Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “You the secretary?” asked the male voice in a blue work shirt, complete with nametag.

  “No, but I’m looking for one,” I wearily mumbled from my couch. “How’s your coffee making? Nobody here does coffee worth a damn.” When he didn’t snap that he was here to give us some work, I decided he was one of the chemical company salesmen. “Look, whatever it is you’re selling, it’s gotta wait till tomorrow. Ten a.m. would be good.” I put my arm over my eyes again.

  “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. They told me a lady ran this place. I’m new with Hollander Chemicals.”

  The arm I had draped over my eyes came away to see the blue shirt backing out of my office door.

  “Hollander Chemicals?” I sat up and swung my legs onto the floor, putting my foot into the Burger King box. “Hey, don’t leave,” I said, shaking the box hanging off my foot. “Wait up.”

  He turned around, smiled at the Burger King logo gracing one shoe and a cast on the other. I reached down and removed the box. “Have a seat and I’ll go splash some water on my face to wake up, okay? Be right with you.”

  I went into the bathroom where we had showers, toilets, and a line of sinks along the wall with spray fountains that squirt water upwards. These little squirt guns were our first line of defense against chemical leaks through a respirator. I let the cool water spray my face and then reached for a paper towel. The paper towel dispenser was empty again, the sinks were filthy, and the floor was littered with paper and bath towels. The men expected the “woman” to do it for them. Tired of telling them to pick up after themselves, I had every intention of hiring a “woman.” First thing tomorrow, Juanita’s cousin would clean, scrub, and pick up. Her fee would be divided between pilots and ground crew.

  I looked up from the sink at my reflection in the mirror. Two months ago, Hollander Chemicals was just another name that went with the industry. I should have paid attention when my dad mentioned Hollander Chemicals and Machado, the guy who now owns it. I knew Hollander Chemicals, and their reputation indicated stingy with extras and quick to invoice. How did a crop duster find the bucks to buy another business when most of us in the industry were stretched to the limit running one business?

  I closed the door on the mess behind me and smiled at the salesman. He jumped up from his chair and extended a sweaty hand. He looked as wrung out as I felt.

  I said, “They gave you Stockton to Merced, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “‘Cause that’s why the last guy left. Look, take my advice and go back and tell ‘em you can only handle Merced to Modesto. Or Modesto to Stockton.”

  “Oh no, ma’am. I couldn’t do that. They gave me an opportunity on the best route, and I’m not going to let them down now.”

  “Uh-huh.” I was thinking it more likely that Hollander Chemicals was too cheap to pay another salesman. I motioned him over to a map of Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties and pointed to the red pins. “These pins show the companies who service the farmers of three counties. The green are our clients.” I swept my hand over the colored dots and then let my forefinger trail down to the middle. “Our central location accounts for work that extends east as far as Hughson, south past Turlock, and west just short of Patterson. That’s where Patterson Flying Service starts. If it’s a really busy season, we have to depend on our chemical salesperson to get us what we need. It’s a tight relationship that works both ways. So, I’m telling you this for your own benefit. This is where your territory should be—here,” I said, stretching my fingers to cover a reasonable amount on the map. “When it’s busy, you’ll be able to handle about thirty farmers who control all this acreage and two aerial applicators. When you fail us, and that’s a given with a busy season, we won’t be bothering to pick up the phone and call Hollander Chemicals, we’ll be calling another company.”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple dipping. “You’re right. I haven’t seen my wife and kids for more than two hours out of this whole week. All I seem to do is drive.”

  Pretending I didn’t know, I asked, “By the way, who owns Hollander Chemicals these days?”

  “Uh, guy by the name of Clark hired me, but I think he said the owner’s name’s Machado. I’ve never met the guy. Not that I would, being on the road all the time. I call in the orders anyway.”

  I shrugged, like it didn’t matter to me. “You take Merced to Modesto. Fill that in with Patterson Flying on the west side and Hawk Dusters on the east, and you’ve got a full-time job and our loyalty.”

