A Discount for Death (9 page)

“Approximately four years.”

“Did you compute an average amount for the claims?”

“Yes, sir. The average for the nineteen claims was two hundred twelve dollars and nineteen cents.”

Schroeder once more looked up at the ceiling, as if the figures were on the acoustical tile rather than in bold red ink in his notes. “Nineteen claims averaging a little over two hundred dollars. Some more, some less. Added together, Mr. Enriquez paid out a total of about four thousand dollars in claims. Is that correct?”

“Four thousand thirty-one dollars and sixty-one cents.”

Schroeder pursed his lips. “So four thousand bucks over four years. Out of his own pocket.” He shrugged. “Acting as his own small insurance pool, so to speak. Do you happen to know the average payment made by those thirty-seven customers to Mr. Enriquez?”

Estelle glanced down at her small notebook. “The average monthly payment was seventy-two dollars and thirteen cents.”

“Math isn’t my strong suit, but let’s see if we can make this simple. You’ve got an average payment of seventy-two bucks a month. So that’s something like eight hundred a year.”

“Eight hundred and sixty-five dollars and fifty-six cents,” Estelle said.

“Per person.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So thirty-seven times that eight hundred dollars.”

“Yes, sir. Thirty-two thousand twenty-five dollars and seventy-two cents.”

Schroeder turned in wonder to the jury. “Thirty-two grand
a year
, for four years.”

“Yes, sir.”

He glanced at his notes. “My math tells me that’s a hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Four thousand out, a hundred and twenty-eight thousand in.”

“Yes, sir.”

For a long moment, Schroeder stood quietly, gazing at his notes. “Undersheriff, during your investigations of these activities, did you come to believe that there was any certain type of person that Mr. George Enriquez favored with his insurance ‘deals’?”

“A certain type of person, sir?”

A flash of impatience shot across the district attorney’s face. “Did any of the thirty-seven people share common characteristics…or to put it another way, was there anything about their
circumstances
that they had in common?”

“It appeared in each instance that the person either had difficulty obtaining insurance through normal channels or had an insurance history such that their rates would be higher than they were able to afford,” Estelle said.

“So each one was a tough case. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In Mrs. Pope’s case, why would home-owner’s insurance through normal channels have been difficult…or expensive?”

“They were heating with a defective, out-of-date wall unit as well as a wood stove elsewhere in the trailer that had not been installed according to code. They had also run a number of extension cords out to livestock pens in lieu of appropriate wiring. The mobile home itself was an older model that had been extensively altered by the home owners over the years.”

“You understood this after conversations with fire department investigators?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Had you been an insurance agent visiting the Popes’ property, would you have issued a policy based on what you saw?”

“I’m not an insurance agent, sir. I couldn’t say.”

“But George Enriquez issued the policy, didn’t he?”

“As far as we can tell, there was
no
policy issued, sir.”

“I stand corrected.” Schroeder grinned at the jury. “Mrs. Pope
thought
that she had an insurance policy and was no doubt grateful to Mr. Enriquez for providing some form of protection against loss. It appears that she was making monthly payments on that fictitious policy. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

He was about to say something else when the door beside the vacant judge’s bench opened. Howard Bell, the court bailiff, stepped into the courtroom, closing the door behind him with exaggerated care. “Excuse me a minute,” the district attorney said to the jury, and walked across the courtroom toward Bell. The two men conferred briefly, and then Schroeder nodded and strode back toward the witness stand.

As he bent close, he pushed the microphone boom far to one side. “You’ve got a phone call that you need to take, Undersheriff Guzman,” he said. “Use the phone in the judge’s chambers.” He turned to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take a short break. Please remain in the courtroom. If it’s going to be more than five or ten minutes, I’ll let you know.”

Estelle’s pulse kicked as she hurried out of the courtroom, glancing at the wall clock as she passed the door to the court clerk’s office. She’d been in court for less than thirty minutes—a little more than an hour since she had left Perry Kenderman with instructions to go home and behave himself.

Chapter Eleven

Estelle settled the telephone receiver back in its cradle. Another button flashed on the phone console, a message just as quickly routed somewhere else in the county building as business carried on as usual. She pushed the chair back in and skirted around Judge Lester Hobart’s tidy walnut desk.

