Red, Green, or Murder

Chapter Thirty-one

Concentrating on the what, and not the why, I wrote my way through a lengthy deposition, taking my time so that I included every detail, from the utility knife to the old-fashioned leather-covered lead slapper that Rory Hobbs had carried concealed in his hip pocket. There was no point in dwelling on the why of it. Over the years, I had seen a fascinating number of people who, certainly knowing better, had done astonishingly stupid, self-destructive things.

The late Rory Hobbs and his incarcerated-without-bail partner Richard Zimmerman were certainly in that category. Hobbs had gone from promising actor to dead; Zimmerman had traveled his own slippery slope from pre-med studies to charges that included conspiracy, aggravated assault, grand larceny auto theft, international trafficking, and even cruelty to animals.

Of course, most of those charges would vanish in the cluttered haze of the legal process, but the certainty was that Richard Zimmerman would spend many years behind bars. If lawyers were clever, civil suits on behalf of Pat Gabaldon would hammer Zimmerman and Hobbs’ family for years to come.

In short, two lives wasted, and all because one of the two young men-it was still not clear which one-happened to glance into the cab of a fancy truck and saw the keys dangling from the ignition. Of course, Zimmerman said that it was Hobbs who had hatched the scheme, but he wasn’t a half-bad actor himself.

The pre-med student had been smart enough to hurl Patrick’s phone when it rang and scared the crap out of him-but not smart enough to think about prints.

At five minutes after seven that evening, I became conscious of a figure standing silently in the doorway, watching me. I relaxed back from Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s computer, clasped my hands behind my head, and smiled at the undersheriff.

“You look right at home, sir,” she said. “How’s it coming?”

“Ah. Well, there’s a tendency to wax eloquent, but that’s what the ‘delete’ key is for.”

“I faxed a photo of Zimmerman and Hobbs to Captain Naranjo. The descriptions fit, and we should be getting confirmation from his witnesses here in a little bit.”

“By next week, maybe.”

“And I thought you would like to know…the district attorney is not going to press any charges against Victor.”

I grunted approval. “If he did, I’d rewrite this deposition,” I said. “Hobbs was threatening great bodily harm during the commission of a felony, and besides that, Victor had no way of knowing whether or not Hobbs would turn his whacko attentions toward Christine or Father Anselmo.”

“Besides, he’s Victor,” Estelle said.

“That’s right. He’s Victor. He doesn’t cringe behind the nearest table. There’s a certain element of frontier justice at work here, sweetheart. I did tell Victor that he needs to find a good lawyer, though. I’m willing to bet that Hobbs’ family won’t see it our way. So I’m being extra careful here. Then again, they’ll be busy in a blizzard of other legal paper.”

“I wondered if in a few minutes you’d be ready for a break.”

“Absolutely. I’m ready for food, is what I am. This is what you get for sending me out on errands,” I laughed. “‘Go ask Herb some questions,’ you say. And see?”

“Yes, sir. I knew that Herb would talk with you more easily than he does with me. That’s all.”

“Nonsense.” I knew damn well that she was right.

“And we made some important progress,” Estelle added. “I’ll be in the conference room when you’re ready.”

Ten minutes later, I saved, printed, and filed my deposition, complete with the notary seal that Gayle Torrez affixed for me. My six-page version of events would go into the hopper with all the others, and Zimmerman’s fate would churn out the other end. It was out of my hands, with the exception of testimony eventually in court.

Expecting a short ride either to Estelle’s home or to the Don Juan, my home-away-from-home, I was surprised when we pulled into the small parking lot of the Town and Country Liquor Store.

Formerly the Town and Country SuperMart and before that the Posadas Ball and Pin Bowling Center, the liquor store was not the destination I had in mind. Both Estelle and Francis enjoyed a glass of wine now and then, but I’d never actually seen Estelle buy any-and certainly not while on duty in a county car. The way the day was shaping up, though, I was thinking that a good stout belt of something high octane might be the drug of choice. We pulled into the parking lot of the liquor store, and before getting out of the car she took a moment to retrieve a small plastic evidence bag tucked in her briefcase.

