Red, Green, or Murder

Chapter Twenty-seven

Why anyone would want Assessor Jack Lauerson’s job, I didn’t know. Tax is a four-letter word to most folks, myself included. I loved my ancient, sprawling hacienda on Guadalupe Drive, with its too many rooms, sunken library with flagstone floors, all graced with a patio shaded by immense cottonwoods and dense brush that I was going to trim someday. But I cringed every year when Jack’s office sent my tax notice.

By giving Francis and Estelle Guzman the rear four acres of my spread for their new clinic, I’d cut my tax liability a bit…but the annual assessment would still hurt. I felt a little sympathy for the assessor, though. Jack Lauerson must have developed hide tougher than an aging steer. I’d rather deal with armed felons or bovines afflicted with mad cow disease. I couldn’t imagine that the assessor saw many folks who stopped by his office door just to say, “My God, Jack…you did such a great job assessing my house! Thanks a lot! Can I buy you lunch?”

Jack Lauerson’s secretary, a gal who had been in my youngest son’s high-school class and thirty years later still looked like the teenager who’d almost stolen the boy’s heart, beamed at me from behind a mountain of papers.

“Hi, Sheriff!” she chirped, a year behind the loop when it came to titles. “What’s up? Hi, Estelle. Are you keeping this guy on the straight and narrow?” Was I really that wayward, I wondered.

“I’m trying,” Estelle said. And I was trying to remember the young lady’s name. The plaque on the desk said Wanda something, but I couldn’t read the last name. And if my memory served me even a little bit, that last name was the third or fourth for the young lady. “Is Jack available?”

Wanda swiveled her chair to scan the crowded office. One of the other three clerks raised an arm and pointed a finger, and at the same time I spied Jack Lauerson kneeling by a huge file-one of those enormous things with banks of four-foot wide, shallow drawers that stores maps spread out flat and unfolded.

“Caught him,” I said. “May we come around?”

“Of course you can.” Wanda beamed again. Estelle skirted the counter, dodged desks and cabinets and drafting tables, but I paused at the secretary’s desk. “We found this orphan out in the dumpster,” I said, handing her the big stapler. “Thought you might want it.”

Her face crinkled up in astonishment and disbelief. “The dumpster! My God. I wondered where that went.”

“Must have slipped into a trash can,” I said.

“Well, stranger things have happened,” Wanda said, and she turned the stapler this way and that. “My gosh.” She didn’t ask why we’d been rummaging through dumpsters. “Thanks, sir.” I nodded and followed Estelle, arriving at Jack Lauerson’s elbow without trashing half of Posadas County’s records.

Hands deep in the third drawer from the bottom, the assessor looked up at us over the tops of his half glasses as we approached. Small-town folks often wear several hats, and Lauerson was no exception. He’d found the time to coach the high-school varsity girl’s volleyball squad to four state championships, making him the odd combination of hero in one life, villain in another. The fit and trim coach could probably outrun most enraged taxpayers, but I knew he didn’t depend on that. It was hard to stay mad at Jack Lauerson for very long. He’d scratched his head in puzzlement over property values for so long that his hair was thinning to a few strands, combed straight back, stuck to his skull with some kind of shiny gunk.

“You guys have the look,” he said. He extracted a hand from the file, letting a sheaf of maps fall back into place, and shook hands first with Estelle and then with me. His grip was firm and brief, and he took a second to pat the maps back into place before he stood up without a single crack or creak of bones. He nudged the drawer closed with the pointed toe of his boot.

“We need some information, if you have a minute,” the undersheriff said.

Lauerson held out both arms to include the entire, cavernous office complex. “All is public information under this roof,” he said. “You’re welcome to it all, either solo or with a tour guide.” He looked at the Seth Thomas on the wall. “Is this a quick thing, or a long, involved search for deeply buried secrets, sheriff?” He smiled helpfully, apparently willing to go either route.

“We’ll need a guide,” I said quickly, fearful that Estelle might want to wander off, rooting and burrowing on her own, the hours flying by until we’d missed supper as well. Months from now, they might find our two dusty skeletons over behind one of the files.

Lauerson settled back against the corner of a desk, crossed his arms, and cocked his head at us, ready to listen. “So,” he prompted. “I saw you two across the hall with Kevin. Somebody’s world is ending, is it?”

“Sir, you have an organized listing of county properties, I would assume,” Estelle said.

