Dead Weight

Chapter Sixteen

I shut the engine off and sat quietly for a moment. A block west, a large moving van was pulled into a driveway across the street, its tractor wedged sideways against the curb, out of traffic. Nearly hidden behind the truck, a Las Cruces police patrol car was parked facing us.

Vista del Campo curved gracefully away from the main feeder street and the heavy stone wall that ran as far as the eye could see, undulating over what had once been the open valley. The housing project was surrounded by walls, like a vast, spreading fortress.

From the backyard of 2121, Grace Sisson’s parents had a marvelous view of the interstate, and if they craned their necks, they could see the spread of development east of the interstate as well.

“You’d sure as hell have to like people to live here,” I muttered, and Linda chuckled.

“Some people actually do, sir.”

In a decade, Grace’s parents, the Stevensons, would feel as if they lived downtown.

“Nice place,” Linda said, regarding the house.

“Uh-huh.” I guess it was, all bright and cheerful with its red-tile roof, manicured water-guzzling lawn, and tidy approach plantings. I was old-fashioned, preferring the dank insulation of old adobe in deep shade to the constant hum of a swamp cooler.

The sun was still hot as we got out of the car and so bright bouncing off the hood that I winced. A GMC Suburban with Posadas County plates was parked on the apron in front of the three-bay garage, and I walked up along the driver’s side with Linda following. All three garage doors were down and snug.

“Two cars and a boat,” I said.

“Sir?”

“That’s my bet. The boat’s in here.” I rapped the first door, the one directly in front of the parked Suburban, with my knuckle as I squeezed past. “And they haven’t had time to do much boating, either.”

Somewhere inside the house a small dog started yapping, and as we walked across toward the tiled entryway I could hear him racing through the house, making his way toward the front door.

Before I touched the bell, the front door was opened by a doughy-looking man in tan Bermuda shorts and a tan knit golf shirt. He was shorter than me, perhaps five-six or so, with thinning gray hair that he combed in a wave upward from his right ear and across his round, balding dome. He grinned a perfectly benign smile of greeting, but nothing cracked from about the bridge of his nose upward. His eyes were watchful, shifting first from me to Linda and then back to me. In one arm he held the pooch, one of those tiny creatures with long fur that covered everything but the twitching black nose.

“Reverend Stevenson?” I said pleasantly. “I’m Sheriff Bill Gastner, from Posadas. I think we’ve met once or twice over the years. This is Deputy Linda Real.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, pushing open the screen door. He thrust out a hand to Linda. “Mel Stevenson,” he said, and then shook my hand, his grip moist and limp, just a light squeeze of the ends of my fingers like a politician working the crowds. The dog squirmed in his grasp but stayed quiet.

“No one mentioned that you were stopping by, but I’m glad to see you just the same. What can I do for you folks?” he added, making no move to step out of the doorway. Before I could reply, he added, “This has been some sort of nightmare, I can tell you. Such a tragedy.”

“We’d like to talk to Grace,” I said, and Stevenson frowned as if taking offense that I might leave him out of the loop. “I realize it’s inconvenient, but it’s a lot easier than asking her to drive all the way over to Posadas.”

“Boy,” Stevenson said with a shake of his head. “She’s been through the wringer, you know what I mean?”

“I’m sure she has,” I said, knowing damn well that the good padre would rather that I’d said, “Oh, some other time, then.” I let my hand fall on the handle of the screen door. “We’ll make it as easy as possible. But we’d also like to talk with the children.”

Stevenson nodded and stood to one side. “I would have thought you were about wrapped up with this,” he said.

“Sometimes these things take us a while to sort out,” I said, and ushered Linda inside ahead of me. The foyer included a small fountain that babbled water over a cascade of rocks more colorful than any that nature had ever managed, with two small koi swimming lazy circles in the collection pool.

I saw Linda glance at the fountain and the fish, frown ever so slightly, and then turn away, her gaze sweeping across the spacious pastel living room to the bluestone fireplace at the far end. As a visual surprise, one long wall of the room was floor-to-ceiling bookcases, broken only by a recess that included a floor lamp and comfortable leather recliner. Many of the books were old, their dark, musty bindings in sharp, welcome contrast to the rest of the room.

With the exception of the book wall, the living room’s furnishings were standard stuff fresh out of Tract House Decorating Ideas-coffee table, wingback chairs, entertainment center, two lamps on gold swag chains, magazine stand…but the old recliner by the books said loudly on behalf of its owner, This is where I sit…Find your own chair.

“My daughter has spent all day trying to find some rest,” Stevenson said, carefully closing the front door against the heat. “I looked in on her less than an hour ago, thinking that she might be ready for some supper. But she was asleep, finally. You can imagine how loath I am to wake her.” He bent down and deposited the dog on the floor. It wagged the end that I assumed was the tail and then scampered out of sight, leaving a single high-pitched bark behind as a warning.

“Perhaps you’d check for us,” I said.

