The front door of her own home opened.
“Hey, there,” her husband called. “You okay?”
“Sure. I’m fine. Just slow.” Francis met her at the bottom step, and by the time she reached him, she could smell the aroma wafting from the house.
“You look like you’ve been playing in Carlos’ dirt pit,” the physician said. He engulfed her in a fierce hug. “That’s nice.”
“What’s nice?” she murmured, face buried in his soft polo shirt.
“Eau de packrat, ” he laughed, and reached up to ruffle her hair. “Alan told me what you guys were doing.”
“You should probably turn me upside down and shake me.” She pushed him away as he stooped to do that very thing. He ushered her inside, and Carlos appeared from the kitchen holding a colander, several other ingredients of the evening meal smeared on his face.
“Better hurry up, mamá, ” he called. “We gots it almost all done.”
“You gots it, all right, hijo, ” she replied. In the living room, Bill Gastner sat on the end of the sofa nearest the fireplace and the rocking chair, where Estelle’s mother sat wrapped in a white Afghan.
“You go clean yourself up,” Teresa said as Estelle started to cross the living room. Her voice was as tiny as she was, raspy and cracked, but her black eyes sparkled. She had drawn the Afghan up around her face as if the gentle gas fire beyond her chair produced no heat at all on this mild late summer evening. “Por Dios, ” she groused as Estelle bent to kiss her cheek. “Where have you been, hija? ” Her aquiline nose wrinkled and she waved an arthritis-clawed hand.
“Doing a little spelunking,” Estelle laughed, and she glanced at Gastner.
“Yeah, I told her some of it.” He raised the can of dark ale to salute her. “I hope you didn’t forget that you invited me for dinner, sweetheart.”
“I had ulterior motives, Padrino. But let me get cleaned up a little.”
“Por favor, ” Teresa snipped. Nevertheless, her face, as wrinkled as the surface of a walnut, lit with a proud smile.
In the kitchen, Irma and Francisco were working together at the window counter, the pan of lasagna bubbling as it rested on hot pads between them. Now tall enough that he didn’t have to reach up to the counter surface, Francisco was sculpting green chiles on a wooden board. As the boy deftly fashioned each piece of chile, he scooted it toward Irma, who slipped a fork under it and transferred it to the top of the lasagna.
“You have fifteen minutes,” Irma said when she saw Estelle. “Or so,” she amended.
“You’re staying to enjoy all this, aren’t you?”
“If I may. Gary has a game in Artesia today. I’m a football widow.”
“Ah. Well, that’s good for us.” She leaned over her son, resting a hand lightly on his bony shoulder. With the razor sharp knife, he was cutting the slabs of skinned and seeded chile into small rosettes, little green bursts of flavor and aroma that Irma then arranged on top of the lasagna. To her left was a second pan, already decorated.
“This is an experiment,” Francisco explained. “Ten minutes should be just enough to make them curl and crisp just right.” His brown was furrowed with concentration.
“If it doesn’t work, I brought over some hot dogs,” Gastner called from the living room. Francisco ducked his head with pleasure. Estelle squeezed his shoulder.
“You’ve made enough for an army,” she said.
“That one’s for Mr. and Mrs. Romero,” Francisco said without pausing in his work.
“Oh,” she sighed, “They’ll appreciate that, querido.” She gave him another quick hug and then turned toward the sink where Carlos, just tall enough to see over the rim, was attacking carrots with the peeler, sculpting the roots into fantastic shapes that only he recognized.
“Will you take us to see the cave sometime?” he asked, pausing in his work.
“I’ll have to think about that,” Estelle replied. “It’s just a dusty hole in the ground, hijo. ” That was hardly a deterrent, she knew, since excavating holes in the ground was the little boy’s passion.
She felt grubby and out of place in this center of industrious creation, but five minutes later the blast of hot water from the shower began to pound away the grime and fatigue. For a long moment, she let the stream beat on her forehead and shampooed hair. She was standing thus when she heard the first shout.
Chapter Thirty-two
Francis Guzman slipped through the bathroom door just as Estelle punched off the water. When the roar ceased, she could hear the loud, incoherent shouting from the front of the house.
“George Romero is out on the front lawn trying to raise the dead,” her husband said. “He’s drunk as a skunk. Bill’s talking with him.”
“My radio’s on the kitchen counter. Make sure Bill has it.”
“He took it out with him.”
“I’ll be a just a minute, then, Oso. Keep him out of the house.”
“That already happened. Padrino intercepted him on the front step.”
Estelle toweled herself off quickly, her clothing soaking up the wet spots as she did a fireman’s dress. As she came out of the bathroom, she saw Carlos standing in the dining room, looking toward the front door, his hands curled under his chin in that characteristic pose of delight or concern, depending. Irma had her hand on Francisco’s shoulder, and Estelle motioned for them to relax and stay where they were.
When he’d gone outside, Doctor Guzman had closed the front door behind him, but even so Estelle could hear George Romero’s alcohol-fueled harangue. She paused, hand on the knob, and listened. Bill Gastner’s gruff voice offered up an assuaging stream of mellow commiseration, but George Romero was accepting none of it. His incoherence was fueled by alcohol, but she could hear the full measure of grief that had finally broken loose. Her name was thrown into the mix, but Estelle could not follow the context. If she appeared in the doorway, her very presence could fuel further eruption. But as Romero’s voice choked in a tone that grew wilder, she saw no choice.
A second consideration presented itself, and she turned, heading for the back door. “Stay put,” she said to the trio now gathered in the dining room. She tucked her Tazer into her belt and then slipped out the back door. With the massive open pit mine that Carlos was excavating, the swing set, the garden shed, the bicycles and trikes, the backyard was a burglar trap. She negotiated around them carefully in the dark, finding her way to the side gate.
The passage between the house and the side fence was five feet wide, illuminated by the street light in front of the neighbors. She could hear Romero clearly now.
“Look, I talked to her, see?” the man bleated, his voice high-pitched and cracking with emotion. “I talked to Carla and she oughta know. She saw the whole thing. She told me she saw the whole thing.”
“That’s a long way across that field, George,” Gastner said, his tone gentle and conversational. “I’m not saying…”
“She wrestled the boy down, Bill. That’s what Carla saw her do. When she shoulda been taking care of him, she tackles him. I mean, Jesus, what for? Couldn’t Estelle see that my boy was hurting? Carla said…”
“Now look,” Gastner said, “what she said she saw, and what really happened? You know, those can be two different things, George. She’s what, two hundred yards away? Lookin’ into the sun? And hell, she’s an old lady. Probably got vision about like mine. Couldn’t see a house at that distance.”