A Discount for Death

Chapter Fourteen

Constance Enriquez had never sat in her husband’s swivel chair behind the big walnut desk. For one thing, her hips wouldn’t have wedged into the space between the chair’s padded arms. That problem aside, had she spent time foraging in her husband’s desk…had she cared enough about his activities to do so…her curiosities might have been stirred.

Estelle snapped on a thin pair of latex gloves. She started with the wide center drawer and found the usual potpourri of junk that cluttered most desks. Lying amid the paper clips and roller-ball pens in the forward tray was a rubber stamp bearing the legend of the Posadas Old Timers’ Club, FOR DEPOSIT ONLY, and the service club’s bank account number. Estelle flipped her own small notebook to a blank page and pressed the stamp gently. The ink was fresh enough to leave a clear imprint.

She put the stamp back and ran her hand far into the drawer, feeling along the sides, into the corners, and under the desk’s polished top. In the far back right-hand corner, so far that she had to scoot the chair back against the trophy case to gain clearance, she felt a small, hard object that rolled away at her touch. Her fingers chased it, already recognizing the shape.

Holding the cartridge by the rim between the fingernails of her thumb and index finger, Estelle frowned at the head stamp as she snapped on the desk light to read the small print: R-P across the top arc, 41 MAGNUM across the bottom. The bright brass casing would present fingerprints beautifully.

“Okay,” she said to herself. “Just one of you?” Holding the cartridge over the desk, she rummaged a small plastic evidence bag out of her briefcase and dropped the shell inside. For a moment, she sat quietly, regarding the drawer and its contents. Then, grasping the drawer with both hands, she eased it out further, ducking her head to see into the shadows before pushing it back into place.

The top drawer on the right-hand side of the desk yielded stationery, both for Enriquez’s insurance agency and the Old Timers’ service club, a half ream of expensive onion-skin paper, envelopes, and an unopened package of correction ribbons for an electric typewriter.

Estelle slid that drawer shut and heaved the large bottom file drawer open, raising an eyebrow at the neat rows of manila folders, each labeled across the top. She sat back in the chair. State insurance investigators hadn’t found paperwork in Enriquez’s office for any of the out-of-pocket deals he’d worked with customers like Deputy Thomas Pasquale or Eleanor Pope, each one eager to save a little cash.

The case against Enriquez had been built almost entirely through the testimony of those people who thought they had legitimate policies…their embarrassed testimony, for the most part, and their cancelled checks as proof of payment. Pursuing Enriquez hadn’t been a monumental priority for the district attorney’s office-not enough to bother with a search warrant for the man’s home.

That search wouldn’t have turned up much in this collection of files, Estelle saw. She pulled out the first folder, marked ’95 HEATING AND COOLING. Stubs of bills, with the corresponding cancelled checks, were ranked neatly, from January through December. Similar folders for seven more years marched back through the drawer, followed by records for telephone, automotive, health care, and more.

If he had kept files on his private insurance dealings, he hadn’t cluttered his private life with them, or he’d gotten rid of them at the first whiff of interest from the D.A. and the insurance board…unless he’d used one of those little black books favored by Hollywood gangsters, so filled with convenient answers.

Estelle worked her way toward the back of the drawer, fingering each folder in turn. Then, leaning forward, she frowned with curiosity. With the drawer pulled out to the stops, she was just able to slide a walnut box up past the folders, feeling its weight and elegant, smooth finish. She sat back in the chair, the box on her lap. “Well,” she said aloud and ran her fingers over the embossed logo on the lid.

She released the simple catch and opened the box. The blue velvet lining of the box was formed to fit around a large revolver, the fabric crushed smooth in places from the weight of the gun. After a moment, Estelle realized that she was holding her breath, and exhaled in a long, audible sigh.

A yellow sales ticket was tucked into the lid, and Estelle unfolded it carefully. George Enriquez was listed as the buyer, paying the Posadas Sportsmen’s Emporium $359.95 plus tax for a.41-magnum Smith amp; Wesson Model 657. Estelle recognized old George Payton’s meticulous handwriting on the invoice, including the parenthetical notation, nonoriginal case included. Dated September 26, 1998, the sale had been made two years before Payton had sold the Emporium.

