Deadly Cost of Goods

by Margaret Evans

  * * *

  The third of the three photography shops in Raging Ford, Snap Snaps, had a drive-through window with envelopes for thumb drives of digital photos or actual rolls of film. There was no studio because they took no pictures, so no small, furry animals. Cross that one off.

  Now Laura had to get back with Denny at the Pickens studio and find out exactly how many years they had been using the animals.

  * * *

  Elijah Simms’s stomach growled. The work here in this big old building was twenty-four-seven; however, the workers were there in eight-hour shifts. Elijah usually worked the graveyard shift which was fine with him, but, as they neared their shipping target date, the hours seemed to change randomly. Now they had him on day shift.

  Working in the daylight brought its own complications. Like it seemed as if everybody was watching what he was doing. He started looking around and over his shoulder from time to time…so different from working the graveyard shift where nobody could really see what a body was doing, even with the lights glaring.

  The chemists worked their magic in the daytime. Pills were bottled and labeled and inserts were printed and batched in plastic bags.

  Nighttime was when Elijah usually got to stuff bottles and their inserts into little boxes that went into a bigger delivery box. He didn’t have to think too much about what he was doing. There had been only one product. But now that there was a second product, a third, and more products, it was getting trickier to keep things organized. A straightforward task was now a maze, and a prickly one at that. It took extra concentration on Elijah’s part.

  In the wee hours, Simms could sneak a pill from a filled bottle without anyone noticing. Who would miss just one? And if he only did it once or twice a week, well, it made no difference. He’d been a laborer all his life and was now paying for all those years with the pain in his knees and back, but he’d never been in a union and had no health care. Over the counter meds were expensive and did little. Who cared if a few pills went missing? Nobody bothered to count their pills, anyway.

  Everything was exposed in the daylight, even on a cloudy, rainy day. There was only one product that would work, and the other bottles had pills he knew didn’t. The difference was in the pink dots on the pills, a slightly different pattern, he was told. Just pack them into their little boxes with the inserts and they’d be ready to go to another shipment pile. Thankfully, Elijah didn’t have to actually count and load the pills in the bottles or figure out which pile. Somebody else did that. In fact, everyone else seemed to be able to keep it straight, except him.

  Some days he just wasn’t feeling well enough and had a few drinks before he showed up for his shift. Sometimes, things just didn’t seem that clear.

  Elijah did his best today, and he went home at the end of his shift, stopping on the way to pick up a foot-long sub sandwich. It was jammed into his mouth and washed down with two beers that couldn’t hold a candle to the Keller Pilsner he had recently enjoyed. But he soon collapsed on the cot in his rented room. He did, however, remember to cut his pill in thirds and swallow down one “dose” before he fell asleep. This was one of the good pills, and it certainly helped with the change from day to night sleeping patterns. Tomorrow he would take two doses to see if they worked better.

  * * *

  A brief meeting took place in Ruby Howe’s make-shift office after Elijah Simms left for the day. Four people joined her, among them, Bucky Swindell and Bronco Turner, the two men who knew Elijah the best. The other two workers were witnesses.

  “How many do you think he took?” Ruby asked.

  A woman named Alice spoke up.

  “I saw him take one pill today. He opened the bottle, took one out, and slipped it into his pocket. It’s the only time I ever saw him do that.”

  “How can you be sure it was only one?”

  “We checked the bottles he worked on, after he left for the day. There was only one pill missing from one bottle,” Bronco replied.

  Ruby looked thoughtful.

  “Anything else?”

  The fourth person in the room was a chemist whose name escaped Ruby.

  “The batches he touches are not the duds. He’s being very careful about that.”

  “When did you begin switching out with the duds?”

  “A couple of days ago. We began with just a few, like you said. Next week, there’ll be more.”

  “Do you think he’s reselling them?”

  Bucky shook his head.

  “No, Ruby. He has bad knee and back pain from the masonry jobs he’s done for years and on-the-job injuries.”

  “Okay,” Ruby said. “That’s all for you, Alice and…you,” she said, pointing to the chemist. “And remember, don’t discuss with anyone what went on in this room just now.”

  When the door closed behind them, she looked first at Bucky, then at Bronco.

  “Well, guys, Elijah’s been a good worker, but I can’t have people who work for me stealing from me.”

  “We can’t just fire him,” Bucky pointed out. “He won’t talk, but he’ll wonder why we let him go.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  When Swindell and Turner returned to the floor operations, they were both very quiet. Very quiet. And very unsettled with what Ruby planned to do.

  Chapter 18

  Justin Carlson knew Second Treasures was closed on Sunday, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking a bus to Raging Ford and walking down to the shop. He stared in the front window at its darkened interior, as he had done on several occasions, and wished he knew the right way to approach Laura Keene. And the right way to tell her what he needed to tell her.

  Life came with no instructions, but there were rules you followed and the right things should fall into place. With all he had recently learned about himself and his family, it just seemed craziness had taken over his life.

