Red, Green, or Murder

Chapter Twenty-eight

The number of meals that I’d eaten at the Don Juan de Oñate over the decades was enough to earn me plenty of frequent eater perks…admittedly along with an impressive waistline. The choice seemed simple enough to me. Did I want to be able to tie my shoes without grunting with the effort, or did I want to be able to sigh with something close to ecstasy when I took the first mouthful?

Besides, this was important. Estelle Reyes-Guzman had suggested lunch, and that in itself was an occasion that demanded nurturing. How she kept going on her caloric intake was a mystery to me. In my world, salads and herbal tea were only of use to pass the time until the main course arrived. Second, I was sure that assessor Jack Lauerson knew a good deal more than he would casually offer in an office where a dozen ears might overhear. Third, what better tribute to George Payton could there be? I wasn’t one to mope around in a church, surrounded by teary people in black, nor one to pick at one of the five meat loaves out in the kitchen brought by sympathetic neighbors.

I led the way toward my customary booth in the back of the restaurant. JanaLynn Torrez appeared with a cheerful smile of greeting and three tall glasses of ice water with lemon. She was pretty enough that when she walked by, more than one customer had missed his mouth with a loaded fork, but she’d never married…not that at the ripe old age of thirty-one all options were lost.

JanaLynn knew that this was the time to hone appetites, not wallow in regrets. She raised a pretty black eyebrow at Jack Lauerson. I guessed that the Don Juan wasn’t a customary haunt for him. The best thing in my day was a bountiful lunch followed by a nap, but maybe that didn’t fit the assessor’s work schedule. I could see him pulling a pathetic little brown bag of dry sandwich out of his desk drawer come noon, his work pace never slackening. Maybe on occasion, for a real treat, he bartered sandwich halves with Kevin Zeigler.

“What are you going to have, Mr. Lauerson? I already know what this guy wants.” She leaned against me, bumping me with her hip.

“What’s good?” he asked, confirming my suspicions.

“Well, a menu might help.” JanaLynn stepped over to one of the server islands, pulled a menu out of the rack, and handed it to Jack. “I get so used to folks knowing what they want that I sometimes forget.” She grinned down at me.

Lauerson frowned at the vast selection. He looked skeptical, as if he were about to skate on really thin ice. “I’ll try a couple of the beef enchiladas, I guess.”

“Red or green?”

Our official state question prompted a cautious pause. “Is the green really hot?”

JanaLynn made a face to defuse his anxieties. “It’s not bad. Not like yesterday, when it melted out the bottom of one of the stainless steel pans.” She reached out a hand and made contact with Jack’s left shoulder. “I’m kidding. It’s really good.”

“I’ll try that, then.”

“Smothered?”

“Sure. Why not.”

“Comin’ right up.” She gathered the menu, slipped it under her arm, and held up both hands to demonstrate the size of a football. I nodded, feeling no pangs of remorse at being so predictable. “How about you?” she said to Estelle. When the undersheriff ordered a chicken taco salad, it surprised the hell out of me. It’s a great dish, with lots of savory roast chicken, fresh beans and other wonderful secrets in a large taco shell bowl. Add the quacamole, salsa, and sour cream, and it’s a decent snack. I knew that Estelle was thinking overtime, and some actual food was going to help fuel the process.

Jack Lauerson watched JanaLynn’s retreating figure. “You always order the same thing?” he asked me.

“Of course not. I had the enchiladas once. In the spring of 1982, I think.”

He laughed, still watching as JanaLynn reached up to clip the ticket on the kitchen’s Lazy Fernando. I said nothing to interrupt the assessor’s day dreams. After two previous tries at matrimony, Lauerson was enjoying bachelorhood again…or not.

“Isn’t she related to the sheriff somehow?” he asked after a moment.

“JanaLynn is Robert’s youngest sister,” I said. “One of many sisters, in fact.”

He turned back toward the kitchen, but JanaLynn had disappeared. “She’s attractive,” he said.

“Indeed she is,” I agreed, and watched as Lauerson pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, glanced at it, and then switched it off, a brave, relaxed thing for a government bureaucrat to do.

“So…” He leaned back, hooking one arm over the back of the booth, and sighed with obvious contentment, enjoying the break in scenery from filing cabinets, light green walls, and patrons whose standard expression was a frown. “Losing old friends is tough.”

I nodded. “Especially when you reach the age that you no longer buy green bananas. All us geezers sit around making bets about who’s going next. Not a real healthy outlook.”

“Mr. Payton was how old?”

“Seventy-seven,” I replied. “And not a particularly hale or hearty seventy-seven, either. He’d been living on a third of a heart for a long time.”

“Maggie’s going to have her hands full,” he said. The familiarity in his tone, the way he tossed Maggie Payton Borman’s name into the conversation, surprised me a bit.

“The properties, you mean?” Estelle asked.

He nodded and pulled his arm down. “Of course, that’s what she does for a living, so she’s used to it. Didn’t she get married or something here not long ago?” I heard a wistful note in his tone, although the steady, unexciting assessor didn’t seem to be the type-A Maggie Borman’s type…then again, neither did her current husband.

“She married Phil Borman,” I said, wondering how someone like the county assessor, in the hub of activity in such a small community, wouldn’t know that.

