Blood Sweep (6 page)

Torrez's dark face remained expressionless. “I think I'd be pissed at being detained for an hour for no good reason.”

“He was way cool. Do you think he's up to something?”

Torrez shrugged. “Don't know. I'll be interested to hear what he has to say to the commissioners.”

“Are you going to the meeting?”

“Well,” Torrez said, “that ain't so rare, is it?”

“Yes.” Pasquale's snappy response almost earned a smile from Torrez.

Chapter Seven

With her afghan enveloping her like a colorful tent, Teresa Reyes sat in her rocker, aluminum walker within easy reach. Her right elbow rested on the arm of the chair, and she cushioned her chin in her hand. Once a sturdy, bustling woman capable of managing a one-room schoolhouse filled with twenty-five noisy, obstreperous children, she was now a tiny sparrow of a person. Her gaze didn't shift from her thoughts far away as Estelle entered the house.

“
Mamá
, are you doing okay?”

“Oh, sure.” The elderly woman ever so slowly pulling her gaze back from her personal horizon.

“I'm going to be flying with
Padrino
to Albuquerque here in a few minutes.” Soft footsteps in the hallway announced their housekeeper and Teresa's caregiver, Addy Sedillos, and Estelle's comment was as much to her as to Teresa. “He managed to break his hip somehow.”

“Should I go over?” Addy asked immediately.

“He won't be home for a while, I'm afraid. He has to have surgery—Francis says a hip replacement. Maybe a plate besides. We don't know what he'll need.” She had crossed to her mother, and bent down to give the tiny woman a gentle hug. “We just don't know yet.”

“
Aye.”
Teresa shook her head. “The hip…that's a bad thing.” Her voice was little more than a whisper, raspy as a dried leaf.

“Yes it is,
Mamá
. But
Padrino
has a stout constitution. He'll be all right. Anyway,” and she stood up and stretched, “the air ambulance will fly us up. And guess what?” She bent down again so that she was face-to-face with her mother. “Camille's coming out. She'll fly in tonight. I'll be able to meet her at the airport.”

Teresa brightened. Despite what Bill Gastner might imply, his daughter Camille Stratton was indeed welcome company. She would pamper and chat with Teresa Reyes, drawing the elderly woman out, savoring Teresa's stories of her childhood in northern Mexico, of life in Tres Santos, just a few miles south of the border.

Estelle quickly packed what she needed in one compact gym bag, and then returned to the living room. She sat down on the fireplace hearth next to her mother's rocker. “Will you tell me about the cashier's check,
Mamá
?”

The elderly woman looked blank for a moment, and then one expressive eyebrow lifted a bit. “Sometimes you find out things faster than you should,” she said. “I didn't want you to worry. You have enough on your mind.”

“Tell me,
Mamá
. Is this about something with Francisco?” Her husband's offhand remark about a new flute had seemed logical to her, since the boy's passion had grown to include the wind instrument as well as the piano that he'd been playing since the age of five. But eight thousand dollars would pay for just a note or two from the sort of flute Francisco would favor.

With the fourteen-year-old boy hundreds of miles away from home, living at Leister Conservatory in Missouri with his world heavy with theory, practice, and performance, it wasn't hard to imagine his agile mind coming up with some scheme—a new instrument of some kind, or perhaps he had changed his mind and was planning a personally produced CD of his music. But he would never try to cajole finances out of his grandmother, whom he revered.

“Do you recall…Francisco's friend? Remember…” Teresa squinted at the window as if her memory lay outside…“Do you remember the boy who played in the concert…was it last winter?” Her speech was halting as she both tried to recall what she wanted to say from one sentence to the next, but also struggled to cope with English—not a language for which she had much affection.

“Of course I do.” Mateo Atencio, the fifteen-year-old youngster from a tiny village in south-central Texas and also a senior performance major at Leister Conservatory on a full-ride scholarship, had stunned the audience with his virtuosic flute performance, playing both solo and accompanied by Francisco Guzman on the piano.

“I hear that he got in trouble somehow,” Teresa said slowly. “In Mexico. Maybe it was Mazatlán.”

