“Got the new streaming service set up, if you want to try some gaming.” Jason sat down next to the new arrival and fist-bumped his right hand. “They finally dug all the right channels and stuff to connect up the fiber.”
“Fancy.” Ant jiggled his eyebrows. “But no can do.” He held up his left hand, the knuckles swollen and bruised. “The doc says to keep off this as much as possible for the next week. Got me out of work and all.”
“Look, Alice came over here to—”
“Yes, why did she come?” Jason turned and glared at both of them. “I’ve been sat here waiting for an explanation for twenty minutes while you two have been talking about the weather.”
“It’s nice,” Ant said, slumping farther down in his chair.
“What?”
“The weather. Good for growing and stuff.”
Jason frowned as though his friend had suddenly turned into a lemur. “You what? Since when have you been into gardening?”
“It’s good for the environment, init?”
“And?”
“It’s the only planet we’ve got.”
Sally ducked her head down and Alice peered with suspicion at her friend’s shaking shoulders. It appeared the world had moved onto different concerns during the period Jason had been incarcerated. In a way, she felt a great deal of empathy for his current bewildered expression. She was often out of step in the same way.
“What d'you do, Alice?”
“I’m a beekeeper.” She turned to look at Ant, carefully examining his face in small snippets before putting them together and deciding he wasn’t making fun of her. Yet. “I keep bees on a property just out of the city.” She nodded at Sally. “We also operate a café together where I sell a lot of my honey.”
“Cool stuff.” He sat back and patted his belly. “I ate far too much honey when I was a kid. My mom was always yelling at me because of my sweet tooth.” He smiled, revealing a few gaps near the front. Alice presumed the missing teeth had more in common with his grazed knuckles that his passion for sweets. “D’you make that Manuka stuff? I hear that’s good.”
Alice gave a small laugh. “I don’t make any of it, my bees do all the work. But, yeah, I have a few hectares given over to Manuka, and it’s one of our more popular varieties.”
“Money in it, isn’t there?”
“There’s money in everything if you do it right.” Sally reached her hand out to place it on top of Jason’s. “We really do need to have a serious discussion with you and I can’t do that with Ant here.”
“Way to make my friends feel welcome.” Jason jerked his hand back, his eyebrows pulling together to throw a shadow over his eyes. “How d'you feel if I told Alice to get out of the house because we’ve got something important to discuss?”
“My house.”
“Whereabouts is your farm, then?” Ant asked, leaning forward and snapping his fingers to gain Alice’s attention. “You up north or down south.”
Alice kept her gaze fixed on Jason and Sally as she fished a business card out of her pocket. “That’s the address for the farm. We sometimes sell direct to the public, but not at this time of year.”
“I’ll have to come by when you’re doing that.” Ant flicked the edge of the card with his thumbnail. “Those Manuka bees, they’re worth—what? Thousands, tens of thousands per hive?”
“They’re not Manuka bees, they’re honey bees. It’s just their home happens to be smack bang in the middle of hectares of Manuka we planted.” Alice turned, confused why the man seemed so interested. Apart from the school children at a talk she’d once given, nobody usually showed any longing to hear more about her bees. Usually, it was the opposite.
“I don’t care who you have over most of the time, but I did ask if you’d stay home especially to talk something through with you today,” Sally said, clenching her hands together on the table in front of her. “Now, I’m not saying you deliberately invited Ant over to disrupt this conversation, but I do need to speak with you. Right now.”
“Well, you’re not going to.” Jason stood up and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. “Come on, Ant,” he said when his friend stayed seated. “Let’s go out and find something fun to do together.”
“Nice meeting you ladies,” Ant said, tipping a forefinger to his head. “But the master’s calling.”
Alice wasn’t certain if she should feel more annoyed or relieved. From the looks of her friend, Sally didn’t know which way to go either.
DS Hogarth crossed his legs at the ankle. “Do you believe Jason was deliberately trying to avoid hearing what you had to say?”
Sally shrugged. “Possibly. Or he didn’t like that I’d asked him to do something special and wanted to get out of any serious talk. I don’t think he had the slightest inkling of what I needed to tell him. He’s certainly never acted in a way that led me to think that, then or now.”
The sergeant squeezed the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb, his eyes closed tightly. Just as he opened his mouth to ask another question, a sound from outside apparently changed his mind.
Footsteps echoed up the front porch and Alice watched Doug stride up to the door. Immense relief cascaded through her body, and she bowed her head for a second in thanks. He’d told them he’d be perfectly safe getting everything done and although she’d believed his words, she still hadn’t been sure her friend could accurately predict the situation.
But, here he was. In good health. In one piece.
“I’ve got it done,” Doug announced from the doorway.
In a moment of shock, Alice realized he couldn’t see the DS sitting just inside the door.
“I paid the gang with your money and they’ve assured me you won’t get any trouble from him again. He’s fixed up. Permanently.”
“Come inside and tell me some more about that,” Hogarth said, rising from his chair and startling Doug so much he jumped. “I’m all ears as to why you’re paying off a gang and exactly who it is that’s taken care of permanently.”