Lauerson laughed good-naturedly. “Of course. Now, some would argue the ‘organized’ thing. I think it’s organized. But yes. We live in a world of lists, Sheriff. That’s what we do.”

“If a taxpayer owns more than one piece of property, are those properties listed all together somehow?”

“You mean can we access information about each piece of property by the name of the owner? Of course.” He nodded slowly. “Actually, property is listed and mapped in a variety of ways. Over in the county clerk’s office, they have those wonderful old binders with the deed legends and whatnot? Our mission is a bit different over here. But we do have a master listing that’s always updated. Each time there’s a property transfer of any kind that’s recorded across the hall or a building permit that’s issued, our lists are updated.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. “Most of the time. We’ve been known to slip up on occasion.” Cocking his head, he regarded Estelle with interest. “What was it you were looking for, exactly? Do I get to know?”

“Suppose I wanted to inventory George Payton’s real estate holdings in the county. How hard is that to do?” she asked.

“Not hard at all,” Lauerson said. “Somebody told me this morning that George passed away. That’s a shame. He used to come in and grump at me from time to time. More as a way to pass the time of day than anything serious.” He pushed himself away from the desk. “You know, I had that thought this morning when I heard about his passing. When his estate is probated, all the records will be scrutinized. Lots of changes. Lots and lots of changes.” He crooked a finger at us. “Come.”

A young man at a drafting table looked up as we passed and flashed a smile of welcome. “Don’t mind the mess,” Lauerson said when we reached the mountain under which his own desk was buried. His clutter made Kevin Zeigler’s workspace look downright antiseptic. A vast collection of neatly rolled maps and documents was stacked strategically to avoid slumps and avalanches. A small area around his computer remained clear, and the assessor sat down and pulled himself up to the keyboard. In a moment, lists appeared. At least I thought they were lists. The print was so fine it could have been text for a new Biblical translation.

“Here’s how they’re listed,” he said, and scrolled down. “Let’s get to the P’s here. Padilla, Padilla, Padilla…there’s a lot of them. Patterson, Payne, Payton comma Bruce, no relation, Payton comma George. Wowser.” The screen suddenly created a black chunk of text, with a whole field of listings. “All these are George’s,” Lauerson said, running his pencil eraser down the screen.

I bent down on one side of the assessor, Estelle on the other. Lauerson scooted his chair back and rose. “Here, sit.”

“Go ahead sir,” Estelle prompted, and I did so, then read the entries-legal descriptions of property with all the range-township mumbo-jumbo, acreage to three decimal places, and zoning classifications of the properties. The final five columns compiled the five most recent annual valuations.

Jack reached past my shoulder and touched the last column, where the figures were bold-faced. “These are current assessed valuations,” he said. “This is what went out to every property owner on the last statement, half due in December, second half in the spring.”

“A guy sort of has to know,” I mumbled, cruising down through the numbers. The problem was that if I was interested in a piece of property, I thought of it as “that little patch out past the Torrance ranch, just off County Road 43.” But these were all legal descriptions, down to the last dotted ‘i’ and crossed ‘t’. “How do I tell what’s what?” I asked.

“Well, you find a translator,” Lauerson laughed. “What are you looking for in particular?” He scanned down the highlighted brick of entries. “This tells us that he owns fourteen parcels in Posadas County. It’s none of my business, but I happen to know that he owns property outside of the county as well. I know that he traded with Miles Waddell for some property up in Grant County, for instance.”

“May I have a copy of that?” Estelle asked quickly. “This whole listing?”

“Certainly you may.” Lauerson reached past me again and tapped computer keys. In a moment, the laser printer beside his desk came to life.

The undersheriff had never actually said what it was that she was tracking, but I had my own curiosities.

“George owned a little chunk of prairie out by Herb Torrance’s ranch,” I said. “Just north of Herb’s house, on top of that little mesa there.” Lauerson reached out and scrolled the screen a bit, then jotted a number or two down on a scratch pad.

“That would be 1453,” he said, and touched the screen with the tip of his pencil. “And actually, he owns three parcels out that way. Here’s the listing with the legal. It shows 11.325 acres. He paid $17.90 last year in property taxes on that piece you’re talking about.”

“Eighteen bucks,” I remarked.

“It’s unimproved range land, no utilities, no easy access to the county road, no nuttin’ except a great view. Now, when the BLM does some development with the cave property across the county road, he may have something. One guy I know is positive that some of the cave complex extends under that mesa. Up on top might be a killer location for a visitors’ center or something like that.”

