Double Prey

Chapter Three

As if retreating to a more familiar, safe world, Francisco had settled at the piano. Estelle paused on the front step and listened. His scales sounded almost pensive as Francisco worked around the circle of key signatures. Not pushing for speed as he usually did, but working like a little human metronome set on adagio, he played through the sharps and then the flats, the minor and diminished keys, pushing each scale up and down through a full five octaves. The scales then blended into enormous chords that walked from one key signature to the next.

He stopped as his mother opened the front door. “Carlos is out back,” he announced, apparently fearful that she would think he wasn’t paying attention. Estelle could see through the sliding door of the dining room that led out into the back yard. Sure enough, six-year-old Carlos was industriously excavating another tier in his open pit mine, the over-burdened Tonka truck carrying a load to the tailings pile. “And Irma’s making corn bread,” the pianist added.

“That smells wonderful.”

Francisco turned away from the keyboard. “Will Butch be okay?”

“He’s going to Albuquerque, hijo. We’ll see.”

Irma Sedillos, Gayle Torrez’s younger sister and the on-call nana for the two little boys, appeared around the foyer partition. “You’ve had a day, I hear,” she said.

“Not me so much,” the undersheriff replied. “The mighty hunters met their match, though.”

“Is papá going to Albuquerque on the plane?” Francisco asked.

“No. He’ll be home in a bit.” She stepped into the kitchen. “What magic are you up to?” She hugged Irma’s shoulders.

“Your mom wanted a chicken salad, so that’s what you get,” Irma replied. “By executive order, the salad has to be chilled, the chicken and green chile have to be hot.” She grinned at Estelle. “And a message from Padrino, ” she continued. “He has a question for you.” Irma frowned. “Is Butch going to be all right?”

“We’re not sure yet. Nasty thing.” She pointed at her own right eye. “The trimmer shot a fang right into his eye.”

“Ay!” Irma shivered.

Estelle picked up the pile of mail along with the yellow Post-it note with Irma’s exquisite handwriting. “Padrino and jaguars, ” she read.

“He has a question about jaguars. He said that he remembered your great uncle talking about them.”

“Reubén and jaguars? Es muy curioso. Is Padrino coming over for salad?”

“I told him that he should. But he grumbled something about health food.”

“It has chile in it, though.”

“I told him that. But you know how he is.”

“Oh, sí. I know exactly how he is. I should call him and tell him not to be so fussy.”

“He wondered if Bobby was coming back from Cruces this evening, and I told him that I thought so.”

“Your brother-in-law won’t stay in the city any longer than he has to.” Estelle leafed through the rest of the mail, stopping at a fancy envelope with no stamp. She became aware that Irma was watching her.

“I brought that over with me,” Irma said, and Estelle looked up, alerted by the quiet tone of the young woman’s voice. The envelope was the sort one would expect with an invitation, and Estelle instantly knew what it was…hints had been in the air for some months. Once again, she was jolted by an odd mix of emotions-a euphoria for Irma, a deep, almost selfish sadness for herself and the family.

“Is this what I think it is?” Estelle asked. She held out her arms and encircled Irma in another hug, this one long and hard. “When?” Without releasing her hold, she slipped the invitation out of the envelope, reading it past Irma’s right ear. “October sixteenth,” she whispered. “Irma, that’s wonderful.”

Releasing the hug, Estelle contemplated the engraved wedding invitation. For eight years, Irma had helped what she called the Guzman Corporación avoid going bonkers with their impossible schedules: Francis the busy physician, now in clinic partnership with Dr. Alan Perrone, and Estelle the Undersheriff of Posadas County, on-call 24/7. Irma had become more than a well-paid nana- a dear friend now to Estelle’s aging mother, to the little boys who had never known a household without her, and to the undersheriff herself.

“It will be a grand occasion.” Estelle looked quickly at Irma, since the girl hadn’t yet had a chance to offer her plans.

