“You’d have to ask her that, sweetheart,” I said. “But if I were to hazard a guess, I’d think it’s because they’re related, somehow. They hang out together a lot, she and the kid.”
“Come on, sir. Please.”
“Marjorie, let me suggest the obvious. Give Estelle a call, and ask her.”
“I did. Erma Sedillos wouldn’t let me talk with her.”
I chuckled again. “I guess I could have predicted that. And by the way-not that it’s any of my business-what are you planning to do with the pictures you took of my daughter and the youngster? Is that front-page stuff?”
“Frank wants to use it.”
“Well, then, far be it from me to suggest to you and Frank how to do your jobs.” I kept my tone gentle and even jocular, but an uneasy feeling settled somewhere in the pit of my stomach.
Gayle Sedillos appeared in my doorway and held up two fingers, and I nodded. I covered the receiver with my hand and mouthed, “Go home!” She waved a hand in agreement.
“Marjorie,” I said into the phone, “Estelle will be here in about half an hour. I need to take another call, so why don’t you either ring back or, better yet, come on down in person. We’ll figure something out.”
“Do you think she’ll talk with me?”
“I don’t know, Marjorie. I gave up trying to read Detective Reyes-Guzman’s mind a long time ago.” That wasn’t strictly true, of course.
I punched the button for line two and prepared myself for Stanley Willit. But in the past two minutes, he’d become a new man.
“Undersheriff Gastner, Stanley Willit. Listen, sorry to cut you off like that, but in this crazy country, you just never know.” He waited a heartbeat or two for me to agree, but I let the line hang silent, and he continued. “I don’t know if you remember me or not, but Gloria Apodaca-that’s Florencio Apodaca’s wife-is my stepmother.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “So I understand.” Sgt. Robert Torrez’s lineage chart for Posadas relationships maintained its reputation for accuracy.
“Gloria Apodaca’s second husband was Howard Willit. He owned a big furniture store in Las Cruces for years and years. Howard Willit was my father. His wife, my real mother, died when I was born, and just a short time after that-oh, I suppose I was two or three years old-he married Gloria.”
“I see.”
“Then about 1945, my dad was killed in a car crash up in Alamogordo. About a year after that, Gloria sold the store and all of my father’s holdings and moved to Organ. You know that tiny little village just east of Cruces? Up in the hills?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where she met Florencio Apodaca, and they got married sometime in 1948. I don’t remember exactly just what the date was. I was about twelve years old, I suppose.”
“And then your family moved to Posadas?”
“No, no. We lived in Organ for, gosh, close to fifteen more years. Florencio had a business where he made old-fashioned-style Mexican furniture. You know, that adobe hacienda casa stuff. He had himself quite a business going, when he wasn’t drinking himself unconscious. Then we moved to Deming, and then when I went off to the military, they moved a couple more times. They finally settled in Posadas around 1970 or so.”
“Mr. Willit, all this is fascinating, but just what is it I can help you with?”
“Well, see, that’s just it. My mother-that is, my stepmother, although she was always like a real mother to me-Gloria had a good deal of money in her own name. From the sale of the store and all. She always kept that aside-for her old age, she used to say.”
“They were elderly,” I said, remembering the two of them hobbling down Escondido Lane on warm evenings, usually arguing with each other.
“Well, she finally gave in here a year or so ago, and she transferred her account to their joint bank account. I don’t know who convinced her to do it, but she shouldn’t have.” I heard a rustle of papers. “I’ve got a whole slew of documents here, letters from mother. After she made that initial transfer, the first thing Florencio did was go out and buy a new pickup truck.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “He’s been driving the same old truck for years.”
“That was just the beginning,” Willit said, and for the next ten minutes I sat patiently and listened to a litany of purchases, most petty, all paid for with old Howard Willit’s furniture-store money.
“And so,” I said to cut Stanley Willit short, “what can I do for you? There’s nothing wrong with a man spending his wife’s money, especially if it’s in a joint account.”
“That’s my point,” Willit said. “Last year, she told me that Florencio had started buying land around Posadas.”
“That’s a thought,” I said, Posadas had never made any of the “fastest-growing communities” lists.
“He’s got at least three sons from a previous marriage of his who are all starting to come out of the woodwork. So I guess he figures to set them up. Anyway, my mother said she was going to pull her money-what there was left of it-out of the bank and put it somewhere safe. She said that’s all she and Florencio argued about anymore. Money, money, money.”
I almost said, “But she isn’t your mother,” but I caught myself in time. “She was well into her eighties, wasn’t she?”
“Eighty-four. Florencio is two years younger, I think.”
“But then she died,” I prompted. “And by New Mexico’s law, right of survivorship gives her estate to her husband, unless she directs otherwise in her will, and as long as they were legally married. Did she leave a will?”
“That’s one reason I’m calling. I don’t know. She said she was going to write one. I don’t know if she ever got around to it.”
“The elderly often don’t, Mr. Willit. Have you asked Florencio?”
“He won’t talk to me.”
“Ah. By law, I don’t suppose he has to, either, sir. Under ‘joint tenants,’ he’s free to do as he likes.”
“Maybe so, but I want you to listen to this last letter. Wait a minute.” More shuffling followed. “Here we go. It’s dated September twentieth of this year. I won’t bore you with all the chitchat, but right here, it says, ‘It’s very sad what he said he might do. I don’t care, old as we are. There’s still a little more,’ and right here I can’t read what she wrote, but I guess she’s talking about her money.”
“Did you hear from her after that?”
“No. That’s the last letter I got.”
“Did she normally write to you regularly?”
“Oh, once or twice a year, I suppose. Maybe four times, counting Christmas cards and so on.”
“Did Florencio write to you, or contact you in any way, when your mother died? When Gloria died?”
“I didn’t know she had died until last week. I telephoned, hoping to talk with her, and Florencio said that she’d passed away. He told me that she hadn’t wanted a funeral service of any kind.”
“I see. Have you talked to him since then?”
“No. He won’t talk to me. But listen. It doesn’t make any sense that he’d bury my mother just across the street in some vacant lot like that. Good God. And she was a devout Catholic. She’d have wanted services of some kind, I’m sure.”
“Well, sir, it’s hard to tell what he was thinking. The very elderly sometimes get a few screws loose, and what seems simple and logical to them is pretty bizarre to the rest of us. Actually, it’s not a vacant lot, if you remember correctly. It’s a quiet, shaded spot, almost like a park.” I thought of the jumble of low shrubs and realized my description was a bit optimistic. “There’s no law that says he had to use the cemetery, and with all you’ve mentioned about his ways with money, maybe the whole idea appealed to him.”
“Well, it doesn’t appeal to me. I mean, there’s no protection for her grave from possible future development, no care, no maintenance. And from what the sheriff told me earlier, it’s not even Florencio’s property. It’s yours.”
“True enough.”
“And we haven’t settled a more important issue, anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“I think he killed her.”