Red, Green, or Murder

by Steven F Havill

  That was easy to imagine—on both their parts…Maggie wanting to do something protective, George refusing. Estelle ducked under the yellow tape, but went no farther into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Phil now?” I asked.

  “He’s outside,” she replied. “I think he’s out by the garage, if you want to talk with him.”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. I wasn’t sheriff of Posadas County. I didn’t need to talk with anyone, unless George had secreted a herd of cattle somewhere out behind the house. I would pay brief respects to Phil Borman eventually, but there was nothing that either he or Maggie could tell me about George Payton that I didn’t already know. I’d spend a lot of time in the next few days and weeks missing old George and his dour, often profane comments about life. The world would march on now, a little poorer for his absence.

  “Let me talk with Estelle for a minute,” I said, and Maggie nodded.

  “Sure,” she said. A hint of a smile touched her pleasant face. “She’s so thoughtful, isn’t she. So professional, but with such a sympathetic touch. We’re so lucky to have her.”

  “Yes, she is,” I replied. I always felt better when I was in Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s presence. It was only logical that others would feel the same way.

  “You go ahead,” Maggie said, and turned away.

  The undersheriff didn’t move as I approached. I didn’t need to be prepared for what was in the kitchen, she had to know that. After twenty years in the military and almost thirty-five in civilian law enforcement, I’d seen enough final moments that I was adequately armored, even when the departed was one of my oldest friends.

  “I’m a little puzzled,” Estelle said in that husky whisper that traveled no farther than the ears for which it was intended. She lifted the yellow tape for me.

  It would have been nice if George Payton had just drifted away in his sleep—at least I think it would have been. After seeing too many of them, I still had reservations about final moments. I wasn’t convinced that there was a good way, or a good day, to die.

  George was seated on the floor, his back leaning against the cabinet door that concealed the kitchen sink’s innards. His left leg was stretched out straight, his right flexed at the knee. His right hand lay on the linoleum beside his right thigh. His left hand clutched a brown paper bag to his chest, resting on his ample midriff. His head nestled in his various wrinkled chins, eyes and mouth open.

  The position was one that he might have sagged into had the seizure struck just as he bent over to toss the bag into the under-sink trash. One chair was pushed away from the table. On the placemat rested a familiar glass serving dish, its plastic snap-on top placed carefully toward the center of the table. I recognized an inexpensive Styrofoam cooler over on the counter beside George’s enormous pill organizer, the cooler’s top askew.

  I knew exactly where the serving dish and cooler came from, and knew exactly what savory aroma had wafted up when George popped off the lid—a green chile burrito grande from the Don Juan. “And that’s not really fair,” I said.

  “Sir?”

  “He didn’t get to finish.” In fact, George had barely begun. Most of the wonderful burrito remained in the dish, and of the portion that George had spooned out on his plate, all but a few bites remained.

  Chapter Three

  “This was a usual thing?” Estelle asked.

  “What, the burrito?” I stepped closer to the table, careful not to touch anything. “Sure it was. You know that George shared my superior taste in food. Today I was supposed to have lunch with him, and I would have stopped at the Don Juan to pick up the grub.” I shrugged helplessly. “Turns out that I couldn’t make it. I talked to him on the phone a couple hours ago, maybe a little longer. He said he’d have the restaurant send over take-out.”

  “He called you, then?”

  “Well, he might have. Like I said, my phone rang but I was indisposed, sweetheart. I didn’t answer it. When it became clear that I was going to miss our lunch date, I called him.” I pointed at the chair pushed in at the end of the table. “My spot.”

  “Was there a particular reason for today?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Don’t think so. Just as good a day as any. Actually, I think Thursday is soup day from the Senior Citizens. George said soup is for sissies.” I thrust my hands in my pockets. “Here lately, he was getting meals-on-wheels from them, but he complained about that.” I grinned at Estelle. “Gotta have something really worth living for once in a while.”

