A Discount for Death (3 page)

Lights from Alan Perrone’s BMW flashed across their faces as the assistant state medical examiner tucked the car in behind the ambulance. The coroner’s dapper figure joined the shadows under the utility pole.

“Impound the bike and the car both,” Torrez said.

“Impound the patrol car?” Pasquale asked.

“Yep,” Torrez said. “And somebody find Chief Mitchell and tell him that he needs to hustle his ass back here.”

Chapter Three

The phone rang six times before the receiver was picked up. No one came on the line immediately, but Estelle could hear her husband’s soft voice in the background, sounding as if he was explaining something to a small set of stubborn ears. Her mother’s voice surprised her. Normally, Teresa Reyes didn’t bother with the telephone; the modern gadget was a chore for clawed, arthritic fingers.

“Hello?” Teresa sounded as if she were cautiously exploring the inside of a dark, unfamiliar closet.

“Hey there,
Mamá
, ” Estelle said. By looking south, she could see the corner fence a few blocks away that marked the front yard of their house on South Twelfth Street.

“Are you all right?” Teresa asked, switching immediately to Spanish.

“I’m fine,
Mamá
. There was a nasty accident up here on Bustos, so I’m going to be a while.”

“We heard the sirens,” Teresa said.

“I bet you did. From where I’m standing, I can see the front yard. We’re right in front of the Don Juan. How are
los hijos
?”

“Carlos went to bed about ten minutes ago,” Teresa said, and Estelle smiled. Her youngest son, not yet four, “enjoyed his dreams,” as her husband Francis was fond of saying. “Francisco is learning how to play chess with the grand master.”

“It’s hard to imagine that little anarchist following the rules. He drives Francis crazy.”

“He’s inventive,
hija. Padrino
deserves a medal for patience.”

“He’s playing with
Padrino
?”

“Yes. The three of them are in the dining room.”

A voice in the background, intending to be heard on the phone across the room, was unmistakably Bill Gastner’s. “Ask her if she’s going to be home in time for some cake, or if we should finish it up.”

“Tell him to finish it,” Estelle said. “We’ve got a mess.”

“There’s always something,” Teresa said. “We thought you’d be home earlier.”

“So did I,
Mamá
.”

“Here’s your husband,” Teresa said abruptly. “I’m going to bed now.”

“Okay,
Mamá
. I…” Estelle started to say, but the receiver was already in transit. Dr. Francis Guzman stopped what he was saying to his son in mid-sentence, and Estelle pictured him standing beside the kitchen table with the chess pieces strewn here and there, one hand on top of little Francisco’s head, ready to steer the child if necessary.

“Where are you,
querida
?” Francis asked.

“If you step outside the front door, you could look up the street and see me,” she replied. “Right in the intersection by the Don Juan. It’s going to be a little bit longer, I guess.”

“Bad?”

“One fatal. A girl riding a motorcycle hit the utility pole.”

“Ouch.”

“
Verdad
, ouch. It looks like there was something going on that involved a village policeman, so it’s getting complicated.”

“Which cop?”

“Kenderman.”

“Huh. He was chasing her, you mean?”

“I’m not sure. But it looks that way.”

“Have you talked with Chief Mitchell?”

“That’s who we’re waiting on right now,” Estelle said. “He’s on his way back from Deming.”

“And sometime soon, we hope.” She heard her son’s voice again in the background, plaintive and high-pitched, and then Francis said, “The kid wants to know when you’ll be home.”

“I have no idea,” Estelle said. “And I know how he loves answers like that.”

Francis chuckled. “We miss you,
querida
. Want to talk to birthday boy?”

“Of course she does,” Bill Gastner said. “Hey, sweetheart,” he added, and his voice boomed into Estelle’s ear after the quiet, almost-whisper of her husband. “Thanks for all the goodies. But no more birthdays now.”

“You’re declaring a moratorium?”

“I should have, about thirty years ago. What do you have going on up there?”

“A motorcycle smacked the utility pole on the corner of Twelfth and Bustos. A young woman was killed.”

“Anyone we know?”

Estelle looked down at the driver’s license that Deputy Pasquale had handed her a few minutes before. “Colette Parker,” she said. A small, almost elfinlike face stared up at her, and Estelle turned the laminated license slightly to cut the glare from the flashlight held under her arm.

“Colette Parker. The name rings a really faint bell,” Gastner said.

