A Discount for Death (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

The receptionist looked up to see the sheriff and undersheriff of Posadas County step through the inner door. The central office of Posadas Municipal Schools was the hushed silence of carpet and paperwork. The woman turned her pencil just so and laid it down on the blotter as if afraid the thud of its landing would be offensively loud.

“Well, good afternoon,” she said, favoring them both with a broad smile.

“How you doin’, Minnie,” Torrez said.

“Just fine.” The smile faded a watt. “You two look awfully official today.”

“We need to talk to Glen,” Torrez said.

Minnie’s hand reached for the telephone. “Let me see if he’s in.” She pushed the appropriate button and waited, then actually smiled at the telephone as she said, “Nancy, Sheriff Torrez is here to see the superintendent. Has he come back yet from the middle school?” She nodded. “Uh huh. Sure.” The smile widened. “Sure. Okay. Thanks, Nancy.” She hung up the phone, and her face took on that professional I’m-
so
-sorry expression. “He’s still over at the middle school, Sheriff. Do you want me to tell him to give you a call? Is there something I can help you with?”

Torrez rapped the counter once with his knuckle. “No, that’s all right. We’ll go on over and find him.”

“Well, I think he’s speaking at an assembly,” she said, and the hint of worry in her tone amused Estelle. Perhaps the woman had visions of Sheriff Torrez striding into the assembly and tapping the superintendent on the shoulder just as Archer was about to introduce the Football Mom of the Year.

“
That’ll
be interesting to hear,” Torrez muttered. “Thanks, Minnie.” Outside in the sun, he stopped halfway up the sidewalk. It appeared that he was examining one of the lawn sprinkler heads as it jetted pulses out across the putting green approach to the school superintendent’s office. “Glen Archer and Owen Frieberg drove the buses to Mexico,” he said, still watching the water. “George Enriquez and Joe Tones went along. Somebody from the school as well.”

“Barry Vasquez, the student-council sponsor,” Estelle said.

“Vasquez,” Torrez repeated. “I know him. He’s one of the varsity’s offensive coordinators.”

“That could be.”

“Tones didn’t mention any other teachers?”

“No. The five adults and a couple dozen kids.”

Torrez nodded. “Okay.” He turned and Estelle watched the muscle twitch on his cheek as he squinted at the grill of the county’s Expedition.

“That’s what I mean about coincidence,” Estelle said. “As far as I can determine, the only three unusual things in George Enriquez’s life recently have been this school deal in Mexico, the hunting trip that he was planning, and the grand jury staring him in the face.”

“Un huh.”

“And two of the three have the same players.”

“Okay,” Torrez said. He turned abruptly and strode to the truck. They drove across the broad macadam parking lot the hundred yards to the front door of the middle school. The moment Estelle got out, she heard the volley of screams from the gymnasium, off behind the flat-roofed classroom wing.

“Mayhem,” she said. “Brings back memories.”

“All of them bad,” Torrez replied. “This place hasn’t changed much.” Estelle tried without success to imagine Robert Torrez as an eighth-grader in the middle of a public speaking unit. They entered through the door whose sign admonished all visitors to check in with the principal’s office—Glen Archer’s domain at one time before he’d taken on first the high school and then the superintendency.

A grandmotherly-looking woman with a telephone glued to her ear beckoned at the same time as she quickly concluded her conversation on the phone. She arose, frowning. “Is that Bobby Torrez?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” the sheriff replied.

“I don’t think I’ve had a chance to talk to you since the wedding,” she said, referring to Torrez’s marriage to Gayle Sedillos. “How’s my favorite gal?”

“She’s doing fine.” Torrez glanced at a dour-faced youngster who walked by, bulging knapsack pulling one shoulder low, then turned back to the principal’s secretary. “This is Undersheriff Estelle Guzman,” he said. “Iona Urioste.”

“Hi,” Iona said, and offered Estelle her hand. “I’ve seen your picture in the paper.”

“Central Office tells us that Glen Archer is over here today,” Estelle said.

“They’re all down in the gym,” Iona replied. “Did you need to speak with the superintendent?”

“Yes.”

Iona turned and looked at the clock on the back wall of her office. “They should be out of there in another ten minutes or so.”

