Red, Green, or Murder

by Steven F Havill

  “Whatever I can do to help clear things up,” Zeigler said, and I liked him all the more.

  “We’re just getting started,” Estelle said. “Give us a few days. Once things are cleared up…” That was as far as she was prepared to go in discussing the case, and Zeigler was astute enough realize it. He settled back in his chair, staring at the mass of paperwork awaiting his attention.

  “‘I ain’t going to pay no goddamn lawyers,’” Zeigler said, growling a fair imitation of George Payton’s crusty baritone. “That’s what Mr. Payton told me. That’s why I offered to have Simmons work up the paperwork for him. But that prompts an obvious question.”

  “And that is?” I asked.

  “Mr. Payton’s daughter is a realtor. It would seem logical to me that he’d just have her take care of the transfer.”

  I laughed. “Sometimes being a relative works, and sometimes it doesn’t,” I said. “Maggie Payton is a wonderful lady, Kevin. But she and her dad were about this far apart in personality,” and I held my hands out, spread wide.

  “And she might not approve of his giving the property away,” Zeigler added. “We were ready to pay fair market value for it, you know. It’s not as if we were trying to cheat Mr. Payton out of anything. But he wouldn’t hear of it. Once he decided to transfer the property for a dollar, that was that. No more discussion.”

  “I’m sure she knew that,” I said. “That may be why she didn’t pressure him.”

  “How much was the county going to offer?” Estelle asked.

  “Eighty-five,” the county manager said without hesitation. “That’s what we’d penciled in. Just for the lot that borders our current county building property.”

  “What was the current assessment on it?”

  Zeigler frowned. “You’d have to ask Jack Lauerson to be exact, but the figure I remember is about sixty.”

  I whistled. “Well, it’s location, location, location,” he said. “That’s what drives value in these things. The property is right downtown, an obvious addition to the county holdings. In fact, the expansion hinges on that property, so it jacks the value up even more. George could have held out and negotiated us up even more. In fact, if that property was on the open market, I’d expect it to go for close to a hundred. Maybe more.”

  “It’s my understanding that George owned a lot of properties around the county,” I said.

  “And some outside, I’m discovering,” Zeigler said. “What’s that guy’s name.” He leaned over and pawed through a mound of papers on the left side of his desk. “There’s a rancher up in Newton who wants us to extend a spur from County Road 14 to a piece of his property.”

  “Waddell?” I offered.

  “That’s it. Miles Waddell. He’s trying to pre-empt some development by the BLM over that way. It’s looking like the feds are going to develop something with the caves, as I’m sure you’re aware. Waddell called me a couple weeks ago and said that he was planning to trade a couple of pieces out of county to Mr. Payton for some little piece over that way.”

  “I saw his drill rig,” I said.

  “A little premature with that,” Zeigler said. “Anyway, there it is.” He glanced up at the clock. “I just saw Jack walk past, so if you’re needing to see him, this is a good time.”

  “It would be,” Estelle said, and pushed herself out of the chair. “Are you going to be free for lunch?”

  “I wish,” Zeigler said. “I need to head out to the county maintenance yard to see how much more money they’re going to need.” He smiled ruefully. “It never ends. You guys let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

  With the old chair molded around my backside, I was perfectly comfortable, but I could see that Estelle was edgy, so we left the county manager to fight his own fires. A visit to the assessor would add some intriguing parts to the puzzle. It was apparent that George Payton had been a little busier than I ever would have suspected.

  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, eithe
r 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 Torr
ance’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.”