Absentee List_An Old Horse Mystery

by Elskan Triumph

  Peter was smiling.

  As quietly as he had ten minutes earlier, Peter slipped downstairs and again got out Horse’s wallet. This time he returned all of the money before going to bed.

  Both old man and boy slept soundly that night.

  CHAPTER 11

  The administrative conference room sat at the end of a forty-foot hallway buttressed at the other end by the door to the main office, the receptionist’s desk, and an alcove where students had been sent or parents waited. Off the hallway were offices, three on each side for a total of six. One side had windows overlooking the front of the school. From his desk, if he wished to, the principal could see the busses arrive, and the parking lot beyond. Across the hall sat three offices without windows, two of which held part-time and temporary staff—psychologists and counselors, volunteers and temps that plugged data into the computers when that time of the year rolled around. The third windowless office was occupied by the accountant, who would have been a waste of a window as she rarely looked up from her desk. When budget cuts forced the part-time assistant principal to leave the accountant, Ms. Brecht, was offered an office with a window. “The glare against the computer screen would be irritating,” she had said. And so she stayed put.

  In the conference room sat a long table where Wells and Horse often had lunch. The room was really another empty office that was never repurposed. When the business management aspects for the school were centralized nine years prior, an old grizzled man who coordinated busses and made sure the fuel oil arrived in time for the next cold snap at Grace Haven’s retired, leaving the room empty. People started using it to have brief, confidential conversations. One summer, the furniture was hauled away and replaced by a round table and eight chairs, four of which fit comfortably around the table while the other four were crammed in the corners and against the far wall. The room was not built for more than four, anyway, but as families become more blended—and complicated—it had been made to serve up to nine adults. At some point the round table was replaced with the present, long rectangular one, making an uncomfortable fit for all eight chairs. Often, Wells found himself sitting at one end, offering participants a feeling that someone was in command. Since meetings seemed to run much smoother with the new table he began to have more of them there instead of his office. The walls have been bare for years, but a year prior someone had tacked on the door a sign reading Administrative Conference Room. Baring a crisis or meeting, the two had lunch a few times a week at the table, door closed.

  “Jones isn’t pleased with his scores,” Wells told Horse.

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “Do you really believe in the Broche Effect?”

  “I’ve been looking at names,” Horse replied, ignoring the question. “If I had a kid, I think I’d name him Evan. Or Owen. I don’t think I’ve had a bad Evan or Owen.”

  “Evan Parl lit a fire in the bathroom just last week.”

  “You should read his essay on fire safety, though. Very insightful.”

  “Didn’t you have Evan Bennett? He murdered someone.”

  “He did it with class.” Horse took a bite of his sandwich. “And he almost got away with it. Very clever.”

  “He was a sociopath.”

  “David, Max... Halleys do really well. And Emmas. Emilys. All great kids. Smart. Nice.”

  “Remember that year you had all of the Kates?” Wells smiled at the thought.

  “Kate. Katherine. Kat. Catherine with a ‘C’ Katie. Katelyn...”

  “How many did you have?”

  Then, a scraping noise interrupted the memory. Metal on metal. A slight picking, followed by the light rattle of a door hitting the frame on a windy day, only the catch keeping it from being blown open. It was not the door of the Admin Conference Room, but close by. As Wells noticed with a curious face, Horse dove deeper into their conversation.

  “Eighteen, I think.” He spoke louder. “Kathleen. Katreena. Katreen. Caitlin. Kaitlin, with a ‘K’. Katey.”

  “You said that one.”

  “Katie with an ‘ie’ and Katey with an ‘ey’. And let’s not forget the two Kevins and the Kenney.”

  “That was an odd year. Remember the year you had an entire class of blondes? ‘The Blondes’ you called them. It was like Village of the Damned.”

