by Dale Mayer
“Do we have anything to give them?”
“Lots of suppositions and problems,” he said. “There is definitely an issue at the company. What I can’t figure out is how far back it goes.”
“I hear you.”
Galen pulled in behind her in the front of the apartment building, as she hopped out of her car. She walked around to them. “I’ll just get changed.”
“Good,” Johan said. “I’ll come up with you.”
She frowned at him. “You don’t have to.”
“Doesn’t matter if I have to or not,” he said gently. “I’m coming.”
She rolled her eyes at him and looked at Galen. “Are you staying here?”
“I am,” he said with a grin. “So don’t be long, you two.”
She gave him a startled look, then glanced hesitantly at Johan and bolted to the front door of her building. Johan just looked at his partner and sighed. “You got to make it more difficult for me?”
“It’s always better to have something you need to fight for,” Galen said.
“Bullshit,” Johan said in response.
Galen just laughed at him.
Johan quickly picked up the pace and followed behind her. She held the front door open for him, and he slipped into the hallway with her.
“What is Galen laughing at?” she asked hesitantly.
“Just a joke he made.”
“About me?”
“You’re a beautiful woman,” Johan said. “We’re both single guys. I’m sure your mind has no trouble connecting the dots.”
She didn’t look like she knew if she should be pleased or insulted over that. She just shrugged, and he appreciated her leaving it alone. She stepped into the elevator, and he followed.
“You’re on the third floor, correct?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Seconds later the elevator door closed, and it moved upward.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Two months roughly,” she said. “I stayed with some friends for a bit and then a hotel. Afterward I grabbed this apartment.”
He nodded. “How’s the security?”
“It’s only okay,” she said. “Nothing high-end about this place. I’m also on a month-to-month, so there’s really no incentive for the landlord or the owners to increase the security. Or improve anything else, for that matter.”
“Understood,” he said.
As they walked down the hallway, she pulled out her key, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. He followed. It was small, maybe eight hundred square feet. A one-bedroom apartment where the kitchen, dining room, and living room were together, with the bedroom off to the side and the bathroom opposite.
“Like I said, nothing fancy.” She tossed down her purse. “Excuse me.” She walked into the bathroom first and then through to her bedroom.
Immediately he crossed the living room and pulled back the drapes to look outside, finding a small Juliet balcony. So he opened the glass doors and stepped out onto it. He could access the neighbors’ balconies from hers, but it would take a bit of finagling to make it happen. He looked up to see a fourth-floor balcony directly above him. And another one down below. Pretty standard. An unassuming, nonthreatening, but easily accessed apartment. None of it made him feel any better. He stepped back inside, locked the glass doors, and closed the curtains again.
Joy came out, wearing leggings and a long lightweight tunic. He looked at her approvingly. “Kai said not to dress up,” she said with a frown.
“Good,” he said.
“Do you know where we’re going?”
“Haven’t a clue,” he said. “Does it matter?”
She shrugged. “No. Yet I don’t want to be overdressed or underdressed.”
“How about you just go as you are and forget the status quo?” he said.
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to do,” she said, laughing. She walked back over, picked up her purse, and said, “You ready?”
“I am,” he said, and he walked out, watching as she locked the door. “Let’s take the stairs.”
“Fine,” she said. “But why?”
“I want to see if there’s any security or cameras here,” he said. “There aren’t any on your floor, and I didn’t see anything in the elevator.”
“I didn’t even look,” she confessed.
He’d come to expect that sort of thing. “You don’t until a predator is around,” he said. “Then it’s too late to wish you’d changed things.”
“Well, changing things here won’t be easy,” she said. “If somebody comes in, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.”
“Hence our concern,” he said cheerfully, as they walked down the stairs.
And, indeed, no security cameras of any kind were in the stairwell either. As they walked outside, they headed back to Galen, who still sat in the SUV.
“Maybe I should drive myself,” she said.
“No,” Johan said. “We’ll meet them there.” He opened the front passenger door for her.
She hopped in and said, “I don’t want to take your seat.”
He just sighed and closed the door gently, then popped into the back.
“I’m not being difficult,” she announced.
He burst out laughing. “No, of course not.”
She subsided into what appeared to be a bit of a temper fit, and he was happy to see it. So far she’d been far too amiable, considering all that was going on.
“If you’re going to be mean,” she said, “I won’t tell you what I found out.”
“Well, you’ll definitely tell us then,” he said, leaning forward. “What was it?”
She launched into an explanation of what Phyllis had said about her odd relationship with Barlow and the company. Both men were dumbstruck.
“So she goes from being at the top of the company immediately down to the bottom?” Johan recapped. “And comes back after five years to spend—what? The next nineteen years in the basement? Sounds like she’s punishing herself for her stupidity, but, man, she should be well over it by now.”
