Flash Flood by Susan Slater Page A

feel you have enough protection for the barns?” Change the subject, get Hank talking about the ranch.
    â€œWe should. Mr. Eklund hired on ten new hands last week.”
    â€œAm I going to find working papers for the guys I’ve seen so far?” Dan said it with a half-smile; it wasn’t meant to be threatening.
    Hank looked sheepish. “Papers are in progress. But it takes awhile.”
    â€œAre you comfortable with Mexican nationals working with the herd?”
    â€œSome have experience. All are good with animals. It’s always worked out before. Some of the regular hands have been here for years, twenty or more.”
    â€œYou know, I need to inventory this entire operation.”
    â€œNo problem. It’s going to take awhile.”
    â€œCan we set a date? Start first of next week?”
    Dan waited while Hank seemed to consider something and watched as the vet scooped a pinch of tobacco out of a pouch in his breast pocket. “I’ll need to have some men on standby. We’re talking about rounding up a lot of stock.” Hank pushed the wad between his cheek and gums.
    â€œI’ll go over those records on past workers first, do what I can around here, get the office stuff out of the way. I could put off the bulk of the herd for a month probably, if that would help.”
    â€œYeah. I’ll be in Caracas next week.”
    â€œCattle delivery?”
    â€œMr. Eklund sweet-talked Señor Garcia into taking two cows in calf by the Cisco Kid. A four for the price of one package.”
    â€œWho’s your pilot?”
    â€œYours truly. Safer to have a vet on board during transport. Works to Mr. Eklund’s advantage if they’re one and the same.”
    â€œI’d also like a list of all vets who might have had access to the stock, here at the ranch or at shows over the past year. Maybe a list of competitors, too. Anyone who might possibly stand to gain.” Not to mention Billy Roland himself, who was pocketing the insurance money, but Dan wasn’t convinced that the money was the cause of it all. He was looking at a multi-million dollar spread. How could a few hundred thousand be that important?
    ***
    Dan spent that evening finding an apartment in Roswell. His contract allowed that on extended road trips. And it got him out of Carolyn’s hair. She’d balked, insisted, at first, that he stay there at the house; then, thinking he was seeing Elaine and needed privacy, drove him nuts trying to pry out the details.
    The apartment was furnished. That was being kind; it had furniture was more like it. But it would do. Side entrance off a fire escape served as a back door. He was one story up and to the back with a panoramic view of the stables and training barns belonging to New Mexico Military Institute. All this from the fifties-vintage bay window.
    He’d probably stay at the motel in Tatum most of the time during the inventory. Driving a hundred and fifty plus miles every day round trip wasn’t his idea of working expediently. He’d had a phone put in at the apartment. So he could call Elaine? He hadn’t made up his mind. But it surprised him that he couldn’t keep from thinking about her. So, her husband had been a felon, did it really make that much difference? Wasn’t he being a little tight-assed about the whole thing?
    He got up a half hour earlier the next morning and walked to work. Now that was something he couldn’t do in Chicago. He liked towns with turn-of-the-century buildings. Old red brick two-story structures that oozed history and displayed their conception in a chiseled stone corner block.
    Roswell’s courthouse had a weathered green metal dome that could be seen for miles perched on top of a three-story stone, wide, rectangular-shaped collection of offices placed well back from the main street and surrounded by hundred-year-old elms. Across the street and down two blocks, the local office for United