“You want a snack?” Camille called from the kitchen, and I closed the atlas and slid it back on the shelf.
“Sure,” I mumbled.
“You know, I had a thought,” Camille said. I stopped beside the table, looking at the array of hors d’oeuvres she’d assembled. “You’ve got plenty of room here.”
“Here? For what?” I asked, and sampled a miniature nacho-a nuked chip with cheese and a slice of jalapeno on top. It was so hot, it made my eyes water.
Camille stepped to the kitchen door and looked out toward the five-acre jungle. “You’ve got enough room for horses right here, Dad. All it would take is hiring some kids to clean out the undergrowth.”
“What a job that would be,” I said.
“Less than what you’ve got in mind for the Gonzalez place,” my daughter replied. “And the biggest job is finished. You’ve got a marvelous home here.”
I shrugged. “Yep.”
She hefted the coffeepot and poured two cups. I could tell from the aroma that it was the real thing. “I wonder if Sheriff Holman knows yet,” she said. “That she’s leaving, I mean.”
“Well, if he doesn’t, he will soon enough. And he’s got until June first to do something about it. When Estelle leaves, so does our entire detective division.”
“Is there anyone you’d care to move into her place?”
“I’m not sure. Probably Eddie Mitchell. When he and Skip Bishop work together, they make a pretty good team.”
“What about Bob Torrez?”
I shook my head. “He runs the Patrol Division. We’ll ask him, but he’s never shown any inclination to move out of uniform.” I ate another nacho. “Our problem is that we’re a tiny department. I mean, I say Patrol Division, but that means only a handful of uniformed deputies. We’re up to seven now, to cover three shifts, seven days a week. Plus Martin and myself. That’s nine of us, and that’s hardly a ‘division’ of any kind.
“You and Martin Holman, then.” Camille said.
I grimaced. “The halt and the blind. You’re too kind.” I ate another nacho, particularly savoring the cheese. “Despite everything, Marty Holman is doing a fair-enough job. He doesn’t know much, but he’s a fast study. He’s been sheriff now for nine years, and already he’s learned that if he rubs a latent fingerprint off a piece of evidence, there’s no way we can put it back.”
“Awesome.”
“Indeed.” We sat in comfortable silence for a while. “The hardest part,” I finally said, “is remembering that an institution functioned perfectly well before we arrived on the scene, and that it will probably function perfectly well long after we leave.”
Camille nodded but didn’t respond. I rested my elbows on the table, folded my hands, and rested my chin on them, gazing across the kitchen toward the window that looked out on the backyard.
“That doesn’t make it any easier, sweetheart. Holman keeps telling me that I should take up golf.”
“Ugh,” Camille said.
“You can’t see me doing that?”
“More important, I don’t think you can see you doing that. I think you were on the right track before.”
“What’s that?”
“You saw those draft horses and it lit a passion, that’s for sure,” Camille said. “I saw your face. Everyone will think it’s silly, of course, because it involves a lot of work and time and money. But what everyone else thinks doesn’t matter. The work is good for you; you’ve got the time, and you’ve got the money. What’s silly is feeling that you have to give up this place.”
“I don’t feel I have to. I just thought that it made sense, that’s all. Estelle and Francis need the space a lot more than I do.”
“And they’re moving, so that’s no longer an issue,” Camille said. “You have a housekeeper who comes twice a week to keep the place spotless for you, so it doesn’t matter if the building itself is a thousand square feet or five thousand. Just enjoy it.”
“Maybe so.”
“And out back, those five acres are big enough that you could have a neat two-acre paddock, a small barn and arena, and still have enough space left over so that the whole complex would be hidden on all sides by whatever strange things are growing out there.”
“And a small cemetery to boot.”
Camille laughed. “And with everything here, you’d have room when company came to visit.”
I looked at Camille in mock horror. “Visit? Who’s coming to visit?”
“You never know when a grandchild might want to come and spend a week or so with his crazy grandpa.”
“They never have before,” I groused.
“That’s because you’re always working,” Camille said, and she looked at me as if to add, “So there.”
I took a deep breath, eyeing the nachos. “I’ll think on it,” I said.
I was about to reach for the tempting morsel when Camille reached over to the counter and picked up the pill organizer. “Here,” she said. “Have some. It’s time.”
Chapter 21
I was walking across the foyer in my stocking feet when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. I glanced out through the single slender window beside the front door and saw Martin Holman and Eddie Mitchell climbing out of a county car.
“What the hell would they have done if I’d stayed in Flint?” I said, and opened the door.
“We were in the neighborhood,” Holman said affably as he climbed out of the car. He was holding a clear plastic evidence bag and wearing another of his enormous smiles. His days were clearly marked by the joy of small individual victories. “I was hoping we’d catch you.” He held up the bag. “How about this?”
He handed the bag to me, and I took it by the closure. “Well, well,” I said. “Come on in.” I shut the heavy door with one hand, holding up the bag with the other. The revolver inside was a Smith amp; Wesson, a perfectly run-of-the-mill.357 Magnum, four-inch-barreled Model 19. The letters PCSO were engraved on the rightside plate, just under the manufacturer’s logo.
“Mine, I assume,” I said, and Holman nodded. I turned the bag and saw the deep scratch across the bottom of the left grip where I’d snagged a barbed-wire fence a year before.
“Where was it found?”
“Well, that’s the interesting thing,” Holman said. “You know Deann Black?”
“Sure. She runs that day-care center, over behind the hospital.”
“That’s right. She found this in her son Jason’s sock drawer.”
“Under the socks,” I said, and looked at the Magnum again. It was fully loaded. “Maybe that’s where I should have kept it. How old is Jason?”
“He’s ten,” Eddie Mitchell said, and I glanced up at the deputy. He was no taller than I was, and probably weighed nearly the same, little of it fat.
“A ten-year-old? Well, that explains the brilliant hiding place. Was the little terrorist in on the burglary, or what?”
Mitchell shook his head slightly. “I don’t know. His mother discovered the weapon this afternoon when she was sorting laundry. She called us right away. And she’s pretty smart. She didn’t move it, or touch it. Dispatch sent me over there. Then she went and checked her kid out of school so he’d be there, too.”
“What did the kid say?”
“He claims he found the weapon over behind Guilfoil Auto Parts on Bustos.”
“Sure, that’s likely,” I said. “And mom?”
“She’d like to believe him, but I don’t think she does. She gave me permission to search the kid’s room. I didn’t turn up anything else.”
“And the kid maintains that he just found the gun lying in the alley?”
“Behind one of the Dumpsters. Right.”
“Prints?”
Mitchell shook his head again. “I haven’t run anything yet. Might be interesting, though.”
“Unless the kid’s watched too many movies,” Holman said. “Then he’s wiped it clean.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “Eddie, in the meantime, give mom a call back and tell her that we want to have the kid come down to the office for a chat. Ask her to come along, as well. Who is Mr. Black, by the way?”
“They’re separated. He works over at Posadas General. I think he’s a custodian.”