“Well, you work too hard, hija. Buena es culantro …”
“…pero no tanto.” Estelle finished the proverb for her, and Teresa nodded with approval.
“You remember that,” she said. “Too much of a good thing is no good,” she repeated.
“I do remember, Mama, but sometimes I have no choice in the matter.”
“It’s almost bedtime, anyway. Los Dos are with their father, by the way.”
What had been a one-car garage off the living room had been converted into an office, sunken half a foot below the floor level of the rest of the house. The plastered walls could be glimpsed here and there through the vast sea of books and magazines. A pool table dominated the center of the room, but the cover hadn’t been off the velvet for months and was now weighted down with its own sea of books, magazines, and an odd assortment of children’s toys.
Dr. Francis Guzman sat at the computer with Carlos on his lap and five-year-old Francisco standing at one corner of the keyboard. Estelle could see that the computer’s huge, hi-tech screen was filled with a single photograph of herself-the same photo that Linda Real had taken for the department’s calendar, a Christmas gift to the dozen employees that each month featured a different employee caught in an appropriate moment of unawareness.
Estelle moved closer, her footsteps muffled by the carpet. The original photo had been striking, catching Estelle as she crawled out from under the sagging chassis of the Popes’ burned-out mobile home, her own camera slung around her neck. The photo didn’t show how disheveled and filthy she’d really been at the time. A single theatrical smudge adorned one side of her face as if applied by a Hollywood makeup artist.
She had just enough time to see that the photo was being morphed into something unrecognizable before Francisco, her oldest son, turned and saw her. He screeched and tried to cover the screen with both of his small hands. His father was quicker, hitting the closure X and sending the photo off into the ether.
“You can’t see,” Francisco said, allowing his father to pry his hands off the screen.
The physician pushed the chair back a bit and turned away from the computer. “Top secret project,” he said. He turned Carlos upside down and lowered him to the floor between his knees until the boy’s head touched the carpet before letting him go to complete the somersault by himself. “And time for bed for you guys,” he added and glanced up at Estelle. “Who was the call?”
“Chief Mitchell. They found Kenderman’s truck over in the high school student parking lot.”
“But he wasn’t in it?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t mess with that now, geek,” he said to Francisco, who was having a hard time tearing himself away from the keyboard. “We’ll work on it tomorrow.” He stood up and pushed the chair under the table. “You have to go out?”
“No. The chief just wanted me to know that they found the truck. That was all.”
“So what’s that mean?”
She bent down and stroked the top of Carlos’ head. “I’m not sure,” she said, but she saw that Francis had heard the hesitation in her reply.
“You don’t know what he’s going to do, do you.”
“What who’s going to do, Mama?” Francisco asked.
“Bed time, hijos,” she said and ushered Carlos toward the door.
“You read to us?”
“Por supuesto, querido,” she said. Francis leaned against the pool table, arms folded across his chest, and watched the two children race through the living room and vanish down the hallway.
“Alan said you had a puzzler with Enriquez.”
Estelle grimaced. “No puzzler. Someone shot him while he sat behind his desk in his office. We were supposed to think it was suicide.”
“I think he meant los porques, querida.”
“We have lots of ‘whys’ still. We’re doing pretty well with the ‘whats.’ ”
She turned at the thumping of her mother’s walker. Teresa Reyes stopped halfway across the living room. “You want me to answer the door, or are you going to?”
Estelle looked puzzled. She stepped quickly into the living room. “I didn’t hear it, Mama.”
“I mean the back door,” Teresa said. Estelle stopped in her tracks. The Guzmans’ back door opened to the yard, a yard made secure for the two boys by a four-foot chain-link fence. Because the fence was essentially the property boundary, and because the renovated garage-studio blocked the driveway’s route to the back of their lot, the backyard fence had no gates; entry to the yard was gained through the house.
“You heard someone at the back door, Mama?” Her hand drifted down to her belt, where her cellular phone should have been.
Teresa nodded. “That’s what I just said.”
“Stay here,” Estelle said to her mother. In three strides, she reached the phone extension on the small table by the sofa. By the time she had stepped into the kitchen, the swing-shift dispatcher, Ernie Wheeler, had answered. “Ernie, this is Estelle. Hang on a minute.”
With a quick sweep of her hand, she turned off the kitchen lights and flicked on the switch for the outside light over the back door. Nothing happened, but this time she heard the knocking herself, four quick raps, just the way a neighbor might knock on an errand to borrow a cup of sugar.
“Who is it?” she said, just loud enough that she knew she’d be heard.
“I need to talk to you.”
Estelle froze, the only movement the telephone receiver as she brought it so close that the mouthpiece touched her lips. “Send a car to my house, Ernie. Kenderman’s here.”
Chapter Eighteen
The door to the backyard was closed and dead bolted. The small double Thermo Pane window panel had proved resistant to baseballs, rocks, or elbows. Although Estelle’s first thought was to jerk open the door, grab Kenderman by the neck, and slam him up against the house as she snapped cuffs on him, she knew that to open the door was inviting disaster. Kenderman was no lightweight adolescent. He could as easily be armed as not.
For the moment, her family was safe inside. Kenderman was locked outside and could stay there until burly assistance arrived. Deputy Tom Pasquale was on alone during the swing shift, and if he wasn’t at the far end of the county, he could be at the Twelfth Street address in a few minutes. Chief Mitchell was roaming the village, only seconds away.
Estelle backed away from the door and jumped with a start as she stepped on her husband’s foot. He held one of the sheriff’s department’s enormous flashlights.
“I need that,” Estelle said and nodded down the hall. “Stay out of the kitchen, and stay with the boys and Mama in our bedroom.” Before he had a chance to reply, she darted ahead of him into the master bedroom and touched the code into the gun safe’s door release. The door sprang open and she pulled out the loaded automatic.
In the hallway, her husband loomed enormous in the dim aura of the night light. “How dare he come to my house,” Estelle hissed and pushed past Francis. Back in the kitchen, she stopped by the divider into the dining area. “Perry, are you still there?” she called.
“Look,” he said, and she could tell he was standing immediately in front of the door, “I need to talk to you.”
“Not here, you don’t. You want to talk to me, you come down to the sheriff’s office.”
“They’ll arrest me if I do that.”
“And I’ll arrest you here,” Estelle snapped. She took a deep breath and glanced behind her. Everyone in the house was safe. Francis hadn’t argued with her. Despite his size, agility, and tremendous strength, there was nothing to gain by changing the balance, nothing to be gained by some grandstand play that could as easily turn disastrous as not. If Kenderman forced his way through the door, he was dead. It was that simple. No negotiations, no heroics, no struggles.