  We shook hands, and he left, looking a little less exhausted than when he came in. He wasn’t out of the yard before I had the book of California Aero Ag Owners and Operators on the desk, looking for an address. I found John Machado still listed as being in the industry.

  I went to the house to shower and dug into the back of my closet and pulled out two hangers covered in thin plastic. Choosing the taupe linen knee-skimming sheath over the other, more brightly colored dress, I put it on and shoved my foot into a size nine sandal, grabbed my wallet and keys, and left.

  Bobby Norquist was working for Machado when he died. And Norquist was the murder witness for Eddy McBride’s defense. The question was, did he die by accident or design? I decided it was time for me to find out.

  A “No Trespassing” sign dangled from a chain-link fence in front of the work yard at John Machado’s Aero Ag Service. I drove around the fence and parked next to a huge WWII Quonset hut. Stepping between buildings, I saw men and forklifts hurriedly moving equipment and supplies around. I’d let all of my crew go home by three because tomorrow it would all start again at three-thirty a.m. It made for one very long day. Machado was either working two shifts or only worked nights. Which was odd, since nobody north of Merced flew nights. Cotton is flown at night, as that’s when the wind is down and the bugs are out.

  I followed the driveway to an airstrip where two helicopters and three Ag-Cats lined up. The planes looked like dark, grumpy elephants shuddering behind the motion of their huge propellers. A pilot with an orange helmet in the crook of his arm passed by me, giving me a leer that said, “I would’ve slapped you on the butt, lady, but I’m busy right now,” and then he disappeared around the corner of the building.

  A screen door slammed and a heavyset man in overalls lumbered over to me. He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t carry a club either. I suspected I wasn’t going to stun him with the hundred-watt smile I kept for the old codgers, but a corner of his mouth did quirk up a bit.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Afternoon,” he said, looking at his watch, grudging the time. “What can I do for you?”

  I held out a hand. “John Machado?”

  He ignored my offering. “No, he’s in the office. I don’t mean to be rude, ma’am, but if you’re from the newspaper, he’s not giving out any more statements, and as you can see this is a real busy place.” He waved his arm in the direction of the loaders filling a tank with familiar and noxious chemicals. The loaders were wearing the requisite coveralls and masks, but no respirators. I looked away quickly before the surprise registered on my face, and before he suspected I might be a county inspector. Good thing I wasn’t from county, or he’d be in for a big fine.

  Mr. Overalls stood guarding the office door. “Like I said, this is an awfully dangerous place to be about now. Chemicals, airplanes, and a very tired crew can be a dangerous mix.”

  “I get your point, but I’m not with the newspaper. I just want to speak to Mr. Machado for a minute.” I tried again to move around him toward the screen door.

  He blocked me. “If you have a complaint about the noise or the chemicals, take it to the county.”

  “That’s not it either,” I said, feinting to the right, I slipped by him on the left. He lumbered after me as I walked through the front door.

  In his late fifties, graying hair combed over a balding pate, John Machado sat behind the vintage metal desk. His beefy face reddened when he looked up.

  “Mr. Mac
hado?” I asked, sticking out my hand and giving him my hundred-watt smile. “Could I have just five minutes of your time? I’m not a reporter.” That was certainly true, and I hoped I could pull this off before he connected me to my daily dose of fame in the local newspaper.

  “Gimme ten minutes?” he said, stacking papers. “I gotta get this ground crew on their way.”

  “Sure,” I said. It would give me a chance to snoop.

  He motioned to the guy I brought in with me, and they went out together.

  I watched them walk a few feet from the office, stop and talk. I was just paranoid enough to worry. Were they talking about me? Of course they were. The guy in the overalls glanced back and caught me staring. He quickly looked the other way, then nudged his boss further from the door. What? Like I’m going to read your lips? I wish I had been able to read their lips. Save me some questions.

