services for the clinic.”
“Did? She doesn’t work here anymore?”
“We recently found it more economical to share the hospital’s janitorial crew. The use of beds has declined enough so the hospital subcontracts some of its routine services to various nearby clinics. The janitorial service is one.”
“But you were willing to be a reference on her home loan application?”
“Of course. And would be again. She and her workers did a fine job, and I was quite sorry not to renew her contract. Unfortunately, the hospital had certain union obligations with its staff, and it was just easier all around to make the change. I think Mrs. Chiquichano will be an excellent credit risk. I found her to be very meticulous and thorough.”
“I see. How long did she work for you, doctor?”
“I believe it was two years. I don’t remember the exact dates.”
“Do you know who her other customers are?”
“No. I had no reason to ask.”
“Not even for references when you hired her?”
“I’d rather judge a person’s worth by their work for me, not by what someone else—who may be far less demanding—says about them. If her work had not been highly satisfactory, I would have fired her.”
Hire and fire—now I remembered where I’d heard of the Associated Medical Pavilion. “You do the health tests on Mrs. Chiquichano’s employees too?”
“I beg pardon?”
“TB tests—blood tests. Felix Frentanes … and Nestor Calamaro. Doesn’t your group provide the screening tests for the people who work at the Apple Valley Turkeys plant?”
Matheney’s fingers tugged at his chin whiskers. “Our lab does a lot of industrial screenings. Immunology is one of our areas of specialty, after all.”
“And Mrs. Chiquichano brought them here for the tests?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Kirk. She may have—especially if she was working here at the time. But that kind of scheduling is taken care of by one of the secretaries, so I couldn’t tell you if Mrs. Chiquichano arranged it or not.”
That was it: straight answers to straight questions, and nothing more to ask. I thanked the good doctor and wound my way back through color-coded halls with a sense of letdown. Whatever I had expected to discover, it wasn’t here.
The drive up to Lafayette took about thirty minutes, but with the top down and the September sun cooled by the wind, it was a pleasant ride. The Healey enjoyed the curving country roads that branched off the freeways, and so did I. Lafayette was one of the faster-growing towns in the area, serving as a bedroom community for both Boulder and Denver, and support businesses had begun bringing people and money into what had been a village as small as Erie. Surrounding housing developments rose and fell with the prairie and looked naked and sun baked on the grassy ridges, but the old part of town had settled under tall trees.
That’s where the machine shop was, on a street that was still predominantly residential but unzoned. A familiar blue pickup truck with a tar-bucket trailer sat in front of the cinder-block building, and a pair of tar-stained ladders leaned against the walls. At the foot of one, a deeply tanned and shirtless man ladled melted tar from a portable heater into a bucket and hauled it up to the roof by a pulley at the ladder’s top. On the flat roof, another bronzed man, heavier, carried the buckets away. Neither was Taylor, but noise and gestures indicated more workers out of sight somewhere in the center of the roofs expanse.
I drove past slowly and then circled the block to get a good look at the building. Through my telephoto lens, the bearded faces zoomed close, and I shot a couple of stills, hoping that the men hidden beyond the eave would come forward into focus. But they didn’t, and I drove to another angle, cruising along a rutted dirt alley crowded with rusty oil drums used as trash cans. From this spot I could make out another shape busy on the roof, but couldn’t get a clear
“Did? She doesn’t work here anymore?”
“We recently found it more economical to share the hospital’s janitorial crew. The use of beds has declined enough so the hospital subcontracts some of its routine services to various nearby clinics. The janitorial service is one.”
“But you were willing to be a reference on her home loan application?”
“Of course. And would be again. She and her workers did a fine job, and I was quite sorry not to renew her contract. Unfortunately, the hospital had certain union obligations with its staff, and it was just easier all around to make the change. I think Mrs. Chiquichano will be an excellent credit risk. I found her to be very meticulous and thorough.”
“I see. How long did she work for you, doctor?”
“I believe it was two years. I don’t remember the exact dates.”
“Do you know who her other customers are?”
“No. I had no reason to ask.”
“Not even for references when you hired her?”
“I’d rather judge a person’s worth by their work for me, not by what someone else—who may be far less demanding—says about them. If her work had not been highly satisfactory, I would have fired her.”
Hire and fire—now I remembered where I’d heard of the Associated Medical Pavilion. “You do the health tests on Mrs. Chiquichano’s employees too?”
“I beg pardon?”
“TB tests—blood tests. Felix Frentanes … and Nestor Calamaro. Doesn’t your group provide the screening tests for the people who work at the Apple Valley Turkeys plant?”
Matheney’s fingers tugged at his chin whiskers. “Our lab does a lot of industrial screenings. Immunology is one of our areas of specialty, after all.”
“And Mrs. Chiquichano brought them here for the tests?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Kirk. She may have—especially if she was working here at the time. But that kind of scheduling is taken care of by one of the secretaries, so I couldn’t tell you if Mrs. Chiquichano arranged it or not.”
That was it: straight answers to straight questions, and nothing more to ask. I thanked the good doctor and wound my way back through color-coded halls with a sense of letdown. Whatever I had expected to discover, it wasn’t here.
The drive up to Lafayette took about thirty minutes, but with the top down and the September sun cooled by the wind, it was a pleasant ride. The Healey enjoyed the curving country roads that branched off the freeways, and so did I. Lafayette was one of the faster-growing towns in the area, serving as a bedroom community for both Boulder and Denver, and support businesses had begun bringing people and money into what had been a village as small as Erie. Surrounding housing developments rose and fell with the prairie and looked naked and sun baked on the grassy ridges, but the old part of town had settled under tall trees.
That’s where the machine shop was, on a street that was still predominantly residential but unzoned. A familiar blue pickup truck with a tar-bucket trailer sat in front of the cinder-block building, and a pair of tar-stained ladders leaned against the walls. At the foot of one, a deeply tanned and shirtless man ladled melted tar from a portable heater into a bucket and hauled it up to the roof by a pulley at the ladder’s top. On the flat roof, another bronzed man, heavier, carried the buckets away. Neither was Taylor, but noise and gestures indicated more workers out of sight somewhere in the center of the roofs expanse.
I drove past slowly and then circled the block to get a good look at the building. Through my telephoto lens, the bearded faces zoomed close, and I shot a couple of stills, hoping that the men hidden beyond the eave would come forward into focus. But they didn’t, and I drove to another angle, cruising along a rutted dirt alley crowded with rusty oil drums used as trash cans. From this spot I could make out another shape busy on the roof, but couldn’t get a clear
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