Bag Limit

Chapter Thirty-six

The telephone rang at 2:20. My immediate reaction when the phone’s bell tingled my pulse was that Estelle Reyes-Guzman was calling to report that their flight had been snowed in somewhere in downtown Minnesota, or that they hadn’t been able to find a rental car in El Paso.

Tadd managed to manipulate the phone on the kitchen counter without breaking stride with whatever it was that he was doing…a process that appeared to involve a lot of loose flour.

“Gastner residence. This is Tadd Gastner speaking,” he said, and tucked the phone under his chin as he concentrated with both hands on kneading a long roll of dough. “Sure,” he said, and listened again. “No, he’s right here. Hang on.”

A lift of the chin and he dropped the phone and caught it deftly with a small explosion of flour. He extended it toward me. “Mr. Dayan would like to talk with you, Grandpa,” he said.

I took the receiver gently and dusted it off. “Frank,” I said into the phone, “I was about to call you.”

“I thought we had a moratorium against weekend crimes,” Dayan said.

“Don’t I wish,” I replied. Dayan’s Posadas Register hit the newsstands and the Post Office on Thursday afternoon. A major event happening close to the weekend made him easy prey for the big-city dailies whose circulation reached Posadas-should we have an event that piqued their curiosity.

“I tried to reach you yesterday afternoon, but you were busy, I guess. Pam was going to track you down too, but I didn’t hear if she managed or not.”

“No, she didn’t.” Pam Gardiner did most of the editing and reporting for the Register, but she was no ball of fire. I was certainly no judge of journalism, but it appeared that her favorite kind of news was the carefully prepared public relations release that she could paste into the newspaper without a second thought.

“Someone was telling me that it’s Undersheriff Torrez’s nephew who was killed Friday night in that truck-pedestrian accident, and his uncle who died Saturday morning. Is that right?”

“Almost. Matthew Baca was killed Friday night. He was one of Torrez’s cousins, not a nephew.”

“The other was his uncle, though?”

“That’s correct.”

“And you’re investigating the uncle’s death as a possible homicide? Did I hear that right?”

“That’s also correct. Your grapevine is pretty good.”

“Well, it’s Dan Schroeder, and he should know,” Dayan said with a short laugh. “How did the old man die, do you know?”

“We’re not sure.”

“Not shot or stabbed, though? Anything like that?”

“No. It doesn’t appear that way. It looks like there might have been some kind of tussle that precipitated Sosimo’s death.”

“Got a name yet?”

“For whom?”

“For whomever Mr. Baca was fighting with.”

“I didn’t say they were fighting, Frank. I said some kind of tussle. We don’t actually know what the hell they were doing, if there was a they. Dancing, maybe. And no, we don’t have a name.”

“Huh,” Dayan said, hesitating.

“That’s the way I feel,” I said. “A great big ‘Huh.’”

“Is the undersheriff heading things up?”

“Heading things up? What’s that mean?”

“Is it his investigation?”

I sighed. My intuitive feelers sensed the not-so-fine touch of Leona Spears behind that question. There was still lots of time for the daffy candidate to blow things all out of proportion before the polls opened at 7:00 AM Tuesday.

“What does Leona say?” I countered, and Frank Dayan laughed.

“I’m surprised she’s not camped on your doorstep,” he said. “She wants to know if I’m putting out an election eve special edition.”

“And are you?”

“Uh, no. But she kindly provided me with two letters to the editor, just in case I change my mind. In the first, she accuses Torrez of trying to cover up the facts about his nephew’s death.”

“Cousin. And what are the facts that we’re trying to cover up?”

“That the incident followed a high-speed chase that resulted in damage to two county vehicles and serious injury to two other teenagers, one of whom is reportedly hovering near death as we speak.”

“That’s goddamn creative,” I muttered, and Tadd glanced over at me and grinned.

“And that following a night spent out on the mountain, the boy was finally arrested at his home.” I heard the rustle of paper. “And then the questions start.” Dayan cleared his throat. “Why was the Border Patrol involved? Why did they stop the deputy who had Matthew Baca in custody?”

“The deputy?” I said. Despite my best efforts, I could hear my pulse clicking up a level or two.

“Well, whoever. And the last one. Why was the boy allowed out of the car along a busy highway?”

