Smooth-Talking Texan. Candace Camp
hardly a confidential talk with my client with you looming over us like that.”
He smiled, that same flashing smile of startling charm that he had used earlier in his office, and gave her a slight bow of his head. “Of course, ma’am.” She felt sure that if he’d been wearing his sheriff’s Stetson, he would have tipped it with old-fashioned courtesy. “The deputy will be right outside the door if you have any trouble.” His gaze slid over to Benny, one eyebrow lifting.
“No trouble, Sheriff,” Benny said, lifting his hands in an innocent manner.
Sutton nodded and left the room. He paused outside the closed door for a moment, frowning in thought.
“Everything all right, Sheriff?” Jerry asked finally.
Quinn looked at the man and smiled faintly. “I don’t know, Jerry.” The truth was something felt distinctly wrong, both with the case and with his own internal equilibrium. The arrival of Lisa Mendoza seemed to have thrown them both off.
“You ever hear of a fella named Enrique Garza?” he asked the deputy.
The deputy frowned. “Garza? No, not offhand. There are plenty of Garzas, but I don’t recollect an Enrique. Now, there’s a guy that works in Meltzer’s body shop on First Street who’s named Enrique, but I’m pretty sure his last name is Ochoa.”
Quinn nodded. “Well, take Benny back to his cell when he’s through talking to the lady. I imagine we’ll have to release him after that, but I’ll give Ms. Mendoza a chance to tell me off first. She looks like she’s bustin’ to do that. I’ll be in my office.”
“Sure thing, Sheriff.”
Quinn strode back through the maze of hallways and stairs to his office. Most of his staff, he found, were sitting waiting for him in the outer office, faces turned expectantly toward the door. He walked in and raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly.
“What’s this? All the crime in this county’s been settled? You folks need something more to do?”
With a martyred sigh, his secretary turned back to her desk and the others scattered.
“Say, Ruben…” Quinn stopped him as he walked back toward his desk. “Come into my office.”
Ruben followed him and closed the door behind him. “Hargrove’s right, for once,” he said with a grin, turning to face Quinn. “She is a looker.”
“Yeah, she’s a looker,” Quinn admitted, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Don’t think she’s too happy with me at the moment, though.”
Ruben grinned with a noticeable lack of sympathy.
“Do you know if Benny has any cousins named Enrique Garza?” he asked the deputy, who had lived all his life in the small town of Angel Eye.
“Garza?” Deputy Padilla looked doubtful. “I don’t think Benny’s related to any Garzas. ’Course, I don’t know that much about his real dad’s family. Why?”
“Because that attorney told him that his cousin had hired her, and he looked like he about swallowed his tongue, and he said, ‘Julio?”
“Julio?” Ruben repeated and began to laugh. “Julio Fuentes? My three-year-old’s about as likely to find an attorney and hire her as Julio Fuentes.”
“That was the impression I got from Benny’s expression. But then Ms. Mendoza told him that his cousin Enrique Garza had hired her. Benny recognized the name; I could see that. But he got this funny look on his face…You know anybody at all named that? Related to Benny or not?”
“Off the top of my head, no. But there are lots of Garzas. Could be from Hammond or someplace else, too.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m going to call Señora Fuentes and see if she knows who he is and what relation he is to her grandson.”
“You think Señora Fuentes knows about that attorney?”
“My guess would be no.” Quinn smiled ruefully. “I expect she’s going to give me holy hell about letting Benny go, too.”
“Better you than me,” Ruben replied, grinning. “I used to get enough of that for cutting across her lawn when I was a kid.”
“Listen, check around. See if you can find anything out about this guy Garza.”
“Sure. You think it’s somebody involved in what’s going on at old man Rodriguez’s place?”
“That’d be my guess.”
“You think Ms. Mendoza’s connected with them?”
“I don’t know.” Quinn frowned. “They hired her, if I’m right, but that ‘cousin’ stuff—I’m guessing she doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.”
Quinn didn’t want to admit, even to himself, how intensely he hoped that was true.
“He arrested you because you had a broken taillight?” Lisa asked, amazement sending her voice soaring upward.
“Well, no, not exactly. I mean, that’s why he stopped me. Then he looked at my license and walked around the car and all. Asked me questions.”
“Questions? About what?”
Benny shrugged, not looking at her. “Oh, you know. Where I been and who I was hanging out with.” He raised his eyes to meet hers. “Just general kind of sh—stuff, you know, like cops do. And he said a car like mine had been seen, you know…”
“Seen? What do you mean? Seen where?”
Benny frowned. “I’m not sure. He didn’t say exactly. I—he was kinda holding out on me, you know, like, waiting for me to say something I shouldn’t.”
“Okay. What do you think he was wanting you to say?”
Benny shrugged elaborately. “I don’t know.”
Lisa had the feeling that her client, if not precisely lying to her, was at least possessed of more knowledge than he was letting on to her. It didn’t surprise her. One canon of criminal law that she had had drummed into her in law school was this: Your client always lies. She had experienced it herself with her clients, and not only in the criminal cases she had had. All clients wanted to present their best case to their attorney, even if it meant hiding a few things that would later sabotage their case. She wasn’t sure how much of it was sheer denial, the hope that if they hid the negative things from their attorney, they wouldn’t really exist, and how much of it was the simple human desire to look good in the eyes of their new ally. Whatever it was, it all too often backfired. But no matter how many times she warned them, it was rare that some little lie didn’t surface at some point during a case to muddy it up.
She started to press Benny about it but decided to let it slide. Whatever Benny was concealing, it wasn’t really the point. What mattered was that Sheriff Sutton had hauled Benny off to jail.
“So—when you didn’t say whatever he was hoping you would say, what happened?”
“Finally he told me he was gonna have to take me down to his office.”
“Did he say why?”
Benny shrugged again. “I don’t know. ’Cause I wasn’t telling him anything.”
“Is that what he said? Specifically?”
Benny frowned, concentrating. “I don’t remember exactly what he said. I think he said he wanted to ask me some questions, and, oh, yeah, he made me get out of the car, and there was this beer can on the floor, and he picked it up and asked me if I’d been drinking. And I said, no, ’cause I hadn’t.”
“Did he give you a test? Breathalyzer, walking straight, anything?”
“Nah. He knew I wasn’t drunk. Only there was some beer still in the can, see, and so he was saying I was a minor in possession,