Easy Errors by Steven F Havill

Author:Steven F Havill [Havill, Steven F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781464209253
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2017-07-25T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“We’re closed.” What a cheerful, welcoming greeting. Victor Sanchez glanced up at me as I entered the back door—the kitchen door—of the Broken Spur Saloon, a door with the equally cheerful, welcoming sign, “Keep Out.” I knew he wasn’t closed. Not at six-thirty in the evening, height of the dinner hour. Victor would think about closing sometime after midnight, when it was time to usher the drunks home.

He couldn’t be too busy to talk, since there were only two vehicles out front, a Volkswagen plated to Delaware, the other a long-of-tooth Ford three-quarter-ton hitched to an empty livestock trailer, the whole battered rig licensed to Gus Prescott, a local rancher. I had eased the Crown Vic in behind the building, between Victor’s late-model Cadillac and the front steps of his mobile home, then radioed dispatch to tell them where I was.

My entry wasn’t a surprise for Victor, since I’d rapped on the door at the same time I turned the knob. At least I didn’t catch a colander of reject greens that he was in the habit of pitching out the back door to feed the skunks and peccaries.

Victor stood with his back against one of the big refrigerators, left arm across his comfortable belly with that hand buried in his right armpit, right hand holding a white porcelain cup of coffee. He didn’t look especially overworked.

“I got me this fancy front door out there,” he said ungraciously. “You lookin’ for dinner?”

“As a matter of fact,” I answered.

“You’re looking for something else, too.” He looked me up and down, coming to what conclusion, I didn’t know. “Cheeseburger enough?”

It took me a scant second to consider that. “That would be fine. And some of your delectable fries.” He made no move toward production, so I launched into it. With Victor, predictability was a losing battle beyond his cranky attitude. Location, location, location. That’s what kept customers coming, not his cheerful spirit.

“You probably heard about last night.”

“Which part of it?” Victor’s big, square face, framed by a thick mane of heavily oiled raven black hair and a newly sprouted little goatee that tried to balance his mustache, showed no surprise or concern.

“We had four kids killed, one of ’em right up here in Bender’s Canyon, the other three in an MVA just off the interstate at Posadas. I think—we think—that the four were all together down here at some point.” One of his black caterpillar eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Not here, not here in the Broken Spur, but in the canyon,” I added.

He pushed himself away from the fridge, pulled open the door, and drew out a stainless steel bowl carrying a couple of pounds of ground beef covered in plastic wrap. He set it on the center butcher block table, and went to the sink where he methodically washed the armpit off his hands, then toweled them dry. Next came a generous handful of frozen fries, snapping and frothing as he placed the basket in the deep fat. My stomach growled.

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