Back in the courtroom, most of the jurors lounged in and around the jury box. One walked the perimeter of the room, swinging her arms to encourage a return of blood to her extremities. The jurors looked toward Estelle with interest as she reentered. Dan Schroeder leaned on the broad table used by the prosecution during regular trials, his hands planted among a sea of papers. He glanced up as Estelle approached. She leaned over the table, her back to the jurors.

“Sir, we have a problem,” Estelle whispered.

Schroeder straightened up.

“George Enriquez’s secretary found his body a few minutes ago.”

The district attorney looked hard at Estelle, the hand holding the papers sagging back toward the table. He drew a slow, deep breath. “Where?”

“In his office, sir.”

Schroeder slumped against the table and dropped the papers. “Christ,” he muttered. “Natural causes?”

“No, sir. The sheriff asked that I break loose here, if that’s possible.”

“Of course it’s possible.” He shook his head in frustration. “Keep me in the loop, all right?”

Estelle nodded.

“I’ll get these folks out of here in the next few minutes.” He flashed a humorless grin and rapped on the table with his knuckle. “I guess we’ll find out what the grand juror’s oath of secrecy is really worth.”

As Estelle turned away, he stepped around the table and touched her elbow, whispering directly into her right ear. “And we need to talk about Officer Kenderman, too. Today sometime, if you can fit it in. I’ll be in Posadas at least until tomorrow morning, so…” He released her elbow. The jurors, sensing that something important had happened, had taken their seats, including the power-walking woman. Estelle nodded at them and left the court.

The sheriff’s office was no more than a hundred steps away, across the small enclosed courtyard. Gayle Torrez, the sheriff’s wife, administrative assistant, and head dispatcher, glanced up as Estelle hurried in.

She made a face of frustration and opened the glass door to the dispatch room. “Bobby just took off,” Gayle said. “Dennis took the first call. Howard’s over there, too.”

“Right at the insurance office?” Estelle asked.

Gayle nodded. “And I called Linda. She’s on her way.”

“Good.”

As soon as Estelle pulled her unmarked car out of the county parking lot, she looked down East Bustos toward the oval sign that announced
GEORGE ENRIQUEZ, AGENT—CLU, HOME, AUTO, LIFE INSURANCE
. The long, low stucco building was tucked in the lot immediately adjacent to Chavez Chevrolet-Olds, the two businesses separated by a low chain-link fence.

A county patrol unit was parked straddling the street’s center line, facing westbound and nose to nose with one of the village cars. Nate Olguin, a part-time officer with the village, touched his cap when he recognized Estelle, and waved her through. The sheriff’s battered pickup was parked along the curb at the west end of the auto dealer’s lot. The ambulance hadn’t arrived, but Dr. Alan Perrone had, his dark green BMW so close to Deputy Collins’ Expedition that their bumpers appeared to be touching.

As Estelle drove past and prepared to swing a U-turn, she saw two other vehicles in the lot beyond Torrez’s truck. Several people were standing in the parking lot of the car dealership, leaning against the new cars and waiting to see something interesting. As she pulled the car to a halt, Estelle heard the distant wail of a siren from the direction of the hospital.

A yellow crime-scene ribbon stretched from the corner of the car dealer’s fence across the sidewalk to a street sign, then across the westbound lane to Collins’ unit, finally angling back across the street to the corner of a small abandoned building west of the insurance agency that at one time had been a hairdresser’s salon. Deputy Dennis Collins was standing at the front door of the agency, head swiveling this way and that as he watched street and sidewalk. As Estelle ducked under the ribbon and approached, he stepped away from the building.

“They’re all inside,” he said.

Estelle nodded and refrained from smiling at the young deputy’s earnest statement of the obvious. She stepped to the edge of the sidewalk. “Whose vehicles are those?”

Collins turned to glance at the parking lot. “The Subaru belongs to Kiki Tafoya…she’s one of the office staff. And she’s the one who reported finding the body.”

“The SUV is George’s?”

“Yes, ma’am. I believe so.”

Estelle walked the few steps to the corner of the building. The rest of the parking lot was empty. A second yellow ribbon stretched across the alley, looped around a scrubby saltbush, and then disappeared behind the building. “Is someone at the back door?”

