A Foreboding Felony

by Constance Barker

  Elle held up a finger. “Unless her death was just a cruel reminder that now you’d lost her completely. Knowing there was no way to win her back might’ve triggered a new rage.”

  He considered the possibility. “I can see how you might see it that way. Funny, it didn’t even occur to me. I see your point, but even if you are right, if that had been my reaction, wouldn’t that have moved me into action a year ago when she died? Why would I wait another year?”

  “He has a point,” Charli said.

  “He does,” Elle said, reluctantly.

  Terri turned back to Paul. “Just for argument’s sake, and for completeness, can you tell us where you were the day he died? Two days ago?”

  Paul thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact I was at the cattle auction in Lordsburg.”

  “They auction cattle?” Charli asked.

  “Don’t you ever watch old Westerns?” Elle asked, laughing. “Did you think they stick the cows in a shop window and have people come in and put them in shopping carts?”

  “How people buy cows hasn’t ever popped up on my radar at all. Not even once,” she said.

  “They have auctions there once or twice a year,” Paul said. He grinned at Charli. “I mean cattle auctions, not shopping carts.”

  “And how do you get meat the rest of the year?” Charli asked. Now she was curious.

  “Various places. Salesmen come by representing the wholesale places. That’s the easy way to buy, but I had a special order from the Ranch House Restaurant for some grass-fed beef, so I went to the auction. That gives me a better markup and then I can sell off the rest as extra profit.”

  Terri nodded. “So several people there could vouch for you?”

  “Sure. But I can do better than that,” he said. He opened a drawer and took out a folder; after a quick glance, he shoved it across the table to Terri. “Since the trip is tax deductible, and I didn’t want the IRS thinking I went just to visit a friend, I saved all the receipts. There’s the contracts with my signature, a motel receipt and, if you do like the cops on television and check my credit cards, you’ll find I bought gas at the Love’s station there the day before he was killed. The station is right on I-10 and that receipt is there too.”

  Terri glanced at the papers. “A hot dog? You had a hot dog for breakfast?”

  He shrugged. “It looked pretty good at the moment.”

  Terri sighed and looked up at Elle. “Looks like a pretty compelling alibi to me,” she said, passing them over to Elle.

  “And complete?” Paul asked, chuckling. “You wanted completeness.”

  The way he smiled at Terri suggested to Charli that it wouldn’t be long before a certain policewoman was going to get a call from a citizen that had nothing to do with 911. Paul seemed to like what he saw. That meant two local guys found her interesting.

  “And complete,” she agreed.

  Elle took the folder and saw the dated contract. It was even time stamped as was the gas receipt. “How long does it take to drive there?”

  “Lordsburg?” Terri asked. “A few hours.”

  “Takes me about four hours one way,” Paul said.

  Terri nodded. “The fastest way is to drive into Las Cruces and get on I-10. It's close to the Arizona border.”

  “Just asking,” Elle said.

  “Okay,” Terri said. “Paul, thanks for your time and cooperation.”

  They got up and walked to the door as Paul put the papers back in his desk. At the door, Terri stopped and turned around. “By the way we don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” he asked.”

  “Do things like the cops on television. That’s more an NSA kind of thing. In the real world, we have to get a warrant to check your credit card activity, which in Ruidoso Downs would take about a week. Then I’d need to find someone who knew how to do it.”

  He grinned. “I know. Judge Parker is my fishing buddy. He doesn’t like to be rushed about anything. You should see how long he takes to tie a fly.”

  Terri chuckled. “Town this small, it figures our suspect is fishing buddies with the judge who’d probably try the case. They probably all know him.”

  Elle shook her head. “Doesn’t that drive you all nuts?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Living in a town that’s so small that everyone knows everyone else in town?”

  “It does feel like that sometimes,” Paul said. “But then some of us are already nuts and a small place has its good points too.”

  “Like what? I don’t even see any chain stores.”

  He cocked his head. “Well, there is the new Walmart. And we don’t have an NSA office here.”

  “Not that we know of anyway,” Terri said.

  Paul smiled. “I like you, Officer Johns. That’s a good one. You come back for that police special anytime.”

  “I will. My son adores ribs,” she said. “And on police pay...”

  “Say no more. Say, if you come by when you get off work today, I can have some set aside.”

  “Thanks, Paul,” she said, clearly off the clock as an investigator.

  “And I’ve got a great recipe for a sauce. I’ll write it out for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. I’ll come by when I’m done with my paperwork.

  As they left, they heard him chuckling. “Not that you know of. That’s good.”

  “So we reluctantly take another one off the suspect list,” Terri sighed, not sounding reluctant at all. More like relieved, to Charli’s ear.

  “I agree,” Charli said. “But isn’t that better than adding them?”

  “If you have some good ones left to investigate, it is.”

  Charli had to agree that clearing Paul was bittersweet. Unfortunately, they didn’t really have any good suspects left at all. “So maybe we are back to Eknar’s gambling theory.”

