Final Payment

Chapter Seventeen

An hour’s wolf nap wasn’t enough, especially with the rest of the household enjoying the quiet of early Sunday morning slumbering. It would have been too easy to roll over, snuggle up against her husband, and doze off again. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, trying to focus. She had folded into bed at three fifteen. In a blink, the clock had leaped to 4:30 a.m.

“What’s the deal this morning?” Francis asked, his voice muffled by the pillow.

Estelle rubbed her face and double-checked the time. “I need to talk with a kid who might have taken the plane,” she said. “There’s a chance. Slim, but a chance. I need to follow up on it.”

“You be careful. You’re tired.”

“I know. I’ll try to be back in time for the race. If it looks like I can’t make it, I’ll call.” She turned and patted his hip. “Can you take the boys up on the mesa if I’m not back?”

“Chances are,” he replied. A finger appeared from under the pillow and wagged at her. “Don’t you be sending more work our way.”

“I’ll try my best, querido.” After a long shower, she dressed quickly and forced down a small microwaved breakfast burrito and a cup of tea. By five thirty, she was parking in front of a nondescript double-wide mobile home on the southwestern outskirts of Posadas. She paused by her car, noticing two things. First, she could see the end of the vocational wing of the high school, no more than a quarter of a mile distant, across a scrubby field and a single arroyo. Second, her arrival had not gone unnoticed.

Two pit bulls watched her with interest. They were tethered with their light chains running up to a wire clothesline, allowing them to course back and forth in front of the home, in an area lighted by an irritatingly bright streetlight. Both dogs could reach the path to the front door with ease.

By the time she had gotten out of the car and walked around the front fender, both dogs were wagging so hard it appeared their backbones were in jeopardy, their voices sounding like two frantic children. If they thought that a stranger approaching their house in the wee hours of the morning was unusual or cause for alarm, they didn’t show it.

“My long lost pals,” Estelle said aloud. As she approached, one of the dogs, a butterscotch female splotched liberally with white, stood on her hind legs, balancing against the pull of the leash. The other, a brindle female, took the low road and flopped on her back, presenting a white belly that had nursed its share of puppies.

“They’re harmless,” a man’s voice said, and Estelle glanced up to see Gordon Urioste standing at the front door of the double-wide. “As long as you don’t mind the slobber.”

“Good morning, sir,” Estelle said.

“Get down, Squeak,” Urioste said sharply, and the dancing female dropped to all fours instantly, stubby tail still flailing. “How are you this morning, Ms. Guzman?” he added. “You’re out bright and early.”

“I’m okay,” she said, pushing past the two wet, snuffling muzzles that blotched her previously spotless tan pantsuit. The two dogs couldn’t reach the front step, and both of them sat down at the full stretch of their chains, butts wiggling. Urioste stepped the rest of the way past the storm door and closed it behind him. A short, burly man, his heavy-featured face was one of wary good humor.

“What can I do for you? You want a cup of coffee? The wife’s got it going.”

“No thanks, sir.” She turned, surveying the neighborhood, a hodgepodge of older trailers and double-wides situated on irregular two-acre lots. The neighborhood had started its sprawl during the last heydays of the copper mine on Cat Mesa, and now struggled with vacant lots left when the trailers pulled out, leaving behind the stubs of plumbing pipes and chopped-off electrical wiring. Fences were choked with tumbleweeds, and the dirt streets were dismal. The two dwellings on either side of Urioste’s were vacant-on one side, a single trailer whose carport was sagging over a vast pile of trash, and on the other, a ten-year-old double-wide bordered by a rickety cedar fence, the place recently abandoned when the elderly owner had died.

“Going to be a beautiful day, I think,” Urioste offered, a polite way of asking, What do you want at five thirty in the morning?

“I’d like to talk with Hector, if he’s around,” Estelle asked.

“Hector?”

“Yes.” Estelle smiled cordially. “He and I chatted some when I did a career day presentation at the high school.”

“Oh.” Gordon Urioste nodded. “Oh, really? That’s right, I guess I remember. He talked about that.” An even shorter, wider form appeared in the doorway behind him.

“Good morning, Pam,” Estelle said. A loose housecoat, her short hair unruly, Pam Urioste’s early-weekend-morning uniform was a far cry from her polished, carefully groomed image that greeted clients at the insurance office.

“Hi,” the woman replied. “I’ve got coffee on…” And her voice trailed off expectantly.

Each of the three knew that police officers didn’t routinely show up on the doorstep at five thirty on a Sunday morning for idle chitchat about high school career days. Estelle knew the Uriostes well enough to greet them by name-that was all. Gordon glanced across toward the vacant double-wide, and Estelle saw something in his expression that might have been resignation or irritation.

“Look,” he said, “is this about the truck?”

The truck. She was tempted to ask, What truck? But Urioste had opened a door, perhaps unwittingly, and she didn’t want it slammed shut. Instead she said, “Mr. Urioste, I really do need to speak with Hector. I know it’s early, but I have a lot on my plate today, with the bike race and all the rest. If he’s here, then it will only take a minute.”

“Well, sure he’s here,” Pam said, and she began to sound more like the efficient administrative assistant that she was. She started to turn away, but her husband held up a hand.

“Now wait a minute,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “We need to know what this is all about. I mean, after all, we’re Hector’s guardians while he’s in this country.”

“I realize that, sir.” Estelle watched his face, and after a minute, he acquiesced.

“Okay. You want to shag him out here, honey?” Gordon smiled a little. “That might be a trick. He’s been dog-tired these past couple of weeks. Final exams, you know. He takes ’em serious.”

