“The flavoring doesn’t, necessarily. It’s still a valid question.”
“Por supuesto. Right now I’ve got too many of those.”
“I’ll have the preliminaries to you first thing in the morning. I can’t guarantee response from the OMI. Late next week, I imagine. You know the drill.”
“I appreciate it.”
The disinfectant-rich smell of the room followed her out into the hall, and she pushed open the steel door to the stark, cold stairwell rather than waiting for the elevator. She emerged on the first floor, behind the nurses’ station. Karin MacKenzie, one of the RNs, looked up from her computer and offered a broad smile.
“Hi there. You look like you’re on the prowl. Of course, if you’ve been down there, small wonder.”
“I just spoke with Dr. Perrone,” Estelle said.
“Then you know more than I do,” Karin replied. “I think your hubby is down by the ICU. You want me to page him?”
“No, no,” the undersheriff said quickly. “May I just cruise down that way?”
“You cruise away. Stop back and we’ll have a cup of coffee. No…tea. You drink tea, right?”
“I do. Thanks.”
Around two corners and down a lengthy hallway, beyond mauve doors labeled for all things expensive, she saw Francis Guzman in conversation with a chubby, balding man whom she recognized as one of the cardiologists from Las Cruces who rotated through the community health system. Francis saw her and reached out a hand to his colleague to hold him in mid-thought as he extended the other hand to Estelle.
“You know Brian Finlan?” Francis said, and the other physician reached out to shake Estelle’s hand.
“Yes,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”
“You’re having a busy day,” Finlan said sympathetically.
“Yes, we are. A great way to end the week.” She turned to Francis. “I need to know where young Gutierrez is,” she said. “The mesa head injury?”
“Bike boy is around here somewhere,” Francis said. “Try one-oh-nine. Observation overnight, and we’ll release him in the morning. His girlfriend was T and R’d, but I would guess she’s with him.”
“Nothing super serious, then.”
“Well, he did a pretty workmanlike job, but all things considered, he’s lucky. Right clavicle, right wrist, and nine stitches in his scalp right where it would have killed him if he hadn’t been wearing that helmet. And two cracked ribs. No spinal complications.”
“Hopefully not a preview,” Finlan said. “You know, sheriff, I was looking over the list of competitors for the race, and about a third of them are flatlanders. I even saw our esteemed former lieutenant governor’s name-and he wasn’t the oldest one in the bunch, believe it or not. So not only flatlanders, but some old guys as well. You get all these folks from sea level pushing pedals up on Cat Mesa at eight thousand feet, and there’s a lot of things we can expect.”
“I know that the race officials were going to include material about that in each competitor’s packet,” Estelle said. “And they’ll talk about it during the prerace meeting, I’m sure. You’re staying for the weekend, I hope?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
She noted a certain professional relish in his tone, similar to Alan Perrone’s when he spoke of marinated versus plain cooking for coyotes.
“You heading home now, or-,” her husband asked.
“In a few minutes. I wanted to drop in on Gutierrez for just a moment. I’ve got their bikes in the back of the truck.” She left the two physicians to their planning and sought out 109, one of the double rooms in the new wing.
The door was ajar, and she could see April Pritt sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, her body leaning over Terry Gutierrez’s, supporting herself on her right arm. There might have been a thin piece of hospital gauze’s distance between their faces.
Estelle rapped on the door, and April sat upright quickly, but not before Estelle could see that there was nothing wrong with Terry’s left hand. He maneuvered it back into a more appropriate patient’s position on the white sheets.
“You guys doing okay?” Estelle said kindly, although it was clearly obvious that they were. “I just wanted to touch base with you.” She stepped into the room, and April rose from the bed. She limped carefully to a straight-backed chair nearby.
“I still have your bikes,” Estelle continued. “I haven’t been back to the office yet, but that’s where I’m headed now. When you are ready to pick them up, just see whoever is sitting dispatch, okay?”
“Thank you sooo much,” April said. “Everyone has been so kind.”
“Well, we’re sorry this had to happen,” Estelle said. She stepped closer to the bed. “I was just talking to Dr. Guzman. He says battered and bruised, but otherwise okay. How are you feeling?”
The young man shifted a little under the sheet. When he wasn’t black and blue, he’d be handsome enough that he didn’t need to show off by trying to fly off cliffs. “Awful. Like I got hit by a truck. Thanks, though.”
“So, you just took a wrong turn…. Is that what happened?” Estelle gazed at him for a long moment-until his eyes dodged away to his girlfriend.
“That’s it,” Gutierrez said. He grinned sheepishly. “Trying to cut the course, I guess. Maybe I was showin’ off a little.”
“A little,” April said. “Like, try a lot, Superman.”
“You two go to Tech?” Estelle asked, referring to the university in Socorro.
April nodded. “I’m a senior. He’s a junior.” She wrinkled her nose at him.
“You’ll take care of notifying his folks?”
“We’ve done that already,” she said, as if parents were mere pesky details. “Are you and Dr. Guzman related? I wondered about that.”
“He’s my husband.”
“Oh. Well, that’s neat. He’s a nice guy.”
“Yes, he is.” Estelle extended a business card to the girl. “The bikes will be at the office. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to call.”
“We’re fine,” April said. “We really are. Thanks again sooo much.”
Estelle left the hospital room, making sure that the door closed tightly behind her.
Chapter Six
Estelle watched her son’s dark face as the music soared, and she found herself wishing that she could share the images that formed in his vivid imagination. She knew that the seven-year-old was excited about the bicycle race on the mountain, and wondered if some of the dashing up and down the piano keys played videos of cyclists in his mind.
Francisco had settled on Mozart’s Sonata in F for his recital piece, a lengthy challenge for the little boy. On more than one occasion, Estelle had sat beside her son on the piano bench, reading through the piece with him as he played-even though Francisco himself rarely looked at the music. No musician herself, Estelle knew enough to be able to follow his progress, and she could see that the problem wasn’t the sonata’s fourteen-page length. The little boy’s capacity at the keyboard was far greater than perhaps even the seventeen-year-old Mozart could have imagined when he wrote the challenge of his sonata.
No, the problem was Francisco’s agile little mind itself. Something in the sonata’s images cracked him up every time he played the piece-not an unusual reaction when he played the piano. He mimicked the motif in variations of his own, he giggled and composed little answers to Mozart’s questions and comments, and he sometimes went off hiking on his own, deep into his own musical world.
Estelle understood that, no matter how astonishing her son’s talent, he was still bridled by a seven-year-old’s healthy lack of discipline. If there was another trail to skip down, another tonal butterfly to chase, another dark canyon to explore, Francisco did so.
Edith Gracie, Francisco’s piano instructor, remained unconcerned. “We need not worry,” she was fond of saying. Easily said, Estelle thought. And on Saturday, she worried, and not necessarily about her son’s pending performance.