Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [3]
“He took two boxes of Parazone and a two-gallon jug of Caridon,” he said gravely.
Claire didn’t recognize these names. “They are . . . ?”
“Sorry. Pesticides. Parazone is an herbicide and Caridon is an insecticide. Fairly common pesticides that we stock regularly.”
Claire didn’t know what to say. It didn’t sound like much of a haul to her. Certainly not enough to generate the tension she felt in the room. All the men were looking at her. What did she not understand?
The sheriff jumped in. “Tell her how much you figure the whole haul was worth, Ron.”
Sorenson cleared his throat as if he hated to talk about such things. “Between sixty and seventy thousand dollars.”
Claire tried not to let the surprise show on her face. Not your ordinary pesticides, she figured. That amount probably equaled what the two men earned in a year. A loss like that could really hurt a small business, especially a cooperative.
“What exactly happened?” she asked.
“We don’t know much,” Sorenson answered. He appeared to be both the president and the man in charge. “If the lock off the back storeroom hadn’t been busted we might not even have noticed that anything was gone until we did inventory. No one saw anything that I’ve been able to find out.”
“Nothing else was taken?” This puzzled Claire.
“Nope. Just those two pesticides. It’s surprising, since we’ve got a lot of valuable equipment on the floor that he could have hauled out of there.”
“I’m guessing these pesticides aren’t something I’d be able to pick up at the Home Depot?” she asked.
“Right,” Sorenson said, looking her in the eyes, then added, “You need to know what you’re doing to handle these products. If the wrong person got hold of them, someone could get hurt.”
CHAPTER 2
Sorenson opened the passenger-side door to his pickup truck and watched Watkins climb in. Nice-looking woman. His wife had once been as handsome. After all but one of the kids had left home, she had continued cooking for a big family and then ate most of it herself. She had filled out well past what could be seen as attractive. He still loved her, but he didn’t like looking at her as much as he once had.
As he walked around the truck and climbed in his side, he thought about what the neighbors would think if they saw him driving through town with a strange woman. Part of him liked the idea. But it made him nervous that he had to be working with a woman on this problem. He was used to the company of men.
“How long have you been president of the cooperative?” Watkins asked him once they were settled in the truck and he had turned onto the main street.
“A year. We take turns.”
“At being president?”
“Yup. Nobody really wants to do it. It just means more work. Take today. I should be out in the fields. Here I am dicking around with this burglary business.” He needed to watch himself. “Excuse my language.”
The woman deputy laughed. It was a nice, solid laugh, no pretense. It came from her stomach but had a little sweetness in it. “Hey, don’t worry. I was a cop in Minneapolis. I’ve heard everything.”
He felt a smile tug at his lips. “I bet.”
They rode for a few moments in silence. Sorenson debated whether he should turn the air-conditioning on. He tried to use it as little as possible. Cost him in gas and he wasn’t sure it was good for his health. When it was hot, he thought it was better if you stayed one temperature. But he worried that maybe the deputy was uncomfortable.
“Cool enough for you?” he asked.
“I’m fine. After that winter, I’ll take all the warm days we can get.”
“The corn is sure liking it.”
“More than knee-high, isn’t it?” she commented.
“Mine’s up to my thigh,” he told her with pride. Most of his field was in feed corn, but he had planted a few rows of sweet corn close to the house. He could hardly wait until they could start eating it. Super Sweet, it was called, and the name was accurate.
“Tell me about these pesticides,” she said.
“Well, like I said, one’s an insecticide and one’s an herbicide. Both of them are pretty common.