When I arrived at the Public Safety Building, the good news was that the fancy new roof installed the previous fall hadn’t leaked too badly. One of the prisoner trustees—at that moment the only resident in the county lockup—was mopping along the baseboard just beyond the main entrance.
Water had first soaked an area of the ceiling’s acoustical tile, then run down the wall, tracing stained fingers behind several of the framed portraits of former sheriffs of Posadas County, and then puddled on the floor.
Lance Smith paused in midmop and gazed at me with amusement. “Real good roofing job,” he said.
I stopped and regarded the mess. “Is that tile going to fall on someone’s head?”
Lance looked up and shrugged, then gently nudged one of the sodden ceiling titles with the tip of the mop handle. The tile didn’t move, but the handle pressed a dent into the tile like a finger pushed into the crown of an undone cake. “If it does, that’s what the county attorney is for.”
I laughed. “You’re a practical soul, Lance. But thanks for your help. I’ll call someone from Maintenance over here in the morning.”
“Hey, what the hell, it’s probably not going to rain again today,” he said. “I got nothing better to do, anyway.” Even so, he was in no hurry to restart the mop. I left him regarding the water stain patterns on the wall. In Dispatch, Ernie Wheeler was on the telephone, and he held up a forefinger as I approached.
“He just walked in, Mrs. Spears. Hang on.” Ernie turned and held out the receiver. “Leona Spears, sir.”
I sighed and trudged to my office. It felt good to sink into the old leather chair. I glanced at my watch and realized with a start just how many hours this day had racked up. The light on the phone continued to blink, and I picked up the receiver. “Gastner.”
“Sheriff, this is Leona. I’ve been trying to track you down all evening. I know it’s late, but do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
“You sound tired,” she said, leaving an opening for me to tell her, without being asked, how I’d spent my time. I declined the offer.
“I am.” I tried not to sound too abrupt.
“It’s been a busy couple of days.” Again the pause, that silent fishing line cast out in the hopes of a nibble.
“Yes, it has,” I said.
“Sheriff, the reason I called…” She paused and I could hear the sound of paper rustling near the receiver and then a sort of
poit
sound—the noise a bar of soap might make when knocked into the water. “The reason I called is about this puzzling note I received. It was stuck behind my screen door when I got home…the darnedest thing. I think you’d be interested.”
“I’m sure I would,” I said, realizing that I should have said something like,
“A note? What kind of note?”
But I could guess what she was talking about and greeted the news with considerable relief. If the note Leona Spears had been favored with was the same as the others, Thomas Pasquale was off the hook. Leona was the most vocal candidate running for sheriff, a staunch Democrat. Someone was playing politics.
“I’m in my office right now,” I said. “Why don’t you come on down and we’ll talk about it?”
“Let me read it to you.”
“Leona,” I interrupted, “I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. I really don’t. Come on down and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Well, now…maybe it could wait until morning.”
“If something’s on your mind, let’s get it cleared up,” I said pleasantly, and then I heard the unmistakable sound of water sloshing as a body changed position. The woman was lying in the goddamn bathtub, talking to me. “I’ll throw in a doughnut with the coffee. Or I can run over there, if you like. It’s about a minute away.”
“Not…just…now,” she said, and I could hear the smile. “Tell you what. Give me half an hour. I’ll be down.”
“And I’ll be here,” I said, and hung up. “Christ,” I muttered. Leona Spears was an engineer in the state highway department’s district office, and how she’d managed to wrangle the Democratic Party’s endorsement for the third time to run in the sheriff’s race I didn’t know.
Before that she’d unsuccessfully chased a county commissioner’s spot a couple of times and before that had lost a narrow race for a seat on the village council. Mixed in with all those disappointing election nights was an attempt or two at the school board. I wasn’t sure what the voters didn’t like about her, but evidently there was something. We had damn good highways, though.
And whoever was writing the notes about Thomas Pasquale considered her a candidate serious enough to be included in the little game. One thing I did know about Leona Spears—and maybe the author of the notes did, too—she was a regular contributor to the
“Letters to the Editor”
column in the
Posadas Register,
eager to vent her opinions on everything from child care to foreign policy.
