A Discount for Death

Chapter Seventeen

Carlos Guzman’s face appeared in front of Estelle’s as if he’d coalesced out of smoke. She shifted her head slightly so the pillow didn’t block her view but otherwise didn’t stir. His enormous eyes, about the color of semisweet chocolate, regarded her from out of a small round face that was just beginning to lose the indistinct lines of infancy.

“Telefono, Mama.” He whispered the two words and leaned his chin on the edge of the bed.

She lifted her head, loath to move more than that. The hours had finally caught up with her, and she’d almost fallen asleep during an early dinner. She’d stretched out, intending to catnap for half an hour or so-three and a half hours ago.

“Grandmama said you’re supposed to talk on the telephone,” Carlos said when he got no response, and Estelle shifted so she could see the phone on the nightstand. She had never heard it ring.

“Thanks, hijo, ” she murmured and reached for the receiver. The little boy remained motionless, watching. “Guzman,” she said, tucking the phone between her ear and the pillow.

“Estelle, Eddie. Catch you at a bad time?”

She captured her son’s spider-leg finger. With index hooked in index, she was surprised at the strength in that three-year-old finger. “No, it’s just fine,” she said into the phone. And if it weren’t, what difference would it make, she thought. The Posadas chief of police didn’t call to touch bases or engage in idle chitchat.

“We found Perry Kenderman’s truck,” Mitchell said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“Found it where, Chief?”

“It’s parked in the student parking lot at the high school.” She frowned and unhooked her finger from her son’s, and he took a step back as she pushed herself upright. “You still there?”

“I’m here,” she said. “That’s an odd place.”

“Maybe so,” Mitchell said. “Or maybe not. He lives right across the way, there, and knows we’d be watching his apartment. Mix in with all the student vehicles and he might gain himself an hour or two. Maybe he thought we wouldn’t check.” He paused for a heartbeat. “And sure enough, we didn’t. Tom Pasquale found it.”

She glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost eight. “There shouldn’t be many vehicles there this time of day,” she said.

“Nope. But a few. Some kids still in the weight room, a few working in the science lab. There’s always something going on.”

“Any sign of him?”

“Nothing yet. If he left town, he didn’t take his truck. As far as I know, that’s the only vehicle he owns.”

Estelle ran her fingers through her hair. Carlos waved a silent good-bye and thumped out of the room. “Who’s working tonight for you, Eddie?”

“Me. I’d call my part-timer in, but he’s done something to his knee. I’ll be out and about. But I just thought you should know.”

“Thanks, Chief. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just walks into the office in another couple of hours. Give him long enough to think about it. He doesn’t have many options.”

“If he’s smart, that’s what he’ll do,” Mitchell said. “But he doesn’t have much of a batting average for smarts so far. Maybe he’s wrapped himself around a bottle somewhere.”

“He never impressed me as the drinking type,” Estelle said, and that prompted a short, barking laugh from the chief.

“What type’s that?” he said. “Anyway, in a town this small, he’s not going to hide for long. He’s done good just keeping out of sight for a few hours. I wanted to let you know about the truck.”

“Thanks.”

She hung up the receiver and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment with her eyes closed. Perry Kenderman was a puzzle, an unpredictable enigma. He’d chased Colette Parker, behaving like a hotheaded teenager. What had he planned to accomplish by that? He supposedly harbored a deep affection for the two children, yet he’d been unable to admit, let alone assert, his paternity. And what was he doing now? Sitting in the darkened corner of a bar somewhere, nursing his confusion and frustration? Hitchhiking to Wichita Falls? At the time, it had seemed reasonable to give Kenderman the benefit of the doubt, allowing him to remain free on his own recognizance during the initial investigation.

Estelle sighed, arose, and shook the wrinkles out of her blouse and slacks. Her mother sat at the kitchen table, walker at hand. She was frowning over a crossword puzzle in the newspaper but looked up when Estelle appeared.

“You slept quite a while, hija,” she said in Spanish. “This is a funny business. For weeks and weeks, the only excitement we hear about is the county budget. Now there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“That’s true, Mama,” Estelle said. “Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the time, the county could make do with one deputy. That’s just the nature of things.”

“Well, you work too hard, hija. Buena es culantro …”

“…pero no tanto.” Estelle finished the proverb for her, and Teresa nodded with approval.

“You remember that,” she said. “Too much of a good thing is no good,” she repeated.

“I do remember, Mama, but sometimes I have no choice in the matter.”

