A Discount for Death

Chapter Twenty-five

As she walked back down the center aisle, past the bin displays of two-dollar Taiwanese hammers and seven-buck sets of six pliers, Estelle saw that Leona Spears and the patient salesgirl were still lost in the world of key blanks. The highway engineer looked up and saw Estelle approaching. Immediately, she began to move away from the current key problem, homing in on the undersheriff.

“Have you stopped for lunch yet?” Leona asked.

“Lunch isn’t on the schedule for today, Leona,” Estelle answered with a rueful smile. The statement was perfectly true unless Francis could break free for a few minutes.

Leona looked wistful. “Well, someday, then,” she said, and drifted toward the door after Estelle. “Would you please tell your husband how much we all appreciate his efforts with that new clinic and pharmacy?”

Estelle nodded. “I’ll do that. He’ll be pleased to hear it.”

She exited the store, feeling the warmth of the early afternoon October sun bouncing off the roof of her car. As her hand touched the door handle, her cell phone chirped as if car and phone had somehow made electrical contact. She slipped inside the sedan and closed the door.

“Guzman.”

“Estelle?”

She didn’t immediately recognize the voice. “Yes.”

“Listen, this is Owen Frieberg, over at Salazar and Sons Funeral Home. Are you going to be around this afternoon sometime? I tried to catch you at the office earlier, but I missed.”

“I would think so, Mr. Frieberg. What may I do for you?”

“Well…” and he hesitated. “There’s kind of a tricky matter that I need to discuss with you. Won’t take but a minute.” Even as he spoke, the radio barked. Estelle didn’t respond immediately but sat quietly, trying to imagine what kind of “tricky matter” a funeral director might have that would demand her attention.

“Just a second, sir,” she said. Even as she reached for the mike, Sheriff Robert Torrez’s clipped voice broke through again.

“Three ten, three oh eight.”

She pulled the mike off the dash clip.

“Three ten. Go ahead.”

“Three ten, ten nineteen,” Sheriff Robert Torrez said cryptically.

“Ten four,” she said. “ETA about two minutes.”

“Interesting morning,” she said to no one in particular as she hung up the mike. “Mr. Frieberg, I’ll be back in the office in just a few minutes. Do you want to touch bases there, or do you want me to swing by your place later this afternoon? Would that work for you?”

“That would be fine.”

“I’m not sure what time that will be.”

“That’s okay. I’ll be here most of the day. I’ll see you then.”

She switched off and saw Leona Spears push open the hardware store’s front door, and for a brief moment it looked as if she was headed toward Estelle’s car once again. Estelle lifted two fingers off the top of the steering wheel in acknowledgment, farewell, or however Leona wished to interpret it, and pulled the car into reverse.

The Public Safety building was one block north on Grande, and one block east on Bustos. Well under the two-minute estimate, she thudded the county car’s door shut and entered the back door of the sheriff’s department.

“Oh, here you are,” Gayle Torrez said. She was standing in the dispatch island and appeared to be trying to explain something to Dennis Collins, who held a thick envelope open for her. “Bobby’s huddling with Chief Mitchell,” she added, nodding toward the sheriff’s office.

Estelle nodded, ignoring Collins’ slack-jawed gaze, recognizing the expression of a young man who found it hard to look women in the eye. Nothing above a woman’s neck seemed worthy of his attention.

The sheriff’s tiny office looked like a transplant from a Marine Corps barracks, with neutral, institutional colors, metal desk, files, and a scarcity of chairs. Torrez was sitting behind his desk, one brown hunting boot across the corner, the other propped against the heating duct that ran up the wall. The back of his chair rested against the lower window frame behind him, and as Estelle entered he was thoughtfully rubbing the end of his nose.

Chief Eddie Mitchell turned from his perusal of the county map on the wall and flashed a quick grin at Estelle.

“Howdy,” he said.

“Good afternoon,” Estelle said. She leaned her black briefcase against the nearest chair, an uncomfortable steel folding thing with a county inventory sticker on the back. Mitchell glanced at the sheriff, and Estelle read the you-tell-her expression accurately.