“She’s twenty-two, worked in the supermarket,” Estelle said. She remembered a slight, quick-moving figure, blonde hair cut in a pageboy and hooked behind jugged ears, a small neat girl in her old-fashioned white apron, far more fetching in person than she appeared in the motor vehicle department photo. “In that little deli the new owners put in.” She turned the license over and saw the motorcycle endorsement.

“Don’t remember. But I don’t hang out in delis much, either. I probably know her folks.”

Estelle heard the small voice in the background again, and Gastner said something unintelligible. “Your bonehead son thinks his bishop is a rook,” Gastner added. “There’s something about diagonal moves that escapes him.” Estelle heard a giggle and then a conspiratorial conversation between the little boy and his father.

“Don’t let him con you, sir. He plays with Francis all the time. He knows what the rules are.”

“You’d never know it. And they’re playing two against one, so that tells you how fair the whole setup is in the first place. Anyway, you about to wrap things up down there? Are we going to see you this evening?”

“Ah, no…probably not. We’ve got a problem or two.”

“There’s always those,” Gastner said, and Estelle grinned at the broad implication in his tone—
they’re your problems now, sweetheart
. “I’m about to wrap up this important tourney and head for the hills. Anything I can do for you?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry I got held up. I had the best intentions.”

“Don’t give it a second thought. I know how these things go. Give my regards to Roberto.”

“I’ll do that.” She turned to glance toward where Sheriff Robert Torrez had been standing talking to Perry Kenderman, and was startled to see that two additional figures had arrived and were hunkered over the motorcycle. “I’ll see you tomorrow, probably.”

“Sounds good. Be careful.”

Estelle switched off the phone. She looked across the intersection again and saw that District Attorney Daniel Schroeder had turned his attention from the bike to her. He regarded her thoughtfully from across Twelfth Street. If he was actually listening to what the man standing beside him was saying, he gave no indication. Estelle started across the street, and Schroeder reached out a hand to contact Chief Eddie Mitchell’s shoulder. Mitchell looked up and saw Estelle. The two men waited by the motorcycle as she approached.

Mitchell stood with both hands on his hips, blunt jaw clamped askew as if daring his opponent to throw his best punch. At one point, both Estelle and Eddie Mitchell had been sheriff’s deputies before roads diverged. Mitchell had left to join the Sheriff’s Department in Bernalillo County, an area that included the huge metroplex of Albuquerque. He had passed the lieutenant’s exam and then abruptly quit to return to the village of Posadas to take the chief’s job when Eduardo Martínez retired.

Whatever forces drew Mitchell, a native of Pittsburgh, to the tiny New Mexican village was anyone’s guess. Other than innocuous remarks like “Pretty country,” he’d never bothered to explain.

A stocky bear of a man, Mitchell was as quick on his feet as a dancer. He waited, hands on his hips, brows furrowed.

“Evening,” Schroeder offered. As usual, Schroeder’s suit was immaculate, and the light from the street lamp winked off the polished gold rims of his glasses. The same height as Mitchell, the district attorney gave up a good fifty pounds to the chief of police.

“Hello, sir,” Estelle said. “Chief.” She nodded at Mitchell, and he extended his hand. His grip was firm, and he didn’t let go. His light blue eyes locked on Estelle’s, and for a long minute, he stood silently, as if trying to read her mind.

“Bobby says he’s going to impound the patrol car,” Mitchell said finally. His voice was a light tenor. He released his grip.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there something to make you think that there was contact between the car and the cycle?”

“No. It’s just a very good possibility.”

“A possibility?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mitchell searched Estelle’s impassive face for a moment. “Kenderman tells me that the cyclist ran a stop sign at Highland, right in front of him.”

“That’s not true, sir.”

“Tell me what’s true.”

“She may well have run a stop sign, or half a dozen of them, during the time he was chasing her. But it didn’t happen the way he says it did.”

Schroeder ran his right hand through thinning blond hair. “Did the Volvo lady see anything?”

“Her name’s Maggie Archer. The bike crossed directly in front of her, but she had time to stop. There was no contact. Even as the bike hit the pavement and started somersaulting, the patrol car entered the intersection, right in front of Mrs. Archer’s car. She had a grandstand seat. Mears is talking with her right now.”

“I see he is,” Schroeder said. He thrust his hands into his pockets. “Tell me what you think happened, Estelle.”