  She nodded at that deep, philosophical thought as if she understood perfectly. Maybe she did. But Estelle had never eaten a burrito grande in her entire life—I’d bet the farm on it. Not with her waist line. She wouldn’t know the pure pleasure of having about a million calories settled comfortably behind the belt. When I finished one of those mammoth feeds, I felt like an old bruin who had disposed of an entire rich honey hive in one sitting, with a bushel of over-ripe, fragrant apples for dessert.

  “That’s a fancy take-out dish,” she observed. True enough, the Pyrex casserole wasn’t the usual for the Don Juan.

  “The restaurant started packing up George’s burrito like this a while ago,” I said. “When he couldn’t make it to the restaurant any more. That’s one of the perks of being a thirty-year customer.” I glanced around and saw George’s battered walker in the corner by the refrigerator, shoved there out of contempt, but still close at hand. “Fernando couldn’t bring himself to mash that work of art all together in one of those cheap take-out containers. At least not for George.” I held out my hands, drawing vaguely artistic shapes in the air. “Presentation, you know.”

  “Not today for you, though.”

  “Nope. Herb Torrance was ready to move a little gaggle of cattle, and then the kid got messed up. His horse spooked.”

  “Dale is all right?”

  “That’ll depend on who the orthopedic surgeon is. The damn horse planted a shod hoof right on the side of the kid’s knee and then pushed off. Crunch. The kid’s thigh is pointing this way, his lower leg that way. Nasty, nasty.”

  “And you said that you had agreed with George earlier to pick up the food at the Don Juan?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I sometimes do that. Did that, I should say. The restaurant will deliver, of course, but what the hell. It’s nothing formal…no big deal. We thought maybe we’d hit it today, but then I got busy. I rang George when we were on the way to meet the ambulance. Told him that I was likely going to be late.” I glanced over at the silent corpse, hoping he’d wake up and grump at me. “He didn’t like to throw off his schedule, though. He said he’d have someone from the restaurant do the honors.”

  “This was right around noon?”

  “Just a bit before. Maybe eleven-fifty or so when I actually called him.”

  Her expressive eyebrows furrowed a bit. “So the restaurant delivered,” she said, adding, “The dish belongs to the restaurant, then.”

  “Sure. George washes it—that’s a production if there ever was one—and then someone takes it back. I would have done that today.” I saw the fork on the floor, and moved back. A juice glass had been knocked off the table on the other side of his plate, splashing red wine across the linoleum.

  Estelle watched me as I surveyed the little kitchen. “Just a bite or three,” I said. “That’s about what he managed, wouldn’t you guess?”

  “Yes,” she said. “When you talked to him on the phone this morning…did he sound okay? His usual self?”

  I shrugged. “He said he wasn’t feeling so hot,” I made a face. “But I didn’t get the impression that he thought this was his last meal, if that’s what you mean.”

  She knelt beside George Payton’s body, her hands folded on her knee. “This bag is from the restaurant,” Estelle said, thinking out loud, since we both knew that it was. She cocked her head, reading the inscription on the crumpled paper. I already knew what it said: From the Don Juan de Oñate—this ain�
��t for no doggy.

  I backed up closer to the fridge for a panorama of the whole scene. It was easy enough to imagine what had happened. George had felt the first thunder of the seizure, dropped his fork, spasmed out and knocked over the full tumbler of wine. He had missed knocking over the nearly full bottle that stood near the center of the table. Rearing to his feet, he’d staggered away, headed for nowhere. Maybe he’d already spun into the gray void when his left hand reached out and grabbed, connecting with the restaurant’s delivery bag that had probably been on the kitchen counter. Then he’d slid down, coming to his final rest like an exhausted plumber working up energy to tackle the sink drain.

  “Odd thing to grab,” Estelle said.

  I sighed. “What ever is handy, sweetheart. He might have already been unconscious by then. Just a spasm.”

  “I’m surprised that he didn’t reach out toward the telephone,” she said. The small cordless phone rested in its recharging cradle under the first cupboard beside the toaster…no more than four feet from George’s left hand.

