“You look like something is bothering you,” Madelyn Bolles commented as Estelle slid back into the Crown Victoria.
“Lots of things,” Estelle said. She made no move to start the car. “It makes sense to me that if there’s a scam being worked here-and I think there is-the Bacas were the target. They’re the ones with the proceeds from an earlier win. They’re natural targets with deep pockets.”
“You don’t know yet that the sweepstakes thing is fraudulent, do you? I mean, didn’t you say that this lady won twice? And actually collected money?”
“Yes, she did.”
“You’re thinking that she was used to soften the other couple up for a bigger hit, aren’t you. People would hear about her success, and be suckered in?”
Estelle looked across at Madelyn. “Sin duda. That’s exactly what’s nagging at me. If come tomorrow Joe and Lucinda cash that last check with no problems, then I’m going to be really puzzled.”
“Just a tidal wave of good fortune? Isn’t that possible?”
“No. We know that Chris Marsh and his nifty little truck were fraudulent. He was posing as a deliveryman, Madelyn. His supposed delivery company doesn’t exist. It sounds good, it sounds like it should be a real company, but it isn’t. That makes the whole thing suspect.”
“Is someone trying to rip off the sweepstakes company?”
“That’s a possibility, and I’ve thought about that. But I can’t imagine a legitimate publishing house doing business that way. Why would you use an unknown courier company, especially when so much money is involved, when you could choose one of the established firms? Anyway, you hit it exactly right. What bothers me is that if someone is trying to scam money out of Joe and Lucinda Baca, it makes sense to start small with a close friend-like Serafina here-to build confidence. That’s what I can’t put behind me.”
She looked at the small shed where Serafina’s Jeep had been stored.…The big SUV would have been a snug fit. The door had been only partially closed.
“I see smoke,” Madelyn said. Estelle turned quickly to look at her, and the writer quickly amended her remark. “I mean from your ears. You’re thinking so hard.”
“Sure enough.” She started the car and backed out to the dirt lane. “I need to check one thing,” she said.
“If you want my opinion,” Madelyn said, “so much winning in a tiny village would be enough to spook me, too.”
“But when the winner wants to take the money so badly, it’s easy to say it’s just a freak of statistics,” Estelle said. “‘It’s just good fortune.’”
“What are we after, then?”
“If the sweepstakes thing is a scam, then that leads us down an interesting road. Serafina Roybal was the first one who won. I haven’t heard of anyone else…no one in Posadas, as far as we know. No one has called the sheriff’s office to complain about a possible scam, and we get calls all the time, complaining about this and that. How did Chris Marsh target Serafina, then? How would he know about her?”
“You could drive through a village like this one, point at any little house, and say, ‘Let’s start with this one.’ That’s an easy thing to do.”
“You could do that,” Estelle agreed. “And maybe that’s what happened. Especially after the publicity of Joe and Lucinda winning the state lottery. The snag there is that you don’t cruise through Regál, not with these little lanes and cow tracks. You can’t really see Serafina’s house from the main highway. That’s assuming that you find the village in the first place.”
“That’s the new bumper sticker: ‘Where the hell is Regál?’” Madelyn quipped.
“Everything else was too well planned, at least until that deer decided to run across the road. Someone was being very, very clever. Just very clever.”
“Where to now?”
“Serafina’s granddaughter is here for a visit. That’s who owns the Subaru.”
“You know her?”
“I met her once or twice a dozen years ago.”
“What’s she going to tell you?”
Estelle looked across at Madelyn and smiled. “The crash victim was from Las Cruces.”
“Isn’t that a bit like meeting a stranger who says he’s from such and such city and you say, ‘Oh, I have a friend who lives there. Do you know so and so?’ Talk about long shots.”
“The granddaughter is not only from Cruces. She’s also a student at the university there. So was Chris Marsh. There’s always a chance, no matter how slight.”
“If that’s all you have,” Madelyn said philosophically.
“That’s all we have. And I’ve never trusted coincidence.”
Chapter Thirty-two
The Riveras lived in the only home in Regál built after 1960-in this case, long after. The gray and white double-wide mobile home had been purchased on Fernando Rivera’s eightieth birthday. They probably wouldn’t have considered the snazzy new digs if their hot water heater hadn’t ignited the utility room of their historic home, resulting in a fire that burned the old adobe hollow.
The couple, celebrating their seventy-fifth wedding anniversary this Sunday in February, were now both ninety-six years old, and looked seventy-five. Their only concession to advanced years was welcoming their grandson, Danny, to share their home.
A fair collection of vehicles adorned the dirt yard, with a large metal shop building off to the east, its double door rolled all the way to one side. Two scruffy short-haired mutts bounced stiff legged out toward the road, barking frantically as the county car neared the driveway.
“Oh, nice,” Madelyn muttered. “You don’t have to tell me to stay in the car.”
A young man appeared in the door of the shop and whistled sharply. The dogs ignored him. When it became clear that the white county car was actually pulling into his yard rather than passing through, he shook his head and angled across toward the dogs.
“Come here,” he shouted. The dogs did, ratty tails wagging. He grabbed the larger female by the collar, and the other dog followed along. In a moment, both were snapped onto a chain run beside the house. “They bite,” he said as Estelle got out of the car.
“That’s nice to know,” she said.
The young man wiped his hands on his jeans, which along with his sleeveless denim shirt were so dirty that they could have stood up by themselves. “What can I do for you, sheriff?” he asked. One green eye drifted out of coordination with the other as he glanced toward her car. With the dogs safely tethered, Madelyn had lowered her window. If the breeze was just right, she would have been able to smell the pungent aroma of grease and perspiration. Danny Rivera looked as if he’d crawled out from under a greasy truck on a hot August afternoon.
“How have you been doing, Danny?” Estelle asked. “Are the folks all ready for their big day?”
“We’re all fine,” he replied, and glanced at his watch, nestled in a crust of grease and dirt on his right wrist. “I figured to get a couple hours’ work done before gettin’ cleaned up, and then I got side-tracked.” His grandparents’ seventy-fifth wedding anniversary was occasion enough to slow down the young workaholic, who managed to put more miles on his county road grader than any other three county employees combined.
“I just stopped by Serafina’s,” Estelle said.
“She okay?” the young man asked quickly, before Estelle had a chance to continue.
“She’s fine, Danny. She mentioned that Irene might be over here.”
Daniel Rivera’s full blond eyebrows wrinkled with puzzlement, and his errant left eye drifted a bit, an altogether fetching expression, Estelle thought. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No. I’ve known Irene since she was like so.” She held her hand three feet off the ground. “I just wanted to say hi. We were passing through, and saw her car at Serafina’s. Her grandma said we might catch her over here. You guys were working on the Jeep?”