  “Unusual names with boys tend to work. Allistair. Addison. Tree. Ubikal. Unusual names with girls are a disaster. All of the mispellings. Jayne with a ’Y’. Remember her? J-A-Y-N-E. Just plain dumb, and loud about it; always a bad combination. You could break the Kates down into normal spelling and odd, and then do a blind matching. K-A-Y-T-E-E. That girl...”

  “One more factor we can’t control.”

  “Heather. Crystal. Matt. They never work out. Alex is a wildcard. Ryans, too. Chris tends to be an underachiever. Christophers are punks.”

  “I’m a Christopher.”

  Ignoring Wells he states, “We should just give them all numbers.”

  “Oh, then kids would just get labeled odd.”

  Click (light, distinctive).

  Thump (loud, muffled in a carpet).

  Wells rose from his seat, Horse mid-bite, to see what made such a noise. Looking into the hallway, Wells saw two young legs in jeans emanating from his office door; a door he had locked earlier. The body attached to the legs got up.

  “Speaking of Katies, one just broke into my office.”

  “Oh?” Horse said, feigning surprise.

  Opening the conference room door, Katie froze and looked at the ground.

  “Hi, Mr. Wells,” she said. Looking up, her smile was all mischief.

  “Katie,” he replied with edged courtesy. “Can I help you?”

  “No?” she asked. Then, gaining more of her wits but still with nerves in her voice, she said, “I have to go.”

  And she left. Nothing more said.

  Wells looked down at his doorknob and saw two pieces of metal hanging from the door’s lock. He turned to Horse, who was still chewing.

  “She picked my door’s lock.”

  “Clever.”

  “Criminal.”

  “I think it’s part of a project.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Research and procedure essay. I think this is the research part. You know, to see if it works.”

  “She had to use my office?”

  “No one else locks their door.”

  “You could have locked your classroom.”

  “Well, I kind of told her to try your door.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ll send you the report after she’s written it.”

  CHAPTER 12

  After Peter’s school work was done and he was sent to bed, Horse excused himself to go to the store.

  “Call if you need something,” he had said, shaking his cell phone before pocketing it into his coat.

  “Like what?”

  “A bear attack.”

  “The kid’s a survivor,” he had muttered, making his way to his car.

  With satisfaction he felt the warmth that remained in the cab from his drive home. The old Festiva was a little box running on 12R tires, barely a two seater but with a nearly useless back seat. His students called it a toy. Oddly, it fit his tall frame and left an inch of headroom. “You won’t need a can opener if you get into an accident,” an EMT had once said, “because there’ll be nothing left.”

  A short time later he parked outside Laporte’s main office.

  Nearly once a week he had passed it, but had never given it a thought. Contractors, landscapers, excavators, and foundation specialists were scattered throughout these state highways, each with a sign that looked like the other during the day as the trucks and equipment were elsewhere, working on a job site. What remained were metal buildings and large dirt patches, surrounded by weak crabgrass cut close to the ground in the summer, snow banks made of plowed storm in the winter. Many had a few derelict or underutilized pieces of heavy machinery—a lift, dump truck or
backhoe that signaled what type of business they did. Laporte’s was larger than most, but still blended into day, forest, and the Mansfield range behind it. At night, as Horse sat and looked at the building, everything had disappeared but the moon and the mountain.

  Creak, went the door to his car. He had parked on a slight pull-off on the main road, which had seemed like a good idea at the time, but with each crunch of gravel it seemed a long trek. Things are louder in the dark. ‘I’ll have to get someone to do a science fair on that,’ he thought. Successful deception, he knew, meant acting like you belonged—he should have driven right up to the front door.

  The lights outside of Laporte’s office had motion sensors; Horse hadn’t thought of that. A small, flat prefab building that looked knocked together twenty years prior, it was about twenty-five by twenty-five-feet square, with a few small windows and mustard colored metal siding. Like most prefab housing built south of New England and trucked north, the roof was flat. From the lack of snow on top, someone must have gone on top and shoveled it more or less clean. Horse looked around. Standing about thirty feet away was a much larger metal hangar that Horse assumed held equipment. That building had a tin roof, angled, with several feet of snow sitting on the ground twenty feet below the roof’s edge.