“
Ay.
Did my
hijo
call you?” Estelle knelt beside the chair, both of her hands covering her mother's.
And why would he do that?
Estelle knew that both her sons treasured talking with their grandmother, who was now never left alone. The boys knew that. Had Francisco had such important news, he would have asked to speak with his brother, Carlos—who would receive and deliver messages with perfect accuracy. Failing that, he would have spoken with
Nana
, Addy Sedillos. If not her, then whichever dispatcher was on duty at the Sheriff's Department. Or their father at the clinic. Or, or, or…

The Spanish word opened the floodgate, and when Teresa replied, it was in the elegant, old-fashioned borderlands Mexican dialect with which she'd spent the first eighty-five years of her life in Tres Santos.

“
Su amigo, el Capitán…”
and she stopped as if recalling that difficult name had exhausted her circuits.

“
Tomás,
you mean?” Now a colonel in the Mexican
judiciales,
Tomás Naranjo had been a valuable resource for the Posadas County Sheriff's Department when matters had spilled one way or another across the border. “He called here?”

“I told him that he could reach you at the office, but he seemed in such a hurry, that man.”

Estelle frowned. Naranjo being in a hurry was a difficult concept to accept. It was unlikely enough that he would have called Estelle's home during the day—and even if he had, he would have been the epitome of genteel manners. He would have taken time to court Teresa over the phone, asking about each family member in turn. Eventually, he would have gotten around to the problem at hand. And what help would Teresa be? Naranjo would certainly have called Estelle at the Sheriff's Office had something urgent arisen. That he might have called her home, choosing to speak with Teresa, was incomprehensible, and stirred Estelle's suspicions.

“Did he explain what he wanted? What was going on with the boy? Why would they be in Mexico?”

Teresa looked distant again, and for a long moment didn't answer. Estelle had long since learned to simply wait, not pushing her mother with impatient prompting.

“I don't know,” Teresa said finally.

“But the eight thousand dollars? Did Naranjo himself request that?”

This time Teresa nodded thoughtfully. “That was last week,
mihija.
That is the bail that is necessary. And I know that the two boys have concerts coming up.” A fleeting smile touched her lips. “They always do, those two. Maybe that's what it is.”

“Bail.” Her stomach felt as if it were full of lead. “Tomás asked you for the money? It was him,
personally,
who made that request of you?” How completely unlikely, Estelle thought. The colonel would never do such a thing.

Teresa nodded. “I believe that is what your friend said.”

“
Por dios, w
hatever for?”

“The captain explained it to me, but he talked faster than I could listen. But you've always trusted him, no?”

“Of course.” Trusted
him.
“So he asked for the bail money, and you then agreed to send the cashier's check?” Tomás Naranjo was a colonel, his most recent promotion not something that Teresa would remember. But he would not have tried to cajole money out of Mateo's friends or relatives. Unthinkable. No, it would have been much simpler to order the boy's release and—if Mateo had actually been in Mexico in the first place, had been caught with one hand in the Mexican cookie jar—send him packing back across the border. Anything serious enough to warrant custody, like an unlikely weapons charge, assault, auto theft, or a rough night at a cantina, wouldn't be assuaged with a mere eight thousand dollars. Had such an improbable thing occurred, her son Francisco would have called immediately. At least she hoped he would.

But a
cashier's check?
That took a moment to digest, and then Teresa nodded slowly. “Maybe I shouldn't have,” she whispered. “But the bank is so slow now, you know. I thought that this was something I could do. Without bother to you. He said I would have the money back promptly.”

“No harm done,” Estelle said. “Mr. Mears has not cut the check yet.”
And won't.
“I think I know what happened,” she added, and rose to give her mother a hug. She didn't bother explaining the continual flow of telephone predators…and the phone scams trying to lever emergency money were common. “Let me check with Francisco.” She frowned hard. True enough, trying to force that kind of money from Atencio's parents—his mother a
nana
like Addy and father a day laborer—would be a fruitless pursuit. But a ninety-nine-year-old woman might be an easy mark.

As she dialed, she walked out into the dining room. Addy Sedillos was busy with four huge baked potatoes at the sink-side cutting board in the kitchen, and she glanced up as Estelle leaned against the counter, waiting on the phone connection. After four rings, Francisco's cell went to messages. “Long chance,” Estelle muttered. “Francisco, this is
Mamá
. Give me a call as soon as you can, please? Love you.”