“Sergeant Bishop was back there, ma’am. He was kinda scouting the alley.”

“Any signs of forced entry?”

“No, ma’am.” Collins looked puzzled. “He shot himself. That’s what they were saying.”

“Ah.” Estelle nodded, feeling a twinge of genuine sadness. Despite his penchant for fictitious insurance policies, George Enriquez had been a likable fellow—part of his secret as a successful salesman. Estelle realized that the looming threat of a grand jury investigation, with its promise that someone’s life was going to be forever changed, could be cause enough for depression, especially when, in George’s view, he’d done nothing to harm anyone.

The undersheriff snapped on a pair of rubber surgical gloves and then paused with her finger hovering near the door handle. A computer-printed sign was taped to the inside of the window:
OUR OFFICES WILL BE CLOSED THIS WEEK DUE TO FAMILY ILLNESS
. Two emergency numbers were listed, and Estelle recognized Enriquez’s home number as well as National Mutual’s toll-free number.

“Family illness,” she said aloud.

“Well, in a way,” Collins said cheerfully.

Estelle pulled the outer door open, keeping a single finger on the underside of the latch. The vestibule was no more than six feet square, just enough buffer to keep the sand from blowing into the office when customers opened the door to the street. The ornately carved inner door rested ajar, a rubber stop placed between it and the jamb. A plastic bag enclosed the brass door lever. Estelle nudged the door open with her elbow.

Kiki Tafoya sat in the swivel chair behind her desk, doubled over with her elbows on her knees and her face buried in her hands. Posadas Police Chief Eddie Mitchell knelt beside her, balanced on one knee so that his face was close to the girl’s, one large arm resting on the corner of her desk for balance. He glanced up as Estelle entered. Kiki nodded at something the chief said, and he patted her shoulder as he pushed himself to his feet.

“Not pretty in there,” he murmured to Estelle as he stepped close. Estelle’s eyes roamed the small office. Enriquez had three employees, the other two working in cubicles whose boundaries were marked by six-foot partitions covered in soft yellow fabric. Behind Kiki Tafoya’s desk, the solid wall of wood paneling angled off to meet a section of tinted glass above three-foot paneled wainscoting. A heavy glass door marked George Enriquez’s private domain.

She saw Sheriff Robert Torrez back partially out of the office doorway, his hands in his back pockets. He shook his head at something someone in the office said, then turned and saw Estelle. He nodded toward the interior of the office.

Estelle stepped around Kiki’s desk. The girl didn’t look up, and Estelle could see her slender shoulders shaking. Kneeling down as the chief had done, she slid her arm across Kiki’s shoulders. The girl was strung as tight as a guy wire, her entire body quivering in shock.

“Try to breathe slowly,” Estelle whispered. The girl uttered a little
ummm
of distress, refusing to lift her face from her hands.

“Perrone gave her a sedative,” Mitchell said. “Her husband is coming down to pick her up in a few minutes.” Even as he said that, the ambulance arrived outside, its siren dying in a truncated yowl.

“Okay.” She looked up at Mitchell, questioning.

The chief shook his head. “She told Collins that she came in to the office this morning to pick up a jacket that she’d left here yesterday morning. When she was here for a few minutes, catching up on some paperwork, she said that she noticed that the light was on in the boss’ office this morning, and she looked in and saw him.” He shrugged. “That’s what we’ve got so far, anyway.”

Another spasm shook Kiki’s shoulders, and Estelle waited silently, arm around the girl, until one of the EMTs appeared at the door. “We need a blanket,” she said. In another moment, Kiki Tafoya was wrapped snuggly, and Estelle backed off, giving the EMT room to work.

“Let’s take a look,” she said. Bob Torrez had turned sideways in the office door, hands still in his pockets. Dr. Alan Perrone was writing quickly on a small aluminum clipboard, talking just as rapidly. Behind them, seated at his desk, was George Enriquez.

“Single, large caliber gunshot wound to the head,” Perrone said without looking up from his writing. “My best ballpark guess is sometime yesterday. I’ll be able to narrow that down some for you, Estelle. For the moment, I’m finished here.” He tapped a period with his gold ballpoint and sighed. “I don’t think the young lady who found him is going to be in any shape to tell you much. At least not for a few hours.”

