“A twenty-seven-thousand-dollar bone,” Torrez agreed. “God knows what a new machine that size would cost, but a used one is bad enough. The bank records show it’s an ’82 model. Twenty-seven grand for a piece of machinery that’s eighteen years old.” He shook his head in wonder.
“Did you talk with Penny about that loan in particular?”
“She said the bank floated the paper with ‘some misgivings.’ They let Jim sign a five-year note, and she said that was longer than the bank likes to go. He asked for ten, but they refused.”
“So on top of everything else, on top of all his other debts, on top of his payroll, he’s paying out a chunk of money every month for that loan.”
“Five hundred and twenty-eight dollars and eleven cents, give or take. That’s at nine point seven five percent interest.”
“Jesus. He must have been planning to move a lot of dirt to pay for that.”
“Among other things, he was one of the bidders on the village’s project to extend the water line back behind your place, over on Escondido.”
“That’s nickel-dime stuff, though. A single ditch, maybe a mile of pipe at the most. A few trees to knock over, a little arroyo to fill. That’s if he won the bid in the first place. The profit from the whole job wouldn’t pay for one year’s payments on that machine.”
Torrez shrugged. “Maybe he was one of those folks who just loved machines.”
I shifted against the seat belt so I could rest my right elbow on the windowsill. “And young Kenny? What do we know about him?”
“We know that if he’s very lucky, he might graduate next year. He’s about a year behind, give or take.”
I looked at Torrez with surprise. “I didn’t know that.”
“An active social calendar.” Torrez grinned. “According to the principal, the kid has taken about all the vocational courses the school has to offer.”
“Which isn’t much.”
“No. But that means Kenny’s stuck with taking stuff like history and English and science if he wants to graduate.”
“Well, gee, what a shame,” I said. “And probably math…and stuff. How unfair can you get. He can’t just weld himself out of high school. At least he’s stuck with it so far. He hasn’t dropped out.”
“So far.”
“And Jennifer Sisson is going to be a sophomore.”
Torrez nodded. “If she stays in school.”
“They’ll be a cute couple along about February,” I said. “What other names do we have?”
“Jim Sisson’s two employees. Aurelio Baca has been with him for almost ten years and Rudy Alvaro is going on three. Both good, steady men. I don’t know too much about Baca except that he’s on a green card and lives just across the border, in Palomas. He’s got his own small plumbing business that he runs down there, on the side.”
“And Rudy?”
“He used to work for the village before he went over to Sisson’s. He’s one of my wife’s cousins.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” I said. “Did both men work Tuesday?”
Torrez nodded. “Baca left for Palomas at about ten after five. Rudy was still finishing up a few things over at the Randall job at six. He went straight home from there. He helped Jim trailer the front loader.”
“Did he come back to the yard to help him take it off?”
“He told me that Jim said he didn’t need to come back to the yard, that Jim thought that he could do it just fine by himself.”
“So nothing about either Baca or Alvaro piques your curiosity,” I said. “No loose ends?”
Torrez shook his head. “Not a thing.”
“Had Jim ever missed a payroll?”
“Nope. The Sissons have been rotating their utilities for a while-make the phone wait a month, then make the electric stand in line-but they’ve paid both Baca and Alvaro each week.”
“Huh.” I let my head slump back against the headrest. In the distance I could see the flat spread of buildings that marked Deming. “You think we’re wrong about this?”
“About Sisson’s death not being an accident, you mean? Not a chance, sir. Not a chance.” He glanced in the mirror and let the car drift into the right lane.
“People have been crushed accidentally by things like that before.”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure they have. Heavy equipment thinks up all kinds of neat ways to kill the operator. And if Jim had been found right close to the machine, maybe crushed up against the axle or something, I might have believed it. But not this way. The distances don’t make sense for it to have happened solo. My gut feeling is that someone took an opportunity, figuring that any investigation would just take the easy route. Big machine, dangerous wheel and tire combination, careless chain hookup. A dozen ways an accident could happen. But…” He stopped and thumped the rim of the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “If I’m wrong, you can let Leona Spears have the job in November.”
“Don’t say that, even in jest,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-eight
LaCrosse Construction was as large and evidently successful as Jim Sisson’s firm was small and struggling. The LaCrosse headquarters was a low, white stucco building about the same size as Sam Carter’s supermarket, a stone’s throw from the railroad track on the east edge of town.
Behind the building loomed the stone crusher tower where LaCrosse brewed its own batches of concrete. Dotted around the crusher like small mountain ranges were enormous piles of sand, gravel, crusher fines, even shiny black asphalt. Off to the west were thousands of railroad ties, neatly bundled, the old creosote fragrant in the hot sun.
Four concrete delivery trucks, their huge revolving drums sparkling clean and white, were parked fender-to-fender, with room for another half-dozen in the row.
“Some bucks here,” I observed. “LaCrosse probably does more miles of highway each year than any five of his competitors.” I cranked my neck around, surveying, the huge yard behind the office building. “Not a soul here, either.”
We parked in front of a windowless white doorway, immediately behind a late-model white Ford three-quarter-ton truck with the blue oval logo of LaCrosse Construction Company on its doors.
The sun bounced off the white building as I stepped onto the sidewalk, a solid blast of heat and light that made me gasp. I opened the door to a second blast, this one straight from the Arctic. Lacrosse hadn’t wasted time or space with foyers or receptionists sitting prettily at desks. Instead, we entered the building and found ourselves in a hallway with offices to either side, all but one of the doors closed.
The door had no sooner thudded closed behind us, locking in the frigid air, than a chunky woman appeared from the first door on the left.
“Hi, guys,” she said, and grinned as if we’d just made her whole day. “Don’tcha wish we’d get some warm weather soon, eh?”
I smiled. “Nice in here, though.” I stepped forward and extended my hand. “I’m Sheriff Bill Gastner from Posadas County. This is Undersheriff Robert Torrez.”
She pumped first my hand and then Bob’s. “And I’m EllenFae LaCrosse. What can we do for you?” She had that air of bustle and self-confidence that went with the name. A door opened farther down the hall, and two men wearing hard hats appeared and then walked away from us down the hall without a backward glance.
“Mrs. LaCrosse, we need to visit with Kenny Carter, if that’s possible. We won’t take much of his time.”
“Kenny?” She looked down at the floor for a moment, hands on her hips. She was short and stubby, maybe on the downside of fifty, with smooth, creamy, flawless skin that hadn’t been baked to leather from a lifetime of sitting outdoors on machinery.
“Kenny Carter,” I said. “He’s one of your summer kids.”
She looked up, grinning. “Oh, for sure I know who he is. God, we’ve known his family forever. No, I’m just trying to remember where he was working today. I think he’s over on Route Eleven.” She reached out a hand as if I were drifting away and she needed to reel me back in, “Let me go double-check.”