They went back to work and got it exposed. The weight was squared off on top and a slightly wider trapezoid on the bottom. Three large bolt holes were drilled into it, and an oblong opening through the side and out the top, like a handhold.
“What kind of weight?” Holly asked.
“Counterweight for a Deere loader. A 644C. Common enough machine around here,” Yeager said.
Broker curled his hand around the opening in the top and yanked. It heaved slightly. “Jesus, what’s it weigh?”
“Yeager squinted. “Something’s wrong. You shouldn’t be able to move that thing. Sucker should weigh over four hundred pounds.”
“Why bury it? It’s not like they wear out, like tires,” Holly said. Real curious now, his shaggy white eyebrows drew closer together, his forehead wrinkled. Broker cleared away more dirt, tossed the shovel aside. With Holly, he squatted, grabbed handholds, and together they upended the weight.
“No shit, lookit that,” Holly said.
The three of them explored the cast-iron slab with their fingers. More than a third of its volume had been cleanly machined to create a cylindrical cavity, open on one end.
“A hollow counterweight?” Broker said as he and Holly turned to Yeager.
“See here,” Yeager said. He pointed to one end of the cavity, where the edge of the weight had been thinned down to less than a quarter-inch. It had cracked and shattered. “If it was bolted on the machine, with another weight in back of it, you could never see it was drilled out. But they screwed up milling out that thin edge to the hole and it cracked. Woulda gave it away, so he tossed it.”
“Dale Shuster is sounding more and more like a tricky guy,” Broker said. “What do you suppose he had in mind to put inside this thing?”
Yeager squatted, ran his thick fingers over the steel. “I seen a lot of smuggling tricks-false bottoms in gas tanks, compartments in trucks. But this is way too much work to get on and off a machine unless it was for something real special.” He looked at Holly. “Would what you’re looking for fit in here?”
Holly shook his head, tapped his teeth together. “Not sure.”
“Still, it’d be one hell of a chore to get the weight on and off. You’d need a hoist, air wrenches for the bolts. And only one fella around here has the gear to do millwork like this,” Yeager said. He looked at Broker, then at Holly. “Eddie Solce. He’s done a lot of repair work for the Shusters, going way back.”
On the ride out, Yeager explained how Eddie Solce lived south of town. He’d failed farming and had sold off half his land and had the rest in the Crop Rotation Program. He’s always been the local guy to repair farm equipment in his metal shop. “And he’s only got one hand. Lost his left hand in a corn picker, ’bout twenty years ago. Got him one of those old-fashioned Trautman farm hooks-just this clamp, but he can practically pick his nose with it.”
Yeager wheeled into a long driveway leading up to a white foursquare farmhouse in need of a paint job. Pointing toward a green F-150, he said, “He’s home, there’s his truck. Another thing, Solce always liked Ace. He was a little disappointed Ace didn’t marry his oldest daughter, Sally. They dated pretty heavy during high school.”
At the front door, Eddie Solce came out to meet them in blue jeans and a Chambray work shirt. Lean and rawboned, he’d shriveled into one mean nest of wrinkles after sixty and now it was impossible to tell his age. But he still looked strong, especially his right hand-as if the loss of his left hand had pumped twice the strength into the right. Broker thought he looked garrulous and he was.
“I already heard. Goddamn shame. Ace got himself shot by that goddamn Joe Reed. And some woman, too. Ace always did follow his pecker into trouble. Damn Joe anyway. Dale should’a never taken that buck on.” Eddie paused, squinted, nodded toward Broker and Holly. “Who the hell are
Yeager took Eddie by the shoulder, walked him off a few paces. “You don’t want to know who these boys are, believe me.”
Eddie flexed his jaw and sucked in his cheek on one side as he snatched a look over Yeager’s shoulder. “That one dusty white-haired fucker-he looks like he came outta a goddamn
“Eddie.” Yeager said it like an admonition, like a command to come back to his senses and get serious.
“Yeah, Jimmy,” he said, more collected.
“C’mon, let’s take a walk.”
“Am I in trouble?” Sober now, his voice slower. “Where we going?”
“Your shop. Something I wanted to talk to you about. We found it over at Shuster’s shed. But the thing is, it’s too big to carry around.”
Solce set his jaw in resignation when Yeager said that. Like he knew where this was heading. They started toward the barn and the pole barn alongside. Broker and Holly fell in behind, listening to the conversation.
They went into the shop, which was an orderly rectangular work space with a long metal fabrication bench in the middle. A stick welder, along with tanks of acetylene and oxygen, sat off to the side. Racks of mixed plain and diamond-plate chromed steel sheets lined the wall. Yeager walked up to a machine at the end of the shop. It stood six feet tall, had a complicated drill head and a video console on an arm off to the side.
“Bridgeport mill,” Broker said.
“Yep,” Holly said, “That’d be the thing.”
They settled back and watched.
Yeager put his hand on the mill and looked at Solce. “Well, Eddie?
“I got nothing to do with what happened at that bar. I been here all morning, ask Margo and the grandkids,” Eddie said. He began to scratch at the steel hook with his right hand.
“But you did some unusual work for Dale this summer, didn’t you?” Yeager said.
Eddie ground his teeth, tapped them together a few times. “A job’s a job.”
“But this job was pretty strange, you gotta admit…”
Eddie swallowed and said very respectfully, “Am I in trouble, Jimmy?” He scratched at his hook faster, like it really itched.
“I’m thinking no, but if you don’t tell me straight about drilling a channel in a five-hundred-pound Deere counterweight I’ll sure as hell figure out a way to put you ass deep in something,” Yeager said.
Eddie sagged and sat on his metal bench. “Wasn’t just one. Was five of the fuckers.”
Broker and Holly came forward, their eyes getting wide. “How the hell did you get five of those things in here?” Broker said.
Eddie shrugged. “Joe Reed brought ’em over on a lowboy. Had a hoist and jacks. He was good at stuff like that. We brought them in one by one on a forklift.”
“When was this?” Yeager said.
“Beginning of June. Took me two weeks to do the four on the loader. Then one of them cracked and I had to do another one.”
“Jesus Christ, Eddie,” Yeager said. “Did it occur to you to wonder what the hell Dale wanted with bored-out weights on a 644C?”
“Well, it was different. And Dale, he just said, like-‘I know this looks weird but it’s a joke I’m playing on Irv Fuller.’ See, he was getting set to sell the loader to Irv, in Minnesota.”
Broker and Holly were squinting slightly, leaning forward, listening carefully. They shot quick looks at Yeager.
“One hell of a lot of work for a practical joke,” Yeager said.
“I know, Jimmy. But those two families have a history of shorting each other way back. And there’s the stuff from high school. Remember? Irv was behind that stunt they pulled on Dale.”
Yeager narrowed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and said quietly, “Along with Ginny Weller.”
“They ever find her in Grand Forks?” Eddie asked.
“No,” Yeager said. He glanced at Broker and Holly.
Broker took Holly aside and explained about the burned yearbook, Nina’s license. Then he stepped forward, raised his hand to calm Eddie, who instinctively edged back. “Give us a diagram of the job, how you milled out those weights.”
Eddie’s eyes flitted to Yeager, who nodded his assent. Eddie got up from the bench, went to a counter next
