The Fourth Time is Murder pc-15

by Steven F Havill

  “It’s going to be a while,” Estelle said. “I have some loose ends to tie up down here in Regál, and then I’ll be back up.”

  “Just a sec.” Gayle didn’t bother covering the mouthpiece of her headset, and Estelle could hear her explaining the situation to Ms. Bolles. The discussion continued for a moment, and then Gayle said, “Sorry about that, Estelle. She wants to know if she can meet you in Regál somewhere. She suggests at the mission.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t know how long I’ll be. Is she still driving the red Buick rental?”

  Gayle relayed the question, and the response in the background sounded amused. “She says yes.”

  “Then I’ll keep a lookout for her. It’s a pretty small world down here. She shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  Estelle realized that Joe Baca was standing on the front porch of his home, watching her with interest. She waved a greeting. “Oh,” Gayle said. “Bobby is back in from the accident site. He said that he wanted to talk with you later today about Deputy Collins.”

  “We need to do that,” Estelle replied.

  “I think he’s settled down a little,” Gayle said. “Bobby, that is.”

  “I hope so. I’ll be back in a little bit,” Estelle said. She put the phone away and unbuckled from her office.

  “Good afternoon, Joe,” she called as she got out of the car.

  “Buenas tardes, hija,” Baca replied, and stiffly held up a hand as if his shoulder joint was frozen. “How come you don’t come around anymore?”

  “Here I am,” Estelle said, and stretched out a hand to the old man. His grip was warm and light, and she could feel the individual bones in his hand. “We’ve been so busy that sometimes I don’t know which way is up.”

  He looked at her askance, assessing her from head to toe. “You came out of it okay, then.” Joe made it sound as if it had been only the week before, not ten months.

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  He grunted something unintelligible and shook his head. “Nobody,” and he accented each syllable carefully, “is fine after something like that, hija.”

  “I was lucky.”

  “Yes, you were. Very lucky. I saw you stop at Emilio’s place just now.” He turned, moving toward an old wicker chair. He didn’t sit down but rested a hand on it. “I wondered if you were going to stop by.”

  “Sure,” Estelle said.

  “You want to sit down? Let’s go inside. It’s chilly out here.” He turned toward the door. “I thought maybe it would freeze last night. Maybe this year I’ll have some peaches.”

  “They look fine. It’s way early yet.”

  “We’ll see.” He shuffled inside, more like a man of ninety than someone two decades younger. “Lucinda isn’t here just now, hija. She had to go to town. Maybe she’ll be back before you have to go.”

  “I’d like to see her,” Estelle said.

  “There was an accident on the highway last night, I hear. Up on the pass.”

  “A bad one, Joe.”

  “Somebody got killed?”

  “A young man from Las Cruces. His truck hit a deer and somersaulted over the guardrail just north of the pass.”

  Joe waved at the living room, as dark and gloomy as Betty Contreras’ was light and cheerful. The walls had been plastered a generation or two ago, and then painted a bright green that had faded to hideous. Various magazine pictures of Christ, the Virgin, and the various apostles had been framed and hung here and there. A huge photographic print of the Grand Tetons hung over the TV set.

  “You want some cider?”

  “No thanks, Joe. Betty wouldn’t let me go without tea and cookies.”

  “She’s a good cook,” he said, somehow managing to imply that Lucinda wasn’t.

  Estelle drew one of the photos of Chris Marsh out of the envelope. “Con permiso, I want to show you this, Joe,” she said. “This is the young man who was killed up on the pass.” He took the photo and moved toward one of the windows.

  “Ah, por Dios,” he whispered.

  “You know him, then?”

  “He drives for that company,” Joe said. “You know.”

  “The package delivery company, you mean?”

  “Yes. He’s stopped here before. We saw him this past week.” He looked up at Estelle. “He brought the checks.”

  “The checks?”

  “Lucinda won one of those sweepstakes things,” Joe said. “In fact, she won twice. Quite the thing, you know.”