Stevenson stood perfectly still, his hands at his sides, regarding me. “If there’s some news that Grace needs to know, perhaps you could tell me, and when she wakes-”

“I wish we could do that,” I said. “But there’s a few things that need to be cleared up. It shouldn’t take long. If Grace is sleeping, maybe we can talk to the kids first. That’ll give her some more time.”

“OK, now, Mom took Melissa and Todd with her to El Paso. They’re picking up Marjorie at the airport. She’s flying in from San Diego this evening. She’s Jim and Gracie’s oldest, you know. Marjorie is, that is.”

“So both Jennifer and Grace are here now?” I said gently.

Mel Stevenson was about to reply when a voice barked from the back of the house, “Dad, who is it?” I had only met Grace Sisson a time or two, but I recognized her voice immediately.

“It’s Sheriff Gastner, honey,” Stevenson called back. “From Posadas.”

There was a pause and then, not quite so loudly, “Well, tell him to go away.”

Stevenson grimaced and ducked his head with embarrassment.

“Give me a moment, will you please?” he whispered.

“Sure,” I said. “Take your time.”

He left the room and I looked at Linda. “‘Tell him to go away,’” I said softly, and grinned. “There are a lot of folks who’d like to tell us that and have it work, I’m sure.”

“Does she have to talk to us?” Linda asked.

“No,” I said. “But it would be nice.”

While we waited, I stepped over to the bookcase and let my eyes roam over the volumes. Rev. Melvin Stevenson wasn’t a fan of reprints of the classics with fancy fake leather bindings in neat gold-leafed trophy sets. His were the real thing, and I whistled softly. Several appeared to be in German, their leather spines worn soft and smooth by many hands over many years.

“A scholar,” I mused. I was a fan of military history, with a library that eased my mind on frequent occasions when the country was quiet and insomnia reared its ugly head. I was no theologian, but the fact that I recognized many of the authors whose work resided on the pastor’s shelves didn’t surprise me. Religion and politics had often been a volatile mix over the centuries, with some of the nastiest wars a natural result.

“This doesn’t look like a household that’s used to having teen-agers around for extended periods of time,” Linda observed. She had moved to the edge of the foyer tile and stopped, the toes of her shoes touching the posh beige carpet.

Reverend Stevenson reappeared. “She’ll be out in a minute,” he said, and his tone was neutral. “Come on in and have a seat. Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee? Beer? Ice water?”

“No. thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the thought, though. Deputy Real might want something.”

Linda declined and remained a pace or two in from the door. I selected a straight chair near the television that looked as if it might take my weight without protest, but before I had a chance to settle and before Mel Stevenson faced the task of making conversation with us, Grace Stevenson Sisson appeared. She was rubbing her forehead and squinting, and she looked across the room at me with obvious irritation.

“Yes?” she said. She ignored Linda Real, and the single word served as all the greeting we were going to get.

Taking into account that Grace had had better days, I walked across the living room until I was close enough to smell the alcohol on her breath. She looked up at me and squinted, hand still massaging her forehead.

“Mrs. Sisson, I know that the deputies talked with you some yesterday, but there are some things that I need to go over with you. And I’d like to talk with the children, too.”

“Well, so…” she said, and shrugged. She made no move to settle in the living room, content to stand on the cool tile of the foyer.

“You want to come in and sit?” her father asked as he drifted over toward the fireplace, but Grace shook her head.

“No. I don’t want to sit.” She looked up at me again. “I don’t know what you want,” she said. “What am I supposed to tell you that we don’t already know?”

“How about telling me what happened Tuesday night, as best you can?” I said, trying my best grandfatherly tone.

“I already did that,” she said. “What was his name? Mears? I talked to him.”

“That’s the way these things go, Mrs. Sisson. We need to know if you remember seeing or hearing anything Tuesday night before your husband’s death. Or after, for that matter.”

“No. I was inside. The television was on. That’s what I told Mears.”

“No one came over earlier in the evening?”

She finished massaging her forehead with an irritated flourish and walked quickly past me into the living room. She plopped down in her father’s chair, and I settled for the nearest wingback, sitting forward on the edge, elbows on my knees.

“No,” she said. “You mean someone to see my husband? No, not that I know of.”

“Was Jim in the habit of working so late?”

“He worked all the time,” she said with considerable bitterness.

“Do you know what he was doing out there Tuesday night?”

“The new front loader had a flat tire.”

“How’d that happen?”

Grace sighed hugely and looked up at the ceiling. If she’d spent the day wracked with grief, she certainly had recovered nicely, slipping instead into a fine case of petulance. Talking slowly, she said, “He backed over a stake earlier in the day. Over at Bucky Randall’s place. He was mad because it ruined the tire.”

“What was he doing for Randall, do you know?”

“Of course I know. They were putting in new leach lines for the motel.”

“And he decided to trailer the machine back to the shop, instead of just making repairs there? At Randall’s?”

“Yes.” She said it as if I were just too dense for words.

“Is that particularly unusual for him to work out back during the evening? Does he do that a lot?”

“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.