  Horse took out Katie’s lock picking tools and tried to recall the steps she had taught him earlier in the day. After lunch, the two had sat for an hour picking the locks to his classroom, the back entrance to the 3-4 wing, and the janitor’s closet. By the end of the day, Katie smiled and told him he had it.

  Just a bit… he thought, wiggling the tools as he crouched in front of the knob. There were three steps to the stoop, knocked together by 2 x 6 boards left unpainted, the door itself near the corner of the building. He had to balance on them while crouched low enough to see what he was doing. His back ached, as did his knees. So that he could feel the inside mechanism turn and tumble—and miss—he was forced to be without gloves. His fingers lost feeling. Laporte did not seem to have a sophisticated security system—a deadbolt and, perhaps, the knob—although he wasn’t sure what triggers and alarms might await him inside. Quietly, he felt and listened.

  Success.

  The pin fell into place; Horse could feel the sweet spot and the tumblers turned, the door falling open. He peered into the darkness beyond the parking lot light. Holding a small LCD flashlight picked up at Morrisville Lumber a few hours before, he swept the room. Getting to his feet, he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

  Holding the flashlight next to his right ear, Horse scanned with the beam as he turned his head slowly. The room was twelve feet wide and twice as long. He looked down it like one would a bowling alley. To the right, in the two feet between the door jam and the wall, were a few basic metal office chairs, lined up against the wall. A waiting area. In front of him stood the front of the secretary’s desk jutting out from the wall, blocking anyone who might want to get further than a few feet into the office. Behind her on the wall to the left stood four filing cabinets, some of the drawers and sides covered with stickers of associations and local businesses. Horse noted three distinct Smugglers’ Notch Resort stickers from three different advertising campaigns, and one for Burton snowboards. There were over a dozen stickers from tool manufacturers and contracting organizations. A few desks were pushed against the far walls, mismatched office chairs pushed into them. All of the furniture was second hand; not as an afterthought but bought by someone with a frugal eye and function in mind. All of it looked heavy, as if the buyer equated solid with quality. On the other wall was a door, which Horse figured led to another office. Laporte’s, he assumed. The wall clearly divided the building in half, making more rooms to check later.

  Satisfied that he was as safe as he was going to be, he turned on his trusty headlamp.. None of the file drawers were locked, allowing Horse to find nothing quickly. As he flipped through, the laptop on the secretary’s desk warmed up, ready as Horse quietly slid the last file drawer closed. No security or password, but nary a mention of Dan. He found some old tax payments, but they were five years old: Dan had not worked for Laporte in all that time.

  ‘Freelance,’ Horse wondered. Under the table work? It wasn’t unusual in the area to take cash payments, but a business like Laporte’s tackled big jobs that only got compensated because of costs; anything off the books didn’t get paid for. Unless Dan didn’t work the big jobs.

  What did you do?

  In for a penny, Horse warmed up the copy machine in the corner. Sitting at the desk, he tried to print the paltry financial records they had on Dan and found the copier was also the printer. Finally, warmed up, it churned out a few pages. While it whirled loudly, he watched his breath in the light of the headlamp. Then he realized where he was, and what crimes he was committing; Horse turned off the lamp.

  ‘Let’s take a look back here,’ he thought, opening the door to the back room. It was indeed Laporte’s office.

  But Laporte was still there.

  Horse flicked on his headlamp.

  “Hello,” he said with a smile. The owner was in a metal bed from an old hunting camp. Under him was a mattress without a fitted sheet. Over him were two comforters that had seen better days, looking as if they, too, had come from an old hunting camp. Or dug up. There was no pillow.

  Horse smiled back, the lamp on his head offering the only light in the room.

  “Are you alone?” the old teacher asked.