  “Do you recall his name, Joe?”

  “No. He had a name tag, but without my glasses…”

  “What was he driving, do you remember?”

  “Sure I remember. A little white truck. A Chevy, I think. It had one of those camper shells on the back. White, too. A nice little rig.”

  “Any lettering on it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘lettering’?” He handed the photo back to Estelle.

  “Like the company name. The logo. Something like that.”

  “The name of the company was on the door,” Joe replied. “I’m pretty sure about that.”

  “Do you remember what the name was?”

  “Something ‘Global.’ That’s all. I didn’t pay attention. I know it wasn’t UPS or anything like that. Not a big van. Just a little truck. That boy had on a uniform with a name tag on the pocket. I remember that. And he had one of those fancy gadgets that you sign. That new stuff. No paper.”

  “And you say that he gave you a check?”

  “He did,” Joe said emphatically. “Both times.”

  “But you gave him a check as well? Do I understand that correctly?”

  He nodded. “That’s the way it works. The cashier’s check that we gave him…he said it was for the taxes and the what do you call it now…the exchange rate.” He moved painfully to one of the chairs and sat down with a popping of joints. “When did the accident happen? Last night?”

  “We don’t think so, Joe. We’re thinking maybe Wednesday or Thursday. We just found him last night.”

  “I’m surprised that he was ever found, going down in that country.”

  “So am I, Joe. You’re sure this is the same young man, then?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “When did he drop off the last check?”

  “You know, I think it was Wednesday right after dinner.” Joe’s face lit up a little at the recollection. “That’s what it was. I remember him apologizing for being so late, but he said that he’d had a really busy delivery schedule, and that he’d also had some trouble with a flat tire.” Joe shook his head sadly. “Too bad. Too bad. A nice young man. These things happen, sometimes.” He looked up. “The cashier’s check we gave him…maybe he still had it with him in the truck, then? You think that’s possible?”

  “It’s possible.” But he didn’t, Estelle almost added. “Do you have the winning check that he delivered to you?”

  “Lucinda took it to the bank on Friday afternoon. That’s what happened. Friday.”

  “How much was it for?” Estelle knew the blunt question about the prize amount would draw Joe up short, and she watched as he struggled with whether to answer or not. He hesitated and looked at the manila envelope again. He shifted uneasily in his chair.

  “Is there some kind of problem with the check? If they don’t receive the money for the exchange rate…maybe they stop payment. I don’t know how these things work.”

  “I’m not sure yet what problems there are, Joe.”

  “Lucinda already took the check he gave us to the bank,” Joe said with finality.

  “Posadas State?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wrote a check to the driver?”

  “No. We had to have a cashier’s check. Lucinda got that Wednesday morning. She could tell you the reason why. I don’t remember. But that’s what we gave to the young man. The cashier’s check. Anybody could cash it.”

  “And when you did that, he handed you the sweepstakes check?”

  Joe nodded. �
�That’s how it happened. We won twice, you know. Betty told you that.”

  “When was the first time?”

  “I would have to look in the checkbook. But I think it was about two weeks ago. Maybe three.”

  “Same deal? You handed over a check, and in return were given the sweepstakes winnings?”

  Joe nodded emphatically. “Same exact thing. Only the prize wasn’t so big the first time.”

  “Do you mind me asking how large it was?” she asked gently. This time, he replied without hesitation.

  “No, I don’t mind,” he said with a note of pride. “We won more than eight thousand dollars the first time.”

  “You were given a check for that amount, then?”

  “We had to pay…Wait a minute. This is making my brain go all to mush.” He pushed himself out of the chair. “Wait a minute.” In a few minutes he returned with a well-worn checkbook. “Now,” he said with satisfaction, and settled back in the chair. “Let’s see what this is all about.” Estelle waited for him to thumb through the records.

  “On January: eighteenth, we gave him a cashier’s check for $1,402.50.” Joe repeated the number while Estelle jotted it in a small notebook. “That was for taxes and all that stuff.”