“That’s it?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“Leona is a head case, Frank. You know that. I’m not going to dignify any of that trash with a comment. Except to clarify the deputy thing. I had the kid in custody, not one of my deputies.”

“I know that, Bill. Schroeder set me straight, and said he was going to call Leona and set her straight. I just kept the letter as a souvenir. Something for my scrapbook in the chapter titled ‘Life with the Loonies.’ If you think that letter’s good, you ought to read the second one…just in case I decide to have an election eve special, mind you.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear.”

Ignoring me, Dayan started his recitation. “‘Despite the United States Border Patrol’s best efforts to investigate the death of a prominent Regal resident, the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department steadfastly refuses to divulge important information to federal authorities.’”

“Steadfastly. I like that word.”

“Me too. There’s more. ‘None of this is surprising, considering that the victim is a close family relative of Undersheriff Robert Torrez, who heads the investigation for the county.’”

“A family relative,” I said. “I wasn’t aware of any other kind.”

“I thought you might appreciate that.”

“Your original question is probably valid, Frank. Is Robert heading the investigation? No, he’s not. I am, at least until Tuesday when election returns are counted. And when Robert wins the election, he’ll be in charge. And I, thank God, will be a civilian again, with nothing better to do than sit around and write crazy letters to the newspaper.”

Dayan laughed good-naturedly. “I look forward to those, Bill.”

“I bet you do. But look…I appreciate hearing about Loony Leona. It’s nice to be forewarned, just in case. And I have a question for you, too.”

“Shoot.”

“In your travels around town, have you heard anything about Cliff Larson resigning as livestock inspector for this area?”

A short pause followed, then Dayan said, “I hadn’t heard that, no. It doesn’t surprise me, though. I know he has family somewhere back east with an illness, and I know for a fact that he’s ill. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he called it quits. Why?”

I didn’t ask Dayan who his sources were, but it didn’t matter. He and Judge Lester Hobart belonged to the same service clubs, where talk was rampant. Cliff Larson looked like death warmed over-maybe because he was. And if that was the case, he wasn’t asking me to take over the livestock inspector’s job for just a week or two…just as Judge Lester Hobart had implied.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “He looks and sounds like hell. But he asked if I’d help him with the job after the election for a week or two.”

“A week or two? Maybe that was just to make it sound like a smaller favor than it is, Sheriff.”

“You’re not the only one saying that, Frank. What’s going on?”

He hesitated again, and for an instant I wondered if I was going to regret talking to the newspaper publisher. I had trusted him before with sensitive stories, and beyond that, even though he’d lived in Posadas now for nine years, I knew that he was still considered an outsider-except during community fundraisers, of course. “Maybe you and I should have lunch sometime,” he said.

“Why not just tell me right now?” I said with more impatience than I would have liked.

“Some things I’d rather say in person, Bill,” Dayan said. “This is kinda interesting. You and I need to talk.”

“I can’t today, except maybe later this evening. How about tomorrow?”

“That will work, I think.” He laughed. “Do I need to ask where?”

“No, you don’t. And how about around two in the afternoon? That’ll give the lunch crowd time to get out of the way.”

“I’ll be there. Call me if something comes up so you can’t make it.”

“Sure enough.” I hung up and took a deep breath. Tadd was cutting strips of thin dough and lacing them across the top of a sea of apple and pineapple in one of my old glass baking pans. “Is that cobbler?”

He nodded. “Cool beans, eh?”

“Cool beans,” I said. “You’re hired.”

He grinned. “What’s a livestock inspector do, anyway?”

“All kinds of things,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were tuned in.” He shot a quick glance at me to see if I was really as irritated as I sounded. I wasn’t, and added, “New Mexico has a pretty comprehensive set of laws that govern how livestock is handled, Tadd. Anytime a rancher wants to move cattle off his own property, for instance, he’s got to have a travel permit. That involves an inspection of the cattle, a count, all that kind of thing.” I waved a hand in dismissal. “It goes on and on from there.”

“You’re going to do that after you retire?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

He stood back and regarded the finished creation. “You sure find interesting things to do, Grandpa.”

“Thank you.” I bent down so I could direct my bifocals at the intricate crust. “And when do we get to eat this?”

“Thirty minutes from now,” Tadd said, and glanced at the clock. “Timing is everything.”