Part 3 — The Neighbor With Pie
The name on the red tab was Phil Oakes. My next-door neighbor of fourteen years. The man who borrowed my ladder and returned it with a pecan pie.
The agent introduced himself as Sanchez, of the Department of Labor investigations unit, with an FBI agent beside him. “Mr. Voss, we know you did nothing wrong,” he said. “We have your logbooks. We have waited twelve years to prove what Mr. Oakes has been doing.”
The boxes were payroll records. Twelve years of time cards, tax forms and wage statements from a staffing company Phil ran out of Minneapolis. He had been underpaying hundreds of workers, collecting their payroll taxes and keeping the money. My trailer moved the originals so no single labor office could audit them in one place.
The photographs were his idea of protection. He thought if I ever got curious, a picture of my wife watering her roses would convince me to mind my own business. He was wrong about the roses, and he was wrong about me.
They arrested Phil at six the next morning in his bathrobe, on his own front lawn, with my wife watching from our window. She waved at him. I think that was the loudest statement she has ever made.
The kindest face on the street can hide the dirtiest ledger in the county.
Phil pleaded guilty to payroll tax fraud, wage theft and obstruction. The court ordered him to repay more than $1.8 million in unpaid wages and taxes. His house was sold, and every worker received what was owed, with interest.
I got a phone call from a woman in Minneapolis who had worked for his company for six years. She said she cried when the check arrived. She asked me to thank the driver.
The Department of Labor also paid my retirement bonus out of the seized funds. It came with a certificate, which my wife framed and put on the refrigerator.
The house next door sold to a young couple from Lubbock. They brought a casserole on the first day, and I looked at it for a long moment before I took the first bite.
It was a very good casserole. We sat on my porch, watched the sun set over the plains, and talked about roses.