“We’ll just go on down,” Torrez said.

“You know the way,” she said with a smile. “Good to see you again.”

They walked down the empty polished hallway toward the intersection where the battered school seal adorned the wall, then turned toward the swelling cacophony of voices. Thirty yards ahead, a sea of students appeared through the double doors.

“It’s like swimmin’ upstream,” Torrez observed as they made their way along the right-hand wall while the flow of chattering middle-schoolers flowed past, for the most part oblivious to their presence. One gaggle of five girls, lost in conversation, cruised down the wrong side of the hall. Torrez stopped and waited, forcing the girls to change course or collide. The bottleneck of oncoming traffic reached critical proportions at the double doors, and Torrez slowed, letting the tide of youngsters figure out for themselves how to either maneuver around or bounce off him.

School Superintendent Glen Archer was standing near the gymnasium doorway, beaming at the flow of children and talking with a short, chubby woman with close-cropped hair and enormous dangling earrings. Archer was the first to see the officers. A quick frown touched his open, kindly face.

Archer reached out to touch the woman on the elbow, mouthed “Excuse me,” and walked across the foyer to meet the two officers.

“You missed all the excitement,” he said, stretching out his hand. “They sure get wound up, don’t they? Like to break my eardrums.”

“What’s the occasion?” Estelle asked.

“End of the first marking period,” Archer said. “We gave away four bikes for perfect attendance.” He nodded at a straggling gaggle of students as they filed out of the gym. “Good group of kids.” He turned back to the officers. “What can I do for you?”

“We need to talk with you for a few minutes.”

“Sure.” He turned and caught the eye of the pudgy woman with the earrings, raising his voice just high enough to carry across the foyer. “Use your office for a minute, Mrs. Dooley?” The woman nodded and made a you-go-right-ahead shooing motion with her hand at the same time that she reached out with the other hand and stopped a harried-looking student who was trying to stuff papers back into a rumpled manila folder and walk at the same time.

“Follow me,” Archer said. He grinned at the two officers. “Been a while since you guys wandered the halls, eh?”

“Not long enough,” Torrez said.

Archer laughed. “Robert, all we ever had to do to find you was figure out which hunting season it was.” He led them up the hall, through the crowd of kids, each of whom seemed to be slam-testing locker doors. In the front office, Iona Urioste was back on the phone, and Archer paused at the corner of her desk until she put a hand over the receiver. “We’ll be using Mrs. Dooley’s office for a few minutes,” he said, and Iona nodded. He pushed the inner door open, and Estelle glanced at the large spot marked on the wall, labeled
STRESS RELIEF: BANG HEAD HERE
.

The superintendent closed the door securely behind them, blocking out the hubbub. “Let’s use this,” he said, indicating the long conference table. “Now…which of our kids do you have in jail?” He managed to make it sound like a joke. “And by the way, when do your kiddos start school?” he asked Estelle.

“Francisco starts kindergarten next year.” she said.

“Wow.” He shook his head. “How the years go by.”

“Glen,” Bob Torrez said, eager to halt the reminiscing, “we need to know some details about the trips down to Acámbaro.” His heavy-featured face was impassive, eyes heavy-lidded.

“You mean last year?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” and Archer drew a circle on the polished table. “We go twice a year, as I’m sure you’re aware. Once in early December, once on the
Cinco de Mayo
. And I gotta tell you, it’s a really big deal for the kids.”

“On both sides of the border, I would imagine,” Estelle said.

“Oh, sure. You wouldn’t believe…well, I guess maybe
you
would, eh? What exactly did you need to know?”

Estelle slipped the small recorder out of her pocket and slid it across the table so that it faced Archer. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not.” His forehead furrowed. “This is about George Enriquez, isn’t it.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Wow.”

“Mr. Archer, what adults went on the trip in December?”

“Well, it was the same crew both times, actually.” He drew another circle that linked with the first. “I’ve been going now for eighteen years. I wouldn’t miss it. Usually, the middle-school principal goes. At least in the past. This is Mrs. Dooley’s first year. She didn’t feel that she could take an entire day, so she didn’t go along. I told her to plan for next year, though. It’d be good for her.”

“Who else?”