“We’ll talk to her when we can,” Estelle said. Without stepping closer to the ornate wooden desk, she regarded Enriquez. The man was slumped back in his chair as if napping, head lolled to the right. The top of the chair back cushioned his head at the junction of spine and skull. His jaw hung slack.

The single bullet had crashed into his skull through the thick, silver hair of his left sideburn, leaving a large corona of powder dappling that extended to the corner of his left eye.

“The bullet is in the wall over there,” Torrez said. He extended an arm past Estelle’s shoulder, pointing. “It hit the edge of the bookcase, punched through the side support, and then smacked into the wall. It didn’t go through.”

Estelle nodded and moved around the desk.

“A thorough job,” the sheriff observed. The single bullet had passed obliquely through the victim’s skull, exiting along with a large chunk of skull from behind the right ear. “The weapon is under his chair.”

Enriquez’s body rested like a sandbag in the modern fabric-and-fiberglass swivel chair. His left arm hung straight down, index finger extended as if he’d been pointing at the large revolver that lay between two of the swivel chair’s five black legs. His left shoe rested flat on the clear plastic carpet protector under the chair, and his right leg was extended under the desk.

“It’s supposed to be a pretty standard picture,” Torrez said, and Estelle looked up at him quickly. He didn’t elaborate but let the remark pass with a shrug.

Kneeling carefully on the carpet an arm’s length from the corpse, Estelle looked at the revolver. Its satin stainless-steel finish was flecked here and there with gore, but she could easily read the legend on the right side of the barrel.

“What do we know about this?” Estelle asked, not because anyone had had the time to run the weapon through NCIC or put it under the microscope but because Bob Torrez’s consuming personal interest in firearms made it likely that the sheriff had already reached some conclusions.

“Smith and Wesson Model 657,” he said. “Stainless, forty-one mag, and the grips probably didn’t come with the gun.” Estelle looked at the grips and frowned. “The stainless usually comes with soft, black rubber grips,” Torrez said. “Those wood ones are the standard issue on older models of blued guns. Some folks like the looks better, with the fancy grain and all. The wood is goncalvo alves, I think.”

Using her pen, Estelle reached out and moved Enriquez’s hand slightly, looking at the palm for a long moment.

“I didn’t see any, either,” Torrez said. “Neither did doc.”

George Enriquez’s hands were soft and well manicured, not the work-hardened, calloused hands of a laborer. The undersheriff looked back and forth, from hand to revolver. Estelle could imagine that the big magnum was a challenge to fire one-handed in any case, requiring a firm grip. Someone about to unleash that tremendous, shattering power against his own skull would have held the gun so hard his knuckles would have been white and trembling. The resultant recoil would have pounded the sharp checkering of the hardwood grips into the palm of the victim’s hand, leaving characteristic marks.

“That’s a puzzle,” Estelle murmured. She stood up and stepped back from Enriquez’s chair. “I’m surprised that the revolver would land there.”

“You ain’t the only one,” Torrez said. “Recoil’s going to bust it back. If he had a death grip on it, maybe it stayed in his hand and then just kind of fell on the floor under the chair, there.” He grimaced. “Not likely.” He knelt, balancing on the balls of his feet. “If he had a death grip on it, then relaxed…” he glanced back up at Estelle, “I’d expect to see the weapon directly under his fingers, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably.”

“But it’s not under his fingers. It’s a good foot away from his hand, in a direction that would have taken some effort to accomplish.” He stood back up with a creak of leather.

“No signs of forced entry, though?”

“None.”

“And no struggle.”

“Nothing that’s turned up yet.”

“And he had plenty of reason,” Estelle said.

“Maybe. Maybe not. If he was the suicidal type, I’d say yes. But we don’t know that he was. Folks face a grand jury probe all the time without offing themselves.”

“Did you already send someone over to notify Connie?”

Torrez nodded. “Taber picked up Father Anselmo and swung by. Nobody’s interviewed the woman yet.” He looked expectantly at Estelle.

“I’ll break away from here in a few minutes and see what she has to say.”

“Best of luck,” the sheriff said, then followed her gaze to the far wall where the small bullet hole pocked the textured plaster. “You’re thinking that you’d like to make sure the bullet we dig out of that wall comes close to matching this revolver?”