Gastner nodded. “Eduardo had dealings with Hank Sisneros sometimes? If that’s the case, he wasn’t alone. I crossed tracks with him a time or two myself. Old Hank liked the bottle, and he liked the back of the hand.” While he waited for Essie to reply, Gastner drew out a small spiral notebook from his left breast pocket, along with a ballpoint pen, and made a brief notation. “I’m sure Eduardo had far more dealings with him than I did.”
“I don’t know,” Essie said. “I just know that Eduardo didn’t care for Hank. You can tell sometimes, you know? And Eduardo…he was a funny one. When there was something bad to say about someone, he talked to himself. So I suppose he had his secrets.”
“There must have been a time,” Estelle said. She watched Essie’s face, wondering if something bubbled beneath the surface of her memory. For Essie to recall clearly that Eduardo didn’t like Hank Sisneros hinted that she would know something about why.
Essie’s eyes narrowed, but she seemed reluctant to open the door on indiscretion. “When Hank Sisneros moved out of town, Eduardo said that was a good thing. He thought that maybe Mike would have a chance to make something of himself. But I don’t know what the relationship was between Mike and his father.”
“Hank went to Deming?”
“I don’t know where he went. Just that he went, you know. For a long time, Mike worked at the hardware store, out in the lumberyard. He was still in high school. He took such good care of his mother.” Essie looked wistful. “She remarried, of course.”
“And moved,” Gastner said.
“You know, you ask me what Eduardo talked about. That’s easy. The thing that Eduardo just hated,” Essie said vehemently, “was going on domestic dispute calls. He just hated that.”
He sure did, Estelle thought. Before Chief Mitchell took over, if there had been ten domestics in a month, the sheriff’s department routinely handled nine of them.
“That Hank Sisneros…he and Irene-they were like oil and water. I don’t know how they ever got linked up in the first place, but what a mess. Hank, now, he had an eye for the ladies. That’s what Eduardo used to say. What they saw in him, I don’t know. It’s fortunate,” and she drew the word out, “that Mike takes after his mother in the looks department. The way I heard it was that finally, Irene just gave up and the church looked the other way when she divorced him. The best thing. When he moved out of town, that was a relief.” She heaved another sigh. “And that’s what I know about that.”
“We still have our fair share of folks like that in town,” Gastner said.
“Any town does,” Essie said.
“Mike and Janet were happy together, though,” Estelle said abruptly. “Did you ever meet her, or did Eduardo ever talk about her? Maybe she and Mike weren’t seeing each other that long ago.”
“I don’t think so. Like I said, I don’t think I know her beyond just a face in the store, you know. That sort of thing. But what a shame, no? A young girl like that.”
During the next few minutes, Estelle tried every avenue to explore what Essie Martinez might know about her husband and his relationships, and got nowhere. By and large, Chief Eduardo Martinez kept his own personal thoughts to himself. Or, if there had been long sessions of “pillow talk” between the two of them, Essie guarded those chats closely. And the pressure would have been considerable to be less than discreet when enjoying gossip with the other ladies from the church.
The undersheriff looked up from her notes with annoyance when a loud rap on her office door interrupted her thoughts. “Yes?” she said, but the door was already opening.
Sheriff Torrez leaned heavily on the knob. “Hello, Essie,” he said. Behind him, Estelle saw Eddie Mitchell in the hallway. “Bill, you got a minute?”
“Me?” Gastner said with surprise. “I have all kinds of minutes.”
Torrez nodded at Estelle. “I need a couple of ’em with you guys,” he said. “Essie, they’ll be right back.” He made an effort to sound pleasant and conversational. “Thanks for comin’ down.”
“You just go ahead,” the older woman said, favoring Torrez with a nod of approval.
A moment later, the four of them crowded into Torrez’s office, and the sheriff made a point of latching the door behind him. “You got your keys with you?” he asked Gastner.
“Sure.” The former sheriff hauled his keys from his pocket and held them out toward Torrez, letting them dangle from the ignition key of his Blazer.
“The key to the conference room?” Torrez asked.
Gastner fingered through the keys. After looking through twice, he stopped, puzzled. “It’s not there, Roberto.” He looked again, and the silence was so heavy in the room that the metallic tink of each key turning against its neighbor sounded loud and harsh. “Nope. I don’t have it.” He frowned. “What the hell did I do with it?”
“You’re sure you did something with it?” Mitchell asked.
“Hell yes, I’m sure. Otherwise it would be here.”
Estelle pulled out her own keys and held the conference key out to Gastner.
“I know what it looks like,” he snapped with unaccustomed impatience. “It’s not here.”
“Now we know what he was after,” Torrez said.
“What?” Gastner said. “Who?”
“Whoever assaulted you with that bar maybe wanted you dead,” Mitchell said. “Or maybe he just wanted your key.”
Bill Gastner whispered an expletive, then shook his head. “That’s nuts, Eddie. For one thing, how would he know which one of the goddamn collection is the right one?”
Mitchell extended his hand, and Gastner thumped the bunch into his palm. “This is the ignition and door-lock key for your Blazer, right? This Kwikset is the front door of your house, maybe the back, too. This little Sergent is the key to your wine cellar.” He grinned, but his eyes remained sober. “You got a safety deposit box key here. They’re easy to recognize, especially with Posadas State Bank stamped on the head. This little fart is to a suitcase or something like that. And this is the ignition key and door key to the state pickup that you drive.” He paused, and looked closely at the last key. “I don’t know what that one is, but it isn’t one that fits any doors in the county building.”
“That’s to my house,” Estelle said.
“Oh, there we go,” Mitchell said. “We’re looking for a big Yale, one that is stamped do not duplicate on its face. Convenient, huh?”
“Did you have the conference room key on your ring?” Torrez asked. “On this ring here?”
“Sure.”
“Did you take it off?”
“Don’t think so. Why would I?” Gastner glowered at Torrez, then at Mitchell. “Do you guys take keys on and off your rings?” Estelle felt the intense déjà vu, remembering their talk with Mike Sisneros about his own keys.
“Nope,” Eddie said, as if to say. And that settle that.
“So that poses a goddamn interesting question,” Gastner said. “Number one, if we assume that in the heat of the moment, in the goddamn dark of the moment, this guy can even see to figure out which key is which, that he then-number two-takes the key before dropping the rest of ’em in the bushes.”
“Something like that,” Mitchell said gently. “It could happen. And nobody is going to be the wiser. At least for a day or two. Somebody knew what Janet’s apartment key looked like, too. Right?”
Gastner looked skeptical. “He whacks me, and takes my conference room key? Interesting that he’d know what it’s for.” When silence ensued, he turned to Estelle. “When you found yours truly lying on the front step like a goddamn drunk, did you check my keys?”
“Ah, no sir. I picked them up and put them in my pocket. And then sometime later, after Jackie and I checked out your house, I put them in your trouser pockets in the closet of your hospital room.”