A truck idled to the curb, and Melinda nodded, recognizing her brother’s vehicle. “Don’t say that I said so, but he was taking a nap. Here you all are working and he’s napping.” She leaned forward as something appeared on the screen, then quickly tapped in data. She relaxed back again as the computer went on digesting. “You’ll have to turn the key to let him in. I locked it.” Estelle stepped to the door and twisted the lock.
“Hey,” the sheriff said, and let a nod to Madelyn and his sister suffice.
“How’s the nap?” Melinda asked, and Torrez’s instant frown was dark.
“How do you know if I was nappin’ or not,” he said.
“’Cause Gayle said you were going to,” Melinda shot back. “And if Gayle says it, it’s true.”
“She said I was going to. Don’t mean I got to, thanks to you guys.”
“Okay,” Melinda said, and held up both hands. “We’re up and running. Who needs a new license first?” Her expression turned serious. “What do we need to know that doesn’t require a court order, which you don’t have.”
“I have a name,” Estelle said. “I need to know what vehicles are registered to her. And I need her last known address. CJ Vallejos.” She spelled the name, and both she and Melinda finished at the same time.
“Well, now,” Melinda said, leaning back again. “I need something to narrow this down. There’s a whole city of Vallejoses in the state, and when I scroll down, let me see,” and she ran a finger down the screen. “Not a single CJ. Let’s roam a bit farther. How about Constance Vallejos?” She looked up at Estelle.
“Maybe. She would be in her early twenties,” Estelle replied. “Certainly no more than thirty. The last residence we know of is in Las Cruces.”
“Ah. That helps.” Melinda leaned an elbow on the computer console and waited as the cursor searched.
“Do we have license photos?”
“Sure we do.” Melinda reached out and pivoted the computer screen so Estelle could see it by leaning over the counter. “This is Ms. Constance. Her DOB is five five eighty-two. That makes her twenty-five, coming up on twenty-six.”
“I don’t think so.” The photo showed a homely young woman whose fleshy, teardrop-shaped face glared into the camera. The rims of her tiny granny glasses nestled grooves into her heavy cheeks. The photo showed the top swell of wide shoulders.…No stretch of the imagination could call this woman willowy.
“Well, then,” Melinda said. “In the same pew, we have Consuela Juanita Vallejos. That’s a nice, old-fashioned name, isn’t it. Ms. Consuela Juanita…” She looked up at Estelle. “CJ for short, maybe? She shows a DOB of eleven nine eighty-four. That makes her twenty-three come November.”
Estelle’s heart jumped. It took a special kind of composure to look beautiful in a driver’s license photo, but Consuela Juanita Vallejos managed to do it. The young woman had cocked her head at the last moment so her face avoided that pasted-on look of Post Office bulletin board photos. Long black hair pulled back, her face finely sculpted, she had allowed the hint of a smile to touch her full lips.
“I see a light,” Melinda said, smiling at Estelle.
“Who the hell is this?” Torrez asked.
“It could be one of Irene Salas’ classmates at State,” Estelle replied. “A lab partner, in fact.”
“Irene give you a description?”
“Of sorts. This one fits enough that I need to run it down to Irene to make sure. Melinda, may I have a copy?”
“Um…,” Melinda said, thinking. Then she shrugged. “What the hell. I’ll give you the photo without all the personal data. How’s that?”
“That’ll work as long as we can have her address,” Estelle said. “And that,” she said, pointing at the phone directory. While the photo printed, she found Serafina Roybal’s number and dialed, stepping away from the counter. “Come on,” she said, waiting as the ring count mounted. After eighteen, the phone connected with a clatter. Serafina’s voice was distant and sounded fragile.
“Hello?”
“Serafina? This is Estelle Guzman bothering you again.”
“Yes, dear. How nice.”
“I need to ask you…has Irene come back from the Riveras’ yet?”
“Well, you know, I think they’re outside working on my old car. Would you like to speak with her?”
“If that’s possible, yes.”
“Let me call her.”
“Take your time, Serafina.”
“Oh,” and the old woman chuckled. “That’s a certainty.”
As Estelle waited, she looked across at the others. “We need Irene to make a positive ID before we do anything else,” she said. “If this isn’t the girl, we’re back to square one.”
The sheriff raised one hand. “I got some preliminaries from Mears, too,” he said. Estelle nodded, and in the background over the phone she could hear voices.
“This is Irene,” a strong voice on the phone said.
“Irene, this is Estelle Guzman again. Look, I hate to keep bugging you on your holiday, but I have another photo I need you to look at. Will you be at your grandma’s for a while longer?”
“Sure, I guess.” She didn’t sound overly enthusiastic at the prospect of more morgue shots. “You bet. I wasn’t going back to Cruces until morning.”
“Perfecto. It should be about thirty minutes, then.”
“I’ll probably be back over at the shop,” Irene said. “There or here.”
“I’ll find you. While I’m at it, do you have a cell?”
“Oh, sure. You want that number?”
“Yes. It’s hard for Serafina to get to the phone.” Estelle jotted down the number. “Thanks.”
She snapped the phone shut. “Okay.” She stepped back to the counter. “Bobby, I’ve been beating this same horse to death. I just keep circling around to the notion of how Serafina Roybal’s name was chosen for this sweepstakes thing. I know, I know…we’re probably all on every list in the world. But Chris Marsh was up to something, and he knew where she was-where Joe and Lucinda were, too. This is the first link.” She held up the photo. “Almost certainly, Irene would have talked to this girl about Serafina. She and CJ Vallejos were partners in an anthro class during the fall semester.”
“You got something else?” Torrez asked, openly dubious.
“We’ll see. Irene remembers that Chris Marsh came by that anthro class from time to time to pick up his girlfriend.” Melinda handed her a printout of the photo. “Thanks. She describes CJ as looking about like this.” She passed the photo to the sheriff.
“And?” Torrez said, still unimpressed.
“Can you tell me what vehicles this one has registered?” Estelle asked.
“Most recent is a 2007 Ford Mustang, color blue. License…oh, this is cute. ‘MY PONY.’”
“Ay,” Estelle whispered. “There we go. She did buy it.”
“‘There we go’ what?” Torrez said.
“That jibes with what Marsh’s neighbors at the trailer park told Tony. This is the girlfriend. She’s got to be.” She read the address. “Off campus, for sure. I want Irene to confirm this photo,” she said.
“Betty Contreras has one of those phone-fax-copier thingies,” Melinda said. “Might be quicker than driving all the way back down to Regál.”
“That’s an idea, but it’d take almost as much time to include Betty in the loop as not. Besides, I need to see Irene Salas face-to-face when she IDs the picture.”
“Mears finished dusting the beer can, by the way,” the sheriff said. “He was goin’ over to the county boneyard to finish with the truck. I’ll give him a heads-up.”
“We have to have that,” Estelle agreed. “By itself, this is nothing.” She looked at the photo. “Just because she was Chris Marsh’s girlfriend for a while doesn’t mean she had any other connection with what he had going on. But if her prints are on the beer can, then that puts her at the scene of the accident.”