  “I think we should ask the bank manager why he went to see Carmella,” Elle said. “I don’t think she gave us the entire story. And why would he go all the way out there? Why not just send her an official notice by mail? I know it's a small town, but....”

  Terri nodded. “That opens a box that we should look into. Is the first thing tomorrow morning okay? It’s almost five and the bank is already closed for the day. They open at eight-thirty.”

  “So early?” Elle asked.

  “Ranchers bank there. They get up early and go to bed early... or not at all. So the bank hours caters to them.”

  Charli nodded. “Sensible. Then we will take off and leave you to your paperwork.” She grinned. “Enjoy your police special.”

  Terri nodded, seeming to miss the teasing. “It would be nice to get home early enough to spend time with Sandy and have a real dinner together. Too often I have to fix something quick so he can do his homework and get to bed.”

  And so Elle and Charli went back to the motel. Charli called Roger to catch him up on the case. He told her he was enjoying visiting some ranger stations and had gone to the White Sands museum.

  “Where are you now?” she asked.

  “Mescalero. I went by to chat with Torre,” he said. “We had dinner in Mescalero and I got a motel room.”

  “Then you are getting along with her?”

  “She’s great. She has some interesting ideas.”

  “Like what?”

  “She was thinking you might enjoy teaching on the reservation for a time.”

  Charli started. “Right now I can't think about anything like that.”

  “Well, that’s decisive,” Roger teased. “I understand. You are busy tracking down an arch villain.”

  “More like a bungler, it’s beginning to seem. Ruidoso Downs, in Lincoln County, home of all those gunfighters and outlaws, apparently suffers from a shortage of actual arch villains.”

  “That sounds like a feature.”

  “Maybe it is. Consider that the motel we are staying in is named after Sheriff Pat Garrett, after all.”

  “Ironic that he
might’ve been as bad or worse than Billy the kid.”

  “Don’t tell me that,” Charli laughed.

  When she hung up, Elle was talking to her husband, Lester, letting him know how desolate the desert was and then listening to his complaint about having to cook for himself. “Two words for you, sweetheart... ‘take out,’” she said. When she hung up she laughed. “In a perfect world, a man who refuses to learn to cook should at least learn to like frozen dinners.”

  “In a perfect world, all men would be master chefs,” Charli said.

  With that thought, they went out to dinner at the Ranch House Restaurant, where they’d heard you could get grass-fed beef. The house wine was mediocre, but the steaks were tender and delicious. Paul hadn’t lied. Then they had an apple pie with ice cream that was excellent and went back to the motel to watch some television and fall asleep.

  Some days were better than others. But Charli had concerns about the conversation she needed to have with Roger when she got back to Mescalero. And her grandmother would involve herself in it. There was no way around it. The future was in flux. Her universe was in flux. But for now, she slept and happily, didn’t dream.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bank Management

  The next day, when they met Terri in the parking lot at the bank, she was grinning. “I caught Sloane’s secretary before she left the office last night. She scheduled us in as his first appointment. I don’t like getting caught up in the ‘I’m sorry I don’t have more time, I’m a busy person’ game.”

  Elle nodded.

  Charli had grown to like Terri. She was a smart cookie and she’d gained a lot of respect for her as a person as well as a police officer. And she had to ask: “Before we go in, you have to answer the more important question: how did it go with Paul?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, turning her face away but unable to keep from blushing slightly.

  “Did you enjoy the ribs,” Elle prodded. “And his recipe.”

  “Great. Both were great.”

  “And how was Paul?” Elle asked.

  “You two remind me of why I didn't like high school,” Terri said.

  Elle brushed back her hair. “I’ll take that as a compliment and an admission that you and Sandy might’ve had company for dinner.”

  Terri tried to brush it off, but then gave in. “He was very polite and nice. Sandy liked him. His ribs, the ribs he cooked, were fantastic.” She pulled her shoulders back. “Now can we go do the interview?”

  “By all means,” Charli said.

  When they were seated in front of his desk, Charli stared at Harrison Sloane in disbelief. He looked like... well, exactly like her worst preconception of a small town bank manager. If she’d seen him on the street and been asked to guess his profession she would've said banker. Thin and with a pasty indoor complexion, Harrison Sloane dressed neatly, although in cheap clothing, and he wore a bolo instead of a necktie. This was New Mexico after all. The almost universal informality was quite refreshing. The man’s glasses were smudged so badly that she wondered how he could see through them. His thinning silver hair and nervous manner suggested he was a worrier, and his feeble, damp handshake wasn’t reassuring.

  Elle did a better job than Charli of pretending not to notice, and Terri Johns skipped shaking hands altogether. When he offered them seats on the hard plastic chairs lined up neatly in front of his desk, Terri sat down, took out her notebook and pen and got to business. She introduced Elle and Charli as insurance investigators. “We are looking into the death of Jake Ravenwing.” He stared blankly, so she added: “We have a few questions for you.”

  “Oh my,” the man said, predictably from Charli’s perspective. She was taking in the room and his spotless desk. The only thing on it was a computer terminal that sat, off to one side, as if he didn’t use it much. Not that those things had much to do with why they were there, but increasingly Charli noticed details. She stored away odd things like the things that floated up in her dreams. At times the seemingly irrelevant led somewhere and, as she developed the habit, it intrigued her.