“Yes, my thoughts too,” Joy agreed. “Phyllis said she and Barlow had had a relationship for years, but I don’t know what ‘years’ means.”
“Right? Like was it really years, like three or whatever, or was it just her saying that,” Johan asked.
“Do you believe her story?” Galen asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “It was an odd thing, even for Phyllis.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said.
“Not too many people would tolerate that situation either,” Johan noted.
“Well, her attitude is very much about her now. I don’t know if she would have had anything to do with this missing ketamine though,” she said.
“It’s hard to say, but you’re right,” Galen said. “It is an odd thing.”
“Thanks for telling us.” Johan settled back. He pulled out his phone, wrote down a few more notes, and sent a message to Levi, asking him to check on Phyllis and the owner.
“And I wonder if he’s had any relationships since?” Galen asked.
“She said all were unsuccessful.”
“In the twenty-four years since he broke up with Phyllis though, there has to be a bunch,” Johan said from the back seat. “So we need to find out who they were.”
“Do you think they’ll have anything to do with this?” she asked in astonishment, twisting in her seat to look at him.
“No, I can’t say that,” he said. “But again what we want to do is make sure we check out every avenue.”
“Got it,” she said. “I was trying to figure out the processes of the company, but there really isn’t anything I’ve found so far,” she said. “The lab and the research side are all separated from the corporate side, at least on the books. Everything that’s done in my building is more of the business, marketing, and accounting side, with a small online research group somewhere within our building too. There’s no manufacturing. At
least none that I have any access to. It’s all at the big lab facility.”
“So where did all the extra supplies come from in those lower basement areas?”
“What extra supplies? What basement levels?” she asked. When both men stared at her in surprise, she shook her head.
Johan explained about the three locked rooms on B3 that didn’t show up on the blueprints.
“I had no idea.” She frowned, deeply concerned. “How am I supposed to do my job if I don’t know about this?”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Galen said.
“What does that mean?” Joy asked testily.
Johan explained, “That you’re not supposed to know, so you can’t interfere with their plans.”
Joy’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t voice her fears.
Johan admired her courage. She needed to hear about all they had discovered, so she would be properly informed. “I spoke to the foreman in charge of the loading docks. They bring in truckloads of boxes that are unloaded in the shipping bays, and then his workers distribute everything to where it needs to be, basically those three locked rooms I found.”
“But there shouldn’t be very much here in the way of chemicals and medicines, right?” Galen asked.
“According to my records, just for the big lab down the block,” she said. “All the trials and heavy-duty dangerous chemical-manufacturing stuff are done at the main lab’s research center.”
“Interesting. And I wonder what else happens there?” Galen asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Not sure I want to either.”
He nodded. “Particularly if it involves animals.”
“So, should there really be that much stuff coming and going then from your building?” Johan asked her.
“That depends what you mean by ‘that much stuff,’ I suppose,” she said. “I don’t deal with a ton of the shipping. That would be more for our purchasing officer and the accountant to reconcile between themselves.”
“And yet a truck was unloading, a big truck. Unloading boxes with three forklifts down there.”
She twisted around in her seat to stare at him. “Three forklifts? Why would they need so many supplies?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. What exactly are they unloading here, and do people realize what’s coming in and what’s going out?”
Joy shook her head, her eyes wide.
“It’s also possible,” Galen said, “that you’re dealing with one company, but the building is shared by another company, and the one company owns it.”
“Meaning, the one I work for is an umbrella company?”
“Exactly. They could be dealing with some shipping import-export company on the other side or something.”
“Well, that makes sense,” she said, “particularly if it’s related to their research.”
“Maybe we need to look at that more deeply,” Johan said. “It should have already been mentioned though, if that were the case.”
“I don’t think anybody here volunteers any information,” Galen said. “They’re all stuck on sticking to themselves, heads in the sand, ignoring whatever is going on there.”
“Unfortunately that’s very true,” she said. “I was really surprised when Phyllis went off on her tirade today and explained all that about her relationship with Barlow.”
“And that in itself is unusual, correct?”
“Well, I’ve shared an office with her for six weeks now, and she’s been barely civil,” she said. “But she’s barely civil to Doris too. So I think the argument today that you guys had with Edward set her off.”
“Interesting.”
“Very.”
Johan sat back, thinking about what they didn’t know, and wrote down more notes to send to Levi. “We still don’t have an awful lot of information,” he said. “It would sure be helpful to get someone to open up to us.”
“But is that cooperation necessary for you to investigate anyway?” she asked.
“Maybe not,” he said. “Either we find out the information now, or we must find it later. Personally I’d rather get the information now, so I have what I need to know before I head into any dangerous situations.”
