Deadline(122)
“Really. You heard that?”
“A big-city guy like you probably doesn’t understand this—”
“I was born and raised in Marshall, and I live in Mankato.”
“Then maybe you do. In towns like this, you hear everything, sooner or later. Everybody in town knows you’ve been sniffing around the schools, and a lot of people are beginning to talk about why that might be,” Ross said. “A couple of those school board members have been known to spend more money than they really have. And everybody knows how much they have, since we all live in one big pile down here—the bankers, the lawyers, the loan company people, the lady who runs the Edward Jones franchise . . . everybody.”
Virgil wiggled once to get comfortable in his chair, and asked, “Let me give you a hypothetical. Hypothetically, if something is going on with the school buses, if somebody’s creaming off some money there . . . then Dick Brown must know about it.”
Ross leaned back in his office chair and put his heels up on his desk, looked up at the ceiling. “Well, I don’t know. The school could just put down one number for fuel costs, and pay me a different one. A different number. Nobody really compares them. I’ve never had a single person come here and ask how much the schools pay me for fuel. I’ve kinda wondered about that, too. Shouldn’t an auditor be coming by every few years?”
“Did Clancy Conley ever ask?”
“Nope. I knew the man, he used to try to sell me ads, but I told him the same thing I just told you: Why in the hell would I buy an ad, when everybody knows I’m the only guy who delivers fuel oil? Diesel? Anyway, you sayin’ that’s why he was killed, because of the fuel numbers?”
“Because of all the numbers,” Virgil said.
“How much are they stealing?” Ross asked.
“Don’t know yet. A lot. They’re buying houses in Tucson.”
Ross whistled: “You gotta expect a little leakage, but that’s more like a mountain stream. No taxes, either.”
Virgil asked, “You have records of all your deliveries and the amounts?”
“Going back six years. In case the IRS asks.”
“Hang on to them,” Virgil said. “Somebody’s gonna want to take a look.”
Virgil got up to leave, but as he was scuffing out the door, Ross said, “Something occurs to me . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Of course Dick would know. He knows how much I deliver, and how much the buses burn. And sitting where he does, he’s gotta know what the schools report on fuel prices. No matter how they do it, he’d know.”
—
ALTHOUGH VIRGIL DIDN’T necessarily have to believe what Ross said, he did—he’d been reasonably convinced by the no-option argument that Ross had made, and also by the fact that he had six years’ worth of records. It was likely that Ross gave away more than a few bottles of booze at Christmas, but it probably wouldn’t be much more . . . because he didn’t have to. He didn’t look like a guy who would pay a bill he didn’t have to pay.
—
DICK BROWN was sitting at a greasy-looking desk in the school motor pool, working over some greasy-looking paper. He took one look at Virgil and said, “Ah, shit.”
“You knew I was coming,” Virgil said.
“I gotta talk to a lawyer. I haven’t done anything illegal, I just did what I was told,” Brown said.