“Like Carlsbad Caverns,” I said.

“Exactly. I heard some scuttlebutt that the BLM was planning to trade the land that they own across the road to the Park Service.”

“Interesting,” I said. “I wonder how those properties got chopped up so that we’re left with an eleven-acre parcel out there in the boonies, unrelated to anything else.”

“Well, records will tell you, if you want to research hard enough,” Lauerson replied. “Over the years, these things get divided, given away, forgotten, you name it. You could research the deed and have a better idea of the history. Now, 99 percent of the time, it has to do with either water or access to something. Neither one of those applies to this little mesa top, though. I couldn’t even guess why George bought it originally.”

“Because it was there,” I offered. “Maybe he liked the view.”

“Most likely that’s exactly right.” He laughed. “What’s the old saw…‘they ain’t makin’ no more land, pardner.’” He beckoned toward one of the huge filing cabinets. “Is that the only one you’re interested in? He owns this little chunk down here, too,” and he high-lighted 1456. “That’s a little more than seven acres.”

Estelle said reached out and indicated 1463, farther down the column. She had done a pretty good job of letting me run wild over her investigation so far. “I’m curious about the lot right behind this building,” she said. “Right behind the county building. The one that fronts the alley and then wraps around behind the old bank.”

“Okay,” Jack said, and he jotted numbers on his scratch paper. “Let’s look at the ones out west first.” Confronting the massive file cabinets, he pulled open the fifth drawer from the top. Flipping through the corners of the stack of maps, he found the one he sought and slipped it carefully out of the drawer, then carried it to the nearest sloped drafting table.

Before I had a chance to bring the thing into focus, he thumped a portion with his index finger. “This is Herb Torrance’s ranch-actually, let me correct that. This is the portion of Herb’s ranch where his residence is located. See County Road 14 right here?” I nodded, following the thin blue line down to its intersection with the state highway. Lauerson slipped the sharp blue pencil from his pocket and used it as a pointer. “That black symbol is his residence. And the various permanent outbuildings.”

The pencil pointer moved over to one of the blue lines. “This is the property boundary of Herb’s ranch. To the south is a block of land owned by George Payton that runs out to the county road. That’s 1456. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, one of the windmills that Herb uses is right there.” He touched the map gently.

“On George’s land.”

“That’s correct,” he nodded.

“How many acres is that plot?”

He cocked his head, reading the legend under the neatly printed name. “Seven point two one five, more or less.”

“A little seven-acre postage stamp,” I said. “Now what the hell is the point of that?” I meant it as a rhetorical question, since it was obvious that George Payton had collected and bartered land like some folks collect and trade postage stamps. But Lauerson was a walking, breathing property gazetteer, and he was eager to share what he knew.

“Oh,” he said, “always water out here. A good well, access to the county road? A great home site, for one thing. I mean, seven acres is ideal for that. Just a good investment. I remember how he got that one, too. In fact both of you probably do, too. George bought the property in a deal with old Reuben Fuentes, years ago.” He turned to smile at Estelle. “Your infamous uncle, if I’m not mistaken.”

“My great uncle,” she corrected. The relationship was actually more complicated than that, since Reuben had been Estelle’s adoptive mother’s uncle-making him a step-great-uncle. “He liked land, too.”

“Sure. Now this particular piece…I always wondered why Herb Torrance didn’t acquire the land when Reuben passed on. But he didn’t. George Payton jumped on it. I know that Herb uses the well, and I don’t know what kind of deal he had worked out with George. You’d have to ask him.”

“And the mesa parcel?”

“Those eleven acres are high and dry.” He traced the outline with his pencil. “Herb might have use of them for pasturage, I suppose. The parcel joins his land at the east end.”

I turned to Estelle, tapping the map just north of the mesa parcel. “Waddell’s drill rig is parked right here.”

“That’s BLM land,” the assessor said. “Waddell has grazing leases with them all through that area. He’s doing some range improvement, would be my guess.”

“Interesting place to do it,” I said.

“No comment,” Lauerson quipped. “You didn’t ask about them, but Payton had two other parcels a little to the north, too.” He stepped to the file and removed another map. “One parcel is 56.48 acres, the other is…” and he hesitated while he found the legend, “it’s 108.225 acres, more or less.”

“So about a hundred and sixty or so.”

“Yep. The larger one was part of the exchange deal with the Forest Service ten years ago or so. They wanted some land that George had up on Cat Mesa, so they cut a trade for this.”