  “The exchange rate, you mean?”

  “That’s it. He said it was up to seventeen percent now.”

  “And the delivery driver…he was this same young man?”

  “Yes. The same man.”

  “And then?”

  “And then what?”

  “This last time? The second time you won? What did you give him?”

  Joe hesitated and flipped a page. “It was Wednesday. We wrote a check for this much to the bank, so we could have a cashier’s check.” He turned the book toward her as if embarrassed to say the number.

  “Thirty thousand four hundred thirteen,” Estelle said, and the jolt of apprehension she felt was palpable. “And you received a check for how much?”

  “Here’s the copy of the deposit ticket,” he said, and handed it to Estelle. “Lucinda went to the bank on Friday afternoon.” Estelle looked at the number and blinked-$178,900.

  “One hundred and seventy-eight thousand,” she said.

  “And nine hundred.”

  “That’s a lot of money, Joe. That’s quite a streak of good fortune you’ve had. First the state lottery back in November, and now this.”

  He grinned slyly. “That lottery…I bought the ticket, you know. Good thing, too. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had the money to pay for this.” He reached out and touched the deposit ticket.

  “Was there a particular reason why you and Lucinda waited two days to deposit the check?”

  “We had things to do,” Joe replied, and smiled. “Maybe we had to give it time to sink in.”

  “That would take some thinking,” Estelle said. “Caramba.” She sat back, the deposit slip in hand. “Do you have one of the original mailings for the sweepstakes?”

  “Lucinda might remember where she put it. I don’t know. I can look if you want. There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  Other than a dead man? Estelle wanted to say. She looked at the deposit ticket again. The advance payment for a lottery prize was one of the oldest scams, and existed in a myriad of iterations, she knew. The undersheriff had a small folder of solicitations that she had collected over the years, including a Nigerian version, where the mark was told that he had been selected to help a foreign corporation transfer an enormous sum of money to avoid tax penalties, and had only to provide bank account numbers for transfer. Some required wiring advance money to pay various charges. But none offered a check on the spot, delivered in person.

  This was simplicity itself. The Bacas had paid a total of just under $32,000 in “fees” and received, on the spot, checks that totaled more than $187,000, for a profit of more than $155,000.

  When Estelle didn’t respond, Joe tapped the paperwork. “You ask Serafina,” he said. “She’ll tell you the same story.”

  “Serafina won from the same contest?”

  “Sure, she won before we did. She won twice, too.”

  “You’re kidding.” She didn’t mention that Betty had already spread the good news.

  “No, I’m not kidding, hija,” he said, and then added, the tone of his voice implying that somehow he and his wife had found the magic formula, “Maybe we shouldn’t have…I don’t know. The driver told us that he had delivered more than one prize a lot of times. Serafina won twice, I know that. And so did we.”

  Estelle sat back in the chair. “Fascinating,” she said. No complaint, no crime. Joe and Lucinda Baca evidently hadn’t been defrauded.…In fact, they’d collected handsomely-maybe. The second, larger check hadn’t had time to clear the bank yet. Maybe it would. But there had to be a catch, Estelle knew. The whole “taxes and exchange rate” nonsense was just that, as surely as the sun rose. Somehow, the next step in the scam had been scotched when Chris Marsh had plunged his truck over the mountainside.

  She tapped the envelope on her knee thoughtfully. “Joe, let me ask you one more thing.” She drew out the photo of the woodcutter and handed it to the old man. She watched his face intently.

  “Now this,” he said slowly. “What happened?”

  “Do you know this man?”

  “No.…” He shifted uneasily. “Maybe I’ve seen him around. I don’t know his name. What happened to him?” He squinted at the photo.

  “An accident while cutting wood-up north near Reserve.”

  “Who took this picture?”

  “One of the investigating officers.”

  “Who was with him? He was working alone?”

  “I’d like to know the answer to that, Joe.”

