by Dale Mayer
“Kai’s going back anyway, isn’t she? I think she has to work tomorrow,” Joy said.
“So maybe Tyson can bring something back with him?”
“We’ll need to hook up with them and see for sure,” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll give him a call.”
She stood outside the car, pacing on the driveway as Johan contacted Tyson. She heard only part of the conversation, but it was short and to the point.
Minutes later he put away his phone and said, “Okay. Tyson said Kai was hoping to have dinner with you, early, like four o’clock today, and then they are heading back home tonight.”
She nodded, shoving her hands in her pockets. “That works.”
“Tyson will come back tomorrow morning with the gear for tracking any motion around the house.”
“That sounds good.” She nodded again. “So, I guess I get up and go to work in the morning?” she said, shaking her head. It all felt so damn wrong.
Chapter 17
When the next morning rolled around, it felt even worse. But she got up, dutifully got dressed, and stood alone in her hotel room, wondering what she was supposed to do next. When a knock came on the door, she instinctively knew it would be Johan. She opened the door and smiled. “You didn’t have to get up just because I’ve got to go to work.”
“We’ll work too,” he reminded her gently.
She smiled. “I’d forgotten about that,” she said.
“Let’s go get some breakfast first,” he said, “and then we can all go together.”
She nodded. “I guess there’s no reason for me to have separate wheels, is there?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
They walked down to the hotel restaurant to find Galen already there with a table. She quickly ordered eggs on toast, and, when they were done, it was a quick drive to her job.
She was the first one to walk into her office. Shrugging, she sat down at her desk and proceeded to get started on the work that had been left from Friday.
She didn’t see the men for another couple hours. All of a sudden, she looked up to see James, her boss, standing fretfully in her doorway.
“Good morning,” she said cheerfully. He just glared at her. She immediately fell silent and watched and waited.
“You know you can’t stay here,” he said.
Her heart sank. “Are you firing me?” she asked slowly.
“No, of course not,” he said sarcastically. “You’ll just go to the union and cause all kinds of trouble.”
“Well, there are definitely laws against firing me without cause,” she said, “but there’s also the fact that I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
He continued to glare at her for a long moment and then spun on his heels and took off. It was so bizarre.
Johan appeared moments later. “Did I just hear that right?”
“Yeah,” she said, “though what it means, I don’t know. He didn’t come out and fire me.”
“He’s probably hoping you’ll quit.”
“Well, I would if I had a reason to,” she said. “I presume for the moment that I should be here.”
He looked torn, and she immediately changed her statement. “I do need to be here, at least for the moment. And they can damn well pay me a settlement if they want me to leave early, especially after the break-in and the damage at my apartment,” she said. “Plus, a move will cost me a lot.”
“But not too much.” He then added gently, “There’s not much left.”
She winced. “But I still have to make that money and cough up rent for my current apartment, which is a problem.”
“That’s quite true,” he said, and he disappeared.
Frowning at that, she finally focused on her work.
When Doris showed up, like three hours late, Joy just smiled at her. Neither of the women said anything. Doris sat down at her desk and immediately got to work. The woman kept looking over at Phyllis’s desk, but there was no sign of her.
Joy was contemplating if she should say anything to her when Doris suddenly got up and walked out of the room. Joy sank back in her chair and whispered to herself, “Everybody is so weird today.”
When Doris returned, she had a coffee cup in her hand but still no smile on her face. She was a much younger woman than Phyllis, but Joy had no idea why Doris was down in this dungeon area too. Joy hoped a little conversation might ease the strained atmosphere around them. “Did you have a good weekend?” she asked in a cheerful voice.
“No,” Doris snapped. “And I don’t do small talk. I really don’t want to talk to anybody right now.” And, with that, she put in earplugs and focused on her own work.
“Wow,” Joy whispered to herself. “It’ll be a long day.”
“They are all long days,” Doris said in a snide tone. “You’ve got to have an end goal or life will get you.”
Now she really wanted to ask what Doris’s end goal was but knew the woman wouldn’t say.
*
As the day went on, Johan and Galen received a summons to Edward’s office, with the expectation that they had something to show for their time. As they walked into the penthouse floor and found the offices designated for the board members, they located Edward’s office.
Edward motioned them to the two chairs across from him. “Please tell me that you have something.”
“You mean, outside of the fact that the CEO was murdered?”
“Yes, dammit,” he snapped. “Outside of that.”
“Well, he was blackmailing several people,” Johan said. “Does that help?”
Edward stared at him in shock. “What?”
“Yes,” he said.
“That’s just wrong.”
“It is, indeed,” Galen said. “So does that mean you don’t know anything about it?”
“Of course I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “But it’s crazy. No way he’d do that.”
