A Discount for Death (11 page)

“Mexico?”

Connie raised a hand in mock surrender. “That sister-village thing?”

“Through the chamber, you mean?”

She tipped her head ever so slightly in agreement. “What’s the name of the place across the border?
Aca
something.”

“Acámbaro?”

“That’s it.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “It sounds so pretty when you say it. Why another town would want a place as pathetic as Posadas as a sister village is beyond me. Sisters in misery, I guess. Anyway, the chamber goes there a couple times a year. Christmas for the kids is one time, I know. A group of students from the school goes down with ’em. That’s Tones’ big deal. Him and George. They liked working with the schools. I know that. Joe didn’t go on the trip with them last year. I don’t remember just what the reason was.”

“Do you recall anyone else associated with the hunting trip idea?”

“Some guy called here a few nights ago, but I don’t remember his name. It wasn’t Tones or Owen.”

“But several of them were going together? It wasn’t just Tones, Frieberg, and your husband?”

Connie nodded. “George was going to take the RV to use as a base camp. I heard him say that. And I think it was on one of those game ranches up north. A ‘boys night out’ sort of thing.” She tossed the tissue into a small brass trash can with unerring aim and pulled a fresh one from the box. “And wives weren’t invited, by the way, not that I would have gone anyway. I had visions of him getting drunk and then tripping over a fence while trying to carry a loaded rifle like in one of those hunter training films we used to see in school, or maybe one of his buddies would mistake him for an elk.” She grunted with amusement. “I’d end up having
his
head mounted on the wall.”

“Mrs. Enriquez, do you know why your husband was at his office downtown on the day of his death?”

“
Why
? No idea whatsoever, other than the obvious. That’s where he
goes
.”

“But he’d closed the office for the week, had he not?”

“I think so. But who knows.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“When he left the house yesterday morning. Monday morning.”

“Did he say anything when he left?”

“If he did, he was talking to himself. I was still asleep.” She regarded Estelle for a moment as if waiting for a comment. “We sleep in separate bedrooms. I snore, apparently,” she said finally, and then frowned. “So actually, no…I didn’t
see
him Monday morning. I
heard
him. I remember hearing his electric razor, and then I heard the front door when he went out.”

“Did he call you at any time during the day? Either late yesterday or early this morning?”

“No.”

“Did anyone else call?”

“Other than friends of mine, no.”

“Are you aware of any arguments that your husband might have had in the past few days with anyone?”

Connie Enriquez frowned and turned her head slightly sideways, skeptical. “
Argue
is a word that I wouldn’t have associated with my husband, Undersheriff. Once in a while I tried to bait him just a bit, to see if he knew I was still on the planet. That didn’t do much good. He’d give that cute little shrug of his and just walk off. But that’s with me. After hearing about the grand jury investigation, I guess it wouldn’t surprise me if he had arguments with half the planet.
I
didn’t know anything about them. That’s what I’m saying.” She pushed at the inside of her cheek with her tongue, thoughtfully. “Are you saying that my husband’s death wasn’t an accident?”

“We’re still investigating,” Estelle said quietly.

“I
can
picture my husband trying to struggle out of that Jeep and accidentally shooting himself, Undersheriff. That’s
exactly
the sort of thing that he’d do. I
can’t
imagine someone else wanting to shoot George, and I
can’t
imagine him trying to commit suicide. That’s
my
bailiwick, more likely.”

“Mrs. Enriquez…” Estelle started to say gently, but the woman waved a hand in dismissal.

“Not anymore. I went through a stage for a while until I just said
to hell with it
. Life goes on. And now…” she shrugged. “Now I’ll play the black veil bit for a little while, make all the friends feel better, and then we’ll see.”

“What will you do?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Connie said, “Promise not to laugh?” With a forward lunge, she pushed away from the chair, using a steadying hand on the corner of the desk. She waddled around to one of the bookshelves, one that wasn’t crowded with bowling trophies, various small awards and commendations, and a handful of books, mostly insurance references. From a sea of photos, she selected one in a gold frame that was no more than three inches square.

Estelle rose and met her at the corner of the desk, taking the picture. In it, a young couple stood hand in hand, up to their ankles in surf with pure white sand behind them, lava cliffs off to the right. She recognized George Enriquez, dressed in sunglasses and skimpy bathing suit. Only twenty years old or so, he was already beginning to show sleekness around the torso. With her free hand, the girl held a sun bonnet on her head. She wore a one-piece bathing suit the same color as the surf. Soaking wet, she might have tipped the scales at ninety pounds.

“I really loved him then,” Connie Enriquez said.

“The two of you on your honeymoon?” Estelle asked.

Connie nodded. “Would you believe it?”

“It’s a beautiful spot.”

Connie laughed. “You’re such a diplomat,” she said. “I’m going back there, you know. I’m serious. By the time those Mexican doctors are through with me, I’m going to look like that again.” Her nod was slow and determined. “And
then
we’ll see.”

