“Leona Spears needs to go, not come.”
She laughed. “We’ll see, Bobby. Besides, Leona is local, for one thing.”
“Loco, you mean.”
“Well, maybe. But that’s important to the board, at this point. They don’t want some stranger coming in who doesn’t have some sympathy for the way we do things down here. Maybe they have a point. There’s no one who knows the county better than Leona does, except maybe yourself or Bill Gastner. I can see why they’re willing to give Leona a chance. She’s a professional planner, she’s good at working through budgetary matters, and she has to be pretty good at managing people, or she wouldn’t have been with the highway department as long as she has.”
“She’s nuts,” Torrez said.
“Maybe. She cornered me last week sometime and asked me a couple questions that didn’t sound too crazy.”
“Like what? She never talked to me.”
Small wonder. “For one thing, she wanted some figures on how much it would cost to have enough vehicles for the deputies to take the units home when they were off-duty.”
“You know we can’t afford that.”
“Leona wants to investigate applying for grants. That’s one of her specialties, I guess. Anyway, Bobby, I liked the sound of what she wanted to do. With the county having to provide coverage for the village now, it made sense to me to have each deputy with immediate access to a vehicle. If Leona Spears can make that happen, I’m all for it.”
Torrez flipped the paper off to one side in contempt.
“You want me to go through that and write up some answers?” Estelle asked. “She isn’t asking a lot…and there’s only a day or two left now to put together an answer that might do us some good.” She refrained from adding, We could have talked about this last week.
“If you want to do that, go ahead,” Torrez said. He made no move to hand her the paper, and she reached across and retrieved it. “So fill me in. What’s going on, other than Leona Spears? Christ.”
As succinctly as possible, Estelle reviewed their progress, and he listened without interruption, feet now propped up on his desk. When she’d finished, he let one leg slip off the desk, his boot thumping on the floor.
“Mike stopped by,” he said abruptly. He picked up a 3 x 5 card. “Janet’s sister lives in Kentland, Kansas. Monica Tripp-Baylor. I was going to call her…give me something to do.”
“Okay. When you do that, I’d like to know something about the parents.”
“She died.”
“The mother? So I’ve been told. But Mike says that Brad Tripp just sort of walked out on the family. I’d like to know what the real story is.”
“That’s what happened,” Torrez said. “They didn’t get along, and he moved out. Lived in town for a while, then hit the road.”
“I was trying to recall the incident of him on the stairway in the old building,” Estelle said.
Torrez actually smiled. “He’d been tearin’ up Pike’s Saloon. Remember that place down past the Don Juan that burned a year or so later?”
“Sure.”
“Just a bar fight,” the sheriff said. “I happened to be cruisin’ by, and took the call. When I brought Tripp back to the office, he decided to take me on. Didn’t work,” he added with some satisfaction.
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.” He shrugged.
“And after that incident?”
“Don’t know. I didn’t see him all that often. Eduardo would know, but he ain’t talkin’,” Torrez said bluntly.
“Well, sure, Bobby.”
“No doubt about it. Probably wasn’t a soul in the whole town that Eduardo didn’t know.”
“Agreed. But, as you say…”
“We need to sit down and talk with Essie, if you think you need to know something about Brad Tripp.”
Estelle mulled that for a moment. Essie Martinez was living through the least merry Christmas of her life. Digging through what she recalled of her husband’s tenure as police chief would be painful and, under the best of circumstances, of suspect accuracy anyway. But the sheriff was right. It was another angle, and at this point, any angle could help.
“How about if I do that,” she said. “I’ll take Bill along-he and Eduardo worked together for years. He might think of something to nudge Essie’s memory.”
Torrez glanced at his watch. “This afternoon?”
“Sure. Why not? Bill was going to come over to the house for dinner anyway. We’ll swing by Essie’s first. You’ll be home?”
“Home or here,” Torrez replied. “I got to pay attention to my therapy now, you know.” He said the word with so much venom that Estelle laughed, and that only deepened his glower.
Chapter Thirty
Less than an hour after Estelle left Sheriff Robert Torrez’s office early on that Sunday afternoon, her phone chirped. She had just parked the county car in her driveway after running several errands, and Francisco was halfway across the front yard toward her.
“Guzman,” she said, and held out a hand to her son. She was surprised to hear the characteristic monosyllabic greeting from the sheriff.
“Hey,” Torrez said, and the one word didn’t carry a flood of good will and holiday cheer. The intervening hour hadn’t improved his mood. “Where you at?”
“I just pulled into my driveway,” she replied.
“You got a few minutes?”
No, I don’t, she almost said. I’m going to spend the rest of this Sunday with my family. “Sure.” She reached across the seat and grabbed the two plastic sacks of groceries with her right hand, and handed them to Francisco, whose small hands deftly twined around the tops. “Give those to tía, hijo,” she said.
“We got us a problem,” Torrez said. “I’m in my office.” The connection broke.
“I thought Padrino was coming,” Francisco said.
Estelle sighed. “He is, hijo. After a little bit. Right now, Roberto el Gruñón needs to see me.”
“He could come over here,” Francisco said. “Tía and abuela have been baking all day.” His face beamed, and she saw the trace of powdered sugar near the left corner of his mouth. “There’s lots to eat.”
“Bobby’s not hungry right now,” Estelle said, and almost added, and that’s not the way el gruñón works. “You save some for Padrino.” She closed the car door. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
The little boy stepped back. “Okay.” The resignation in his tone was heavy, and he didn’t turn toward the house, waiting as if there were a chance his mother might change her mind.
“These things happen, hijo,” she said.
Her son’s expression was almost comical. Had he been old enough to frame the right words, he would have muttered, “Don’t make it a habit.”
As she drove back to the sheriff’s department, impatience prompted Estelle to run down her mental inventory of potential problems that might have reared their ugly heads, and she found herself centering on Mike Sisneros-if ever there was a lost soul, Mike was the very definition. With no clearcut direction for the case to go, nothing positive for him to pursue, all he could do was pace in circles and fume. The weekend even made it worse.
The sheriff’s office door was open, but Estelle paused at the counter of the dispatch island, where Gayle Torrez was busy organizing and straightening after two days of unplanned absence. As if the sheriff had been lying in wait for the first sounds of his undersheriff’s footsteps, his voice interrupted her greeting for Gayle.
“Hey?” His command was easy to interpret: If you’re there, get in here.
“Neanderthal man summons,” Gayle said, and beamed at Estelle. “You want to go out for some late lunch and leave him?” She knew her husband too well to be intimidated by his moods.