“No, I didn’t. I got hung up at Herb’s. I did talk to George briefly, and he didn’t want to wait. He cancelled the luncheon date, not me. He didn’t mention the wine then, or that he was asking someone else to fetch a bottle. He wouldn’t ask Ricardo Mondragon to do it. But no…I don’t think he’d go out to get it himself. He’d just make the one glass last.”
“So,” Estelle mused regarding the receipt thoughtfully. “At 11:47 a.m.” She held up the baggie, her thumb marking the cash register’s day-time imprint.
“If the computer’s clock is accurate.” I nodded at the store’s front door. “Blake would remember if George came in,” I said. “Well, he might,” I amended.
Blake Pierson had tended the little bar at the bowling alley in the 1970s, then worked at the supermarket, tending its small liquor department, then managed the current iteration. His knowledge of things alcoholic was encyclopedic. I knew him well not because I drank-nobody got rich off my intake-but because the largest percentage of crimes involved lubrication before their commission, wearing the badge meant talking with the source of the sauce from time to time.
I followed Estelle inside, struck as always by the odd, cloying aroma of the store. The merchandise didn’t ooze through the glass of the shelved bottles. It oozed from the pores of those who drank too much and then returned to the store for a refill. The potpourri of wine and spirits thickened over the years, permeating the very skeleton of the building itself.
Pierson, a stumpy little guy who favored plaid flannel shirts any time of year, was studying a multipage computer print-out as we entered. “Ohhhh,” he shuddered. “I didn’t do it.” He folded the print-out carefully, patting it flat on the counter. From somewhere amid the racks of red wine, a rail-thin elderly man appeared clutching a liter-and-a-half bottle, and Pierson reached out across the counter to tilt the bottle just far enough that he could scan the bar-code with the little hand wand. “Thirteen thirty-eight, Pop,” he said, and made change from the twenty with economical motions, counting the change out like a rapid-fire auctioneer. “You come back and see us,” he said. He slipped the bottle into double paper bags and handed the cargo to the aging customer. Pop Mendoza ambled past us with a curt nod of greeting, headed for the door.
“How’s it goin’?” Pierson asked, and leaned on the counter.
Estelle had removed the receipt from the evidence bag, and she placed it on the counter. Pierson framed it with both hands without touching it and closed one eye as if peering through a spy-glass.
“Right over there,” he said, and pointed over the top of the cash register. “The Aussie end cap display. We sell a lot of that. Good shelf life when it’s uncorked, robust, lots of fruit. Good, honest stuff, and cheaper than it should be.”
“Sir, did George Payton come in sometime during the last day or two to buy a bottle of this?”
“Oh,” Pierson groaned, and when he exhaled I could smell the afterlife of something robust, with lots of fruit. He touched the date on the receipt as if assuming we hadn’t noticed its presence. “Damn, I was so sorry to hear of Georgie.” He frowned and shook his head. “What a guy, you know?”
“Yes, sir,” Estelle said. “He was in?”
“Oh, gosh, no.” Pierson bent down and rested stout forearms on the glass counter, pushing the receipt back toward Estelle. “I haven’t actually seen Georgie in a couple of months. I asked Maggie the other day how he was doing, and she said he was real frail. Just real frail.”
“When was that?”
He tapped the receipt. “Guess it was yesterday. Yesterday morning.” He squinted one eye at the receipt again. “This says 11:47 a.m.”
“So, yesterday morning,” Estelle repeated.
“The one bottle, right there,” Pierson said, and straightened up. “Probably for Georgie. ’Course, I don’t know that for sure. She strikes me as a martini type, you know.” He held thumb and forefinger together as if pinching the slender stem of a glass. “So I’m guessing it was for Georgie. Phil…you know Phil comes in and buys that from time to time for his father-in-law, too. But he’s a beer man. Phil, I mean.” He puffed out his cheeks. “I could be nosy,” he added, and looked quizzically at the undersheriff.
“Whenever there’s an unattended death,” Estelle said easily, giving him the stock answer. “We like to tie up all the loose ends.”
“Well, sure you do. What else? Mornin’, Evie,” he called to the woman who had entered and was angling off toward the single section of grocery items.
Estelle picked up the receipt. “This was Maggie Payton, though,” she repeated. “You’re sure of that?”
“Well, as sure as I am of anything these days,” Pierson laughed. “That’s a cash sale, so we don’t have a card receipt with a signature. But she was here yesterday morning, and I remember her buying the Aussie.” He grinned, showing a diminishing supply of teeth. “You could ask her, right? Don’t go tattling on me, now. I’d hate to have her as an enemy.”
“Not to worry,” Estelle said pleasantly. “Thanks, sir.” She held the receipt so he could see it. “This time is accurate?”
“Right on the dot,” he laughed. “Lookit,” he said, and held out the tail end of the register tape. He twisted around and eyed the Coors clock behind him. “Right on the money. To the minute.” Estelle nodded appreciatively.
The walk back outside to the car seemed like about fifteen miles, all of it uphill.
Chapter Thirty-two
The neat brick ranch house on East Fairview Lane was manicured to the hilt, ready for a magazine photo-shoot. Neither Phil nor Maggie Borman would call their place a “house,” of course. That word was taboo in their circle. The Bormans’ home cried out to me that the owners would rather be somewhere else…nothing about the place said Posadas County to me.
Only heavy, diligent watering could produce such a verdant yard, coupled with endless mowing, aerating, fertilizing, and fussing. The lawn would make a golf course envious. I had no doubt that the Bormans had a water treatment system, since Posadas water was hard enough to break with a hammer. On top of that, the soil held enough alkali that the upward leaching deposited white ghosts on the surface when the water evaporated.
I knew the Bormans’ aging yardman, a sober guy who rarely spoke and even more rarely smiled. His customer list included several similar owners, and I guess he had the touch that assured business. The busy Bormans’ perfect lawn, perfect cosmos and chrysanthemums, perfect token cacti, perfect everything-all flourished.
It made my yard seem like a bramble pile…but then again, I considered my yard an authentic bramble pile, and that saved me a lot of time and energy. I had no desire to be reminded by a perfect green lawn that I had at one time lived somewhere else, or that I wanted Posadas to somehow morph into something it wasn’t. The thought occurred to me that if I had hired Maggie Payton Borman to handle my real estate deal with the Guzmans, she would doubtless have had a fit about my brambles, perhaps even arguing me into doing something about them. Well, by and large, the bulldozers had taken care of that.
The Bormans’ driveway was empty, the front drapes pulled against the afternoon sun. Estelle slowed the county car, but drove past without stopping. “Nice place,” I said. “So southwesterny.” Estelle didn’t reply, not acknowledging my cynicism. “You know, it nags at me,” I added.
“What does, sir?”
“Gweneth Barnes said that Phil Borman came into the pharmacy with Guy Trombley first thing this morning.”
“Yes, she said that.”
“Phil could have palmed that little bottle easily enough. Suppose he went back to the restroom, way in the back of the store, past the prescription counter, out behind Trombley’s office. If the door to the compounding room was open, or even just unlocked, he could have just reached around and put the bottle back on the shelf. It would only take an instant. Clumsy as I am, I could even do that.”