“I got one a while ago, Frank. I haven’t looked at it. We got kinda busy around here.” She knew that the county commission had called a short special meeting to sort through and qualify the handful of applications for the county manager’s vacancy, but it was nothing that she had needed to attend…and Bob Torrez could be counted on to flee to the opposite side of the county from anything remotely construed as politics.
“Well, I have a copy with me,” Dayan said. “I think you and the sheriff are going to be very interested.”
“How many applications did they finally end up with?” As she talked, Estelle had made her way toward the front door of the hospital, and now she stood just inside the foyer where framed photos of the staff, including her husband, graced the east wall.
“Five that they’re going to consider,” Dayan said. “Were you planning to come in to the office this morning?”
“I’m on my way there right now.” She stepped outside and saw that the skies had cleared, leaving only a small smudge of clouds to the southwest.
“Maybe we could chat for a minute, then. I know it’s a bad time, with it being Christmas morning and all, but I’m trying to keep ahead of things. It’ll take me all week just to wheedle a comment out of the sheriff.”
“I sympathize, Frank,” Estelle said. Frank Dayan’s newspaper hit the streets on Thursdays, dictated more by the schedule of grocery store advertising inserts than by when breaking news was most likely…something that Estelle was sure twanged the newspaper publisher’s heart in opposing directions. And the search for a new county manager was a significant story for the county in general and the Sheriff’s Department in particular, regardless of Sheriff Robert Torrez’s disinterest in either politics or the press. Torrez had pretty much ignored the previous county manager, leaving the attendance of county meetings and reports to his undersheriff.
“Did anybody local make the short list?” Estelle asked.
“Oh, yes.” Dayan chuckled. “You and Robert are going to like this.” His tone said otherwise.
Chapter Nine
Frank Dayan handed the undersheriff a photocopy that included five names. Each name was followed by a one-or two-sentence résumé. Estelle settled in her chair and smoothed the single sheet of paper on the center of her desk calendar. She folded her hands and glanced up at Frank, seeing the twinkle in his eyes as he waited expectantly for her to read the list.
“Now this is interesting,” she said, and Dayan’s smile widened, lighting up his narrow, swarthy face.
“That’s an understatement,” he said. “Did you have any heads-up about this?”
“I hadn’t heard that this guy from Oklahoma City had applied.”
Dayan laughed at Estelle’s joke. “Oh, gosh. We’re concerned about him, all right.”
Estelle regarded the newspaper publisher with amusement and saw the expression that meant Dayan was sniffing for good front-page stuff. “I knew that Leona had applied,” she said. She again read the short statement about the candidate who had drawn Frank Dayan’s interest.
Leona Spears, B.S., M.S., Stanford University; Ph.D., California Institute of Technology; 28-year employment with New Mexico State Department of Transportation’s Highway Department. Currently planning engineer, DOT District 19.
“She told me a month or so ago that she was going to apply,” the undersheriff added.
“We’d be interested in what the sheriff has to say,” Dayan said.
“Ay,” Estelle sighed. “Well, ya veremos.”
“Is he going to be coming in later?” He waved a hand defensively. “I know this is Christmas and all.” Or maybe he didn’t, Estelle thought. Dayan was divorced, and seemed to spend every waking hour hovering over his newspaper…a dedication that was seldom rewarded by the newspaper chain’s corporate owners a thousand miles away. She glanced out the office door toward the dispatch island where Brent Sutherland presently commanded telecommunications. The young deputy had said nothing to Frank Dayan about the sheriff’s condition, and Estelle jotted a mental note to compliment Sutherland on his discretion…and to compliment him for not grumbling about swinging a double shift.
“The sheriff is on his way to University Hospital in Albuquerque, Frank.”
Dayan grimaced. “They’re transferring Chief Martinez up there?”
“No. It’s the sheriff who’s being transferred.”
Dayan’s face went blank. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“For what?”
“The possibility of a blood clot in his lung. We’ll know more later today.” She was almost ready to add, That’s not for publication, but didn’t. The Posadas Register came out on Thursday…five days away. The entire world could change by then-and at the rate things were going, probably would.
“You’re kidding,” Dayan said again. “He was with you down in Regál last night. That’s what I heard.”
“Yes, he was.”
Dayan settled back in his chair. “Huh.” He grinned sheepishly and nodded at the list. “This is going to cause a relapse, that’s for sure.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Estelle said. True enough, Leona Spears was a special case. A talented engineer and skillful planner when it came to asphalt, bridges, and drainage culverts, she still managed to tweak the sheriff the wrong way with her eccentric ways, right down to the bright, floral muumuus that she preferred when not in khaki and hard-hat at work.
More than that, during one memorable election year she had run against Bob Torrez for sheriff, a position for which she wasn’t remotely qualified. In years previous, she had run for county commission, for school board, for village trustee, losing every election in spectacular fashion.
The other names on the commission’s short list for county manager included two applicants from Las Cruces, one from Oklahoma City, and the current acting manager, a nice enough older man who had worked in the village planning and zoning office, but who Estelle knew had significant problems with both basic arithmetic and alcohol.
“The list of finalists is also the entire list of everyone who applied,” Dayan observed. “Posadas County is not everyone’s top choice.”
Estelle nodded, but didn’t volunteer the information that Dr. Arnold Gray, a local chiropractor and chairman of the county commission, had told her the week before-both that Leona had applied for the county manager’s job and that he and at least two other commissioners supported her choice. As Gray had succinctly put it, “When you look beyond Leona’s eccentricities, she’s a good fit. She’s not going to work for us for a couple of months and then go somewhere else.” With their support, Leona was a shoe-in.
Evidently, Dr. Gray hadn’t seen the necessity of tipping off either Frank Dayan or the sheriff himself. Perhaps the commission chairman was trusting Estelle to build some defenses for their decision…not that it mattered to them what the sheriff thought.
“Any comment?” the newspaper publisher asked hopefully. He fished a ballpoint pen and small notebook out of his jacket pocket.
Estelle handed the list back to Dayan. “They’ll do what they do,” she said. “I’m sure the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department will offer full cooperation with whoever is selected.”
Dayan grinned. “That’s nice. You don’t have any concerns?”
“Concerns? Lots of concerns, Frank. I don’t even want to start counting them. But no. None about Leona. Not at this point.”
“Ms. Spears has something of a history, you know. ‘Colorful’ might be a kind way to put it.”
“Yes, it would.” Estelle relaxed back in her chair and folded her hands across her stomach. “I’ve had occasion to talk with her a number of times in the past several years about one thing or another. But at the moment, we have two men in jail for grand larceny, auto theft, and assault, we have a former chief of police who is desperately ill, and Sheriff Torrez has had better days, I’m sure. And as you know from your own well-written front-page story last week, we’ve just started a mammoth records project to consolidate the village records with our own. That all by itself takes time and lots of manpower.”