“Let’s see. Barry Vasquez went, of course. He’s the student-council sponsor, and the program is his baby, so to speak. Do you need to talk with him?”

“Not just now.”

“Okay. Let’s see. Me, Barry, George Enriquez from the chamber of commerce. You wouldn’t believe the load of stuff that group got together to take on down. George and our other buddy, there. Owen Frieberg. Both with the chamber. We couldn’t do it without them, let me tell you.” He grinned. “For one thing, we were
really
short of bus drivers last year. I ended up driving one, and Frieberg the other. He got his bus driver’s license a couple of years ago, when he was helping out with the track team.”

“That’s four,” Torrez observed dryly.

“Let me think. Am I missing someone?” He regarded the ceiling tiles for an instant. “Well, sure. Joe Tones. He’s with the chamber, too. In fact, I think he’s president this year. Can’t leave him out.” He nodded vigorously. “That was the crew. Me, Barry, Joe, Owen, and George.”

“Two buses?”

“That’s right. We took the two new activity buses. Two buses and the van.”

“Which van is that?”

“George Enriquez borrowed the van from the senior citizen’s center. That big twelve-passenger thing. We had a whole bunch of computers, and he suggested using the van. A whole lot easier to load and unload from that than trying to lug all those components up into a bus. Plus we had about a hundred sacks of food, clothes, and toys, so we needed the room.”

“You drove one bus, Owen Frieberg drove the other, and George Enriquez drove the van.”

“That’s correct.”

“Joe Tones rode with the van, or in one of the buses?”

“He rode down and back with me,” Archer said. “That way Barry covered the other bus with Frieberg. Not that there was going to be any kind of problem. Not with the twenty-two best kids in school.”

“They were all on one bus?”

“We had most of them with us. There were three, I think, on the other bus. It was kind of crowded, with all the groceries, gifts, stuff like that. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff went down there. We even had an older-model copier shoved in the back of my bus. I wasn’t sure we’d clear the border checkpoint there at Regal, but we had no trouble. If you looked in the van or the bus, either one, it looked like we had a used-electronics ring going. But we’ve been doing these trips long enough that we’ve got some friends on both sides of the border.”

“What time in the morning did you clear the border crossing?” Estelle asked.

“Let’s see. We got out of here about nine, so we hit Regal what, at about nine forty-five or so? Maybe a little before.”

“And came back into the country…?”

“Right at three,” Archer said. “That gives us a full three hours in Acámbaro, which is plenty. And we like to have the kids back in time to catch their regular bus home. Saves us and the parents a lot of headache.”

“Any complications at the border crossing coming back?”

Archer leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. “Neither time. In December, one of the officers stepped onto my bus…I was first in line, then the van, then the second bus. The customs guy looked at the kids all seriouslike for a couple of seconds, then said, ‘Welcome back.’ That was it. In May, we were just waved on through.”

“And you traveled as a group, both times? Two buses and the van.”

Archer nodded. “Both times. Well, in May, we didn’t need the van. Just the two buses.”

Estelle looked down at her notebook for a moment. “You were in Acámbaro for about three hours, is that right?”

“Just about. In December, there’s lots of music and dancing with the kids. Then we give out the gifts, have a snack, and hit the road. During the May trip, it’s mostly a show put on by the kids at the Acámbaro school. We have a picnic afterward, and that’s it.”

“You said that George Enriquez went on both trips, Mr. Archer?”

“Yes, he did. Same crew both times.”

“What about the year before that?”

“No, this was George’s first trip. Joe Tones has been going for a decade or more. I think this is Owen Frieberg’s…I don’t know, maybe fifth year?” Archer grinned ruefully. “You got to be careful when you let the school district find out that you’ve got a bus driver’s license. Once we’ve got our claws in you, it’s hard to escape.”

“In May, where did you park the buses when you got to the school in Acámbaro?” Torrez said. “Right in front on the street, or in that space back by the gym?”

Archer looked puzzled. “The one bus—the one I was driving? We drove it around back, since we were the one with the heavy copier. That was the nearest point to their office, where it was going. The other bus just pulled up in the street, right at the curb.”

“And the van?”

“He went around back with me.”

“And the vehicles were parked there the whole time?”