“Maybe not,” Johan said. “The cops are all over it anyway. And, yes, we’ve tracked spare inventory coming through this place. Not necessarily drugs but items that have been moved off to the side, only to suddenly disappear, get moved over to the other warehouse. But we don’t have records on the inside of receiving them. Things in the shipping area have been left quite comfortably obtuse for a long time.”
“That’s because our foreman is great,” Edward said. “He’s taking care of all that.”
“Maybe, but if so, he’s also looking out for himself and not for the company,” Johan said. “And I think, now that things got a little bit dicey, he stepped out for a little bit.”
“Are you saying he’s involved?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “But I don’t think he checked into things as closely as he could have.”
“I need to talk to him then,” Edward said, jumping to his feet. “It still doesn’t tell us who’s involved though.”
“No, it doesn’t. I suspect we’ll find out fairly quickly,” he said. “Give us another forty-eight hours, and we should be on top of this.”
Edward hemmed and hawed.
Johan said, “We’ve got a lot of really recent breakthroughs,” he said. “We just need time to tie it all together.”
“Okay, I’ll give you forty-eight hours,” he snapped, “but that’s it.”
“Good enough,” Johan said cheerfully; then he walked out. With Galen at his side, they walked down the hallway back to their office.
“Do you think forty-eight hours is really enough?” Galen asked.
“I suspect we’ll know all about this by the time we find out who’s collecting the money tomorrow,” he said. “Speaking of which, have you heard from Tyson at all?”
Galen held up his phone to see a text had just come in. “He just got back to town with our stuff.”
“Wow, he made good time in rush hour traffic to downtown Houston.” They looked at their watches. “At lunchtime
, maybe we should go set some stuff up.”
“Good idea.” And, with that, they had a plan.
At the doorway to their office, they stopped.
“So what about Joy?” Galen asked.
“Well, she doesn’t have lunch with her, and there’s no place to get it here, so why don’t we take her with us?”
They walked to her office and, as they stepped in, the other woman stood there, glaring at Joy.
Joy was completely oblivious as she worked on her computer. When the guys walked in, Joy looked up, smiled, and asked, “Is it lunchtime?”
They looked over at the other woman, smiled, and Galen said, “Hello.”
“Are you taking her for lunch?” the woman asked.
“Maybe,” Johan said cheerfully, his gaze watchful as he studied the other woman. “Any reason not to?”
“Much better if you do,” she said. “I’m not very good company right now, so I’d just as soon have the office to myself.”
They looked over at the empty desk. Johan asked, “Who belongs there?”
“None of your business,” the woman said coolly.
At that, he was surprised, but he nodded. “You’re right. It isn’t.” He looked over at Joy. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, hopped up, grabbed her purse, and walked out. She called out a goodbye as she left. The other woman didn’t answer. As they walked out to the car, he asked, “Is she always like that?”
Joy shook her head. “Obviously Doris must have had a shitty weekend.”
Chapter 18
Joy didn’t know if there was a bigger problem going on with Doris or not. The woman was grouchy today, but she’d never been overly friendly.
Lunch was a quick affair of sandwiches eaten on the run. They headed to the house of the two blackmailed men from the board. There they met up with Tyson, who had brought the equipment from the compound. They had a sandwich for him too. They quickly set up cameras on the outside and then another pointing to the driveway as well.
“Too bad we don’t have one in my office,” she muttered. “I’m forever feeling that somebody is staring at me.”
“Still?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it’s kind of creepy.”
“Well, I have spare equipment now, if you want to set something up.”
“We’d have to do it without anybody else knowing,” she said.
When they got back to her office, thankfully it was empty. “Perfect. No time like the present,” Tyson said.
After a quick look around, he found a place just above the door where he could fit the discrete camera against a bit of the molding that went around the doorframe. Within seconds he had it up and installed. He said, “I’ll keep the feed on my phone for now, just for testing.”
She nodded. “Fine with me.”
And, with that, he said, “I’ll disappear so I don’t attract more attention.”
She laughed, watching him leave, now looking at Johan and Galen. “Coffee’s around the corner, if you two want some.”
“You know what? We never did find the coffee,” Galen said. “You want to show us?”
She nodded, then led the way to the little lunchroom. As usual, there was a pot, but it was empty. She thought the others prided themselves on creating that problem. She quickly put on a fresh pot, and, while they stood here, waiting for it to drip, Johan’s phone rang.
He answered it. “Hey, Tyson. What’s up?” He listened a moment. “Oh, really? That’s interesting,” he said. He shot Galen a hard look and quietly said, “Keep her here.” And, with that, he disappeared.
She turned, coffee cups in hand. Staring at Galen, she asked, “What was that all about?”
He shrugged, but his face was hard. He took the cups from her, poured coffee in them, and said, “I’m not sure we’ll get much chance to drink this.”
She frowned, looked at the coffee, looked at him, and said, “Is it my office?”
“I don’t know, but Tyson just called, and Johan took off.”
“I want to go see,” she said abruptly.