Doug’s eyes flicked to the roadside, charting a path to escape that it was far too late to take. He walked inside, shoulders slumping, and sat on the sofa next to Alice.
After glancing at her for permission, he sighed and began.
Chapter Ten
The construction crew manager clicked his fingers at Doug and pointed toward the Portakabin currently serving as his office. “Can I see you for a minute?”
Doug leveled off the grouting in the top of the brick and set it down between the strings. He knocked it a few times, working the air out so it wouldn’t crumble apart in the first good frost of the season, then followed his manager into the small building.
He closed the door behind him, not that it mattered. With the paper-thin walls, everybody on the crew could hear if they wanted to. If they could hear anything at all above the noise of the building site.
“I’m going to be up in Auckland for the next few days,” the manager said, waving Doug into the only other chair. “I wondered how you felt about looking after the boys while I’m away.”
Doug kept his face steady but felt a glow of pleasure. He’d been working with the same construction team now for ten months and found they’d been like a second family. After uprooting himself from his hometown of Timaru to chase new opportunities in the big smoke of Christchurch, the news was similar to a stamp of approval showing he’d made the right choice.
“Yeah. I could do that. Any money in it?”
The pay didn’t matter, but he knew it would to the rest of the crew. If he wasn’t getting his end on top for the extra supervision, they wouldn’t give him the same respect.
“It’ll be another thirty percent on top and forty if you can get them to sign-off by the weekend.”
Doug sucked in his lips, narrowing his eyes. “That’s only four days. There’re at least five days of full graft still to go, I reckon.”
The manager inclined his head. “That’s why there’s a full ten percent in it.” He
slapped his hands down on the desk. “It’s not a have-to, it’s just an incentive in case you think you can get there just by working a bit harder or smarter.”
“Okay.” Doug gave the man a small smile. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
Four days certainly didn’t seem like a lot of time to get into trouble.
“Where’s the corrugated iron?” Doug called out a day later. The manager had given him a walk-through that morning to check they were both on the same page, then left for the airport.
He definitely recalled the large sheets of metal being stacked near the spare truck and now it wasn’t there.
“Anybody?”
The lads ignored him, but Doug knew they could hear him perfectly well. Their lack of response meant they didn’t know, so weren’t going to waste time with the question.
He flipped his hand at them and walked over to the edge of the property. There were meant to be large coils of copper for the wiring sitting near the ditch on the right-hand side. Meant to be. They’d gone walkabout as well.
“Strewth.” Doug took his gloves off to run a hand through his hair. He looked over the site, all the men working away at their individual tasks. None of them were slacking, or paying him attention. None of them looked like obvious thieves.
He’d be facing a loss of maybe half a grand just in the wire. If the iron didn’t turn up, the theft might run to a full thousand.
That ate up his percentage on top plus his full wage. Doug didn’t know if the site manager would take the theft out of his cut, but it was a pretty solid bet since he was meant to be in charge.
“Sod this for a joke,” he muttered under his breath.
Sweat ran down the sides of his face and damped the shirt around his pits. He took a few steps back and sat on a canvas director’s chair, trying to think what to do.
If the boys had seen anything, they weren’t telling. Today might be a one-off but Doug didn’t like to put money on it. After another glance around the section, just in case he’d gone metal-blind, he headed into the Portakabin to look up the suppliers.
Notes on the desk showed a steady pattern of thefts occurring on the job. Doug stared at the scribbles in concern, then lifted them up to find an insurance claim underneath.
From what he read, so far the site had lost five thousand worth of equipment and supplies. Sure, the insurance was taken out by the landowner, so was their worry, but still… Doug couldn’t imagine another job lining up with that sort of loss sitting on the books.
He jotted down the losses he’d found so far and called through to the suppliers to see if they could send through replacements. To his surprise, one call got it done. The man who answered told him they had the lot in stock.
At least he could get the crew working on what they needed to do with just a few hours delay getting the new stuff delivered. Doug went back outside, picking another task to work on until they arrived.
It was later that afternoon when Doug saw a theft occurring, right out in the open. One of the younger guys—Willis or Wallace—rolled a jackhammer over to his truck and lifted it onto the back.
Doug was just about to call out, ask him what the hell he was doing, when he reconsidered. That evening, rather than heading home, worn out but pleased with the work he’d gotten done, he hung around, spying on the property from a few houses up the road.
It didn’t take long for the young guy to circle his truck back around and pick up a few more odds and ends from the equipment store. He even had his own key! Nothing worth the same at the jackhammer, but it probably totaled up to another couple of hundred if the site had to replace the tools from new.
When the truck pulled around the corner, Doug put his car into drive and followed along behind it. Although scared he’d lose sight of the man, he kept at least three cars between him and the truck.
The lad might be new to Doug but from what he’d seen on the worksite, the other fellows knew him from around and about. If this was his sideline gig, no wonder. The lad probably only had to work one month out of three, then spend the rest of the time living off his thieving.