“That’s another, what, about a mile on up the county road from Herb’s place?”

“More like two,” Lauerson said. “But in the same general neighborhood.”

“And all those parcels…they’re still in George’s name?” Estelle asked.

“As far as I know,” Lauerson said. “If he’s sold one or more parcels here recently, then there hasn’t been time for the information to make it over from the County Clerk’s office.”

“But that’s an instant transfer of information, is it not? When the deed is transferred in their files, it shows up on yours? All on computer?”

“Essentially correct.” He looked at the undersheriff and raised an eyebrow as if to say, “what’s next?”

“And the courthouse property?”

“Another map,” he said good-naturedly. From another filing cabinet two stalls down he searched for a few seconds and slipped out a sheet. “A really irregular-shaped piece, as I recall. It used to include the old Nolan Pet Shop, remember that? It burned way back when?”

“Back when there were enough people living in Posadas that someone could actually make a living selling goldfish and gerbils,” I said.

“Well,” Lauerson said, “it’s this narrow little parcel that runs down the side of the old bank’s rear parking lot, and then right over to the property boundary with the county building. The village had great plans when the bank moved into its new place behind Pershing Park. The city council had visions of an office complex that adjoined the county building. That never happened, and now we want to expand.”

The property lines were a jumble. “What’s that little piece assessed for?” I asked.

“Just a second.” Lauerson crossed to his desk and consulted the computer. In a moment he returned with a scrap of paper that he handed to me.

“This is current?” I asked, forwarding the paper to Estelle. “Sixty-two thousand bucks is a fair chunk of change for a postage stamp.”

“Well,” and he shrugged. “I could argue that it’s on the low side for a piece of property right downtown, right next to the county complex, right in the path of the planned expansion that’s in the works.”

“That’s not necessarily the market value, though.”

He laughed abruptly. “God, no. Not likely. Depends on who wants it and who’s selling it. The average right now for downtown properties is roughly a 150 to 200 percent of the valuation. Where this one goes is anyone’s guess. When they floated a bond issue to fund the additions and renovations, this little piece of land is what makes it possible. So it’s a seller’s market.”

“I never had the impression that George sold much,” I said. “He collected a lot. Anyway, he was planning to give this property to the county. His contribution to the project. He’s told me that a dozen times.”

“I heard he was going to do that. That would help Kevin’s budget.”

“If it happens,” I added. “Deals may change now.”

“Well, that’s true. They hadn’t moved to finalize that generous offer before he…before he died?”

“No, they hadn’t. And it was just a matter of days, too. Kevin had the county attorney working on it.”

“Ouch. Somebody is going to have a good time straightening it all out,” Lauerson added. “It’ll fall in Maggie’s lap, I suppose.”

“That’s what she’s good at,” I said. I turned and looked at Estelle. “What do you think?”

“I have a favor to ask,” she said. “I know it’s a bother, but you have records for fourteen properties owned by George Payton. That’s the whole list in Posadas County?”

“You’d like some copies?” the assessor guessed.

“I really would. You don’t have a way of telling what he might own in surrounding counties? Grant, Luna, Catron?”

“Ah, no. You’d have to contact the county offices in each one. I could do it via e-mail for you, but you can do it just as quickly yourself. Let me fetch what material we have for you.” Less than fifteen minutes later, we had not only the list, but a neat little stack of plats. Lauerson tapped the pile into order, ranked by ascending file number, clipped the lot together, and slid them into a shiny blue folder with the Posadas County seal on the cover.

“Absolutely wonderful,” Estelle said. “Will you make time so we can buy you lunch?”

I was delighted but astounded to hear her say that, since as far as I’d ever been able to tell, she had the daily caloric intake of an anorexic gnat and was deaf to my occasional whimpers of gastronomic suffering.

Jack Lauerson glanced at the clock again, held up a finger, and walked quickly back to his desk. He shuffled through half a dozen Post-it notes that had accumulated, frowning at one of them, and then nodded. “Never turn down a free meal,” he said. His waistline looked as if his idea of lunch was half a tuna sandwich on whole wheat with ice tea as a chaser. What a trio of extremes we made.

As we walked out of the office, Lauerson held the door for Estelle. “How are the plans for the new clinic coming along?”

“Always a few kinks,” she said. “But fine. I think.”

He laughed. “Bill, wait ’til you see what that place does to property values in that part of town. Your neighbors will be delighted with you.”