“Gayle is excited,” Irma said. “She wants to put together the wedding of the century.” She smiled wistfully. “Maybe something a little less grand than that, but Gary would like a nice traditional ceremony, and so would I. It’s a chance to kinda catch up on what we all missed when Gayle and Bobby got married.”

“You do it the way you want to,” Estelle said. “No matter what, your mamá and papá would be very proud. And so are we. Anything I can do to help…”

“Gayle and Bobby will give us away,” Irma said, then smiled. “Of course, Bobby doesn’t know that yet. It’ll be just like him to be the only one there who isn’t in a tux.”

“He’ll behave.” Maybe Sheriff Robert Torrez would consent…maybe.

Irma reached out and touched Estelle on the forearm. “If you’d be matron of honor?”

“I’m honored. Of course.”

“And I’d really like to borrow Carlos as the ring bearer. He’s the handsomest man in my life.”

Estelle laughed. “He’ll take the responsibility very seriously.”

Irma took a deep breath, obviously relieved to have the whole affair out in the open. Gary Herrera, Irma’s fiancé, would be relieved too, Estelle thought. His willingness to share his beloved with the corporación over the past three years had bordered on the saintly.

Out in the living room, Francisco had settled into Bach as the composer of choice for warm-ups. Irma stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Do you think he’d play for the wedding? May I ask him?”

“Of course you may, querida. ” Estelle chuckled. “The real question is what he might play. You know how he is.” Play-on-demand had always been a concept that had escaped Francisco. “You’re as apt to get his famous Car Crash Composition as you are Schumann, Haydn, or Bach.”

“I’ll work on him,” Irma said. “And…” She stopped, frowning at the cornbread. Nothing in the perfect pan of golden aromas warranted a frown-the crust was just so, neither too dark nor too light, only lightly fissured with small canyons to catch the melting butter. “Gary has been accepted into Stanford’s MFA program.”

“¡Caramba! ” Estelle whispered in delight. She took her time pouring the tea water into her mug, unable not to think of all the ramifications of Stanford University…a long, long way from Posadas, New Mexico. “An MFA?”

“What he really wants to do is write screenplays. Teleplays, really.”

“That’s a side of him that I never realized,” Estelle said. Gary Herrera, a popular middle-school math teacher and basketball coach, did not fit her image of a playwright, working in smoke, caffeine, and alcohol-laced solitude. “You two are going to become Californians, then? Por dios, I can’t imagine.”

Irma grimaced. “Well, for a while, anyway.”

“When does he start at Stanford?”

“We’re going out in June, right after school finishes. And you know the superintendent? Dr. Archer? He promised Gary an unlimited leave-of-absence. I’m so pleased about that. He’ll have a job waiting for him if he wants it.”

“Dr. Archer would be foolish not to. Ay, what an adventure for you two. And what about you, querida? What new vistas for you in California?”

“I would like to study Spanish,” Irma said quickly, as if she had expected the question. “Historical Spanish. I talk to your mother, and she knows so much. I could listen to her all day.” Estelle’s expression was so blank that Irma plunged on. “Like Spain, centuries ago? Not street Spanglish…that’s all I know.”

Estelle slowly shook her head. “You’ve been with us for years now, querida, and why didn’t I know that this was an interest of yours?”

“Well, I never talked about it, I mean except with your mom, Estelle. How could you know?”

“Ay. I sometimes feel as if I live on another planet.”

Irma’s eyes teared, and she wrapped her arms around Estelle. “We just need to do this,” Irma whispered. “Gary and I. We’ll be out there for two, maybe three years. Do I get a leave of absence too?”

“You always have a place in our family, Mrs. Herrera.”

“Oh, not yet!”

Estelle squeezed her shoulders. “I was just trying the name on for size. It suits you.”

“What is this conspiracy going on out here?” The voice that interrupted them was thin, fragile, little more than a croak. Teresa Reyes, bent over her aluminum walker, was so tiny that six year-old Carlos could look her straight in the eye when they stood face to face.