  Mr. Overalls went on out to the crew and John Machado, with his back to the office, started waving his hands in the air and shouting after him. Overalls was right, this might be more dangerous than I thought. While they were still shouting at each other, I did an about-face and rifled through the papers on his desk. Nothing that could tell me what he was doing tonight. No work orders with today’s date, and no recent invoices for chemicals. I tried a couple of drawers, but they were locked. When I heard footsteps, I turned away from the desk and pretended to be studying the set of photos on the wall behind his desk. In a line of old black-and-white photos, guys in soft leather caps and jackets stood in front of their Stearmans, goggles lifted to show raccoon faces and watery eyes rimmed with sulfur.

  The door opened and a voice behind me said, “That one was taken in the fifties, when we spread sulfur over everything, cows, kids and crops. See the people in the field waving? Today they shake their fists at us and call county.” Mr. Machado and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder while he tapped the glass on another picture. “Poor Bud was so allergic to the stuff, watery eyes, skin rashes, he finally just gave it up and bought a bar down the road. You may have passed it? Big old Stearman with a neon dust trail? Bud’s happier running a bar than he ever was pitching chemicals out of an airplane.”

  “Who’s the guy on the right, the one with the funny haircut?”

  “That’s not a haircut, that’s burn. It got the whole right side of his face.”

  “Was he a bad pilot, or just unlucky?”

  “Unlucky, but thankfully not on my dime. I needed a hand and Bob was helping out for the season. I don’t think his wife even had a photo of him after he was burned in his first accident. He didn’t like pictures of him around, so I put this one up after he died.”

  “Died?”

  “Yes, Ms. Bains. That’s Bob Norquist. He was the pilot who crashed and burned to death just before he was going to testify twenty years ago on behalf of Bill Hollander.”

  “Okay, you got me.”

  “Yes, the question is, what am I going to do with you? Just kidding. Want some coffee?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass. By the way, I never thanked you for clearing me for landing at your strip. And I presume it was you that called the ambulance?”

  “It’s been a long day.” He poured the coffee, then topped it off from a bottle of Jim Beam and put the bottle back in his desk. “Odd that this is the first time we’ve actually met. Thought I’d have a chance to speak to you before they hauled you off to the hospital, but glad that you made it as far as you did.” He came around to my side of the desk and nodded at the cast. “How’s the leg doing?”

  I followed his glance down to my walking boot-cast. “Coming off this week, I think.”

  John Machado was sizing me up. He was also inside of that precious eighteen inches of space anthropologists say is essential to Americans, though not to Orientals, or so I’m told. He didn’t look Japanese, but then I was in his office so I let it go, for now. He pointed a finger to another frame, brushing his arm across my chest. Annoyed, but not quite ready for a showdown, I bit down on my lip and moved out of range.

  A flicker of amusement crossed his face at my withdrawal. “This here bunch are boys from twenty years ago. Jeff Sperry, Bobby Norquist, the guy with the burn, and John Shanahan.” He leaned into me again, and the pointing arm made another swipe at my chest. I ignored the arm, letting him think what he would, and just when his lips twisted in something like a grin, I leaned into him and stepped hard on his left foot and then quickly backed off.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I step on your foot? It’s this darn cast.”

  His mouth slammed down into a thin line of pain, but he did look at me with renewed respect. He folded his arms over his substantial gut and said, “So, what can I do for you today, Ms. Bains?”

  “I was hoping you could help me figure out why Eddy McBride would be running around pointing a gun at people, though so far, mostly at me.” I wasn’t going to mention last night, not if I wanted to keep my father’s relationship to Eddy separate. Luckily, Machado didn’t seem interested in specifics.

  His face lost all its ruddy color. “Eddy McBride? The guy they convicted for killing Bill Hollander? I thought they already caught the little bastard.”

  “Not that I’ve heard. Not yet anyway.”

  “I always thought the guy did in his wife’s boss and tried to weasel out of it by fingering poor old Bobby Norquist. You say he’s going after people with a gun?”

  “He held it on me, twice. So, can you tell me exactly what it was that Bobby Norquist was supposed to testify about? “

  His reply was a guttural whisper. “I thought they’d found him.”

  “Eddy? Does he have any reason to come here?”

