“Well, we’ve had company most of the morning. Really interesting company. You got the judge’s note?”
“Yes.”
“He’d like to meet you for lunch, if that’s possible.”
“Sure enough possible. Will you join us?”
She laughed. “No, thanks. I’ll keep Carla company.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Her voice dropped a bit. “Carla Champlin’s been sitting out in the hall all morning. She said she’s going to sit there until the judge signs a court order evicting one of her tenants.”
“Lucky you,” I said. “She bent my ear a day or so ago, but I guess that didn’t do any good. Did you tell her to bring a pillow? My guess is that it’s going to be a long wait.”
“Oh, sure,” Violet said. “You come over and tell her that.”
“Nope. Did the judge say where he wanted to escape to?”
“He asked that you meet him at the country club at twelve-thirty, if that’s going to be possible for you.”
“I can do that,” I said, and groaned inwardly.
“He said it was his treat,” Violet added, and I grinned. After nearly thirty years, the judge knew my habits, even if he didn’t share my enthusiasm for Mexican food.
“Well, tell His Honor to sneak out the back door. I’m on my way.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “And so will he.”
I could picture Carla Champlin, ramrod straight, jaw thrust out pugnaciously, sitting on the blond oak bench under the display of Western paintings by various county artists. Maybe after a few more hours her bony butt would hurt enough that she’d go away. Or maybe she’d overheard Violet and even at that moment was planning to join the judge and me for lunch.
I suppose I was a touch annoyed with Carla, too. I’d told her that I would talk to Pasquale, and I had. She wasn’t allowing much time for success before badgering someone else. But if she wanted to sit in the courthouse hallway, that was her call. She could talk to the potted plants. I’d rather have a conversation with a good green chili burrito.
The Posadas Country Club was less than two years old, and despite the grand implications of its name, it was no more than a nine-hole patch of irrigated sand, rattlesnakes, and Bermuda grass. The club sported a restaurant-Vic’s Place-in what long ago had been one of the county’s maintenance barns. Renovated and painted with a jazzy new hung ceiling, the clubhouse and restaurant still smelled vaguely of old hydraulic fluid and rubber.
Shortly after its grand opening, I’d eaten the worst chicken salad of my life at Vic’s Place-cold, slimy, and reptilian. I was no golfer, so it wasn’t hard to avoid a repeat of that culinary adventure. As far as I could tell, the quality of the restaurant matched that of the rest of the club.
The wind usually blew so hard that I guessed it was possible to tee off from the first launch pad and whack the ball all the way across nine holes to the parking lot of Posadas High School on South Pershing Street.
But golfers were ecstatic to have a spot closer than Deming to play, and they took the snakes, goat heads, and wind in stride. When Vic’s Place had somehow managed to find a brand-new liquor license, the restaurant with the awful chicken salad had become a sort of watering hole for “who’s who” in Posadas-or for who wanted to be who. It was an out-of-the-way spot for Judge Hobart to feed his gout.
I drove down Grande to Country Club Road and turned right past a short block of apartments and then the sprawl of Posadas High School. What had once been a gently rolling short-grass prairie was now a nine-holer, watered just enough that the grass on the putting greens remained an alkali-bleached, sickly ochre.
I parked beside the judge’s white minivan and noticed the assistant district attorney’s Corvette nestled off in the corner in the shade of a single valiant elm tree.
Inside Vic’s Place, the air conditioning was cranked to maximum. As my eyes adjusted, I could see Judge Hobart across the dining room, seated with Don Jaramillo under the display of historic golf clubs.
“Afternoon, gentlemen,” I said.
With a glass in one hand, the judge waved at the chair beside Jaramillo.
“Seat yourself,” the judge said, and reached out a hand. I shook, and felt joints older and more arthritic than my own. I braced myself for Jaramillo’s knuckle-duster, but he was surprisingly gentle this time. Maybe he knew he was in the company of duffers.
One of Vic’s waitresses, a young gal whom I didn’t recognize, appeared at my elbow with a mug of coffee. While she was setting the cup on the table, I shifted my bifocals so I could see her name tag.
“Mr. Palacek said you’d want coffee,” she said brightly. “Do you use cream?”
“Everything, thanks, Tamara,” I said. The judge and the ADA watched as I emptied two packets of cream and two of sugar into the coffee.
“I remembered that you drank coffee black,” the judge said after the waitress had left.
“I do. This isn’t coffee.” And it wasn’t. Even with the additives, it tasted like a quarter-teaspoon of instant coffee dissolved in dishwater. I took a sip, grimaced, and pushed it aside.
“I ordered the chicken salad, and Don here is having the halibut.”
He pushed a menu across toward me. The print was so fuzzy that even with my bifocals I couldn’t read the grim details.
“They don’t have enchiladas,” the judge added helpfully. “But the whiskey sours aren’t bad.”
The waitress appeared at my elbow and I looked up into her sober face. “I guess I’d like a ham and cheese, hold the cheese,” I said. She nodded and turned away, laboriously writing something far more complete than the word ham on the ticket.
“Bob tells me that you and he talked to the Carters,” Don Jaramillo said. He was a pudgy man, with a good set of jowls forming despite not yet having reached his fortieth birthday. His shirt looked as if he’d slept in it, tucked carelessly into jeans-the Jaramillo uniform when not in court. I somehow always expected him to blurt out, “I’m not really a lawyer, really, I’m not.” He eyed me sideways, which was pretty direct for him.
“We did that.” I nodded.
Bob Torrez had dropped me off at my office not many moments ago, but he hadn’t mentioned that the assistant district attorney had been one of his “errands.”
“What’s he have to say?” Jaramillo asked.
“Who?”
“Sam. Sam Carter.”
“Oh, I thought you said you just talked to Bob. I figured he’d tell you.”
“Well, no,” Jaramillo fussed. “We just crossed paths, so to speak. We didn’t have time…”
I put his floundering out of its misery. “Kenny Carter says he had no conversation with Jim Sisson beyond a chance encounter-a friendly encounter, he claims-last Saturday, three days before Sisson’s death.”
“And the chairman of the county commission? What’s he got to say for himself?” Judge Hobart asked.
“Sam blustered, as always. My guess is that he doesn’t know what his son’s doing most of the time. Par for that course.”
“Bob says that he thinks Kenny Carter is the father of Jennifer Sisson’s child,” Jaramillo said.
“So do I.”
Judge Hobart frowned. “She’s a tad young, isn’t she?”
“Sure.”
“But the boy denies it?”
“That’s correct, Judge. Sincerely denies it, too. With a good, level, unblinking gaze,” I said. “In the best ‘I am offended you should think such a thing’ tradition.”
Jaramillo leaned forward and glanced across the empty dining room. Apparently other folks shared my opinion of the food. He lowered his voice. “The undersheriff thinks it might be profitable to order a paternity test. That’s why he stopped by a bit ago, to see what I thought.”
Judge Hobart toyed with his whiskey sour but didn’t take a sip. I watched him thinking and was surprised how much he’d aged in the past year or so. The New Mexico sun had reduced the skin of his cheeks to a blotched parchment, with a particularly nasty patch in front of his right ear. His hand drifted up toward the blemish, then hesitated at the last instant, leaving it alone.