“October sixteenth,” Estelle said. “The best holiday of the year.”

“I know all about that,” Teresa said, wrinkling her nose. “That Gary…he doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

“We’ll all make sure he does, mamá. ”

“You have a month and more to make plans,” the old woman said, and it wasn’t clear to whom she had addressed the remark. “Things are going to be different around here.” She regarded her step-daughter sternly, black eyes bottomless. “It’s an opportunity for you, Estellita.”

Estelle held up both hands in surrender. Teresa was right, of course. Irma Sedillos, cheerful, bright, trustworthy-willing to be on-call, just as were both Francis and Estelle-would leave an enormous hole in the corporación with her leaving. Estelle realized that she had coped with the notion of Irma’s eventual, inevitable leaving by not thinking about it. Now she had a deadline. Seven months after the wedding, the Herreras would move west.

For a few minutes she watched her youngest son playing outside the back door while, in the front room, Bach grew more complex. She nudged the door open and Carlos looked up. He wore a good deal of the excavation on his face. “Time to clean up for dinner, hijo. ”

“¡Mira! ” Carlos swept a hand grandly to include the road he’d been engineering up the side of the mine. A sand box would have been too simple. This excavation, where once there had been a struggling flower bed, sank deep enough that it had earned the name “burglar trap” from Dr. Francis. If the driver of the over-loaded Tonka was careful, the ore truck wouldn’t plunge over the precipice-that had happened a time or two.

“How deep are you going?”

He regarded his work judiciously. “I think seven levels.”

“Ay, ¡caramba! Such a grand mine.” Carlos had been captivated during a stop at the Morenci open pit in Arizona during a family trip the previous summer. Now, with a little more work, he’d be able to sit in the bottom of his pit with his head level with the patio.

“I’ll probably need a new truck,” he mused, ever hopeful.

“Maybe so. Come on, now. Shut down the mine and clean up. Nana made cornbread for us.”

“Papá is home!” Francisco bellowed from the living room, and Bach’s Invention sped up to light speed, finishing with a resounding crash. For the next half hour, Estelle let the natural momentum of the meal draw them together. Dr. Guzman didn’t allow the conversation to center on Butch Romero’s misfortune, and Francisco’s initial apprehension about what his father was going to say about the rattlesnake episode relaxed.

They talked about Irma’s impending marriage and studies, but no one dwelled on what losing their nana would mean to the household. At one point, Estelle happened to glance across at her husband. Francis raised an eyebrow as if to say, “and now what? ” But he didn’t pursue the question.

“Did you see the paper?” he asked instead. He cut another square of cornbread and balanced it on the edge of his salad plate. He leaned back in his chair, scooped the mail and the newspaper off the counter, and shuffled through them quickly, seeing the note from Padrino, Bill Gastner. He tossed the rest of the mail back on the counter and folded the newspaper neatly, presenting one of the inside pages to Estelle.

The article included a photo showing Nate Underwood, a biology teacher at the high school, as he bent over an animal’s skull, probe in hand. It was a surprisingly good picture, taken from table level so that the skull appeared large and impressive, with the teacher looming in the background. Frank Dayan, publisher and sometimes roving reporter for the Posadas Register, had triumphed this time in his struggles with the digital camera.

From the left, a student leaned over the skull as well, pointing a pencil at one heavy, blunt canine tooth.

“I heard about that,” little Francisco said. He leaned over Estelle’s elbow to look at the picture. “Freddy found that.”

Skull of Rare Jaguar Found, the headline trumpeted. Estelle scanned the brief article. A Sunday afternoon jaunt south of Borracho Springs ended with discovery of a jaguar skeleton by a local student. Intrepid explorer Frederico Romero, 18, said that the skeleton was found in the San Cristóbal mountains, in a small cave deep in Salazar Canyon within a few hundred yards of the crest.