Estelle leaned back, the open box on her lap. Just six months before, she had investigated Payton’s death. The old gun dealer had had troubles of his own. What had the two Georges talked about on that September day four years before? Had the insurance salesman just fallen in love with the heft and balance of the weapon, with no intention of ever using it? Had he wanted something to carry in his car when he traveled?

She looked down at the single cartridge in its plastic bag. One orphan stayed home, perhaps forgotten as it rolled toward the back of the drawer. Estelle closed the wooden case and transferred it to another, large evidence bag. Laying the case on the desk’s blotter pad, she searched the left-hand drawers, finding nothing of particular interest.

Satisfied, she got down on her hands and knees and surveyed the underside of the desk. The housekeeper whose payments were documented in the folder marked CLEANING LADY had done a meticulous job, discouraging all but one spider, whose tiny web clung to one desk leg.

The shelving that surrounded the room was equally tidy, with the flood of mementos and awards dusted and neatly arranged in echelons. George Enriquez had spent thirty years in Posadas as a member of virtually every service club that existed, holding offices in all of them, credited by all of them with continuing generosity. From 1985 through 1991, he had served on the Posadas Board of Education, acting as president in 1990. He had been cited by his own parent insurance company every year since 1978, including a shiny new Nambe tray dated less than two months before.

What George Enriquez apparently spent very little time doing was reading. The array of books was limited to a single shelf, mostly insurance manuals and five years’ worth of Posadas telephone directories. Estelle cocked her head, reading the title of each volume as she moved down the shelf, stopping with a raised eyebrow at two large volumes, Spurgeon’s Home Health Encyclopedia and the Physician’s Pharmaceutical Guide for 2001.

A bent ear of a yellow Post-it sticking out of the fat Pharmaceutical Guide’s pages caught her eye. The text was so fat and bulky that she used both hands to grasp the spine when she pulled it off the shelf. Lugging it to the desk, she thudded it down beside the walnut revolver case and flipped it open to the marker.

The Post-it marked one of the glossy pages of photographs of prescription drugs, arranged by manufacturer. On the tag were written a column of eight three-digit numbers, beginning with 311 and ranging up to 341. The obvious starting place was to assume that the numbers referred to pages, and sure enough, Estelle saw that the entire thirty-page series of numbers on the Post-it was included by the gray section of the drug identification guide.

She turned to page 311. Columns of little pills marched up and down the page, with a sprinkling of bottles, inserts, and inhaler systems. Nothing was checked and nothing was marked. Page 315 was a repeat, with no marks, no dog-ears. In each case, the number on the Post-it corresponded to a page of the photographic drug identification guide, with no additional marks. She frowned and fanned the rest of the pages, finding nothing. She closed the book, making sure the Post-it remained in place, and slid the bulky text into an evidence bag.

For another hour, Estelle poked into every nook and corner of George Enriquez’s den. Finally convinced that she had missed no hidden shelves, no floor safes, no locked cabinets, she repacked her briefcase. For a moment she stood by the desk, gazing around the room. George Enriquez had been a tidy man. For someone who worked with paper all day, he showed no inclination to allow the flood of paperwork from his office to assault his home.

Indeed, he kept so few papers that the single drawer of files in the desk evidently sufficed for all his needs; there was no other filing cabinet.

Estelle moved to the door and opened it. The same woman who had greeted her at the front door was just leaving the bathroom, and Estelle smiled warmly at her. “Would you do me a favor?” she asked.

The woman halted, uneasy.

“Would you see if Connie can break away for a few minutes?”

“I’ll see.”

“Thank you.”

Estelle retreated back inside the office and pushed the door closed without latching it. She walked back to the desk, popped a fresh cassette into the recorder, and placed the little unit conspicuously on her briefcase after making sure the reels were spinning.