I glanced at my watch again, hesitated, and dialed long-distance. It was almost 11:00 p.m. in Minnesota, but both Estelle and her physician husband were night owls. The phone rang five times with no response from either human or answering machine, and I was beginning to imagine the young couple sitting out in the backyard of their neat two-story house in Westridge, watching the display of northern lights while their two kids snoozed in the upstairs garret, their bedroom curtains hanging limp in the humid air.
What Estelle and Francis probably didn’t need just then was an interruption from New Mexico or anywhere else, and on the seventh ring I had started to put the receiver back in the cradle when I heard the familiar voice, clipped and efficient as always.
“Hello.”
“Francis, this is Bill Gastner.”
“Hey, hey,
padrino,
” Francis Guzman said, and then I could hear a hand muffle the receiver as he turned and shouted, “Estelle…it’s Bill!” The hand was removed, and he added, “It’s good to hear your voice, you know that?”
“Thanks. I hope I didn’t haul you out of bed, but I was returning Estelle’s call. How are you folks doing?”
“Well…OK, all things considered. It’s been hot and muggy. I’m not sure we’re used to the muggy part yet. I keep checking to make sure I don’t have mold growing in my armpits.”
“Green chili is the cure for everything, Doctor. That’s a scientific fact.”
“Yep, I suppose. And by the way, that last CARE package you sent was appreciated.” I heard the mumble of another voice, and Francis said, “You been all right?”
“Well, as you say…all things considered, which I’d rather not do at this point.”
“No sleep, too much food from the Don Juan, and lots of stress. Is that about right?”
I laughed. “Close enough, Doctor. It seems to be the magic combination for me.”
“We should fly you up here so folks at the clinic can study you,” Francis said. “Find out how you do it.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
There was more mumbling in the background that brought a chuckle from Francis. “Here’s Estelle. She keeps trying to pull the receiver out of my hand. Take care of yourself, Bill.”
“You, too.” I leaned back in the chair, making myself comfortable.
“Sir.” Estelle’s voice was soft and alto. “I hope things are going better for you than what Ernie Wheeler described.”
“They’re not. In fact, probably a good deal worse. But what else is new, sweetheart? How are you doing? How’s your mother?”
Estelle laughed, and I found that was the easiest expression of hers to bring to mind—the way her face lit up around those enormous dark eyes. “
Remarkable
might be the best word,” she said. “She’s not using the walker anymore. And the humidity doesn’t seem to bother her as much as the rest of us. Who knows why?”
“Maybe she got so desiccated living those eighty years in the Mexican desert that she can soak up more humidity than the ordinary person,” I said.
“Now that’s an interesting theory.”
“My only one. But let me get right to the ‘it’s none of my business’ part. I noticed the sign was down over on Twelfth Street. Maggie Payson tells me that you guys took it off the market.”
“Yes.” The one word carried more than just a simple nod of the head, and I got the sense that Estelle was weighing carefully just what she wanted to say. “We did that last week, sir.”
“You’re keeping an old man in suspense, Estelle.”
“How so?”
“Well, my razor-sharp detective’s mind leaps to a logical conclusion. If a family doesn’t want to sell their house, maybe it means that they want to live in it. Again. Sometime.”
Estelle sounded amused. “Or that they have a poor relative who wants to use it. Or they want to use it for rental property.”
“You don’t have any relatives in this neck of the woods, poor or rich. And owning a single-family rental from two thousand miles away doesn’t make any sense, either, unless someone else is going to manage it for you. What’s up?”
“Nothing yet, sir. Really. We’re just not sure right now. It’s going to take some time. Maybe in a month or two, we’ll know more.”
I frowned, not liking the sound of that. “Cheer up,” I said. “In four months, the snow will be stacked up so deep around your front door that you’ll long for some Posadas dust. That’ll make up your mind for you.”
“It’s not really that, sir.”
“Then what is it?” I said with a trace of impatience. “You sound like something’s wrong.”
There was a short silence, and I could hear Estelle take a deep breath—more of a sigh of resignation. “I guess in part it depends on how Francis’s hand heals up, but in the past few days we’ve been thinking that isn’t it, either, really.”