  “No time,” I said. “Just boom. He had time to get out of his chair, and that was just about it.” A few years before, I’d been on duty—in fact, in the middle of a homicide investigation—when a coronary had flattened me, too. There had been no time to grope for the speed dial on my phone, no time to key the hand-held radio on my belt. Not even enough time to reach out a hand to prevent my face from eating gravel.

  Estelle nodded, rose, and stepped back from the body. She circled toward the table, glanced out through the door toward the living room, and when she was standing immediately beside my shoulder, murmured, “I’ll be interested to know what caused the heavy discharge of mucus, sir.”

  I hadn’t knelt down to scrutinize George Payton’s face, but was ready to take the undersheriff’s word for it.

  “Maybe the Don Juan’s chile was a little hotter than usual,” I said. I’d eaten my way through plenty of those servings, pausing occasionally to mop my forehead or blow my nose as the fumes from the select Hatch green chile blew out the sinuses and numbed the tongue.

  I regarded Estelle, lifting my head a bit so I could bring her into bifocal focus. As usual, I was unable to read past those dark eyes. It was obvious that something was bothering her, though. When a very senior citizen with a long medical history dropped dead of circumstances that all screamed natural causes, we generally didn’t string a crime scene tape and take a thousand photographs.

  But typically Estelle, the undersheriff wasn’t ready to voice her concerns, and I didn’t push it. I trusted her to tell me as much as I needed or wanted to know, and ask for help if there was something specific I could do for her.

  “How ill was he?” she asked.

  “I’m no doctor, sweetheart, but I’d describe him as old, frail, and unrepentant of bad habits. I would guess he was living on about a third of his heart, and you can add to that one failed kidney and a blown prostate.” I pointed out the door. “Your hubby can tell you more, but I know that George couldn’t walk from here to there without running out of air. I know that he had emphysema.” I turned and indicated the walker in the corner. “Those things weigh just a few ounces, but for old George, it was a chore. Everything an effort. No wind, no circulation. And you know, when he got to feeling down in the dumps, he’d have a cigar and a glass of brandy. ‘It was good enough for Churchill,’ he’d say. So…‘borrowed time’ is the appropriate expression in his case, I would think.”

  I chuckled at myself. Over time, cops develop the habit of carrying on conversations in the presence of corpses as if the victims were still very much alive and ready to contribute their two cents. It wouldn’t have surprised me if George had stirred a bit, muttering a string of colorful expletives aimed at the us for standing in his kitchen, trying to pry into his very private death.

  Estelle mulled that over, gazing down at the table setting. I knew better than to ask what she was thinking.

  “Let me know what I can do to help,” I said. “I was going to take a minute and pay my respects to Phil.” She nodded and accompanied me as far as the yellow tape, holding it up for me again like a gate. I exchanged a few more words of consolation with Maggie and then headed outside, more to suck in some fresh air than to talk to anyone.

  I hadn’t seen Phil Borman when I arrived, but now he was facing the closed garage door, leaning against the front of George’s old pickup. He was off somewhere in his own musings and didn’t hear me until I was just a step or two behind him. He turned then, left arm across his striped golf shirt, right arm propped on left like Jack Benny about to deliver a punch line, his cigarette a couple of inches from his mouth.

  I knew that George had thought highly of his son-in-law, and that was enough of an endorsement. “Maybe Maggie will stop now and smell the goddamn roses once in a while,” George had grumbled to me at the couple’s wedding two years before. No such luck, unless the roses were offered for sale with a 6 percent commission. Maggie and Phil worked like dervishes to make their business a success, opening satellite offices in both Deming and Lordsburg.

  Phil Borman unfolded his arms and straightened up. “Ah,” he said, extending his hand. “I saw you drive up a couple of minutes ago. I was in the back yard. Estelle’s got you in harness again?”

  “Not a chance,” I said quickly. “Phil, I’m sorry about this.”