  The color in his face dropped another shade. The blood probably went to puddle where it could do some good, like close to his pounding heart. He leaned his hairy arms on the metal desk and swallowed, then he pushed off, and crossing his arms over his chest again, said, “Lady, if Eddy McBride walked through this door right now, I’d call the police. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to do a report for the county and it’s due yesterday.”

  He turned his back to me and proceeded to rummage in a file cabinet, but I could see he was leaning on the open drawer for support. Though the air conditioner was on high, dark sweat stains were soaking through the back of his shirt. Here was another person who had underestimated Eddy McBride. If Eddy had been framed, then was John Machado involved? Was Machado responsible for Bob Norquist’s death? If that was so, then was he also involved in Bill Hollander’s murder? Either way, I now had something to share with Detective Rodney—and someone more interesting than me or my father.

  SIXTEEN

  I drove back the way I came, down Geer Road, then into the strip mall where a replica of Bud’s bi-plane soared above the bar in green neon. I left the rental car unlocked, hoping maybe someone would steal the damn thing. The air conditioning was driving me crazy. It came on intermittently, long enough to turn my knees blue. And no amount of insults or banging on the dashboard would stop the cussed thing, unless I turned off the engine. That’s what I get for wearing a dress.

  The interior of Bud’s Place was similar to most, maybe a little cleaner from a frequent and substantial use of Lysol. I sat down on the nearest stool and waited for the bartender to notice. The guy behind the bar wore a white dress shirt buttoned up to his bow tie. His chin, or what there was of it, was draped in wattles down to the top button; the bow tie an X-marks-the-spot where his chin left off and the shirt began. When he dragged his cloth along the bar and in my direction, I smiled and nodded a friendly greeting.

  Spaniel eyes in the stoic face calmly appraised this latest client. “Good afternoon. It’s still afternoon out there, isn’t it?”

  “It’s going down fast, so I guess I’ll have a beer.”

  “Coors, Coors Light, Heineken, Lowenbrau, Miller, Miller Light? We also got your Mexican labels, Dos Equis, Pacifico, Modelo, Tecate. Or, how about ale? We got—”

  “Whoa, that’s way too much already. Wh
atever’s on draft.”

  “We got Coors, Coors Light, Heineken, Lowenbrau, Miller, Miller Light—”

  I held up a hand and ordered a Coors Light, the same beer Noah kept in the fridge. The bartender went to pull the tap and brought it over in an icy mug.

  Looking for an opener, I remarked on the heat.

  “Supposed to cool down,” he replied, his sad brown eyes bouncing from the cocktail tumblers he was rinsing under the counter to the two guys at the end of the bar and back at me again.

  If there was a secret password, handshake or code, I wasn’t going to get it, so I came right to the point. “Are you Buddy Rutland, the owner?”

  “Selling something?”

  “No, but this,” I said, grabbing a paper from the counter and turning it around so he could compare an old publicity photo with the real thing, “is me.”

  He nodded, then mopped at the bar for a minute. “Noah Bains’s daughter, right? I knew your dad. You look better in person.”

  “Thanks.”

  He pulled thoughtfully at the sagging flesh at his neck. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was led to believe you were a friend of Bob Norquist.”

  “Bob’s wife died of cancer yesterday.” He lifted a hand at my expression of concern. “That’s okay, Miss Bains, I know your family has been preoccupied. Funeral will be in a few days, so I thought I’d mention it. Your dad would remember Bob’s wife Isabel from the Aero Ag conventions. Bob couldn’t abide the pity stares at his burns, so he sent her instead.”

  “I’ll make sure we send flowers. Could I ask you a couple of questions?”

  When he nodded, I thought for a minute, then said, “Tell me how Bobby Norquist died.”

  “Huh. Ya wanna know something funny? Nobody else has thought to ask my opinion, not since the accident that killed him and not now. I decided poor Isabel already had enough grief. Insurance don’t pay up if there’s suspicion of foul play, you know.”

  “You think it wasn’t an accident? How? Why?”