She smiled, a delightful expression that I’d learned she held in deep reserve. The smile didn’t stay long enough, but faded as her eyebrows lowered in a frown. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
I laughed. “Well, hell. I can come up with that much, Deputy Reyes. In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re going to end up clocking a dozen hours today if we don’t knock off. That happens once in a great while-normally, our days are full of astounding boredom, and you’ll have to develop your own system for not going insane.” I pulled the car into reverse. “But in a case like this, we make hay when we can. The longer we dawdle around, the greater the odds that the killer will walk.”
The LTD idled down Hutton…all right, dawdled. As far as I was concerned, the day was yet young. “I have a stop or two I want to make, but I’ll be happy to drop you off at the office. “It’s your call.”
“You had mentioned coming up with a schedule for me…”
“Ah. I did. And of course, I haven’t gotten around to it. Mañana isn’t our motto for nothing, my friend.” I watched Hutton creep by. “I’d like you to start out working dispatch days for a couple of shifts. You need to see how the organization works-or doesn’t, as the case may be. Meet people, learn were the copier is, how the files work, how we manage the lock-up…just the whole ball of wax. It’s not rocket science, and it’s not a huge department.” I shrugged. “So in about twenty minutes, you’ll know all there is to know. Then we’ll swing you around to four to midnight, and then midnight to eight. And then you’ll dispatch, probably midnight to eight, with Ernie Wheeler looking over your shoulder. Fair enough?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what are your druthers for the rest of the afternoon? I plan to keep slugging along, and you’re welcome to stick it out to the bitter end. I want to talk with the widow again, and then I’ll need to refuel. That’s the schedule.”
“I’m fine, sir. I have a couple of things I need to get done before five, but otherwise, I’d like to see where all this is heading.”
I grinned. “So would I. Let’s sit down with Marilyn Zipoli for a few minutes.” I rested my hand on the personnel folder. “She’s not going to be thrilled with any of this.”
“It’s hard to imagine that she wouldn’t know about the drinking.”
“Yes, it is.”
Marilyn Zipoli did not want to talk with us. We were a hundred yards away when she saw our county car approaching, and she wrapped up her sidewalk conversation with another woman abruptly. I saw her reach out a hand and touch her companion on the elbow, turning at the same time toward the house as if she’d heard the telephone imperative. The other woman said something, and morphed Marilyn’s touch into a hug. They separated, and the woman crossed the street, heading for the house where the old yellow dog guarded the patch of shade by the garage. With an economy of motion, the woman stooped to pick up something on the sidewalk that offended her sense of tidiness, and entered the house.
Marilyn knew we were approaching-you can’t disguise the squat, light-bar-decorated profile of a police car, after all. And she could guess that we might want to talk with her. Perhaps she even had a question or two for me. But by the time we pulled to a stop at the curb, it seemed to me that the neighborhood had drawn in on itself.
If Marilyn Zipoli was in no mood to deal with us, I can’t say that I blamed her. We’d chosen a good time-the curb was empty of visitors, with only the daughter’s little Honda in the driveway. Marilyn would be starting to feel the weight of the day, and the dreaded approach of another sleepless night. We wouldn’t help bringing in all the dirt.
There were a myriad ways to offend her by being overly blunt or pushy-or even obsequious. We didn’t need a hostile widow on our hands.
I fussed with junk that littered my rolling office, and Estelle Reyes waited patiently. Her hand had strayed to the door handle, though, so I knew that she waited.
“I’d be willing to bet a week’s pay that Marilyn Zipoli is inside, watching us through the curtains,” I said. “We want her to think that there’s something specific that we’re after, something specific that you and I have to discuss before getting out of the car. If there’s some reason, however obscure, that our visit might put her on edge, we want to add to that tension.” I smiled at my companion. “However innocently. What we don’t want is for her to clam up. We don’t want to make an enemy of her. That doesn’t accomplish anything. All it does is force us to take the long way around.”
“And if she’s completely innocent of any…” Estelle paused, searching for just the right word. “Any nefarious designs, then what?”
I chuckled. “‘Nefarious designs.’ I like that. Estelle, I have every confidence that Marilyn Zipoli had nothing to do with her husband’s death. She didn’t hire a hit man. If we’d found him slumped in his truck, a bullet behind the ear, maybe I’d think differently. But not this way. So, that being the case…if everything in the Zipoli household is pure as the driven snow…then she isn’t watching us through the curtains at this very moment. She has no reason to avoid us.”
With a vigorous pull on the steering wheel to help launch my mass upward off the soft seat and out of the car, I almost beat Ms. Reyes to the pavement. Almost. As I rounded the left front fender to join her on the sidewalk, I said, “You see?”
“Yes, sir. She was at the south window.”
“Unless their dog or cat stroked the curtain.”
“A dog would be barking, and a cat wouldn’t bother.”
I smiled at that. As I stepped up onto the first concrete riser leading to the front door, I glanced at Estelle again. “It’s nice to be as welcome as the plague.” I pushed the doorbell, and heard no response from inside. I pushed it again, and that time heard footsteps padding toward us.
Marilyn opened the door wide, the way folks used to living in a small town do, rather than to the narrow little security slit favored by folks nervous about home invasions.
“Oh, hi.” She didn’t add the it’s only you that her tone implied. She gave the screen door a push, enough for me to grab it easily. “Come on in. I’m right in the middle…” She waved a loose-wristed hand by way of explanation.
“We’re sorry to intrude,” I said.
“You do what you have to do, sheriff. I’m trying to deal with things that I just don’t understand. Even my know-it-all neighbor across the street isn’t of any help.” She left us in the foyer with that comment, and walked off toward the living room. We could follow or not-who the hell cared. I carried Larry Zipoli’s personnel folder, his records now encapsulated in one of our large manila envelopes-the legal kind with the string that winds around the closure doohickey. I hadn’t decided how much to show Marilyn, if any.
Marilyn walked across to the impressive dining room table, a six place set now pressed into service as a cluttered office. She picked up a sheaf of papers and held them out to me. Even without my glasses, I could read the black, somber logo for Salazar and Sons-the oldest and now only funeral home in Posadas. The page included an unctuous paragraph or two about final parting, perfect ceremony, and lots of talk about “loved ones” and “memories.” Nowhere did it discuss the ramifications of having a hole blown through one’s skull while sitting in a county road grader. The rest of the document appeared to be a contract and listing of services-the cold, hard economics of death.
“In the first place,” she said, and I could hear the anger in her tone, “I’ve known Art Salazar for years, sheriff. Just years. I’ve handled his accounts at the bank, I’ve…well, you know. This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody.”