Interesting. Especially in light of all the real-estate failures lately. "What about his crews. Do you have any idea how he gets along with his employees?"
Silence for a moment. "Rides his boys pretty hard, makes sure every minute on the clock is a minute of work. I can meet and match his bids, though, and I can guarantee I don't have the kind of labor problems he does."
"Labor problems?" she asked, trying to prompt him without sounding like she was doing so.
"Who've you been talking to?" Morse countered. "I could tell you better if I knew."
A shrewd man; she had the notion that he wanted to know if anything he said could get him into trouble.
"Some of his employees," she said absently, trying to get down the apple without sounding like she was eating. "I may talk to some other people who aren't working for him right now."
"Well, miss, like I said, he's kinda hard. There's some folks that just don't like him being that tight on the clock, and they kinda got a problem with that. Are you working with that fella name of Sleighbow that called me?"
She decided she might as well loosen up a little. If Sleighbow had sent this man to her, it was probably safe to be a little less obtuse. "Yes, actually," she replied.
"Well, I got some of Calligan's people here, they're Indians-they don't think too highly of the man. They said he's got an attitude about things they feel pretty strong about." He sounded as if he was feeling her out. "Pardon my asking, miss, but are you Indian?"
"Yes," she said, figuring it wouldn't do any harm. "Why?"
Silence again. "I talked to them, trying to figure out why they left. They said it was because they figure he's disrespectful of the earth, and if you was Indian too, I reckoned you'd know what they meant." The man sounded puzzled. "I don't get it, but they feel pretty strong. They say he's disrespectful of the ancestors too; the way they carry on sometimes, you'd think he was out there every day bulldozin' down churches or something."
"Well, I think I can understand how they feel," she replied, trying to think of a way to give this apparently well-meaning fellow some insight. "Imagine how you'd feel if some punks got into the graveyard where your grandparents are buried and wrote graffiti all over the gravemarkers."
"I guess I'd get pretty hot about it," Morse admitted. "I guess they are too, then."
"Could be." She checked her watch again. "Mr. Morse, thank you. If you have anything more specific to tell me, call me collect, all right?"
"That'll be fine," he said cheerfully. "Glad I could help. G'night, Miss Talldeer."
"Thank you, Mr. Morse." She hung up; unfortunately, the man hadn't told her anything she hadn't already heard from Sleighbow. Getting steamed about something and doing anything about it were two different things. And this still sounded more like a terrorist action than something concocted by a disgruntled employee. People who hated your guts came after you personally with a gun; they didn't blow up a bulldozer and take out only fellow employees.
Well. It had been a long day, and it was likely to get a lot longer. She'd better get on the road again.
The phone rang just as the Calligans were halfway through dinner. Toni Calligan started, her hazel eyes going wide, and pushed away from the table to grab it before it disturbed her husband. But Rod waved her back to her seat, before she could get up.
"I'm expecting a call," he said. "Go ahead and eat; this won't take long."
He left his dinner on the table, knowing that if it did take longer than he thought it would, Toni would automatically take his half-finished plate off to the kitchen to rewarm it. He had her well trained.
He picked up the phone on the extension in his office just as it got to the fourth ring. "Calligan," he said, shortly. If this was a siding salesman-
"Smith," said the voice on the other end. "You wanted more information, I got it for you."
Rod took down notes as Smith rattled off a short biography of this "Jennifer Talldeer" who had been assigned to him. Mother, father, brothers, grandfather living with her--there didn't seem to be a lot of leverage there, except for strong-arm tactics, and it wasn't at that level yet.
Then he got to the interesting tidbit. "Seems like she takes on some no-pay cases on her own time," Smith said. "She goes after Indian bones and artifacts and sends them back to the tribes they came from. She just shipped off a box of stuff like that within the week, in fact. If she's doing this for nothing, I'd say she's pretty motivated about it."
"Oh, really?" Rod Calligan's hand moved of itself to his good-luck charm in his pants pocket, but his eyes moved to the boxes of loot from that Indian graveyard, artifacts that had looked like they might be worth something, and which he hadn't used to salt the construction site.
He smiled.
"What do you mean by that?" Smith demanded testily.
Rod's smile widened. "Only," he replied softly, "that I think I can promise I know how to pull her strings."
_CHAPTER SIX
this had been her first full day on the case. By now, sunset was only a memory, and Jennifer was just grateful she knew the entire Tulsa metroplex like her own backyard. Otherwise it would have been impossible to find all these addresses. Some of these little suburban areas had streets that wound around through them with no plan that she could make out. This was one of them, and it took her fifteen minutes to find the right "Ridley," for there was a "Ridley Street," a "Ridley Way," a "Ridley Court," .and a "Ridley Place," all within blocks of one another. She pulled the Brat up in front of the third house on her list, only to find it dark, with no signs of vehicles anywhere. Not in the garage, nor the driveway, nor the street outside.
What is this, bingo night? It's too early in the year for Softball league, and too late for bowling. This was ridiculous; there hadn't been a single soul home so far who was on her list of Calligan's ex-employees. It was beginning to feel like an episode of "The Twilight Zone."
Well, no point in sticking around here. There was some traffic on the road, but not much. She waited until the car behind her had pulled around her parking place, then got back on the street again. Surely someone was going to be home!
The fourth name on her list was a guy who lived out in Sand Springs, not Tulsa. With any luck, whatever it was that had pulled everyone out of their houses here in town would not be something that someone in Sand Springs would want to drive all the way into Tulsa for. At the end of a long workday, a twenty-minute drive could seem much too long.
Unless it's a Garth Brooks concert or something. Nothing too much to go through for a Garth Brooks concert.
That was a facetious thought of course. If there had been anything that big in town, she'd have known about it weeks ago.
The drive out to the Springs was uneventful; sunset brought cooler temperatures, and she was able to roll the windows down instead of using the A/C. Heat lightning flickered in the clouds overhead, illuminating them for a brief moment in a flash of orange. The color always made her think of orange sherbet, a childhood hangover from nights spent sitting out on the porch, watching the lightning and the lightning bugs, and sharing a bowl with one of the cats.
Her next target lived a little out of town on a county road, and as she neared the house, she knew that this man, at least, was not off somewhere. His driveway was full of cars and trucks, and his yard held the overflow. The little white frame house was lit up inside and out, and it was clear that the owner expected all this company.
As she pulled into the driveway and parked her car behind the last one in the line (a red pickup), she had a sinking feeling that now she knew where everyone on her list was. Someone had gotten wind of trouble, and this was how they were dealing with it.