“What is dangerous though?” Joy asked. “If there is a secondary company working within the same building, then it easily could have been just a mix-up in inventory.”
“So, in that case, why didn’t somebody just tell you or us about the second company?”
“I don’t know,” she said, pulling up her phone. “I almost want to call James and ask him.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. You don’t know what else is going on out there. James could be just a middleman.”
“But 240 people work for this company,” she said. “So it doesn’t sound like there’s room in this building for more than that. Granted, a bunch of the employees on file could be those who work at the main lab research facility down the block. I’ve never really done an employee canvass.”
“But, if it’s an umbrella company, maybe they work for someone else?” Galen offered.
“Lots of people think they work for one company,” Johan said, “but legally, on paper, they’re working for somebody else.”
“I guess,” she said. “It’s kind of sad though that I’ve been there for six weeks, and I still haven’t figured out any of this.” She settled into her passenger seat, again facing forward. “But back to Phyllis. I sure wouldn’t want to be in her shoes.”
“No. I can’t imagine that she’s taken the whole thing very easily.”
“And yet I want to find her guilty of something, but she hasn’t stolen anything that we know of, and I think that’s wrong too,” she murmured. “Surely James is guilty of something, right?”
Galen laughed. “You’re beginning to sound like us.”
“We’ll find out who’s behind all this,” Johan said.
“If there even is any this,” she muttered. “So far it’s just one case of ketamine missing. Although Phyllis did mention Chelsea today.”
“Good! What did she say?”
Joy quickly relayed the little bit that she’d heard. And then said, “But that’s really not definitive either.”
Just then Galen pulled into a parking lot of a park. Johan unbuckled his seat belt, hopped out, and opened her door. She looked up at him in surprise, but he was busy searching the area.
“So, are you trying to be gallant?” she whispered in a low voice, as she stepped to the ground and leaned toward him. “Or are you thinking of my safety?”
He looked down at her, his gaze warming as he studied her worried face. “Does it bother you either way? Regardless of those two choices, I mean.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be worried about my safety too,” she said. “I never really had anybody be this attentive.”
“Well, maybe it’s a good thing I’m here then,” he said. He swooped a hand up, lifting her chin gently, and he kissed her on her nose.
She gasped and frowned. “What was that for?”
“Because I wanted to,” he said with a smile.
She gave him a good frown. “Well, don’t do it again.”
He chuckled. “Why not?”
“Because I didn’t give you permission,” she said.
“Do I need permission to kiss you?” he asked with interest.
She looked immediately flustered. “Well, yes. So don’t do that.”
Immediately he leaned down and kissed her on the nose again. “I didn’t ask for permission that time. Does that mean it’s a problem?”
She glared up at him, shoving her chin toward him and asked, “What are you up to?”
He grinned, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close, and whispered, “Maybe anything and everything I can possibly get up to,” he said. “What would you say to that?”
She stared up at him, confusion clouding her gaze, and, in spite of everything going on, he
reached up his hand, sliding into her curls and against her scalp. Then, holding her head in place, he lowered his lips and kissed her. When he finally broke away from her, her gaze was softly muted and completely unfocused. “Maybe I should do that again,” he whispered against her lips.
“And maybe you shouldn’t,” she said, struggling to right herself.
He chuckled, then leaned forward and gave her a gentle peck on the lips. “Too late.”
Chapter 6
Joy was flummoxed and completely confused as to what Johan was up to. She managed to deflect the jokes from Galen, but, as they walked to a large outdoor park, she stopped and frowned. “Are we meeting Kai here?”
Just then came a call from the other side of the park. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Kai yelled, “Joy! Over here!”
Looking that way, she saw her friend, standing with her partner, Tyson. Joy raised a hand and started walking quickly toward them. Galen and Johan walked on either side of her. She glanced from one to the other.
“Why out here?” she muttered.
“Because it’s a beautiful day,” Johan said.
She snorted. “I still need dinner,” she announced, her voice slightly contrary. But then she blamed Johan for that. Just as she was about to run the last few feet toward Kai, Johan reached out his hand and gently slipped it through her elbow, slowing her pace. She looked at him and glared. “Why?”
“For appearances,” he said smoothly.
“I’m running toward a friend,” she said in exasperation. “Do you guys really think we were followed here?”
“If anybody cares about what you are up to, then, yes,” Galen said from the other side of her.
She frowned. “And what difference does it make if I walk or run these last few feet?”
“Maybe nothing,” Johan said. “But this way, if anybody is watching, they’ll know you’re not alone.”
She shrugged. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
He let his hand drop now, since they were only a couple yards away, and Kai was running toward Joy now. Kai threw open her arms, and the two women hugged.
Joy held Kai close. “Seems like it’s been so long,” Joy said.