Estelle handed her the picture.

“Mrs. Enriquez, during the next few days you may remember something about your husband’s activities. I need to know who he was associating with, basically what he was doing up until the time of his death. Anything you can remember would be a help.” She withdrew the business card again, made sure that Connie Enriquez saw it, and placed it on the corner of the desk.

“George was well insured, you know,” Connie said.

Estelle raised an eyebrow in question but said nothing.

“If they think it was suicide—and it wasn’t, believe me—the insurance is void. No question about that. If someone murdered my husband, odds are that the insurance company will force me to sue somebody to hell and gone to collect a penny. If it was an accident, insurance will pay. I know that sounds cold-blooded, but that’s the way it is.” With her hands still on the desk for support, she moved closer to Estelle and lowered her voice. “Obviously, that’s not a topic of conversation for out in the kitchen. But you and I know how things go. You’ll do what you have to do.”

“May I have permission to look through George’s papers here?” Estelle asked. “I’ll get a court order if you prefer.”

Connie Enriquez pushed herself upright. “You go right ahead and look to your heart’s content, Estelle Guzman. I’d be surprised if you found anything of any value. But we never know, do we? And before you ask…I don’t know if George had any safe deposit boxes. But I’m sure you’ll find out.” The woman waddled toward the double doors. “I’ll leave you to it. If you need me again for anything, just holler. I’ll be out there dealing with cat dander.” She smiled this time, showing a set of perfectly even, fine white teeth.

The door closed behind her, leaving Estelle alone in George Enriquez’s study. She sat down in the large, padded swivel chair and gazed around the room, letting her eyes drift from object to object, taking her time. The trophy clock on the desk said that in ten minutes, Francis might be free for lunch. She found herself yearning to see his face, to feel the brush of his beard, to hear the sound of his voice.

Chapter Fourteen

Constance Enriquez had never sat in her husband’s swivel chair behind the big walnut desk. For one thing, her hips wouldn’t have wedged into the space between the chair’s padded arms. That problem aside, had she spent time foraging in her husband’s desk…had she cared enough about his activities to do so…her curiosities might have been stirred.

Estelle snapped on a thin pair of latex gloves. She started with the wide center drawer and found the usual potpourri of junk that cluttered most desks. Lying amid the paper clips and roller-ball pens in the forward tray was a rubber stamp bearing the legend of the Posadas Old Timers’ Club,
FOR DEPOSIT ONLY
, and the service club’s bank account number. Estelle flipped her own small notebook to a blank page and pressed the stamp gently. The ink was fresh enough to leave a clear imprint.

She put the stamp back and ran her hand far into the drawer, feeling along the sides, into the corners, and under the desk’s polished top. In the far back right-hand corner, so far that she had to scoot the chair back against the trophy case to gain clearance, she felt a small, hard object that rolled away at her touch. Her fingers chased it, already recognizing the shape.

Holding the cartridge by the rim between the fingernails of her thumb and index finger, Estelle frowned at the head stamp as she snapped on the desk light to read the small print:
R-P
across the top arc, .41
MAGNUM
across the bottom. The bright brass casing would present fingerprints beautifully.

“Okay,” she said to herself. “Just one of you?” Holding the cartridge over the desk, she rummaged a small plastic evidence bag out of her briefcase and dropped the shell inside. For a moment, she sat quietly, regarding the drawer and its contents. Then, grasping the drawer with both hands, she eased it out further, ducking her head to see into the shadows before pushing it back into place.

The top drawer on the right-hand side of the desk yielded stationery, both for Enriquez’s insurance agency and the Old Timers’ service club, a half ream of expensive onion-skin paper, envelopes, and an unopened package of correction ribbons for an electric typewriter.

Estelle slid that drawer shut and heaved the large bottom file drawer open, raising an eyebrow at the neat rows of manila folders, each labeled across the top. She sat back in the chair. State insurance investigators hadn’t found paperwork in Enriquez’s office for any of the out-of-pocket deals he’d worked with customers like Deputy Thomas Pasquale or Eleanor Pope, each one eager to save a little cash.

The case against Enriquez had been built almost entirely through the testimony of those people who thought they had legitimate policies…their embarrassed testimony, for the most part, and their cancelled checks as proof of payment. Pursuing Enriquez hadn’t been a monumental priority for the district attorney’s office—not enough to bother with a search warrant for the man’s home.

That search wouldn’t have turned up much in this collection of files, Estelle saw. She pulled out the first folder, marked ’95
HEATING AND COOLING
. Stubs of bills, with the corresponding cancelled checks, were ranked neatly, from January through December. Similar folders for seven more years marched back through the drawer, followed by records for telephone, automotive, health care, and more.

If he had kept files on his private insurance dealings, he hadn’t cluttered his private life with them, or he’d gotten rid of them at the first whiff of interest from the D.A. and the insurance board…unless he’d used one of those little black books favored by Hollywood gangsters, so filled with convenient answers.