“It’s almost bedtime, anyway. Los Dos are with their father, by the way.”

What had been a one-car garage off the living room had been converted into an office, sunken half a foot below the floor level of the rest of the house. The plastered walls could be glimpsed here and there through the vast sea of books and magazines. A pool table dominated the center of the room, but the cover hadn’t been off the velvet for months and was now weighted down with its own sea of books, magazines, and an odd assortment of children’s toys.

Dr. Francis Guzman sat at the computer with Carlos on his lap and five-year-old Francisco standing at one corner of the keyboard. Estelle could see that the computer’s huge, hi-tech screen was filled with a single photograph of herself-the same photo that Linda Real had taken for the department’s calendar, a Christmas gift to the dozen employees that each month featured a different employee caught in an appropriate moment of unawareness.

Estelle moved closer, her footsteps muffled by the carpet. The original photo had been striking, catching Estelle as she crawled out from under the sagging chassis of the Popes’ burned-out mobile home, her own camera slung around her neck. The photo didn’t show how disheveled and filthy she’d really been at the time. A single theatrical smudge adorned one side of her face as if applied by a Hollywood makeup artist.

She had just enough time to see that the photo was being morphed into something unrecognizable before Francisco, her oldest son, turned and saw her. He screeched and tried to cover the screen with both of his small hands. His father was quicker, hitting the closure X and sending the photo off into the ether.

“You can’t see,” Francisco said, allowing his father to pry his hands off the screen.

The physician pushed the chair back a bit and turned away from the computer. “Top secret project,” he said. He turned Carlos upside down and lowered him to the floor between his knees until the boy’s head touched the carpet before letting him go to complete the somersault by himself. “And time for bed for you guys,” he added and glanced up at Estelle. “Who was the call?”

“Chief Mitchell. They found Kenderman’s truck over in the high school student parking lot.”

“But he wasn’t in it?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t mess with that now, geek,” he said to Francisco, who was having a hard time tearing himself away from the keyboard. “We’ll work on it tomorrow.” He stood up and pushed the chair under the table. “You have to go out?”

“No. The chief just wanted me to know that they found the truck. That was all.”

“So what’s that mean?”

She bent down and stroked the top of Carlos’ head. “I’m not sure,” she said, but she saw that Francis had heard the hesitation in her reply.

“You don’t know what he’s going to do, do you.”

“What who’s going to do, Mama?” Francisco asked.

“Bed time, hijos,” she said and ushered Carlos toward the door.

“You read to us?”

“Por supuesto, querido,” she said. Francis leaned against the pool table, arms folded across his chest, and watched the two children race through the living room and vanish down the hallway.

“Alan said you had a puzzler with Enriquez.”

Estelle grimaced. “No puzzler. Someone shot him while he sat behind his desk in his office. We were supposed to think it was suicide.”

“I think he meant los porques, querida.”

“We have lots of ‘whys’ still. We’re doing pretty well with the ‘whats.’ ”

She turned at the thumping of her mother’s walker. Teresa Reyes stopped halfway across the living room. “You want me to answer the door, or are you going to?”

Estelle looked puzzled. She stepped quickly into the living room. “I didn’t hear it, Mama.”

“I mean the back door,” Teresa said. Estelle stopped in her tracks. The Guzmans’ back door opened to the yard, a yard made secure for the two boys by a four-foot chain-link fence. Because the fence was essentially the property boundary, and because the renovated garage-studio blocked the driveway’s route to the back of their lot, the backyard fence had no gates; entry to the yard was gained through the house.

“You heard someone at the back door, Mama?” Her hand drifted down to her belt, where her cellular phone should have been.

Teresa nodded. “That’s what I just said.”

“Stay here,” Estelle said to her mother. In three strides, she reached the phone extension on the small table by the sofa. By the time she had stepped into the kitchen, the swing-shift dispatcher, Ernie Wheeler, had answered. “Ernie, this is Estelle. Hang on a minute.”

With a quick sweep of her hand, she turned off the kitchen lights and flicked on the switch for the outside light over the back door. Nothing happened, but this time she heard the knocking herself, four quick raps, just the way a neighbor might knock on an errand to borrow a cup of sugar.

“Who is it?” she said, just loud enough that she knew she’d be heard.

“I need to talk to you.”

Estelle froze, the only movement the telephone receiver as she brought it so close that the mouthpiece touched her lips. “Send a car to my house, Ernie. Kenderman’s here.”