  “I should ask you that.”

  “I don’t want to impose on anything…”

  “Nah,” Laporte said, “that was a few hours ago.” He swung his feet off of the bed, knocking the comforters partly onto the floor. On his feet he had wool socks, but his legs were bare. “Can you turn off the light?” Laporte asked, covering his eyes from the beam.

  Horse complied. Laporte clicked on a light that sat on a table under a window. Immediately, both men squinted and blinked.

  “I didn’t see a car,” Horse said.

  “So you thought you’d come in and have a look around?”

  “Something like that.”

  They were still and in silence.

  “She’s gone,” Laporte said, finally.

  “A friend?”

  He shrugged. “Kind of. She needed to get back to Barre. I lent her my truck.”

  “Hourly rates?” Then, to clarify between the two, Horse added, “The girl.”

  Laporte chuckled. “No, not that kind of friend. But she’s someone’s wife, and she couldn’t spend the night.”

  “Not one of your workers’ wives?”

  “No,” he smiled. “That opens up too many liabilities.”

  “Lawsuit?”

  “Or sabotage. Or worse.”

  “Has that happened before?”

  “Once. Sabotage. A few thousand in hydraulic hoses slashed.”

  “Did you sue?”

  “What could I do? I didn’t want my wife to know.”

  “Price of adultery?”

  “That’s why we have insurance, right? Vandalism. No harm, in the end. I think I might have made a profit, even. Which is why I’m not calling the police now.”

  Horse looked at him, the lampshade and low watt bulb keeping his legs illuminated and his face hard to read. Even under his loose gray Patriots T-shirt it was clear that the builder had plenty of muscle left from years in the field, cased in middle aged fat that came from driving from site to site and yelling into a telephone. Still, sitting on the edge of the mattress, Laporte looked like a man ready to pass the business on to his kids. He looked tired.

  “I guess I’ll thank you for that,” Horse said.

  “Of course, you’re not leaving with those copies,” Laporte added, puffing up a bit.

  Now it was Horse’s time to smile. He was only standing because Laporte had yet to lay him out.

  “You heard that, huh?”

  “Old men aren’t very quiet.”

  ‘You were,’ he thought.

&n
bsp; “Can I ask you about Dan?”

  “You can ask…”

  “He hasn’t shown up on your books in a while.”

  “No, I don’t suppose he’s been employed with me for quite a while.”

  “Yes…”

  “Subcontractor.”

  Laporte then explained to Horse about the growth in the construction industry in northern Vermont, and how he had minimized his liabilities with the current tax laws.

  In short, as larger concerns like Johnson State College and Smugglers’ Notch Resort hired larger, out-of-state contractors for major construction projects, those out-of-state contractors in turn hired Laporte as a subcontractor. Those out of state concerns had a track record with large projects, and had banks and insurance companies willing to back up the contracts with cash. In having such a large volume of work coming in, the firms were able to get lower terms on loans and insurance, as well as supplies, thus lowering their initial bid. This led to more work, and a stronger track record. But more work than they could possibly do themselves. They called smaller, local contractors like Laporte to actually swing the hammers.

  Laporte had his own, smaller version of this setup. Keeping a few workhands on—those he knew would be needed consistently throughout the year—he had trimmed his staff down to the bone. Each job also brought a small additional army of donkeys and hammer swingers; paid little, with no benefits and easily let go when the work dried up. All of those folks were on the books. He did hire a lot of subcontractors, though. Plumbers, electricians and the like worked a few jobs for Laporte, and rounded out their income with other jobs that came their way. Laporte got expertise, but didn’t have to pay FICA or liability insurance on any of them. On the books were the names of the business, but not the men and (few) women who did the work.

  All of the firms received a tidy profit—from the one-man electrical subcontractor to the multistate construction conglomerate—as did the banks, insurance companies, and suppliers. And the buildings went up.

  “So, Dan was a subcontractor?”