“His hand?”
“I guess I didn’t tell you, sir.”
“No, I guess you didn’t.”
“Francis has been riding his bike to work. He enjoys that. Some klutz driving a van cut him a little close and smacked him in the shoulder with the wing mirror.”
“Ouch.”
“He lost his balance and crashed into a parked car. His left hand got cut up pretty badly. There was some tendon damage.”
“For God’s sakes. Permanent, you mean?”
“We don’t know for sure yet. The clinic has been wonderful, as you can imagine.” She made a little sound that was half laugh, half hum of reminiscence. “But what got us talking was something
Mama
said one evening, not too many days after the accident. We were talking about just the sheer number of people in a place like this. We’re six miles from where Francis works and our house here would probably be considered rural by most eastern standards, but there are always people. People, people, people. At any intersection it seems like there’s always a car or two, you know what I mean? And of course, downtown Rochester is a different universe altogether.”
“Like Posadas on a busy Friday night,” I said.
Estelle laughed. “Oh, sure.”
“What did your mother say?” I pictured the tiny, ancient woman, dark eyes darting this way and that, not missing a thing.
“It was more just a passing remark when one of us said something about the opportunities for Francis here. I think the way she put it was,
‘Es posible quemarse en su propia salsa dondequiera.
’”
“That’s helpful,” I said.
“It translates roughly as something like, ‘You can stew in your own juice just about anywhere.’”
“And that means what? Did she elaborate?”
“Of course not,” Estelle laughed. “We just got
the look,
as the kids call it. You know, one eyebrow up a little bit, just a hint of disapproval. Anyway, we got to talking, and decided not to limit our options. To make a long story short, we took the Twelfth Street house off the market. And it felt like the right thing to do.”
“That’s good news,” I said.
“Well, I talked with
Mama
a lot after that. She’s pretty sharp. She’s enjoying the experience up here, but she’s afraid Francis is going to take his talents where the rich folks live.” Estelle did a fair imitation of her mother’s dry, cracked voice.
“‘And then you’ll be just like them, hija.’”
She laughed. “That’s her greatest fear, I guess.”
“She’s accepted the fact that she can’t take care of herself anymore? That she’s not going back to Tres Marias?”
“Oh sure. She’s a remarkable woman, sir. She’s very at ease with herself.”
“About the house here,” I said. “I can think of a couple renters, but I’m not sure I’d want to inflict them on your property, as nice as it is.”
“Who’s that?”
“Tom Pasquale and Linda Real. They’re having landlord trouble.”
“They? They’re living together now?”
“Ah…I’m glad to hear that someone else is out of the loop besides me,” I said. “I didn’t know until yesterday.”
I told her about Carla Champlin’s tiff, and Estelle said, “Let’s hold off on anything like that for a bit. Give us some time to decide what we want to do. In another couple of months we’ll know if Francis is going to recover some of the fine motor skills in his hand. If not, then he’s going to have to rethink a little.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I hope everything works out for him.”
“We’ll just have to see.”
“And you? What are you doing?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know just yet. I have to admit, I’ve enjoyed just being a mom the past couple of months. There’s a lot to do around here. The kids love it.”
“I bet they do.”
“I think I’ll just putter along until Francis makes up his mind. And speaking of people making up their minds, how’s the campaigning coming along? That’s what I wanted to ask you.”
“Bob is his usual taciturn self,” I said. “He’s making the Republicans and Democrats nervous.” I told Estelle about the Pasquale letters that I’d been handed and added, “Leona Spears is due here any minute. She’s the latest on the hit list.”
“Leona again, eh?” Estelle said. “That just about guarantees that the letters are a political stunt, then, sir. Somebody figures she’ll take the idea and run with it.”
“That’s what I thought. Tom’s not taking it all too well, though.”
“I would think not. The Sisson thing is interesting, by the way. Ernie brought me up to speed on that.”
“You have any suggestions or intuitions?” I asked.
“From fifteen hundred miles away? I don’t think so, sir. If it’s not money, it’s passion—that’s what the statistics say. Who’s Grace or Jim having an affair with these days?”