  “Well then, please, please, tell me how I can be of help?” Harrison Sloane asked. sounding not at all like someone who wanted to help anyone with much of anything. The presence of Terri Johns in her uniform seemed to upset him. Perhaps anyone asking questions upset him. “Does this police matter somehow involve the bank?” His face told them that he very much wanted the answer to be a resounding ’no.’

  “We think it might,” Terri said. “We know that the victim, Jake Ravenwing, banked here.”

  “He’s been a client for years. I know him pretty well. In terms of business of course. Not socially.”

  Charli had trouble picturing Sloane caring enough to know his customers or being social, but Terri Johns just nodded. “The question is if anything has changed recently?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you aware of any sudden changes in his behavior? I’m sure you must monitor the amounts in his accounts... have you noticed any large deposits or withdrawals?”

  Sloane shook his head. “Heavens, no. Anything like that, any dramatic change would be called to my attention immediately. Especially given that...”

  “Given that what?” Terri asked.

  “This information is rather private. I believe it is protected.”

  “This is a police investigation, and the man is dead. He isn’t going to sue you.”

  Charli noted the way he flinched at that word: Sue.

  Sloane cleared his throat. “Mr. Ravenwing was in a bad way financially. He’d gotten into a downward spiral, you see.”

  “Do you mean he was broke?” Terri asked. “What is this spiral? You aren’t suggesting he was selling off some investments are you?”

  “No, no. I don’t think he had any to speak of. I meant his accounts and his loan. You see, he’d fallen behind on his payments and his checking account was decreasing because he didn’t have enough in his checking account to avoid paying a monthly fee. There is a minimum amount required for a free checking account. I’d suggested he close the checking account and put the money into savings, you see. He hadn’t done it.”

  Elle laughed. “But he had a loan with the bank?”

  “Yes. He took it out two years ago.”

  “We were under the impression that he didn’t have a regular job and hadn’t had one for some time. Yet you gave him a personal loan?”

  He nodded. “That’s true. But at the time of the loan application he had a number of clients. He was doing reasonably well. Also, he offered his property as collateral, of course. We wouldn’t offer him an unsecured loan. Not without a regular paycheck. But the land is worth quite a bit. Far more than the loan amount.”

  “And now he was defaulting on the loan.”

  “These have been tough times for some people in this area. Both downturns in the local economy and the changes in the way the race track operated hit him hard,” Sloane said. “For the people at the bottom of the pecking order around here, life is pretty much a hand to mouth existence.”

  “Yet you loaned him money?”

  He sighed. “As I said, that was before these changes. At the time he was doing well as a farrier. I talked to him, reviewed his operation, and we both thought his business would be growing.” He looked up. “A farrier is someone who—”

  “Who shoes horses,” Elle said. “We got that.”

  “And more than that.”

  “We understand,” Terri said. “What was the money for?”

  “Most of it was to make home improvements. The roof needed replacing, things like that. And his car was dying. We loaned him the money to fix it all.”

  “And now you intend to foreclose.”

  Sloane spread his hands open. “No. Not now. We no longer have to.”

  That caught Elle’s attention. “Why not? Or does this bank forgive a loan because someone dies?”

  “No, of course not. But the property has a co-owner.”


  “Carmella Garcia?”

  “Yes. You know her?”

  “We’ve spoken.”

  “She was his... significant other, I believe that is the term, for a number of years. They bought the land together. I talked to her before he died, and she agreed to make good on the loan. Now she inherits his half, as I understand things.”

  Elle wrinkled her nose the way she does when she is trying to find out where a puzzle piece fits in. “What about his late wife’s family? Won’t they contest that?”

  “When Jake applied for the loan, he showed us an agreement they'd come to about the land, and he produced an insurance policy. If he died, Carmella would have plenty to pay it off.”

  “So the property and the loan both go to Carmella.”

  He smiled. “Exactly. That tipped the scales, to be honest. We did insist that his loan payments include an amount to make the insurance payments. We didn't want him dropping it without telling us.”

  Elle sighed. “I suppose the land and money would be a motive for murder.”

  “It could be,” Terri agreed. “Better than some.”

  “Murder?” Sloane looked shocked. “I heard he killed himself.”

  Terri cocked her head. “Really? I’m afraid I hadn't heard that myself. Neither has the chief. What would make you think he might have killed himself?”

  “Well, before he died, I went to see Carmella about the problem.”

  Terri nodded. “Naturally.”

  “This being a small town, we can get a little too casual about notifying a cosigner. We sort of expect the other person to know, but under the circumstances....”

  “You felt the need to see her and tell her about the foreclosure.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She was surprised to hear that Jake was in financial trouble. She told me that they hadn’t stayed in touch since his marriage.”

  “Even about the loan?”

  He folded his hands. “I didn’t ask for details. She gave me some welcome iced tea and said she’d look into catching up on the payments immediately.”