Torrez frowned at his boot. “Some interesting things about the revolver,” he said after a long moment. His eyes clicked to Estelle’s and then to the door. “You want to make sure that’s shut?”

She turned and nudged the door closed, curious. “You mean beyond its original purchase from George Payton’s gun shop?”

“Way beyond. At one point, George Enriquez loaned the revolver to Owen Frieberg,” the sheriff said. He let the unadorned sentence hang there. His fingers finally abandoned the problem on his nose, and both hands relaxed in his lap, fingers intertwined.

Both Estelle’s eyebrows shot up, and the trace of a smile touched Torrez’s face.

“Frieberg called me a couple of minutes ago,” Estelle said. “Just now, when you were on the radio.”

“He beat me to it, then. Your phone was busy when I dialed,” the sheriff said. He swung his boot off the desk and let the other slide down the heating duct to the floor.

“Did you talk with him, or what?”

“The chief and I stopped by Salazar’s this morning, at Frieberg’s request.”

“How did this connection come up?”

Torrez looked across at Mitchell. The chief turned the other small chair around and sat down, his arms crossed over the chair back. “The kind of brilliant detective work from which legends are made,” he said dryly. He waited for the count of three. “Frieberg called me at home and told me that he had borrowed a handgun from George a while ago. He says that George had shown him the gun a time or two and even offered to loan it to Frieberg if he ever wanted to take it hunting. Frieberg says he did just that. He recalls offering to buy the revolver from George at one point, but George didn’t want to go for that. Frieberg took the thing javelina hunting a couple of weeks ago.”

“And he called you this morning, just to tell you that?”

Mitchell nodded. “That’s what he did.”

“So how…”

“He borrowed it quite a while ago, he doesn’t remember exactly when, and then returned it late last week. He thinks it was Wednesday or Thursday.”

“That’s interesting,” Estelle said softly. “I can understand his eagerness to call, then. The revolver he used for who knows how long is returned, and then used in a crime. And guess whose fingerprints should have been all over it.”

“Except they weren’t,” Mitchell said.

“He cleaned it when he was finished,” Torrez offered. “No big deal.”

“That’s interesting,” Estelle repeated. “They’d have to be pretty good friends.”

“George was good friends with half the town,” Mitchell said and smirked. “And that’s in addition to all the people he fleeced over the years, good friend that he was.”

“And speaking of small towns, Salazar and Sons is where the body is headed when the medical examiner releases it,” Torrez said. “Anyway, Frieberg heard the news, heard the rumor that George had shot himself with a large-caliber handgun, and put two and two together. He decided it might be wise to check with Chief Mitchell.”

Mitchell shrugged philosophically. “It would have been embarrassing if he decided to stay quiet and then had to explain himself when we knocked on the door. If a print showed up, we’d trace the thing.”

“Maybe that,” Torrez said. “Or someone might know about Frieberg borrowing the gun and mention it. All kinds of ways for the rumor mill to work. Frieberg just decided to get a jump on it all.”

She felt the sheriff’s unblinking gaze as if he were inventorying the movement of every fine muscle in her face, inventorying every expression. If she were a contender for Boone and Crockett points, he’d be waiting for her to step out from behind the tree.

“What did George tell the district attorney when he telephoned him on Sunday?” Torrez asked.

The question caught Estelle by surprise. She felt a quick swelling of anger at the district attorney and as quickly dismissed it. That was replaced with a twinge of irritation at the sheriff, but she knew it was only natural that he would compare the D.A.’s version of the story with her own.

“Schroeder says that George told him that he could, quote, Give you Guzman, unquote.”

When she didn’t elaborate, Mitchell asked, “What’s that mean?”

“George was trying to weasel his way out of facing a grand jury,” Estelle said. “The implication, at least in Schroeder’s mind, was that Enriquez knew something incriminating about ‘Guzman’ that he could somehow trade for immunity from the grand jury-partial or entire, who knows.”

