“Yes, I said. Those goddam machines just about eat us out of house and home. We just got done putting a thirty-four-hundred-dollar transmission in the one, and then he buys the new machine and, just about the first time out, ruins a tire.”
“The price of doing business, I suppose.” That drew a dismissive sniff from Grace. I stopped and pulled a small notebook out of my pocket. “Mrs. Sisson, on Tuesday, Undersheriff Torrez was called to your place on three separate occasions, all three times by neighbors.”
“Well, duh,” she said, and rolled her eyes heavenward. “I wish they’d mind their own business.”
“I’m sure they meant well,” the Reverend Stevenson said.
“Oh, right,” Grace retorted. “We should have built the fence about twelve feet tall.”
“What were the disputes about?” I asked.
Grace Sisson hesitated, then said, “Why should I answer that?”
I looked at her with curiosity. “Because it makes sense to answer it, Mrs. Sisson. An officer visited your home three times on the same day as your husband’s death, responding to a domestic dispute complaint. Knowing what went on would help us establish something about your husband’s frame of mind.”
“His frame of mind was that he was pissed, Sheriff. He was mad at the damn tractor; he was mad at Bucky Randall for having junk all over his yard; he was mad at me because…well, maybe because the hamburgers were overdone. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s anybody’s business but Jim’s and mine. We fight a lot, but that’s our business. Nobody else’s. That’s what I told Torrez, or whatever his name is, too. I never asked him to come over.”
“Did your neighbors have reason to think that the arguments you and Jim had would turn into something else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Turn physical? Violent?”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because they called the sheriff’s office. Three times.”
Grace Sisson turned a bit in the chair so that she was looking directly at me. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman, just a bit on the heavy side, with frosted hair that she kept cut short, layered over the ears.
“What difference does it make, anyway?” she said finally. “Jim’s dead. What they thought or didn’t think doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. I don’t know how he managed to drop that stupid tire on himself, but he did. Now what are we going to do? As if there weren’t problems enough already.”
She said it as if Jim Sisson’s death were just another unexpected monthly bill.
Chapter Seventeen
“Mrs. Sisson, I can appreciate how difficult this is for you and your family,” I said, “but there are a couple of things I need to ask you that Deputy Mears didn’t.” I flipped a page in the notebook and stared down at the blank lined page.
“The arguments that you had with your husband on Tuesday…did they concern your daughter Jennifer?”
The question fell on silence and stayed there for about the count of ten, and then Grace snapped, “My God, where the hell do you get off?”
“Now, Gracie,” her father said. He’d been leaning against the fireplace, one elbow on the mantle, both hands clasped as if he were deep in prayer. Maybe he was.
“No, really,” Grace Sisson said, getting to her feet. “Now listen, just in case you’re stupid, Mr. Gastner-”
“I’m not.”
“Whatever. I already told you that what my husband and I argued about is no one’s business but our own. Period. End of story.”
She stepped onto the foyer tile with a sideways glance at Linda. I don’t know what kind of expression Grace expected Linda Real to wear in response to the woman’s performance, but Linda looked studiously unimpressed. Who knew-maybe Linda thought I was stupid, too.
Grace would have left the room without another word, I’m sure, but her daughter appeared around the corner, hesitating when she saw the look on her mother’s face. Jennifer Sisson was a cute kid, fifteen years old going on twenty-eight or so. She was barefoot, wearing a white halter top that advertised the considerable extent of her charms and a pair of white shorts that must have chafed like hell in hot weather. Her tanned midriff sported a little roll of fat, and her face was round and full.
“And none of this concerns you,” Grace snapped at her daughter. She took the girl’s elbow and started to turn her around but stopped and looked back at me. “I assume that we’re finished?”
“You assume wrong,” I said.
Grace Sisson didn’t exactly fit the mold of a widow trying to comfort her children from recent heartache, and I wondered what argument had led the pastor’s wife to flee the house with the other two youngsters.
“We’re all under a great deal of strain,” Stevenson said, and he pushed himself away from the fireplace. “Gracie, I really think you should just sit down here for a minute and hear the sheriff out. It won’t hurt to answer a question or two.”
“I’ve answered everything I need to answer,” Grace said. “A stupid accident killed my husband.” She glared at me. “And if you can figure out how to wave a magic wand to pay the mortgage, the car payments, the dental bills, machinery loans, and the God knows what all else, then maybe we’ve got something to talk about. Otherwise, I’m tired.”
“Now that’s interesting,” I said, and grinned a little. I took another step toward Grace and her daughter, thrust my hands in my pockets, and looked at them both over the tops of my glasses.
Grace managed about a three-second scrutiny before she snapped, “What’s interesting?”
I took my time, watching Grace closely, assessing. The woman favored blunt, so that was the way I decided to play it. “Mrs. Sisson, we’re investigating your husband’s death as a homicide.”
The sound of that last word had the desired effect-as if the woman had been struck between the eyes with a ball-peen hammer. Her eyes widened with the initial shock, then narrowed with disbelief. “Now where…now where did this fairy tale come from?” she asked.
“It’s pretty simple, really,” I said gently. “Someone came onto your property Tuesday night while Jim was working out back. The report from the medical examiner isn’t finished yet, but we have every reason to believe that your husband was crushed under that tire intentionally. Someone was there. And someone probably knows who.”
Mel Stevenson strode swiftly across the room and reached out to take his daughter by each arm. He leaned forward and looked hard into her eyes. “Grace,” he managed, and then choked. He cleared his throat. “Sheriff, are you certain of all this?”
“Reasonably so, yes.”
“My God.”
“Mrs. Sisson, you can see why we need to know some basic information. Any detail, regardless of how trivial it may seem to you, might help us find your husband’s killer.”
It was a standard spiel, and I said it in place of what I really wanted to say-something simple like Mrs. Sisson, do you know how to operate a backhoe? But there would be time for that later.
“You honestly think that someone came into our yard and killed my husband?” she asked. “While the three children and I were in the house?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?” I asked. “You said yourself that you weren’t aware of what was going on outside.”
“I said I didn’t hear anything. That’s different.”
I shrugged and glanced at my watch. “Mrs. Sisson, we’re pressed for time. Given the nature of the case, my best advice to you would be to stay available.” I smiled helpfully. “The district attorney will probably want to talk to you about what you remember…or don’t.”
Grace Sisson shook off her father’s hands. “I need to talk with my own lawyer,” she said. “I’m going home.”
She turned and marched out of the room, daughter in tow.
“Grace, I think it’s time. We’re not gaining anything this way,” her father called after her.
The woman turned at the sound of her father’s voice, and I was taken aback at the venom. “Now that’s enough,” she said, and her voice had sunk to a whisper. “I’m going home.”