After a brief stop for a chat with Melody Mears, Mike Parsons lumbered back onstage as the applause continued.
“Well,” Parsons said, pausing as Francisco took his seat. “Remember you heard it here first.” He beamed at the audience and rubbed his hands. “Melody, are you ready?” The girl nodded, and Parsons silently clapped his hands once. “I call Melody Mears ‘Miss Sunshine,’ because she lights up every room she enters. And so does her music. She’s been playing piano for six years, and the piece she’s going to play for you tonight is one of the all-time classical hits.” He beckoned toward Melody, who bounced out of her seat.
“Pachelbel’s Canon in D,” Parsons announced, and left the stage. He met Melody on the stairs, and she reached out a hand and whispered something to him.
“Sure,” he said to the girl, then turned to the audience. “Can we have our talented page turner back for an encore?”
Estelle watched with amusement as Francisco shot out of his seat and practically skipped to the stage. The Canon was another multipage opus, and Melody’s copy was tattered from handling. She smoothed it carefully on the rack, taking her time. Francisco squirmed on the bench beside her, then took a deep breath as his partner prepared to play.
The piece struck Estelle as repetitious but elegant, a haunting tune that once poured into the ears was hard to erase. Even though it was entirely possible that he had never seen the music before this moment, Francisco did a flawless job turning the battered pages.
Finally, as the applause swelled, Francis leaned close. “Company,” he said. A hand on her shoulder startled Estelle at the same time that she heard the unmistakable clank of hardware and creak of leather. She turned to look up into the face of Deputy Tom Pasquale, who then knelt in the aisle beside her.
“We’re going to need you,” the deputy whispered as quietly as he could, and pointed discreetly toward the rear door.
Francis laughed ruefully. “Too good to last,” he said. “I’ll make sure the kid makes it home through the crush of his adoring fans.”
“Ay,” Estelle sighed. Her eyes searched Pasquale’s face. “This can’t wait?” she asked, knowing the question was a waste of time. Her pager and phone were turned off, and instructions had been left with the dispatcher-and she had felt no quake of the world ending.
“No, ma’am. It sure can’t.” Pasquale straightened up, and she slipped out of her seat with an apologetic smile at her husband and padrino. Gastner, retired after twenty years with the Sheriff’s Department and knowing the drill, shrugged philosophically. Two rows ahead of them, Sergeant Tom Mears turned and looked at her, and Pasquale crooked his finger at him as well.
“A minute,” Estelle said, and she crossed quickly to the front row, kneeling by her son. Francisco hugged her fiercely, and she wasn’t sure if the heart she could feel banging away was her own, or her son’s.
Onstage, Mrs. Gracie waited politely.
“I’m proud of you, mi corazón,” Estelle whispered in her son’s ear. She gave him another hug and then rose. As the door closed behind them, Estelle could hear the elderly woman’s voice introducing Jaycee Sandoval, the final star of the show. The undersheriff wondered if Jaycee would need help turning pages, too.
Chapter Eight
“One of ours?” Estelle asked incredulously, and Pasquale nodded.
“The sheriff thinks so.”
The evening away from work hadn’t lasted long. Both she and Sergeant Mears had driven with their families to the recital, leaving patrol vehicles at home. For the altogether too fast ride back to her house, Estelle’s mind churned. She had a dozen questions, but they all could wait. Pasquale dropped her at the curb, and she raced into the house, changed clothes, and was heading toward the front door when her mother hobbled out of her bedroom.
“And so?” Teresa Reyes said.
Estelle hugged the tiny, birdlike frame gently. “I have to go, Mamá.”
“Always, you have to go. Am I going to hear how the concert went?”
“Beautifully, Mamá. I wish you could have gone.”
“There will be others,” the old woman said. She had never offered an explanation why she had not wanted to attend the concert, although the hard metal chairs in a cool gymnasium would be torture enough. “You be careful.”
“Everyone will be home in a few minutes,” Estelle said.
“Then maybe I’ll stay up.” She reached up with parchment fingers and touched Estelle’s cheek. “You be careful,” she said again.
A few minutes later, as Estelle neared the airport gate, she saw Bob Torrez’s county Expedition parked in front of the last hangar in the row of five buildings, nosed in with an older model BMW sedan and airport manager Jim Bergin’s Dodge pickup. Pasquale evidently hadn’t returned to the airport.
The main hangar door was closed, but the regular “people door” off to one side stood ajar. As Estelle pulled her car to a stop, Jim Bergin stuck his head out of the hangar door and lifted a hand in greeting. He waited in the doorway as Estelle approached.
“Thirty-two years in the business, and this is a first for me,” Bergin said, a surprising admission for someone who cherished his “seen it all, done it all” image. He stepped to one side to let her pass, and behind him Estelle could see what appeared to be a perfectly unremarkable airplane sitting inside an unremarkable steel hangar. She hesitated in the doorway, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light.
“Somebody’s been havin’ some fun at Jerry Turner’s expense,” Bergin said.
Estelle glanced at him, wondering how much the sheriff had told the airport manager.
The uncertain light inside the hangar came from two fluorescent shop lights suspended from the corrugated steel ceiling high overhead. Four old bulbs, one of them flickering and humming, turned the large hangar into a shadowy cavern. Estelle saw Torrez standing in front of the blue and white Cessna’s left wing. He held up a hand in greeting and then walked over toward her, looking over his shoulder at the airplane as if it might try to slip away while his back was turned. In the shadows behind the plane she saw another figure moving, but couldn’t make out who it was.
“Pretty bizarre,” he said. “Turner thinks someone’s been using his airplane without his permission.”
“I know someone’s been using it,” Jerry Turner called from the other side of the plane. He held a large, boxy flashlight, and was examining the rear of the fuselage around the horizontal stabilizer, glaring at this and that. He didn’t actually touch the aircraft, and Estelle got the impression that the businessman might be angry with the airplane, rather than the alleged trespasser. The comment and response made it clear that Jerry Turner knew nothing of the multiple homicide out at the gas company’s airstrip.
“Using it,” Estelle said. “You mean as in flying somewhere and then bringing it back?” She frowned, knowing that her question sounded dumb, since there the Cessna sat. She glanced around the hangar, seeing nothing but sheet metal panels on steel girders, with a steel ceiling forming a black night sky overhead. The hangar was plenty large for the one airplane and, in a back corner, what might be either an old car or a boat had been covered with a tarp. A stack of used tires was stored along a side wall beside a well-worn set of cabinets that might once have graced someone’s kitchen. The concrete floor of the hangar was reasonably free of debris.
Turner walked around the back of the plane, shaking his head. A large man with a vast belly and unusually narrow shoulders, he looked like a giant pear dressed in a business suit. He stopped, hands on his hips, and his wide, doughy face wrinkled in vexation. “I don’t believe this. I really don’t.” He nodded at the hangar doors. “You want those open so you can see something?” The twin sodium vapor lights outside might have helped some, but Estelle shook her head.