“Huh,” Mitchell said. “That’s interesting. What else did he say?”

“Nothing, according to Schroeder. They were going to meet and talk about it sometime Monday.”

Mitchell’s round face broke into a grin that didn’t include his eyes. “So what did you do that’s so incriminating it would get Georgie off the hook if it went public?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Estelle said.

“Wrong Guzman, maybe,” Torrez said quietly, and the words wrenched Estelle’s stomach into the same knot she’d felt when she’d discussed that very possibility with Bill Gastner the previous evening. She would have thought less of Bob Torrez had he not voiced the realization, but that didn’t make it hurt any the less. A dawning of comprehension pulled Mitchell’s mouth open in a soundless “Oh.”

“Doctor Guzman,” he said.

Estelle took a moment and sat down, carefully moving the briefcase so it wouldn’t tip over. Her mind spun, refusing to focus on the obvious, the chaos in her mind fueled by the single, terrible possibility that George Enriquez somehow had been trying to save his own skin at the expense of her husband’s new clinic.

“Look,” Torrez said, leaning forward with his beefy forearms resting on the desk. “If George is willing to work his little insurance scam…”

“Not so little, either,” Mitchell observed.

“Right. But if he’s willing to work that, what’s to keep him from dabbling in something else? He’ll do one thing, he’ll do another.”

“A crook’s a crook,” Mitchell said. “What’s he got going then, some kind of health insurance deal?”

“I don’t know.” Torrez relaxed back as if the conversation was over, with the others left to make their own connections.

“You’re saying Enriquez was into something else,” Mitchell said when Estelle made no response. “Well, of course he was. Why else would somebody shoot him? For fake insurance? I don’t think so.” He grinned. “Of course, if old Denton Pope hadn’t blown himself up and managed to kill his mother in that fire the way he intended, he sure as hell would have been torqued to find out his home-owner’s insurance was fake. But it wouldn’t do much good to shoot Georgie.”

“Look at the timing,” Estelle said, feeling as if her words were spoken through wads of cotton. “The grand jury that would investigate George Enriquez convened on Tuesday morning. Who’s the leadoff witness?”

“Undersheriff Estelle Guzman,” Mitchell said.

“Exactly. George’s object might have been to prevent me from testifying. It had nothing to do with my husband. So he tries to frame me for something, whether he had anything concrete or not.”

“A couple of minutes ago, I brought up the possibility that Enriquez meant your husband, not you,” the sheriff said. “We still don’t know about that.”

“And that doesn’t make any sense,” Estelle said. “I was the main grand jury witness. If Enriquez could throw a hammer into my testimony, he’d gain a little time.”

“So you think he was just talking.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s a simple fact remaining in all this,” Mitchell said. “Someone obviously wanted George Enriquez dead. Now, it may be coincidence that it happened the day before the grand jury convened. And maybe not. It may be coincidence that the revolver that killed him was in someone else’s possession for a few days prior to his death. And maybe not.”

“Somebody didn’t want George’s story to go public,” Torrez said.

“That’s right. Lots of dirty laundry comes out after a grand jury indictment. And maybe his wife just got sick and tired of the whole circus,” Mitchell said. “Maybe she waddled down there and popped him a good one.”

Torrez rapped the desk gently. “The other possibility is that George really did have something to tell the district attorney. Something to trade. Something big enough, valuable enough, that even Schroeder would sit up and take notice…that he’d be willing to deal.”

“I don’t like coincidences,” Estelle said, her voice almost a whisper. Both men looked at her, waiting. “I want to know more about the revolver. I told Frieberg that I’d stop by this afternoon. Now I’m thinking that it might be better if I left him hanging for a little bit. He already told you about the revolver, Bobby. I don’t understand why he feels the need to tell me, too.”

“Maybe he wants to talk about something else,” Torrez said.

She reached for the briefcase. “Maybe. In the meantime, let me tell you about George Enriquez and Mexico.”