid of horses…can you believe that?”
“Hard to imagine.”
“Well, it’s true. Go figure.” Casey blew her nose on a bright blue handkerchief.
“Freddy liked horsepower, but more than one, maybe,” Estelle said. “My two little boys worshiped him. There were plenty of opportunities for Carlos or Francisco to ride double with him or his little brother on all manner of crazy machines, but their mean old mom wouldn’t let them.”
Casey bit her lip and wadded her handkerchief against her eyes. “Will Butch be all right?” Her lips quivered. “Mr. Romero said Butch was in a bad way, but he couldn’t talk about it on the phone.”
“It is bad. He’ll lose the eye, maybe with other complications. It’s a bad time for them.”
“I like Tata.”
“She’s a good person.”
“She doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“We don’t always get what we deserve.” She reached out and stroked the mare’s velvety nose. “Will you show me the cave, Casey?”
“If I have to.”
“I’m not asking you to go into it,” Estelle said. “Just where it is.” She glanced at her watch. “Would you take me there now?”
“We won’t see where Freddy… ”
“No. We won’t go that way.”
“Did Freddy do something wrong? I mean when he took the skull?”
“It just doesn’t matter, Casey. Technically, it’s like taking an eagle carcass that you might find, maybe so you could use the feathers. Or even picking up an elk skull with rack. But his retrieving the skull is not the issue.”
With the handkerchief crumpled into a ball and held over her nose, Casey regarded the undersheriff. “What is the issue? Did Freddy do something else?”
“Whenever there’s an accident, we try to find out all the answers,” Estelle said, and she could see that Casey caught the evasion. “Can I meet you back at the house, then?”
Casey nodded. “Flory doesn’t want to go up into all those rocks, do you, lady.” The horse muttered another huh, huh, huh. “She was bitten by a snake last year right here on her pastern.” She bent and stroked a hand down the mare’s left leg, stopping near a bald spot on the hide above the hoof. “She gets skittish sometimes.”
Estelle stepped back as the girl swung effortlessly into the saddle. “I take short cuts.” Casey managed a full smile. “I’ll let mom know.” With no apparent movement of the reins, the horse wheeled and charged off past the Expedition, following the two-track for only fifty yards or so before veering off through the scrub.
Back at the truck, Estelle thumbed the cell phone, and it rang half a dozen times before Sheriff Robert Torrez picked up.
“Bobby, I’m out here with Casey Prescott. It looks as if Freddy Romero made up the story about the cat’s skull. He didn’t find it above Borracho Springs at all.”
“Imagine that,” Torrez muttered. “I said there weren’t no caves up there.”
“Casey is taking me to the spot, but it’s over near the canyon, not far from where he crashed.”
“Pasquale’s out there now,” the sheriff said. “Does she know why Freddy lied?”
“No, she said she doesn’t, and I believe her. Other than that maybe there’s something more to the cave. That’s the logical assumption. She did say that Freddy was excited about bringing out the entire skeleton. He didn’t want anyone else to find his stash. That would be enough for him to play it clever.”
“You ask her about the gun?”
“No. I wanted to wait a bit on that. Until we found out a little more about what she knows.”
“Just as well. We’re still over at the garage. Got interesting stuff going on. Mears is dead-on sure that we have a bullet fragment.”
“A fragment…”
“In the tire. Left front. And there’s a little scuff on the fender panel. Looks like it lines up.”
“Ay, ” Estelle breathed. “The fragment was enough to make the tire go flat right away?”
“No way of tellin’.”
“So it might have been from some other time. Something that didn’t cause a flat, at least not right away. Maybe Freddy got careless with his own rifle.”
“Nope. Twenty-two slugs are lead. This is brass. Mears is goin’ over the tire inch by inch. We’ll see.”
So many possibilities, Estelle thought. A well-placed shot and a suddenly exploded tire, sending the four-wheeler into the rocks. A sudden startle by the rider, maybe when he saw someone or something in the two-track just as he crested the hill, sending the ATV slightly off course to graze the rocks. The way Freddy rode, pell-mell and airborne half the time, any slight distraction could lead to a disaster. And just as easily, the fragment might have been picked up by the tire in normal running-a scrap of something in the roadway, then carried for miles before the tire went flat.
“You be careful out there.” Torrez didn’t need to remind her that some possibilities were uglier than others.
Chapter Sixteen
Rather than driving from the Prescott’s back out to the state highway and then heading south to the Broken Spur and that access to the back country, Estelle took a rough two-track north from the ranch, intersecting the oldest patch of pavement in the county, State 17. Ten miles west, across a dilapidated cattle guard, they turned onto the northernmost terminus of Bender’s Canyon Trail, and for at least two miles, the two-track was relatively smooth, cutting through a few hundred thousand acres of state-owned prairie. They reached the intersection that took them to Miles Waddell’s gate north of the mesa and turned east.
More than once, Estelle saw Casey Prescott lean forward in her seat. They plunged into deep shade on the east side of the mesa’s flank.
“Just up there.” The girl gestured and Estelle slowed the SUV. “We parked right under that big old juniper there.” Estelle recognized the spot where she and Bill Gastner had paused earlier.
“This is where we were on Sunday,” Casey said. “We hiked up the mesa a ways.”
“Tell me something.” Estelle opened the door. “What was the attraction here in the first place?”
Casey bit her lower lip. “Freddy was talking to a friend at school about the canyon? That there were a lot of fossils in that area just south of the window where the bottom of the arroyo is washed clean down to bedrock?” She nodded at the memory. “He’d been pestering me to go with him, so,” and she shrugged. “I did. We took a picnic lunch and made a day of it.” She blushed. “I know…my mother told me that I wasn’t to ride with Freddy on the four-wheeler. But she and my dad went into town, and the weather was perfect and I thought…”