“I’m sure he does.”

They waited silently, and Urioste studiously avoided looking at Estelle. More than once, he glanced next door, and it wasn’t difficult for Estelle to guess what the attraction was.

In a moment, Pam Urioste reappeared, and she looked first at her husband. “He’s not here,” she said.

“What do you mean, he’s not here?” Urioste said, but it didn’t sound convincing.

“What else could I mean?” Pam snapped. “He’s not in the house.” And sure enough, Gordon Urioste’s eyes flicked to the right, toward the abandoned double-wide trailer next door.

“So,” Estelle said, “tell me about the truck, sir.”

“What’s this?” Pam asked. “What truck?”

“Look, I told him that he shouldn’t use it again…well, not too much, anyway. You know,” Urioste said, “after the old man passed away over there-” and he waved a hand toward his neighbor’s “-things have just sat there, you know. That old Chevy-I guess the bank will end up taking it. I was going to see about maybe putting a bid on it.”

Estelle turned and surveyed the double-wide. “There’s usually a truck parked there?” She racked her memory, trying to form a picture.

“The old man-you knew him?” Urioste asked.

“Reynaldo Estrada,” Estelle said. “I’m sure just about everybody knew Reynaldo.” One of the community’s perennial bachelors, Estrada had been a talented stonemason when not wrapped around a bottle, and before advanced years turned his knuckles to arthritic crystal.

The old man had died long before young Hector had arrived on the scene, but an abandoned Chevrolet pickup posed an attractive nuisance. A teenager with a finely honed sense of trespass might find it tempting to investigate. “Hector has the keys to his truck?”

“Well, they were in it,” Urioste said. “The old man, he used to tuck the keys under the floor mat so he wouldn’t lose ’em. He told me that himself once, just in case I needed to borrow it for wood or something like that.”

Estelle took a deep breath. “When was Hector here last?” Urioste started to waffle, and Estelle cut him off. “Look, sir, this is important. When-exactly-did you see Hector last?”

“I went to bed at about eleven,” Pam offered. “Hector was reading in his room then.”

Her husband nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s about right.”

“Did you hear him go out, sir?”

He started to shake his head, then thought better of it. “He got up early.”

“What time?”

“Five, maybe.”

“Did he take the truck?”

Gordon hesitated.

“Sir?”

“I heard it start up,” he said finally. He nodded toward the dwelling next door. “And it’s not there now, so-”

“Do you know where he planned to go?”

“He and his girlfriend were going to hike in a ways on the mesa to find a good spot to watch the race. That’s what he told me yesterday.”

“Who’s the girlfriend?”

“I’m not sure who he’s seeing now. Last week, it was Penny Mendoza.” He laughed weakly. “I’m not sure about who it might be this week. He’s something of a lady killer, you know.”

Not just ladies, Estelle thought. “But you think that’s where he planned to go today?” she asked. “Up on the mesa?”

“I think so. Yes.” He seemed relieved that the story had finally come out.

“We can hope that’s where he’s going,” Estelle said. “If he comes back before I have a chance to talk with him, make sure you let me know, all right?” She handed them one of her cards. “It’s very, very important.”

“We should keep him here, then? When he comes back?”

Estelle had already turned to tackle slobber alley again. She paused, fending off the first flailing tongue. “Yes,” she said. “That would be a very good idea. I’ll be in touch.” When she backed the county car out of the driveway, Pam and Gordon Urioste were still standing in the doorway of their double-wide, wondering what had just happened to their lives.

Accelerating hard out the dirt road, Estelle palmed the phone and touched the auto-dial for dispatch.

“Brent,” she said quickly, cutting off Sutherland’s slow-paced greeting, “what’s Taber’s twenty?”

“Just a sec, ma’am.” Estelle’s county car reached the pavement of Bustos Avenue, and with a howl headed eastbound on the quiet street. Flashing past the center of Posadas, she then turned north on County 43.

“Estelle, Jackie’s west, out toward Regál Pass.”

“Good. Look, find out what license plate old Reynaldo Estrada had on his Chevy pickup. Alert Jackie and ask her to keep a watch for that truck, possibly driven by a Mexican national teenager.” Estelle glanced at the dash clock. The border crossing at Regál would open in just a few minutes. “Have her check with Customs.”

“I’m on it.”

“I’m headed to the airport.”

“Ten-four.”

She pushed the car even harder after turning westward on the state highway that headed out toward Posadas Municipal Airport. If Hector Ocate was bumping the old pickup up Cat Mesa with his girlfriend riding beside him, looking for the perfect vantage point to watch the race, Estelle would breathe a deep sigh of relief.

But she also knew that, if Hector had been the pilot of Jerry Turner’s airplane, he could have had opportunity to hear about the investigation-about the officers snooping around the airport, or about the discovery of the three bodies. Anyone driving past Posadas Municipal Airport on the state highway would have seen activity. Anyone driving south on State 56 toward Regál would have seen the gathering of lights at the gas company’s airstrip. Anyone at the saloon would have heard Jim Bergin’s landing and takeoff.

Estelle hadn’t been listening, but it was likely that at least one of the area radio stations had carried some item, however sketchy, about the tragic events.

Had he glanced out the window of his bedroom, likely in the back of the house where bedrooms always were, he might even have seen the gathering of vehicles at Matt Grider’s room. It wouldn’t be rocket science to put all the numbers together. Knowing that something might be amiss, Hector Ocate would know that safety lay just minutes south of the border.