“Well, if it turns up…” he said, and let the thought drift off.
“Robert, how are you?” He stretched out his hand, and Torrez gave it a brief, polite pump, letting a nod suffice as an answer.
“Is Kenny still living at home?” the undersheriff asked, and the question was such an abrupt change of subject that for a few heartbeats Sam Carter went blank.
“Kenneth?”
“Yes. Your son.”
The grocer’s mental gears meshed and he nodded. “Oh, yeah. Well…I should say most of the time. When there’s laundry for his mother to do, and when he gets hungry.” Carter smiled lamely. “You know how they are. Why? I mean, why do you ask?”
Torrez tossed the black notebook back on the front seat of his car and then straightened up. He was a full head taller than Sam Carter, and he leaned his elbow on the roof of the patrol car and regarded the chairman of the county commission for a moment.
“He was spending quite a bit of time with Jennifer Sisson. I’d like to talk with him, see if I can clear up a few things.”
Carter’s head jerked with disapproval. “I guess there are probably a lot of girls that he spends time with, and as far as I know, the Sisson girl might well be one of them. I don’t know. But what did you need to clear up? What kinds of things?”
“One of the deputies saw your son that night and Jennifer Sisson as well. There’s a chance that they spent some time together. If there’s even a remote possibility that Kenny knows something or heard something, then I need to talk to him.”
Carter grimaced. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You guys are really on a wild-goose chase with this one.”
Torrez and I both looked at Carter with renewed interest.
“And now why is that, Sam?” I said.
“Well, Christ, the man got careless and dropped a big tire on himself. Everybody says that’s what happened. Stupid thing to do, working late like that, bad light. Somebody told me they’d been arguing all day, so Jim’s upset. Hell, I can see that. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“Maybe so,” I mused. “But until we clear up all the inconsistencies, then we’re just going to plod along.”
Sam Carter, chairman of the county commission and successful supermarket owner, drew himself up to his full five feet, eight inches and painted on his best sanctimonious face, the one he used in commission meetings when some worthy agency was asking for a budget increase. “Just remember, Sheriff, that you’ve got a widow and four children sitting at home. Don’t plod too slowly.”
“I’m sure they’ll be well taken care of,” I said.
Carter nodded slowly. “I’m asking the Posadas State Bank to initiate an account for them, so we have someplace to put donations.”
“That’s good.” I didn’t bother to add that it was going to be interesting to see just how much sympathy and goodwill Grace Sisson’s acid tongue would reap. “She’s got some close friends, I’m sure.” I knew of one, but Taffy Hines didn’t fit my description of a deep-pocketed financial benefactor.
“Where’s Kenny working this summer? Out of town somewhere?” Bob Torrez asked.
“Yes, he is,” Sam said. “He’s got just a few weeks left until he goes back to school. He’s working with LaCrosse, over in Deming.”
“Then maybe I’ll swing by this afternoon, when he gets home. You might tell him I need to talk with him.” Torrez reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card, handing it to Carter.
“If I haven’t seen him by the time you do, have him give me a call.”
Carter nodded. “OK. I don’t know what he can tell you, but I’ll mention it to him.”
When Carter had gone back inside, Torrez looked at me and grinned. “You want odds that Kenny Carter knocked up the Sisson kid?”
“No,” I said. “And I wonder if Sam Carter knows.”
“Probably not.”
“Parents are usually the last ones to hear the joyous news,” I said. “And I can’t imagine that Kenny would have gone over to confront Jim Sisson, either. That doesn’t fit what kids do.”
“It’s interesting that he works for LaCrosse, though.”
“Which LaCrosse are you talking about?”
“LaCrosse Construction, over in Deming. Lots of heavy equipment.” He smiled and opened the door of his car. “Good place for a little experience. Maybe the kid’s got some talent with a backhoe that LaCrosse doesn’t know about.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
We didn’t wait for the afternoon. Fifteen minutes after we left Sam Carter and his Dumpsters, we were headed up the ramp to the eastbound interstate and the thirty-minute jog to Deming.
It wasn’t that Kenny Carter had jumped to the top of any suspect list we wished that we had. But trouble in the Sisson household either centered around or was at least exacerbated by daughter Jennifer. She was their own little tropical depression, waiting to blossom. Kenny Carter was right smack in the eye of Jennifer.
Years before-hell, decades and decades before-I had been half of the team that coped with four teenagers, including two daughters. And I suppose there had been times when I viewed any teenage boys other than my own who roamed near our home as potential predators who had my daughters’ virtue in their sights.
Those days had passed, and both daughters had managed to survive adolescence, early loves and breakups, the stresses of college, and, finally, the early years of their own marriages without putting the family through seven versions of hell.
The Sissons hadn’t been so lucky, if luck was what it took. The script for Life with Jennifer might have been enough to drive Jim out into the dark solitude of the backyard, where he could take his fury out on something that didn’t talk back.
I could well imagine that if Jim Sisson had suspicions about Kenny Carter’s relations with Jennifer and if young Kenny had wandered into the yard that night wanting to talk to his girlfriend’s old man, then fireworks could well have followed.
If that scenario was true, one thing was certain: The boy hadn’t hung around the Sisson premises afterward, holding the grieving Jennifer’s hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually seen Kenny Carter-and I certainly hadn’t caught sight of him that night when we’d responded to the domestic dispute call. If he’d been there, the Sisson women, Jennifer included, were keeping mum. And that in itself was excuse enough for a chat with the lad.
I didn’t know Kenneth Carter well. I could pick him out of a crowd of teens, but that was about all. I didn’t know his habits. But he was a connection, tenuous as it might be. State Trooper Mike Rhodes knew a little of the relationship between his nephew and Jennifer, had seen them together enough that it had lodged in his memory. Sam Carter, the ever patient father, would probably be the last one to know-especially since he impressed me as the kind of father who wore pretty solid blinders when it came to his own kid.
“It’s interesting,” I said to Bob Torrez as we hurtled toward Deming, “that Kenny Carter didn’t work for Sisson.”
Torrez frowned. “Jim had two employees,” he said. “And bank records show that he was overextended. So I don’t know. One more wage, even at minimum, might have been more than he could take.”
“How much extended?”
“For this last financial quarter he had to take out a small loan just to meet the payroll obligations…let alone anything else.”
“You haven’t wasted any time,” I said.
“Judge Hobart was cooperative, as usual.” Torrez grinned. “And so was Penny Arguile, at the bank, once the court order was processed that allowed us in to look at the records.”
“Any big creditors knocking at the door?”
Torrez shook his head. “It seems to me more like a gradual buildup. Sort of like a rockslide. First a pebble or two, then some bigger, then bigger, then bigger. Pretty soon Jim’s got the whole hillside crashing down on top of him.” He glanced over at me.
“With some help, of course.”
“Grace Sisson was concerned about that,” I said. “That new front loader was one of the first things she mentioned when we talked to her this afternoon in Cruces. I would guess the damn thing was a bone of contention between Jim and her.”