She disconnected and then scrolled down through the catalog of numbers. Selecting Mateo Attencio's cell, she tried that, and left another message. “Ay,” she said with impatience. “Wouldn't you know.” She selected the landline to the Leister resident hall's dean.

“Dr. Baylor's office. How may I direct your call?” The secretary's voice was brisk, almost dismissive.

“This is Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman in Posadas, New Mexico. I need to speak with either Francisco Guzman or Mateo Attencio, please. It's urgent.”

The woman's voice warmed instantly. “Do you have a number I might use to return your call? It'll only be a moment. I'll leave a short message at the Sheriff's Department, if that will suffice.”

“That will be fine.” Estelle rattled off the number and disconnected. “Nothing can ever be simple,” she said to Addy.

“They're responsible for a lot of talent,” the young woman offered. “Lots of adoring fans out there.”

“I suppose. I haven't gotten used to that yet.” She watched the seconds tick by on her watch, and sure enough, two and a half minutes later, the phone chirped.

“Guzman.”

“Estelle,” Ernie Wheeler said, “Leister Academy just called us to patch a message through to you. I gather you were expecting them to call.”

“That's great. What's up?”

“Dean Baylor's secretary, Lucy Delfino, called to tell you that both Francisco and Mateo are in Mazatlán, Mexico. They left yesterday with two members of the faculty, and will return Sunday. End message.”

Estelle stood silently, phone pressed hard to her ear, hoping that Ernie would add something else. The young man didn't, but said, “That's it.” When Estelle didn't respond, the dispatcher gently nudged her. “You still there?”

There was no point in asking Ernie to repeat the message, or to suddenly recall a vital detail that he had overlooked.

“Thanks, Ernie.”

“You're welcome. By the way, the med-evac is fifty-five minutes out.”

“Thanks.” Estelle disconnected and immediately redialed Leister. Her fingers flashed on the tiny keys, but her mind was deep in Mexico. Mazatlán…the fabled city with snow-white beaches, impressive and colorful historical district, and nestled in an area with one of the worst reputations for cartel violence in Mexico.

“Dean Baylor's office. How may I direct your call?”

Estelle kept any pleasant deference out of her tone. “Ms. Delfino, this is Undersheriff Guzman again. Dispatch informs me that the two boys and two faculty members flew to Mazatlán for several days. They'll be back Sunday. Is that correct?”

“That's correct, ma'am.”

“May I speak with Dean Baylor, please.”

There was just the faintest hesitation before Lucy Delfino said, “Ma'am, Dean Baylor accompanied the boys on the trip this time. He and Dr. Lucian Belloit.”

“This time?”

“Well, I mean
this
trip. We take part in a fund-raising concert in Mazatlán every year. The Angela Peralta Conservatory is one of our sister schools. Just a beautiful, beautiful place.”

“Have you heard from them today?”

“In fact, Dr. Baylor calls here twice a day, Sheriff. Angela Peralta's concert of greeting was last night, and a great success, he said. The two boys play tonight, and then on Saturday night, we have the combined concert as a finale.”

“Sounds wonderful. I wish I had known about it.”

“Ah, that's our fault, and I apologize. If you look at the schedule on the back page of the July newsletter, you'll see the concert series with Angela Peralta listed, but we neglected the follow-up contacts with parents—all the details. I'm not sure what happened, but it won't happen again, rest assured. Your son didn't inform you either, then?”

“No, he didn't.”
A fourteen-year-old isn't in charge of travel arrangements and details,
Estelle almost added, but Leister clearly
knew
that. And parents were in charge of finding these things out, no matter what. That was the baseline.

“Is there a number I might use now to contact Dean Baylor directly?”

“You mean
right
now? In Mexico?”

“Yes.”

The secretary hesitated. “Would it be adequate if I have Dr. Baylor call you at this number? Or Francisco, if he's handy?”

Or even if he isn't,
Estelle thought. “If he will do so in the next ten minutes. I'm about to catch a flight, and I can't guarantee how good the reception will be once we're airborne. If you can't reach them, I'll need his contact number so that I might try later.”