  “Well,” he replied, “so am I, you know?” He dropped the cigarette on George’s driveway and ground it out, then promptly groped another out of his shirt pocket and lit it. I took a step so that the air moved the smoke away from me. As only an ex-smoker can, I had grown not only terribly sanctimonious about it, but was positively repulsed by the stench of cigarette smoke. “He still enjoyed life. I’m going to miss him.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You know…do you hunt?”

  “Nope. Too old and fat. Easier to go to the restaurant.”

  He laughed that practiced, polite response that good salesmen master when a customer tells a joke. “Hunting is always something I thought I wanted to do, you know? Never had the time. Never took the time.” He grinned, showing irregular, strong white teeth. “George took it upon himself to perform an attitude adjustment on me. Now…and you ask Maggie—she’ll tell you. I sell real estate when I can manage to take some time away from my hunting.” He glanced at his watch, reading the date. “I drew a tag for a special antelope hunt up north in another month. George was pretty pleased about that and promised to loan me one of his rifles.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said. He sucked on the cigarette, then regarded it judiciously as he exhaled, as if he was trying a new brand. “You were the one who found him,” I said. “Did I hear that right?”

  He nodded slowly. “What a turn, Bill. Jesus. You know, the instant I saw him sitting there, I knew he was gone.” He looked over at me. “I called 911, and I don’t think that it was more than four minutes before the paramedics were here. There wasn’t any point in trying resuscitation.”

  “Had you called him before you dropped by? Did you talk with him this morning at all?” And what did that matter to me, I thought as the words came out of my mouth. Old habits were sticky things.

  “No. I just came over. Maggie said you two had linked up to have lunch, so I knew he’d be here. I wanted to see if he wanted to take a day trip for fishing over to the Butte. I mean, this weather we’ve been having, you know? Maybe give us a chance to talk some more about the hunt.” Borman hunched his shoulders helplessly. “Sure as hell didn’t expect something like this. You know,” he said, and stopped. I waited patiently. “He felt like shit most of the time, Bill. He absolutely hated taking all those meds. You saw that pill organizer by the kitchen sink?”

  “Sure.”

  “God, what a load of stuff. Here a few weeks ago, he just stopped taking most of it, except maybe a little Prednisone for his arthritis.”

  “Well, I’ve been known to do the same thing,” I said.<
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  Borman went for cigarette number three. “I saw him a couple days ago, when Maggie and I took him out to dinner at the Legion. He was just fine.

  “Well…just fine by his standards. Chipper as all hell. He was excited about me going after antelope.”

  Chipper wasn’t a word I would have associated with George Payton, even twenty years before. Lugubrious, cranky, grumpy…not chipper.

  Borman snapped his fingers. “That’s the way it happens a lot of times, I guess.”

  “If we’re lucky,” I turned at the sound of another vehicle and saw Dr. Alan Perrone’s dark green BMW glide to a stop at the curb.

  “I don’t understand the procedure for all this, I guess,” Phil Borman said.

  “What procedure is that?”

  “It has to be hard on Maggie, her dad just lying in the kitchen.” He looked at his watch and grimaced. “All this time. I mean I don’t know why it’s taken so long to move him.”

  “The coroner has to earn his salary,” I said.

  “I suppose so. It’s hard, though.”

  “Any time there’s an unattended death like this, Phil, things slow down a little bit.”

  “Even when the cause of death is obvious?”

  “Even when,” I reached out and patted him on the elbow. Nothing I could say would make him feel any better. Alan Perrone, the assistant State Medical Examiner and county coroner, hustled up the sidewalk. I raised a hand in greeting. “Estelle’s inside, doc.”

  He paused in mid-hustle and cocked his head. “You suspect Mad Cow disease here?” George Payton would have loved that bit of irreverence at his expense, and it was typical Perrone that the doc didn’t temper his humor for Phil’s sake. The physician didn’t wait for a response, but disappeared inside the house.

  “What’d he mean by that?” Phil Borman asked.