  But it was his life right now, and hopefully, together, he and Laura Keene could work out what they both needed to do in their lives. He felt another blinding headache coming but was powerless to stop it.

  As he walked away, he pressed his fingers to his temples and knew there was a camera outside the shop but didn’t realize his face was transmitted through as many different security systems to as big a host of different security people as it did.

  * * *

  It had been a bear to load the book boxes into the mini-trunk of Laura’s Ford Focus. But she’d done it by emptying half of each box into another book-sized box, and her appreciation for Connor’s and Max’s and Nicky’s strong arms and help rose. As she drove toward the New Library, she felt excitement about the planned display there. It was a new era of embracing the town’s history and heritage, and who knew where it would lead? Was there even a limit to what they could include in the Heritage Days Festival in the future?

  She pulled onto Taylor Street and was on her way to the New Library when she noticed her phone blinking that someone had spent some minutes at her shop’s front door. She pulled over to the side of the road and clicked on the link to the video feed and was surprised to see the same man who had peeked in her shop before and had actually been inside and purchased a couple of items. He walked away after looking around, but what she noticed first was the expression on his face. Sadness and worry were in his eyes. With Connor out of town, she’d better make sure she touched base with Sven and Brianna at the station, so they’d be aware of this stranger in town who kept coming back to her shop.

  She changed direction and parked at the police station, asking at the front desk if either Corporal Brianna Broadmoor or Corporal Sven Mortensen was on duty. She was waved through to see Brianna.

  Broadmoor was not that happy to be working on a Sunday but was definitely glad to see Laura.

  “Sven’s out getting us some lunch, because I’m hungry all the time now, and he knows I get mean when I’m hungry,” she said, laughing. Her baby was due in about two and a half months.

  “I wanted to tell you about a man w
ho keeps coming back to my shop, and I don’t mean he keeps coming back to buy. He does buy, but he also shows up and just peeks in the windows. He’s on all the video feeds and was just there again a few minutes ago. I wanted you to be aware of it because Connor’s still out of town. Usually, I just tell him.”

  The deep male voice behind her made her jump.

  “We know about him.”

  Sven had quietly entered the carpeted area around Brianna’s desk and reached over to set down a bag of food.

  Brianna nodded and waved her thanks to Sven.

  “We know. We saw him today. Just after we saw you leave in the back.”

  “After you loaded all those heavy boxes in your trunk,” Sven added.

  “Could have used some help, there,” Laura put in.

  “We were helping. We’re peace officers and we were watching.”

  “Yes, my parents often tried that one on me,” Laura returned. “ ‘Watching is helping,’ they said when they didn’t want me to do something I was too young or untrained to do.”

  “Did it work?” Brianna asked, smiling and digging into her bag of food.

  “With me, no. Nothing worked. You should both remember that.”

  “I do,” Sven commented.

  “Speaking of remembering, I’m finding out there were apparently a lot of things going on in this town during my sojourn in Maryland, of which I was not aware.”

  “Like?”

  “Like who was dating whom.”

  Sven actually turned red as a beet which included his entire face, ears and bald head, prompting Brianna to laugh and almost choke on her sandwich.

  He shook his head and took his bag of food and headed toward his desk, tossing a final comment over his shoulder.

  “I refuse to discuss Kelly’s and my six dates, except to say I was not the one to break it off.”

  Brianna was still giggling over it.

  “Don’t worry, Laura. It wasn’t funny at the time; it’s funny now because of his reaction. And we are watching for this guy at your shop, and we’ll let you know if there’s anything you should know. We’ll get Connor up to speed as soon as he gets back.”

  Laura cast one final glance at Sven as she waved to both officers and turned to leave. He was no longer blushing, but he was shaking his head. He knew someone had talked.

  * * *

  At the New Library Laura pulled into a space and parked.

  Melba Coombs unlocked the front door and helped Laura load the boxes onto the hand truck and bring them inside then went back for the rest of them. She relocked the front door and the pair then took the two loads of books up in the elevator in book carts and into the sorting and cataloguing room on the third floor.

  Coombs poured some fresh coffee for Laura and offered a plate of muffins. Next she turned her attention to one of the boxes and opened it as if it were a precious artifact. When she saw the excellent condition they were in, she immediately put on her white cotton gloves to handle each one with care.

  “I didn’t use gloves, Melba. Sorry.”

  “Oh that’s not a problem, Laura. Don’t worry. I’m going to be looking more carefully through these books than you were in just moving them. You know, they don’t look like they’ve been touched in all these years until the last few days.”

  “Peter Fulton said his father boxed them up and put them in his den closet where they stayed until I bought them.”

  “I’ll have Glenda look through our online catalog to see if we have them. Either way, they will go into the rare and antique books collection which is really getting crowded. I can’t thank you enough. And I know you wanted to talk about the display. The staff went wild over the idea. Two of them are old enough to remember the Old Library as small children. They would love to have us share that experience with our current patrons. It will be a completely new experience for the school children.