The rest of the article didn’t add many details of the discovery’s circumstances. Salazar Canyon was carved out of the north flank of the San Cristóbals, one of the few mountain ranges on the continent that ran east-west. Hunters like Sheriff Bobby Torrez would know the mountain range and its various canyons intimately.

“I’d like to see that skull,” her husband said. “Did Padrino have something to do with all this? I saw the note from him.”

“Curiosity, at the least,” Estelle replied. “Anything unusual, there he is, especially if it has something to do with local history. I’m guessing that curiosity has Padrino deep in his library, exploring. Irma tried to get him over for dinner, but he refused. I didn’t think that there has been a jaguar sighting in this part of the country in generations.”

“That’s what the teacher said,” Francis added, nodding at the newspaper.

She looked at the article again. “At first, I thought it was a mountain lion skull,” Romero reported. The high school senior added that, “But then I found a little patch of fur that was still attached to one of the hip bones.” Biology teacher Nate Underwood agreed with his student’s assessment.

“The skull is much too heavy and broad to be a mountain lion,” Underwood said. “The jaguar is an altogether different genus-a much bigger, heavier, more powerful cat.” Underwood said that although now considered to be an endangered species throughout Mexico and Central America, the jaguar’s original range included portions of the Southwestern United States, particularly areas near plentiful water.

“This animal might have died of old age,” Underwood said. “The teeth are blunt and show lots of wear. One of the canines is broken off near the jaw-line as well. This big cat wasn’t much of a hunter any more. That’s one theory. There’s some damage to the skull, too. It’s hard to say what happened to him.”

“Curioso, ¿no? ” Estelle said, handing the paper to Francisco. “What was old gato doing this far north. You should walk over to the high school to see it tomorrow.” Even as she said it, she remembered that the gulf of the parking lot between the elementary wing and the high school might as well have been the San Christóbals for younger students. They weren’t allowed to wander about by themselves. “Maybe your teacher can take you over.”

“How did he get way up there on the mountain?” the boy asked.

“Somebody chased him,” Carlos offered.

“Or he might have just been tired, sick, old…that’s as far as he was able to go before he found a comfortable place to call it quits,” the boys’ father said. “Nice view from up there. Lay on a nice warm rock and wait it out.” He frowned judiciously at a piece of cornbread. “It’s too bad that Freddy’s younger brother didn’t go exploring with him. It would have been more productive than chasing snakes.”

Estelle saw little Francisco duck his head as if he’d been slapped. “I wonder what trail Padrino is following with all this,” she said. “Maybe he remembers someone talking about jaguars years ago.”

“They would have been rare then, too.”

“Do they eat people?” Carlos asked.

“Not this one anymore, hijo, ” Estelle said. “With teeth like that, he’d be lucky if he could catch a sick calf. Maybe that’s what Padrino is thinking about. Maybe somebody down that way has complained about losing cattle.”

“If they lost cattle, it wasn’t because of this old guy,” her husband laughed. “And that skeleton could have been lying in that cave for ten years…or more. Enough time for all the bugs and mice to pick it clean. If all of the skeleton is there, they should bring it out and get it mounted. That would make a rare display.”

“Freddy might have been thinking along those lines,” Estelle said. “I hope that Mr. Underwood told him that he can’t just possess the carcass or skull of protected animals without permission from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Even the school would need permission.”

Her eldest son wrinkled up his face. “Not even an old skull? That’s silly.”

“Well, it’s like possessing eagle feathers,” Estelle said. “They don’t want those things on the open market. You start allowing that, and pretty soon you’d have a flood of things showing up at garage sales.”

“I think that you could sell a jaguar skeleton in old Mexico for a good deal,” Irma said. “If there’s such a thing as a sacred cat, the jaguar is it.”

Estelle nodded. “It’s likely that the school will be able to cut a deal with the feds to keep it as part of their academic collection.”

“If Freddy gives it to them,” Francis amended. “Of course, now that he’s gone public with it, what choice does he have?”