  “This is all too bad,” Joe Baca said. He handed the photo back, and Estelle handed him the paper with the telephone number. “What’s this, then?” he asked.

  “You know the number?”

  “Well, sure I know it. That’s Emilio’s phone. Or I guess I should say Betty’s. Emilio doesn’t answer the phone ever. By the time he gets to it, it’s the next day.” Joe smiled. “Why do you need that?”

  “I don’t need that,” Estelle said. “It was in the young man’s pocket when he was found.”

  “And he was already dead?”

  “Yes. He bled to death.”

  Joe shook his head slowly. “That’s bad, hija. That’s a bad business. Those chain saws…”

  “Is this your handwriting?”

  “Why would that be my writing?” he replied. “You already talked with Betty. That’s her number.”

  “But she didn’t write this note,” Estelle said, and slipped the paper back in the envelope.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Joe said. “He’s not from around here. That much I can tell you.”

  “But you saw him around the village,” Estelle suggested.

  Joe shifted, his frown deepening. “Maybe I was mistaken. You know, in this country there are a lot of people. They come and go all the time. I can’t be sure.”

  A lot of people. Regál counted forty-one residents. The border provided a constant trickle, but how many of those travelers-either north- or southbound-paused long enough to be noticed?

  “It’s fortunate that you have recovered from that experience,” he said, apparently eager to drop the subject about whom he might, or might not, know. “We all prayed for you, you know.”

  “I appreciate that, Joe.” She was touched that her welfare immediately after the shooting nearly a year ago had been on the minds and in the prayers of so many people.

  “So, where are you headed now? Can you wait until Lucinda comes home? She’ll just be a few minutes.” He had skillfully opened the door for Estelle.

  “I wish I could,” Estelle replied. “I don’t get down here often enough. But maybe next time.” She glanced at her watch. “Dispatch tells me that I have a visitor waiting for me, so I’d best be on my way. I appreciate your help, Joe. Give Lucinda my best.” S
he stood and slipped the envelope under her arm, freeing her hands to take the old man’s in both of hers. “And I appreciate your thoughts,” she said. “It means a lot.” He patted the back of her hand.

  “I think he was just passing through,” Joe said, nodding at the envelope that contained the photos.

  “I’m sure you’re right.” And I’m sure you know more than you’re telling me, she thought, and saw the crinkles around the corners of his eyes deepen a touch as if he could read her mind.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Estelle recalled Serafina Roybal as a large, imposing woman who could be intimidating when she chose. But that was an image from twenty-four years before, when Mrs. R, as the students universally called her, had taught Spanish, speech, and drama at Posadas High School. Her husband, Octavio, Betty Contreras’ oldest brother, had taught history until pancreatic cancer had killed him on his sixtieth birthday.

  Those many years before, Mrs. R had taken the darkly gorgeous and equally reticent Mexican teenager from Tres Santos under her generous wing after consultation with Estelle’s foster mother, Teresa. Serafina and Teresa had known each other for years, no doubt through Estelle’s great-uncle Reuben, who knew everyone along that section of border, especially if that everyone happened to be female.

  Teresa was adamant about her adopted daughter’s future. Just turned sixteen, Estelle would finish high school in the United States and then attend an appropriate college, collecting her official U.S. citizenship in the process. She would not be left to languish in the dusty poverty of rural northern Mexico. Estelle had accepted that notion with alacrity-she had no desire to languish anywhere-and soon found that Mrs. R was a teacher of enormous imagination and good humor.

  Over the years since then, when Estelle would on rare occasions meet Serafina Roybal in the grocery store or in passing at the bank, their conversations were more often than not in the dignified Castilian Spanish that Mrs. R taught her students. And over the years, Serafina shrank.

  The woman who answered Estelle’s knock this day was impossibly tiny. This could not be the imposing woman who had stood figuratively-and sometimes literally-between Estelle and the swarms of eager teenaged boys who to their credit recognized beauty when they saw it.