Briefly, Estelle recounted what she had first heard, and then seen. “It was a chase over several blocks, sir. If Mrs. Archer traveled six blocks during the time that I heard the police car and the bike, then they could have covered twice that distance.”

“You heard them turning this way and that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mitchell shook his head and gazed down at the bike. He toed the back tire with his boot. “So if Kenderman says that he initiated chase at the corner of Twelfth and Highland, he’d be lying.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you can’t see any way around that.”

“No, sir.”

Mitchell puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly. “And no lights or siren.”

“No, sir.”

“And no conversation with Dispatch.”

“No, sir. The radio in the patrol car was turned off when I looked inside. Even if he had it on during the chase, he didn’t use it. The sheriff was home, monitoring the channel. He says that Kenderman wasn’t talking to Dispatch.”

The chief rocked the cycle’s back tire back and forth against the small amount of slack in the drive chain. “I think we all need to confer with Officer Kenderman,” he said finally. “I’d like both you and the sheriff in on it.”

“Certainly.”

“Right now, Kenderman thinks that it’s his word against yours…and I assume he doesn’t know where you were standing when you heard the chase—or even
if
you heard it, for that matter. Is that correct?”

“I don’t see how he could.”

“Good. Then let’s leave it that way for a little while,” Mitchell said with a curt nod. “There’s always a chance that there’s a great big unknown in all this mess. We need to give Kenderman every opportunity.” He looked hard at Estelle. “After all, there is the possibility that what you heard wasn’t related to this accident.”

“No, sir, that’s not a possibility,” Estelle replied, but Mitchell shrugged.

“We’ll talk to the officer again and see. Is it all right if he rides down with me?”

Estelle hesitated. She liked Eddie Mitchell and trusted him, but she wanted nothing to inadvertently bolster Perry Kenderman’s confidence. “I’d prefer that he rode in with one of the deputies, sir.”

“In custody?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“All right.” Mitchell pivoted at the waist to survey the intersection. “Let’s get this mess cleared up.”

As the chief stepped away from the bike, Dan Schroeder held out a hand and touched Estelle on the arm. “I need to talk with you for a minute.” So far, he hadn’t said a word about the fatality, and it was evident to Estelle that he’d been patiently waiting for that business to be wrapped up.

Schroeder watched Mitchell’s blocky form retreating across the intersection toward Bob Torrez and Perry Kenderman. For a moment he remained silent with his thoughts. “Are you ready for grand jury tomorrow?”

Estelle sighed. “If I fall asleep on the stand, poke me.”

Schroeder managed a tight smile. “Long day, eh.”

“Very.”

“I had a call from George Enriquez last night.”

Estelle raised an eyebrow but said nothing. A long-time Posadas resident and owner of an insurance agency for more than twenty years, George Enriquez qualified as a town father as much as anyone. But beginning at nine o’clock Tuesday morning, a grand jury would start reviewing evidence that Enriquez had engaged in fraudulent insurance practices for more than a decade. District Attorney Schroeder would be seeking indictments on twenty-eight separate counts of insurance fraud, including one count that involved deputy Thomas Pasquale as a victim of the scam.

“Enriquez wants to deal.”

“Deal? I wouldn’t think he had much of a bargaining position, sir,” Estelle said.

“In part, it’s the same old song and dance…give him a few weeks, and he’d clean up the mess, make financial amends—the same sort of nonsense that we’ve heard from him too many times before.”

Estelle nodded and waited.

“And then he said that he wanted to meet with me today.” Schroeder turned toward the utility pole and looked at his watch. “At two
PM
in my office in Deming. That was seven hours ago.”

“What did he have to say?”

Schroeder straightened his sleeve carefully over the watch. “He never showed.”

“Maybe he changed his mind.”

“That’s possible. But he’s not home, and the answering machine at his office says that they’ll be closed until Friday. It gives an 800 number for emergencies.”

“You mean he skipped?” The idea of George Enriquez uprooting himself and fleeing Posadas was ludicrous. Whenever she saw him, Estelle thought of stuffed animals. Enriquez had the same hugability, the same sort of flannel personality, as a favorite old polyester pet. He wasn’t the kind to go furtive, slipping across the border to life on the gold coast. After state insurance investigators had finished pawing through his office files during the past months, there wasn’t much left to hide.