“And I’d agree with that,” he said, “but I’ll carry the coffee.”
She let him carry the three cups back to her office. Johan stopped her outside the door. She looked at him with a frown and asked, “Why can’t I go in?”
He sighed. “You can go in,” he said, “but you won’t like what you see.”
She stepped into the office, not sure what to expect. She found Tyson pulling down a camera that had been set into the ceiling tiles. She stared at him in shock. “So somebody was watching?”
He nodded grimly. “We’ve just got clearance from Edward to track it back,” he said. “It goes to Barlow’s office.”
“Wow,” she said, “that’s just bizarre.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “We’re thinking it was probably directed at Phyllis more so than you.”
She looked at where Phyllis sat and then her own desk and nodded. “That says a lot about their relationship. Whether he was keeping an eye on her or it was something they liked between them.”
“Twisted in oh-so-many ways,” he said. “We also asked Edward to contact Phyllis to see why she didn’t show up today.”
Joy looked at him and wrinkled up her face. “Please don’t tell me something happened to her.”
“We’re not at all sure,” he said. “He didn’t get an answer, so somebody has gone to take a look.”
She turned around in a wide motion. “We could go check.”
“No, the cops have been called in. They’ll do a welfare check to see if she’s okay.”
She reached up to massage her forehead when Doris walked in. “People appear to be concerned about Phyllis,” she said to Doris. “Have you heard anything from her?”
Doris looked surprised, then shrugged. “How the hell would I know?” she said. She looked at the electronic equipment and said, “What the hell is going on here?”
“Just something from the board,” Tyson said and walked out with it.
Doris didn’t sit back down again. “More weird games between those two.”
“Which two?” Johan asked.
“Phyllis and her lover.”
“Are they still lovers?”
“Yes. That is a very weird game they play. Been together since forever.”
Joy turned to look at Johan. He shrugged. “Hey, I don’t get involved with other people’s sex lives,” he muttered.
“Well, theirs is bizarre anyway,” Doris snapped.
“How bizarre?”
“No clue,” Doris said and clammed up. “I have work to do, so, if you’re not working here, get out of my office.”
At that, Joy sent Johan back out again. She sat back down at her desk and got to work. She was hoping there would be an opportunity to talk to Doris about Phyllis. “You seem like you are pretty good friends with Phyllis.”
“Hell no,” she said. “Can’t stand the woman.” But her tone was absentminded, as if she was busy with her office stuff and hadn’t really considered what the question was all about.
With that, Joy didn’t really know what else to say.
When Johan popped his head in about a half an hour later, the look on his face caused her to suck back her breath.
“So,” he said. “Phyllis has been found, and she’s dead.”
Doris looked up and blanched. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Doris just sat there in shock, but that was pretty well how Joy felt too. Joy asked no one in particular, “I wonder if it was the same person who killed Barlow.”
“Of course it was,” Doris said. “Like I said, those two were involved and have been for a really long time.”
“Anything illegal in their involvement?”
“Well, it started off as just Phyllis I think, but then Barlow got involved.”
“What was she doing?”
“Stealing shit. But then so was Barlow. That’s how his company was built. He built it as a shell company
to run a bunch of other shit around and through this place.”
The words just spilled from her mouth, and Johan stared at her in shock. “And you know that how?”
Doris shrugged and didn’t say anything.
“If you know something,” Joy said, “please speak up.”
“Why the hell should I?” she said. “Speaking up doesn’t do any good.” With that, she grabbed her purse and sweater, then said, “I’m taking the rest of this day as a sick day. Obviously I’m overcome with grief,” she said sarcastically; then she turned and walked out.
Johan stared at Joy.
“I’ve never heard her speak like that before,” Joy said. “And how would she know any of this?”
“She wouldn’t,” Johan said. “Unless she’s involved in something.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean she’s involved in the thefts.”
“Maybe she was involved in something else though.”
“The blackmail?” she asked. “Does that mean Phyllis was doing the blackmailing too?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it depends on who shows up for the money tomorrow. If anybody does.”
“Right. So who else then?”
*
Johan didn’t like what was happening. Things were coming to a head, and it wasn’t in a good way. He headed back to his desk and started researching Doris. A bit of an enigma was involved in that woman. He went through the staff records, pulling open her personnel file. She’d asked for some shrink time at one point, and, other than that, she seemed to be a model worker. She’d worked for the company for five years. So why the hell was she still working in the basement?
He knew other people would say that it wasn’t a punishment to be down here, but, as far as he was concerned, it was. There were a lot nicer places to work in this huge building. Unless she wanted to be close to where the smuggling was happening? The fact that she’d accused Phyllis of theft and Barlow of smuggling almost made sense. Even if it was a shell company, Barlow would need somebody, like Phyllis, to give him a hand moving stuff. She was also his accounting spy.
Johan looked up to see Galen walking in.