She held up the bag so that I could see the store receipt inside. The tiny blue print recorded the purchase of a 1.5-liter bottle of Tucker’s Aussie, one of the strong, cheap Australian merlots of which George Payton had been fond…and a near full bottle of which had been on his kitchen table.

“That receipt was in the trash under the sink,” I guessed. “In the bag that the bottle came in.”

“Yes, sir.” She ran her fingers thoughtfully along the zip closure. “A fresh bottle of Tucker’s merlot was on the table, minus a single glassful that had been poured and then spilled when Mr. Payton collapsed. We found an empty bottle in the trash as well…along with the bag and this.”

“All right.”

“Tom Mears found George Payton’s prints on both wine bottles, sir.”

“As I would expect he would.” I gazed at her, waiting.

“And no one else’s.” Estelle turned the evidence bag this way and that. “No one. Not a clerk at Town and County, not a distributor…no one.”

“A glass wine bottle is about the world’s best surface for prints,” I said. “So it was wiped clean. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Yes. Tom Mears found a faint smudge or two, but nothing else. Nothing of use. You said that Mr. Payton almost always had wine with his lunch?”

“Every time that I’ve eaten with him. Yes. Before and during. He always had a dose before the food. ‘Gotta wake up the taste buds,’ he would say.” I could see George’s gnarled, arthritic hands holding the eight ounce tumbler in a two-handed grip. I’d seen him chug down the merlot the way most people can chug tap water.

“That may have been when he finished the first bottle, then,” Estelle said. “He…or someone…poured a second glass from a fresh bottle, and that was what was spilled during the attack.”

“Without a doubt,” I said. “He’d drink that first glass, and have about thirty seconds before he’d have to waddle off to…” I stopped in mid-sentence.

“Waddle off?”

“He’d go to the bathroom,” I said. “He had the beginnings of prostate cancer. Slow growing, Perrone told him. Not to mention that George wasn’t a good prospect for surgery. He wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol. Or smoke. Maybe you can imagine what a six- or eight-ounce tumbler of red wine loaded with tannic acid would do to a cranky prostate and irritated bladder.”

Estelle smiled sympathetically. “Uncle Reuben was always muttering about his próstata.”

“Well, it gets your attention, let me tell you,” I said. “But what’s the fun of giving in to the doctor’s orders, George would say. He just stayed close to a bathroom. But it’s predictable as hell. You drink, you pee. That’s just the way it is.”

She held up the receipt. “I find it hard to believe that he went out to buy a bottle of wine when he knew that the food was on its way over from the Don Juan. Would he do that? Would he drive himself?”

“I was supposed to buy it,” I said. “When we talked Thursday morning, he asked me to pick up a bottle on the way over. He knew he didn’t have enough for lunch.”

“But you didn’t buy the wine.”

“No, I didn’t. I got hung up at Herb’s. I did talk to George briefly, and he didn’t want to wait. He cancelled the luncheon date, not me. He didn’t mention the wine then, or that he was asking someone else to fetch a bottle. He wouldn’t ask Ricardo Mondragon to do it. But no…I don’t think he’d go out to get it himself. He’d just make the one glass last.”

“So,” Estelle mused regarding the receipt thoughtfully. “At 11:47 a.m.” She held up the baggie, her thumb marking the cash register’s day-time imprint.

“If the computer’s clock is accurate.” I nodded at the store’s front door. “Blake would remember if George came in,” I said. “Well, he might,” I amended.

Blake Pierson had tended the little bar at the bowling alley in the 1970s, then worked at the supermarket, tending its small liquor department, then managed the current iteration. His knowledge of things alcoholic was encyclopedic. I knew him well not because I drank-nobody got rich off my intake-but because the largest percentage of crimes involved lubrication before their commission, wearing the badge meant talking with the source of the sauce from time to time.

