The Zipolis lived in a neat place on north Fourth Street just beyond the intersection with Blaine Avenue. “For Sale” signs had started to crop up as the last cleanup crews at Consolidated Mining finished buttoning up the hard rock mine up on the mesa flank.
I pulled the LTD to a stop at the curb behind a long-of-tooth Datsun B-210 and alerted Dispatcher Baker.
“Three ten will be ten-six on Fourth,” I said when he came on the air. The folks who spent time listening to police scanners didn’t need to know that I was going to talk with Marilyn, but Marcus Baker would figure it out.
“Ten four, three ten.” He sounded enthused.
It appeared that Marilyn managed the family coffers as carefully as she managed my money at the bank. The Zipoli corner of the world was neat and tidy, a brick-fronted home that looked to be a standard three-bedroom affair. The front yard was xeroscaped except for a narrow flower bed that separated the property from the neighbor to the north. A fat-tired three-quarter ton Ford pickup parked on the left side of the wide driveway carried a massive cab-over camper. Slipped into the space between the garage wall and the property boundary was a hotrod ski boat on a trailer.
Every light in the house was ablaze, and I suppose that friends and neighbors had been doing their thing, covering every flat surface in the kitchen with food platters. The thought brought an automatic hunger response from my undisciplined gut, which should have been content with that burrito grande for the evening.
For a long moment, I stood on the sidewalk and listened to the neighborhood. An old yellow dog across the street stood by the curb and watched me. He wasn’t on a leash, and he looked like he owned the turf. Apparently I wasn’t worth a single bark. None of the other dog neighbors had noticed my arrival. Somewhere down Blaine Street, a Skilsaw shrieked and I wondered what home builder was working at this time of night. When the saw finished its cut and the night fell quiet, I could hear the regular flow of traffic on the interstate, a mile south.
The night before, with the weather a carbon copy of this evening, had Larry Zipoli paused in his front yard to listen and enjoy the peace and quiet? Probably not. Assumption drives our days, and one of the most comforting assumptions is that tomorrow we’ll still be here.
I took a deep breath and walked to the Zipolis’ front door. I didn’t need to knock. When my boot touched the first concrete step, Marilyn Zipoli opened the door.
“I saw you drive up.” She held the screen open for me, but paused as if having second thoughts. “The old guy across the street doesn’t bite, by the way.”
“My stealth approach,” I said. “I figured he didn’t. Just watching takes most of his time and energy.”
Marilyn hesitated, still blocking the door. “Maybe we could take a little stroll. It’s so nice out, and it’s so stuffy inside. If the phone doesn’t stop ringing, it’s going to drive me insane.”
“That would be fine. Whatever you want.”
She sniffed something that I didn’t catch, and slipped past the screen, closing it carefully. “What I want isn’t going to happen,” she offered. I fell in step with her. At the sidewalk, she turned north. For a block, she said nothing, and I didn’t prompt her. We reached Blaine, and she stopped, gazing off into the darkness of a vacant lot. That lonely, desolate spot seemed to suit her, and she turned to face me, arms folded tightly across her chest. Enough light from the street light across the way illuminated the tears on her cheeks.
“I try to imagine how…” She managed that far and stopped. “Sheriff Salcido said that Mrs. Truman found him?”
“Yes. She was running an errand into town.”
“Tell me how it happened. Neither the sheriff nor Tony seemed to know very much.” Or wanted to say the ugly words.
“We don’t know very much, Marilyn. Someone fired a shot that hit the grader in the windshield. The bullet passed through and struck your husband. He never moved from his seat.”
A yelp escaped from her lips, and she pressed a hand over her mouth, turning away. I started to reach out, to put an arm around her shoulders, but she turned back, both hands held up as if to block the scream of a jet engine. “And if it was…if it was intentional? The sheriff wouldn’t say. But how could it be anything else? My God. That’s all I’ve been able to think about. How something like this could have happened.”
“The bullet could have come from farther out, from out by the arroyo. Lots of folks shoot out there. We just don’t know yet.”
She looked at me, making no effort to wipe away the flood of tears. “Is that what you believe? I mean, how could that happen? You would have to aim right over that way. You’d have to want to shoot that way. Was it just some vandal who saw the county grader and decided to pop one over at it? Couldn’t he see that Larry was working?”
“I would think that he could, Marilyn, but we can’t be sure. That time of the afternoon, the sun would be on the glass of the grader’s cab. Whoever it was might not have known Larry was inside.”
“Anybody up that way would have heard it, sheriff. “That old thing is awful. Anyone would have heard it.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not.” Sharing an investigation closes some doors, and I didn’t want that to happen. So I settled for the lame platitude. “We’re going to find out. One way or another, we’ll find out exactly what happened. Did you have something in particular that you wanted to ask me? Or tell me?”
“Mostly I was just frustrated that the sheriff couldn’t or wouldn‘t tell me very much. And he asked me if Larry had had any arguments recently. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Did he?”
She struggled with that for a moment. “I want…I want you to talk with our neighbor.” With that said, she ducked her head and looked back down the street as if expecting a response.
“Which one?”
“Just next door. Mr. Raught. The fellow with all the cacti.”
“Raught.” The name rang only the faintest of bells. It always surprised me when I heard of a county resident whom I didn’t know, the busy-body nature of law enforcement being what it is. “Mr. Raught has information we should know? Or you have information about him?”
She drew a great, shuddering sigh as if uttering the words were going to cost her a great deal. “He threatened Larry.”
“Really. Threatened how?”
“Well, he’s always ready with something snippy.” She wiped her eyes. “Always. Some snippy comment. Larry would stop home for lunch once in a great while, and if Raught was home and saw the county pickup truck in the driveway, he’d make some snide comment about taxpayers paying for lunch. That sort of thing, just constantly. He complained when he saw a drop or two of oil from the boat on the driveway-and it’s our driveway, after all. Just every opportunity. He threatened to call the cops when Rori had a birthday party, and one of her friends parked for a few minutes in front of Raught’s house, with his car radio a little bit loud. Just no end to it.”
“Complaints aren’t threats, Marilyn. You said that Mr. Raught threatened your husband.”
“Oh, that was the most recent thing. You’re not going to believe this, Bill. You know where the boat and camper truck are parked? The west side of the drive. And then there’s that narrow little border flower garden? Larry put up one of those decorator fences, one of those little plastic things that’s just a foot high or so? Right down the property line between us and Raught’s. And of course, wouldn’t you know, Mr. Raught complained about that. Last week, he just pulled it out and tossed it on the lawn between the flowers and the driveway.”