  “Glenda’s in charge of working with our staff to find an appropriate spot for the display, and I think it may earn a permanent place. You’ve given me the great idea to show holidays and seasons past what it was like in Raging Ford. Since we have the Pickens studio with all of the historical photographs, it just falls into line that we could set up lots of different displays. And that will lead the staff into more ideas for the children’s arts and crafts, based on historical things that used to happen here. It’s a winner in all directions, Laura!”

  Laura grinned. This was the best reception for her idea she could have gotten.

  “So tell me what exactly you have saved and stored in the basement that we could use?”

  “Oh, I have no idea, except for the card catalogue, but we do have an inventory list I’ll print out for you. And here’s the key and a stack of stickies to put on anything you want us to look at bringing up for the display.”

  * * *

  Laura unlocked and opened the door to the big storage room in the New Library basement, inventory list in one hand along with a thick tablet of hot pink stickies and a pen. She flipped on the light switch. At first she was greeted with nothing but dust on pile after pile of boxes looking to be jammed into a room as big as three of her shop workrooms, but she focused on one area near the far right-hand corner and spied a tall, bulky, wooden structure.

  She twisted her way through the boxes until she got to the corner. With a big smile, she realized she’d found the card catalogue from the Old Library. She brushed off a corner of the top of the oak structure and stuck on a stickie with her name and date. She noted the brass drawer pulls would need some work. While they didn’t seem to be coming loose, like the brass railings at the police station, they did need some serious lemon juice and baking soda polishing and a thorough rinsing. Then she looked over the boxes on this row which were all neatly labeled during the transition time from card catalogues and microform to computers. Thank goodness, everything had been typed and dated, and was easily identifiable. Good librarians! Laura thought and thanked St. Jerome, the patron saint of librarians, for guiding the ones who did this amazing job.

  Laura found the boxes with the microfilm readers and stuck stickies on both, then continued her way through the next set of rows, hunting for the original records from the Old Library. The actual sign-out sheets and notebooks had been kept upstairs until the New Library’s computer came on-line. Then they were boxed up and sent to the basement, the librarians never dreaming anyone would need the data ever again. But librarians are well trained to label, number, and date everything, so Laura found four boxes with the information she might need. Hot pink stickies were stuck on each one.

  Over in the opposite corner of the storage room, next to a stack of old library chairs, was a huge box labeled “microform reels.” With a big grin, Laura placed one of her stickies on this box, too. According to the inventory, the microfilm reels contained the old sign-out sheets and card catalogue information, a set of library system rules and instructions, inventories of all books in the library, including how many library cards were created—a gold mine!

  Nothing else looked essential to either her personal project or the Heritage Days display in the New Library, so she ended her hunting expedition and headed upstairs to advise Melba that she would return tomorrow with the muscle to help her get to the marked items in the basement so the staff could review what should be in the display.

  When Laura got home, she decided it was high time to put all her discoveries and research about the Old Library onto one of the freshly cleaned white boards upstairs. With the mysteries cleared up recently, there were now two very available boards on which to continue her research into the disappearance of Lorelei Rage. She was up until nearly midnight writing and re-writing and moving facts about until their order made sense. Lorelei and her activities were on one board, and everything about the Old Library, including the library rules, the sign-out sheets, and the maintenance schedules were on the other board. She left blanks for the pieces she had not yet discovered.

  When she stood back to look it over, sh
e thought—or rather hoped—that she could figure out what happened to Lorelei. More facts had to come to light, and surely there was a way to find them. She knew where she needed to go for help.

  Then she tucked both boards back behind the room divider screens and behind the drapes. She was expecting a visitor tomorrow, someone who would be upstairs and who should not see any of the research about the Old Library.

  Chapter 19

  Jenna showed up at Laura’s back door at eight o’clock sharp in the morning on Monday.

  Laura was waiting on the other side of said back door at eight o’clock sharp in the morning also on Monday.

  They spread out the Memorial Day flyer layouts on the big kitchen table upstairs in Laura’s apartment.

  Jenna had brought her printouts and pictures to swap.

  The flyer was so called because it was originally intended to be no more than a trifold which gave it a cover column and five additional columns for text and pictures. With the material the ladies had gathered, it was clear it would need to be a stapled flyer with approximately twelve half-pages.

  Harry had told them not to worry about the cost. The town would cover it as this was a project long overdue. Maybe it would even set a precedent for other towns in St. Louis County to honor their veterans, and who knew where it might go from there?

  They worked on it for about two hours over the cinnamon swirl sticky buns Jenna had brought and Laura’s awesome coffee. Pictures were moved about but virtually no text or arrangement was changed.

  “You’re really good at this,” Laura commented at least twice.

  “Mother taught me, although it was more for fund-raisers and silent auctions. Kelly gave me some of these ideas.”

  “Yes, she brought over her layouts for me to look at. I think we have it, Jenna. There. That looks perfect to me! What do you think?”