I followed Estelle inside, struck as always by the odd, cloying aroma of the store. The merchandise didn’t ooze through the glass of the shelved bottles. It oozed from the pores of those who drank too much and then returned to the store for a refill. The potpourri of wine and spirits thickened over the years, permeating the very skeleton of the building itself.

Pierson, a stumpy little guy who favored plaid flannel shirts any time of year, was studying a multipage computer print-out as we entered. “Ohhhh,” he shuddered. “I didn’t do it.” He folded the print-out carefully, patting it flat on the counter. From somewhere amid the racks of red wine, a rail-thin elderly man appeared clutching a liter-and-a-half bottle, and Pierson reached out across the counter to tilt the bottle just far enough that he could scan the bar-code with the little hand wand. “Thirteen thirty-eight, Pop,” he said, and made change from the twenty with economical motions, counting the change out like a rapid-fire auctioneer. “You come back and see us,” he said. He slipped the bottle into double paper bags and handed the cargo to the aging customer. Pop Mendoza ambled past us with a curt nod of greeting, headed for the door.

“How’s it goin’?” Pierson asked, and leaned on the counter.

Estelle had removed the receipt from the evidence bag, and she placed it on the counter. Pierson framed it with both hands without touching it and closed one eye as if peering through a spy-glass.

“Right over there,” he said, and pointed over the top of the cash register. “The Aussie end cap display. We sell a lot of that. Good shelf life when it’s uncorked, robust, lots of fruit. Good, honest stuff, and cheaper than it should be.”

“Sir, did George Payton come in sometime during the last day or two to buy a bottle of this?”

“Oh,” Pierson groaned, and when he exhaled I could smell the afterlife of something robust, with lots of fruit. He touched the date on the receipt as if assuming we hadn’t noticed its presence. “Damn, I was so sorry to hear of Georgie.” He frowned and shook his head. “What a guy, you know?”

“Yes, sir,” Estelle said. “He was in?”

“Oh, gosh, no.” Pierson bent down and rested stout forearms on the glass counter, pushing the receipt back toward Estelle. “I haven’t actually seen Georgie in a couple of months. I asked Maggie the other day how he was doing, and she said he was real frail. Just real frail.”

“When was that?”

He tapped the receipt. “Guess it was yesterday. Yesterday morning.” He squinted one eye at the receipt again. “This says 11:47 a.m.”

“So, yesterday morning,” Estelle repeated.

“The one bottle, right there,” Pierson said, and straightened up. “Probably for Georgie. ’Course, I don’t know that for sure. She strikes me as a martini type, you know.” He held thumb and forefinger together as if pinching the slender stem of a glass. “So I’m guessing it was for Georgie. Phil…you know Phil comes in and buys that from time to time for his father-in-law, too. But he’s a beer man. Phil, I mean.” He puffed out his cheeks. “I could be nosy,” he added, and looked quizzically at the undersheriff.

“Whenever there’s an unattended death,” Estelle said easily, giving him the stock answer. “We like to tie up all the loose ends.”

“Well, sure you do. What else? Mornin’, Evie,” he called to the woman who had entered and was angling off toward the single section of grocery items.

Estelle picked up the receipt. “This was Maggie Payton, though,” she repeated. “You’re sure of that?”

“Well, as sure as I am of anything these days,” Pierson laughed. “That’s a cash sale, so we don’t have a card receipt with a signature. But she was here yesterday morning, and I remember her buying the Aussie.” He grinned, showing a diminishing supply of teeth. “You could ask her, right? Don’t go tattling on me, now. I’d hate to have her as an enemy.”

“Not to worry,” Estelle said pleasantly. “Thanks, sir.” She held the receipt so he could see it. “This time is accurate?”

“Right on the dot,” he laughed. “Lookit,” he said, and held out the tail end of the register tape. He twisted around and eyed the Coors clock behind him. “Right on the money. To the minute.” Estelle nodded appreciatively.

The walk back outside to the car seemed like about fifteen miles, all of it uphill.