He drove through town and out the other side, turning into Linwood Avenue. The night was starting to settle in and as Doug stopped at an intersection, all the streetlights flickered on.
The worker pulled into a driveway and some large-built men moved in to drag a gate shut behind him. Doug took note of the address, then turned and headed home. There wasn’t anything else he could do that night.
In the morning, he rang his boss up in Auckland, hoping to get the call done quickly so he didn’t get yelled at about exorbitant cell phone fees.
“There’s been a theft,” he told his boss. “I followed the young lad to a place on the east side of the city. I wrote down the address, but just wanted to check in with you before I called the police.”
“Eh?”
Doug repeated himself, growing increasingly concerned about the silence on the other end of the call. “Did you want me to take action?” he asked, wincing at how thin his voice sounded. “I don’t mind waiting if you’d prefer to handle it yourself.”
“Look, Doug…”
From those first words, Doug knew he’d gauged the entire situation incorrectly. He stood in the office, staring out at the men arriving at work, and tried to ignore how hard it was becoming to breathe.
The insurance claim. The losses. The ease of replacing the supplies. It was a scam.
His bosses voice continued on in its soothing tone, the words cutting deep. He was being fired. Fired, for goodness’ sake!
“We’ll pay you out for today as well—”
“Don’t do this.”
The silence lasted so long, Doug thought he’d managed to disconnect the call. He actually held the phone away from his ear to check the screen.
“I’ll give you a good reference letter. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding another job.”
The phone dropped out of Doug’s fingers and he walked out of the office and got straight into his car. One of the men called out after him—even jogged over, his forehead creased in concern—but he pulled out and drove home, not bothering to explain.
In his room at home, a flat he shared with another couple of builders, Doug sat on his bed, burying his face in his hands. The references didn’t matter. There’d never be another building job contract with his name on it. He was already self-employed, a contractor for hire. Nobody would sign him onto a job knowing he was a telltale.
How could he have misread the situation so badly?
Of all the times to let his moral conscience guide him, this was the worst.
Doug spent hours sitting in his room, thinking of the future falling apart in front of his eyes. If only he could take back the last few hours, or even the last couple of days. If only he’d told the boss to shove it when he offered him the change in role.
He sat there while his mates came home from work, showered, then went out again. As the room grew dark, he grabbed his car keys off the bedside cabinet and headed out, too. He drove directly to the place he’d seen the young man going the night before.
If he was going to beg somebody for his job back, this would be the place to do it.
The gate was closed but Doug was fired up with injustice enough to think he could easily kick it down. When he planted his first boot directly between the hinges on the left-hand side, the reverberations crawled straight up his leg and spiked into his pelvis.
First, he ignored the pain, then he reveled in it.
Three solid kicks and the gate drooped like a drunk woman at the bar just before closing. Another two, one of the hinges popped free, sending a piece of metal bouncing down the sidewalk to roll in the gutter.
“What the—” A man came running down toward Doug, able to see him straight through the gaping hole at the side. “Who are you, man? What’re you doing?”
“Cost. Me. My. Job,” Doug said, aiming a lighter kick between each word. His leg was growing tired, and the ache had spr
ead around to his back. If he rolled out of bed tomorrow, it would only be to fetch the aspirin.
“Who—?” The man turned as an enormous companion joined his side to glare at Doug.
“What’s going on?” The new arrival’s voice was a deep rumble in his chest. “What did the gate ever do to you?”
“I told him to stop,” the first man yelled out. “He’s gone crazy.”
With one final kick, the gate pulled off its sole remaining hinge and fell onto the ground. Doug strode across it, standing with his hands on his hips before the two men. He had to crane his neck to stare up at them. “I want to talk to whoever’s in charge here.”
“No, you don’t, man.” The first man stepped forward. “What you want to do is get out of here before anyone else comes along.”
Doug shifted his position, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m not going anywhere. Some lad brought in a lot of gear last night. He cost me my job and probably got me blackballed. I need to know why, and I want reparations.”
“Reparations?” The first man burst into high-pitched laughter. He pulled a swiss army knife out of his pocket and slowly slid out one small blade. “I don’t think you comprehend where you’re standing.”
“Bring him up, Jericho,” a man called out from an upstairs window. He’d retreated back inside, slamming it shut, before Doug could get a good look at him.
“You’re gonna regret this, man.” Jericho hefted the knife in his hand a few times, then put it away with an expression of loss. “Come on.”
Doug followed him in through a door that opened by magic when they drew close. Inside, there was a tumble of haphazard furniture, positioned wherever the person who dragged it inside had given up on the effort.
A scent permeated the air, one Doug remembered well from a brief stint living in a student flat. The odor of pot and male sweat. It seemed to ooze out from the walls.
“Up there.” Jericho stood aside and pointed upstairs.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Jericho’s face turned ashy and Doug felt the first buds of misgiving. He looked around the room, six pairs of eyes studiously avoiding his gaze. “Right.”
Honeybee Cozy Mysteries Box Set Page 23