Estelle worked her way toward the back of the drawer, fingering each folder in turn. Then, leaning forward, she frowned with curiosity. With the drawer pulled out to the stops, she was just able to slide a walnut box up past the folders, feeling its weight and elegant, smooth finish. She sat back in the chair, the box on her lap. “Well,” she said aloud and ran her fingers over the embossed logo on the lid.

She released the simple catch and opened the box. The blue velvet lining of the box was formed to fit around a large revolver, the fabric crushed smooth in places from the weight of the gun. After a moment, Estelle realized that she was holding her breath, and exhaled in a long, audible sigh.

A yellow sales ticket was tucked into the lid, and Estelle unfolded it carefully. George Enriquez was listed as the buyer, paying the Posadas Sportsmen’s Emporium $359.95 plus tax for a .41-magnum Smith & Wesson Model 657. Estelle recognized old George Payton’s meticulous handwriting on the invoice, including the parenthetical notation,
nonoriginal case included
. Dated September 26, 1998, the sale had been made two years before Payton had sold the Emporium.

Estelle leaned back, the open box on her lap. Just six months before, she had investigated Payton’s death. The old gun dealer had had troubles of his own. What had the two Georges talked about on that September day four years before? Had the insurance salesman just fallen in love with the heft and balance of the weapon, with no intention of ever using it? Had he wanted something to carry in his car when he traveled?

She looked down at the single cartridge in its plastic bag. One orphan stayed home, perhaps forgotten as it rolled toward the back of the drawer. Estelle closed the wooden case and transferred it to another, large evidence bag. Laying the case on the desk’s blotter pad, she searched the left-hand drawers, finding nothing of particular interest.

Satisfied, she got down on her hands and knees and surveyed the underside of the desk. The housekeeper whose payments were documented in the folder marked
CLEANING LADY
had done a meticulous job, discouraging all but one spider, whose tiny web clung to one desk leg.

The shelving that surrounded the room was equally tidy, with the flood of mementos and awards dusted and neatly arranged in echelons. George Enriquez had spent thirty years in Posadas as a member of virtually every service club that existed, holding offices in all of them, credited by all of them with continuing generosity. From 1985 through 1991, he had served on the Posadas Board of Education, acting as president in 1990. He had been cited by his own parent insurance company every year since 1978, including a shiny new Nambé tray dated less than two months before.

What George Enriquez apparently spent very little time doing was reading. The array of books was limited to a single shelf, mostly insurance manuals and five years’ worth of Posadas telephone directories. Estelle cocked her head, reading the title of each volume as she moved down the shelf, stopping with a raised eyebrow at two large volumes,
Spurgeon’s Home Health Encyclopedia
and the
Physician’s Pharmaceutical Guide
for 2001.

A bent ear of a yellow Post-it sticking out of the fat
Pharmaceutical Guide’s
pages caught her eye. The text was so fat and bulky that she used both hands to grasp the spine when she pulled it off the shelf. Lugging it to the desk, she thudded it down beside the walnut revolver case and flipped it open to the marker.

The Post-it marked one of the glossy pages of photographs of prescription drugs, arranged by manufacturer. On the tag were written a column of eight three-digit numbers, beginning with 311 and ranging up to 341. The obvious starting place was to assume that the numbers referred to pages, and sure enough, Estelle saw that the entire thirty-page series of numbers on the Post-it was included by the gray section of the drug identification guide.

She turned to page 311. Columns of little pills marched up and down the page, with a sprinkling of bottles, inserts, and inhaler systems. Nothing was checked and nothing was marked. Page 315 was a repeat, with no marks, no dog-ears. In each case, the number on the Post-it corresponded to a page of the photographic drug identification guide, with no additional marks. She frowned and fanned the rest of the pages, finding nothing. She closed the book, making sure the Post-it remained in place, and slid the bulky text into an evidence bag.

For another hour, Estelle poked into every nook and corner of George Enriquez’s den. Finally convinced that she had missed no hidden shelves, no floor safes, no locked cabinets, she repacked her briefcase. For a moment she stood by the desk, gazing around the room. George Enriquez had been a tidy man. For someone who worked with paper all day, he showed no inclination to allow the flood of paperwork from his office to assault his home.

Indeed, he kept so few papers that the single drawer of files in the desk evidently sufficed for all his needs; there was no other filing cabinet.

Estelle moved to the door and opened it. The same woman who had greeted her at the front door was just leaving the bathroom, and Estelle smiled warmly at her. “Would you do me a favor?” she asked.

The woman halted, uneasy.

“Would you see if Connie can break away for a few minutes?”

“I’ll see.”

“Thank you.”

Estelle retreated back inside the office and pushed the door closed without latching it. She walked back to the desk, popped a fresh cassette into the recorder, and placed the little unit conspicuously on her briefcase after making sure the reels were spinning.