Steven Havill: Red, Green, or Murder

Estelle mulled that over, gazing down at the table setting. I knew better than to ask what she was thinking.

“Let me know what I can do to help,” I said. “I was going to take a minute and pay my respects to Phil.” She nodded and accompanied me as far as the yellow tape, holding it up for me again like a gate. I exchanged a few more words of consolation with Maggie and then headed outside, more to suck in some fresh air than to talk to anyone.

I hadn’t seen Phil Borman when I arrived, but now he was facing the closed garage door, leaning against the front of George’s old pickup. He was off somewhere in his own musings and didn’t hear me until I was just a step or two behind him. He turned then, left arm across his striped golf shirt, right arm propped on left like Jack Benny about to deliver a punch line, his cigarette a couple of inches from his mouth.

I knew that George had thought highly of his son-in-law, and that was enough of an endorsement. “Maybe Maggie will stop now and smell the goddamn roses once in a while,” George had grumbled to me at the couple’s wedding two years before. No such luck, unless the roses were offered for sale with a 6 percent commission. Maggie and Phil worked like dervishes to make their business a success, opening satellite offices in both Deming and Lordsburg.

Phil Borman unfolded his arms and straightened up. “Ah,” he said, extending his hand. “I saw you drive up a couple of minutes ago. I was in the back yard. Estelle’s got you in harness again?”

“Not a chance,” I said quickly. “Phil, I’m sorry about this.”

“Well,” he replied, “so am I, you know?” He dropped the cigarette on George’s driveway and ground it out, then promptly groped another out of his shirt pocket and lit it. I took a step so that the air moved the smoke away from me. As only an ex-smoker can, I had grown not only terribly sanctimonious about it, but was positively repulsed by the stench of cigarette smoke. “He still enjoyed life. I’m going to miss him.”

“Me, too.”

“You know…do you hunt?”

“Nope. Too old and fat. Easier to go to the restaurant.”

He laughed that practiced, polite response that good salesmen master when a customer tells a joke. “Hunting is always something I thought I wanted to do, you know? Never had the time. Never took the time.” He grinned, showing irregular, strong white teeth. “George took it upon himself to perform an attitude adjustment on me. Now…and you ask Maggie-she’ll tell you. I sell real estate when I can manage to take some time away from my hunting.” He glanced at his watch, reading the date. “I drew a tag for a special antelope hunt up north in another month. George was pretty pleased about that and promised to loan me one of his rifles.”

“Good luck with that,” I said. He sucked on the cigarette, then regarded it judiciously as he exhaled, as if he was trying a new brand. “You were the one who found him,” I said. “Did I hear that right?”

He nodded slowly. “What a turn, Bill. Jesus. You know, the instant I saw him sitting there, I knew he was gone.” He looked over at me. “I called 911, and I don’t think that it was more than four minutes before the paramedics were here. There wasn’t any point in trying resuscitation.”

“Had you called him before you dropped by? Did you talk with him this morning at all?” And what did that matter to me, I thought as the words came out of my mouth. Old habits were sticky things.

“No. I just came over. Maggie said you two had linked up to have lunch, so I knew he’d be here. I wanted to see if he wanted to take a day trip for fishing over to the Butte. I mean, this weather we’ve been having, you know? Maybe give us a chance to talk some more about the hunt.” Borman hunched his shoulders helplessly. “Sure as hell didn’t expect something like this. You know,” he said, and stopped. I waited patiently. “He felt like shit most of the time, Bill. He absolutely hated taking all those meds. You saw that pill organizer by the kitchen sink?”

“Sure.”

“God, what a load of stuff. Here a few weeks ago, he just stopped taking most of it, except maybe a little Prednisone for his arthritis.”

“Well, I’ve been known to do the same thing,” I said.

Borman went for cigarette number three. “I saw him a couple days ago, when Maggie and I took him out to dinner at the Legion. He was just fine.

“Well…just fine by his standards. Chipper as all hell. He was excited about me going after antelope.”

Chipper wasn’t a word I would have associated with George Payton, even twenty years before. Lugubrious, cranky, grumpy… not chipper.

Borman snapped his fingers. “That’s the way it happens a lot of times, I guess.”

“If we’re lucky,” I turned at the sound of another vehicle and saw Dr. Alan Perrone’s dark green BMW glide to a stop at the curb.

“I don’t understand the procedure for all this, I guess,” Phil Borman said.

“What procedure is that?”

“It has to be hard on Maggie, her dad just lying in the kitchen.” He looked at his watch and grimaced. “All this time. I mean I don’t know why it’s taken so long to move him.”

“The coroner has to earn his salary,” I said.

“I suppose so. It’s hard, though.”

“Any time there’s an unattended death like this, Phil, things slow down a little bit.”

“Even when the cause of death is obvious?”

“Even when,” I reached out and patted him on the elbow. Nothing I could say would make him feel any better. Alan Perrone, the assistant State Medical Examiner and county coroner, hustled up the sidewalk. I raised a hand in greeting. “Estelle’s inside, doc.”

He paused in mid-hustle and cocked his head. “You suspect Mad Cow disease here?” George Payton would have loved that bit of irreverence at his expense, and it was typical Perrone that the doc didn’t temper his humor for Phil’s sake. The physician didn’t wait for a response, but disappeared inside the house.

“What’d he mean by that?” Phil Borman asked.

“Just a bad joke in a time of need,” I replied. “Doc and I and George go way, way back.” I shook Phil’s elbow again. “Call me if there’s anything I can do, all right?”

Borman nodded, knowing damn well there was nothing for either of us to do except stay out of the way.

I went back inside. Maggie Payton and Linda Real sat side-by-side on the old, deep sofa by the living room window. The Sheriff’s Department photographer had a wide sympathetic streak. It wasn’t unusual for deputies to keep teddy bears in their patrol units to give to children in misery. Linda’s collection probably had the highest turn-over rate. With no photos to take at the moment, I wasn’t surprised that she responded to Maggie’s pain.

George’s daughter beckoned and Linda got up to make room for me. I sank down into the cushions, knowing that actually escaping the comfort of the sofa was going to take determination and planning.

In the kitchen, Estelle Reyes-Guzman and Dr. Alan Perrone were locked in intense conversation, and that made me uneasy. Their voices were whispers and murmurs-well out of range of my sorry hearing, and apparently Maggie’s, too.

“Oh, my,” Maggie said wearily, and heaved a huge sigh. She reached over and patted my hand, then folded hers on her knees. “So, how have you been, Bill?” I knew exactly what she really meant, as in are you next?

“One day at a time,” I said. “I was just out at Torrance’s, counting cattle.”

“How’s that going for you?”

“Counting?” I smiled. “Well, as long as the numbers don’t get too big, I’m okay.”