Twenty-Three Retirees Paid a Fake Crew Using My Company’s Name. The First Snow Was 40 Days Away

He was.

Kaleb Aalto. Twenty-three years old. My late sister’s only son. I’d raised him half the time after she died, taught him to shingle at fourteen, hired him at eighteen.

And fired him last year, for showing up drunk on a job.

I found him four days later, in a motel room in Escanaba, with the curtains closed and a stack of pizza boxes by the door.

He didn’t run. He just sat down on the bed and put his face in his hands.

“I owed money,” he said. “Bad people. I thought if I could pay them off, I could start over somewhere. The other guys had done it before in Wisconsin. They said nobody gets hurt. Insurance pays.”

“Insurance doesn’t pay, Kaleb. Not for fraud. Not for widows.”

“I know that now.” His voice cracked. “Uncle Bjorn, I know that now.”

“Where’s the money?”

“Most of it’s gone. They took the biggest share and left me with the truck.” He looked up at me with my sister’s eyes. “I’ve got about forty thousand left. It’s in the truck. All of it.”

I stood in that motel room for a long time.

My lawyer had been clear. My duty was to call Detective Rautio. My heart said a lot of things, all at once, and none of them were clear at all.

“I’m going to take you to the police,” I said.

“I know,” said Kaleb.

He stood up. He picked up his jacket. Then he stopped.

“But first,” he said, “I want to fix the roofs.”