Rollover by Susan Slater Read Free Book Online Page B

of do not trespass.
    Main Street, if that’s what it was, consisted of several businesses—all boarded up. “I haven’t seen a restaurant, have you?”
    Elaine shook her head. “No grocery store, no restaurant, no commerce at all—but there’s a great-looking high school and middle school on the way out of town. And I think I’ve found a boarding house—at least there was a rooms for rent sign in front of that two-story adobe on the corner.”
    â€œI’d like to take a look at the bank, Nolan and Railroad avenue… sort of get my bearings before I chat with Ms. Kennedy.”
    â€œNolan’s coming up on the right.”
    Elaine turned onto the street and stopped opposite the First Community Bank of Wagon Mound. She put the SUV in park and they stared through the windshield.
    â€œQuaint.” Elaine offered.
    Dan looked at the L-shaped building of not more than eight hundred to a thousand square feet. Its front, probably a painted-over brick façade, sported plaster emblems like miniature coats of arms on every column—everything a solid tan, the density of color that only repeated thick coats of paint could give.
    The building was flat-roofed of a period known as New Mexico colonial and probably was adobe, all but the façade. The wooden numerals eight-zero-one were attached to the building above the door and a repeat of the address in stick-on numerals on the glass in the door itself. There were no windows along the side that faced the alley, but seven foot tall windows graced the front street entrance, each encased in dark brown heavy wooden frames complete with a dark brown painted-over transom above each one. The architecture was definitely early 1900s.
    â€œLooks vulnerable,” Dan concluded. Even if the walls were solid other than the front—and he suspected they were—there was enough glass across the front to warrant an open invitation to unwanted visitors.
    â€œBut didn’t you say the robbers tunneled in? Through some cellar?”
    Dan nodded. “I don’t see a cellar from here. Let’s drive down the alley and around to the south side.”
    It always surprised him to find an alley in the Southwest. Alleys were a Midwestern phenomena—dirt “streets” that divided a block of houses and were fronted by backyards instead of front porches. Usually the place for garbage containers and utilities—poles and meters. And, come to think of it, cellars were not run-of-the-mill out here—another Midwestern touch.
    The cellar in question on the west side of the bank was still marked off by tape. From their vantage point it looked like any cellar in a vintage home from Kansas to Indiana. Just odd to find one in New Mexico and underneath a bank. Wasn’t that some kind of double-dare invite to try to get inside? Didn’t seem like it’d been too difficult to hoodwink the bank’s guards…or guard…there might only be one; he’d have to check—get an interview.
    And he’d visit the bank later, but he’d bet anything that there was a marble counter upstairs, and an area for a couple of tellers all behind tasteful turn-of-the-century, fancy, black wrought-iron caging. Then the steel door with a combination lock leading to the room of safe deposit boxes. A couple offices, maybe a free-standing station with deposit slips, pens, and other paper necessities and that would be about it. That and the small walk-in vault, triple-reinforced and double-locked, needing a key and a combination for entry—the one the robbers didn’t bother with. Just the necessities. A bank like a thousand others that appeared out this way a hundred years ago.
    â€œSeen enough?” Elaine slipped the car in gear.
    â€œYeah. Think you can find Romero Street? Don’t want to keep Ms. Kennedy waiting.”
    ***
    Elaine pulled up in front of a nicely kept two-story adobe with what looked like a