“That’s right,” he said. “He’s a Realtor too.” He straightened up, pulling back from the table to make room for JanaLynn as she arrived with two enormous platters.

“Be careful,” she said. “They’re really hot.” With her hands now free, she pointed her right hand pistol-like at me. “You’d like coffee with cream. How about you, Mr. Lauerson?”

“Ah, I guess the water’s fine.”

“You got it. I’ll be right back with your salad,” she said to Estelle, and in a handful of seconds, she was.

The next several minutes were spent in silent bliss…at least for me. I noticed that Jack Lauerson had to spend as much time dabbing at his leaking nose and perspiring forehead as he did eating.

“I should eat here more often,” he said. “This is really good.”

Estelle Reyes-Guzman had been delicately sorting through her salad, ushering various green things to one side so she could pick out the chunks of perfect chicken. She paused with one properly loaded piece on her fork. “Have you talked recently with Kevin about the county building property?”

“You mean about George’s piece? You know, Kevin and I cross paths a dozen times most days.” The assessor’s office made sure that money flowed in to the county coffers, and Zeigler spent it. “But now we have something of an issue, don’t we,” Lauerson added.

“But the transfer of that property hadn’t been formalized?” Estelle asked.

“Ah, no, as a matter of fact. The last I heard, Mr. Payton was going to transfer the property to the county for a dollar. But that’s Kevin’s bailiwick. I know that he was going to have Paul Simmons handle it.”

“When would you hear about it being finalized?”

“A deed transfer would be filed with the county clerk, and then I’d hear about it,” the assessor said. “You ought to catch Stacey Roybal. She’s the clerk, and the one with the paperwork.” He prepared another mouthful. “But I see her all the time, too, and she never said anything one way or another.”

“That’s what Kevin said,” Estelle agreed. “Mr. Payton’s property here in town has not been transferred yet to the county.”

“As far as I know, that’s how it stands.” He dabbed his nose again and lowered his voice. “What do you want to bet that now Maggie isn’t going to give away the property for a buck? We had no written agreement with George, you know. And it wasn’t even a handshake kind of contract.”

“No bet,” I said. I liked Maggie Payton well enough, but I had no idea how altruistic she might be. Handle a $100,000 sale, and she might garner a $6,000 commission. Own the property outright, with none of her own money invested in it, and the whole hundred grand was hers-assuming that her father had left his holdings to her in his will…assuming he had left a will. If he hadn’t, the state would run the whole mess through probate in its own good time, and all of George Payton’s estate would go to his only daughter, minus the various blood-lettings and pounds of flesh that the feds and the state would require.

Lauerson looked across at Estelle. “You know,” he said, “It’s incomprehensible to me that George wouldn’t have at least talked with his daughter about what he wanted to do. I mean, I realize that he was a brusque old guy. But why hide something like that?”

“Because he didn’t want to have to argue with her?” Estelle said. “It’s not so much a question of hiding as it is just doing things his way. No haggling, no negotiations, no nothing.”

The assessor wagged his fork at me. “Did George know that you gave the Guzmans those acres behind your house?”

“Sure,” I replied. “We talked about it once or twice. That’s what gave him the idea.” I knew what Estelle meant. I had told my four adult children that I was giving my land away, but as a point of interest only, and damn near after the fact. I hadn’t asked for permission or help in the process. I had asked neither sons nor daughters what they thought, or if they agreed with my decision. To my way of thinking, it wasn’t any of their business. The property was mine, and I disposed of it. End of story. I could see crusty old George Payton doing the same thing.

Lauerson stretched back away from an empty platter. “Did you see Maggie yesterday?”

“Sure.”

“She’s taking it all right? Her dad’s death, I mean?”

“I think so,” I said, and let it go at that. We had no way of knowing what was going through Maggie Payton Borman’s mind.

“What’s the department’s interest in George’s land, anyway?” Lauerson asked. It had taken him longer to echo Kevin Zeigler’s question than I expected.

I considered several options for an answer, but not surprisingly, Estelle Reyes-Guzman beat me to it.

“Whenever there’s an unattended death, we want to be as thorough as possible,” she said.

“There’s some question about the circumstances? I hadn’t heard that.”

“Yes,” she replied. JanaLynn approached and favored us all with a wide smile.

“Dessert for anyone?” she asked. “We have an amazing triple fudge thingee that’ll make you reconsider that afternoon nap.” That sounded terrific to me, but Lauerson groaned protest, and I knew that Estelle wouldn’t indulge.

“I really need to get back to work,” the assessor said. He started to reach for his wallet, but I clamped his arm.

“Mine,” I said. “It’s not often we get to enjoy the company of such distinguished company.” By the time I’d settled the modest ticket with JanaLynn, Jack Lauerson was outside, exercising his back to help it support the added weight in his gut. Estelle waited for me in the small foyer.

“Tom Mears should have the histamine jar processed for prints,” she said as I approached. “And Patrick’s cell phone. I need to see what he came up with, and I have a couple of other stops to make. Do you want to shake down lunch?”

“Well, sure. Where are we headed?”

She hesitated. “I’d like you to talk with Herb Torrance again, sir. There are some questions that are nagging at me, especially after talking with Jack Lauerson. If you’d do that,” and she pulled her small notebook out of her pocket, “it would free me up for a couple of errands.”

“Perfect,” I said. “That’ll give me time to think great thoughts.”