Deadly Cost of Goods

by Margaret Evans

  “Jeez, Bucky, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just not feeling good.”

  As he applied four bandages to Elijah’s arm, Swindell told him to go home. He sent the other workers back to their stations but kept Bronco Turner nearby.

  “We have to go through every single bottle, box, and insert Elijah touched today. And I have to talk to Ruby.”

  “This is going to set us back at least a day.”

  “Yes, it will,” Swindell said. “Not good with the Memorial Day holiday this weekend.”

  But Elijah didn’t go home right away. He wandered around watching everyone because he wasn’t quite sure how to get out of the building any more.

  Chapter 24

  Laura was setting up shop, checking register tapes and bags, straightening merchandise on the shelves, and all the other little things that need to be nailed every day before she could flip the Closed sign to Open, turn off the doorbell app, and unlock the door. She was almost finished when she got the alarm on her phone that someone was at the front door.

  Customers came early every day, and she usually glanced at her phone showing her who it was with no concerns. Today, however, was a different story. She did a double-take when she recognized the young man who had been at her store buying small items or just looking around at least four times of which she was aware in the past couple of weeks.

  He checked his watch, a sign he was waiting for the store to open and didn’t budge when two more customers arrived and stood near him.

  She texted Connor and included a picture of the man, but the good sergeant was in a meeting. He would get back to her shortly.

  That meant a delay of opening the shop for only the third time in the seven months since she had launched the store in late November. Now wishing she had kept her father’s old service weapon in her apartment upstairs or locked up in the shop, Laura was reluctant to open at all until Connor arrived.

  The line was growing outside the front door.

  Laura was ready to give up and let people in when her phone dinged and she saw Connor was at the back door. She waved to everyone through the front window, gave them a big smile and indicated she would be back in one minute then slipped into the back room where Connor awaited her.

  “Time for you to change the door codes again,” he reminded her.

  “I know. I was supposed to do it last night. Soon, maybe later today.”

  “Sven recognized this guy as someone who’s been showing up in a number of places recently, supposedly on a tour of Minnesota. He checked the guy out through his employer and everything is cool, as far as we know. Ran him through the system and found no record. Something’s bothering Sven about him, though, like he’s hiding something. What do you want me to do?”

  “I was hoping to ask you to change into civilian clothes before you got here, so we’ll have to improvise. You watch him through the back room peep hole and listen through the microphone that we just installed when Eric hooked me up with the super-duper security system, and when he comes up to the counter, if anything looks fishy, just come out and stand next to him. I don’t want to scare my customers, so try to be low key.”

  “Okay. I’m not the only one here. Sven’s watching from across the street at Valencia. Give me the safe words if you get uncomfortable.”

  Laura opened her shop with a big smile for another patriotic crowd. They flocked to the shelves for t-shirts, flags, soft sparkler caps, and the younger children went straight for the red-white-and-blue wax teeth and fake tattoos. When the crowd began to ebb, the stranger, under surveillance by more people than he could have dreamed, walked toward the counter.

  At just that moment, Eric Williams dashed into the shop, sending the doorbells banging. He sped right over to Laura behind the register.

  “Hey, save me one of those sparkler caps, will you? I need one—no, make that two. Need one for my wife, Susan.”

  “I can ring up two right now for you, Eric. My new shipment just came in. Go grab them off the shelf.”

  In the meantime, the man under surveillance watched the interchange and waited before approaching Laura.

  “I can ring you up,” she told him.

  “I don’t want to get in anybody’s way,” he said, holding a roll each of baby-patterned and plain brown wrapping paper.

  “You’re not. Come on.”

  She rang him up and noted that he paid, once again, in cash. While lots of people paid in cash at her shop, many repeat customers used plastic. In her experience, customers she didn’t know who paid cash were generally trying to remain anonymous.

  Eric stood behind him and waited for the transaction to finish and Laura to hand the man his bag. Williams’s grin was so big it could have split his face. When it was his turn to pay for the hats, his words spilled out faster than his insurance sales pitches usually did.

  “She is going to love this hat. We’ll wear them together. Where did you get them?”

  “Online. I’m glad you like them. Guess that means I picked well. Half the town likes them, too. I’ve had to re-order them three times.”

  Laura noted that the stranger was still at her counter, waiting by the side.

  “Thanks, Laura.”

  “I expect to see you wearing it around the town. They stretch to any head size, so they should fit yours.”

  He smirked at her, but his good mood refused to dissipate. Instead, he put on the hat, and pointed to another shelf.

  “Oh, look! What do you have here?”

  With no one else in the store besides Eric, the stranger approached the counter.

  “Can I help you with anything else?”

  “No,” he said, faltering. “I’d like to talk with you for a moment, if I may. I can wait for your other customer to leave.”

  She tilted her head.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and set it on the counter.

  “Nothing’s wrong, I just wanted to give you this information and tell you something important.”

  “Well, at least you’re not asking for hula hoops, like one of my customers yesterday, because we don’t have any.”

  He didn’t smile, though, and Laura was getting prickles on the back of her neck. Connor heard the safe words and slipped out from the back room, startling the stranger.

  Fitzpatrick played it cool, however, smiled and waved to Eric who was leaving, and approached Laura.

  “I’m early for lunch, Laura. I can wait in the car if you like. Sorry to interrupt your sale,” he said, swinging around the counter and extending his hand to the stranger. “New in town? I don’t believe I’ve seen you before. Sergeant Connor Fitzpatrick.”

  The stranger looked almost relieved when he gave Connor a strong return shake.

  “Yes and no. I’ve been trekking around Minnesota trying to find someone and I believe I found her,” he finished, looking directly at Laura.

  The puzzled expressions on both Laura’s and Connor’s faces forced him to open the envelope and pull out the well-worn, dog-eared letter his parents gave him about eight years ago. He offered Laura the letter that had changed his life forever and was now about to change hers.

  Chapter 25

  He spoke to Connor.

  “Unless you want to read it first.”

  But Laura took it and read through it once. As she read it, she looked up from time to time at the stranger who was now identified as Justin Carlson. Then she handed it to Connor.

  It took him a long time to read the one page letter because he re-read it two times before re-folding and handing it back to Laura.

  “How close are we to your lunch break, Laura? We should discuss this letter together in private, don’t you think, Mr. Carlson?” Connor asked.

  “That would be best, I agree.”

  “I’ll close the shop,” Laura said. Once the sign was flipped, she stood again at the counter and held the letter.

  “Why is it all crumpled?”

  “I’ve had it
for almost eight years, but I couldn’t open and read it until about a couple of months ago. I guess that makes me a coward. I’ve searched for you. Took me a while to find you.”

  “I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t even know if it’s true,” Laura responded.

  “I understand,” Carlson said. “This is as much of a shock to you as it was to me. I didn’t even know I was adopted.”

  “Do you have a birth certificate?” she asked.

  He pulled it out and she saw the names of her own parents and the same birth date as hers.

  “I still don’t understand. It says single live birth. But my birth certificate says the same thing.”

  Justin took a slow, deep breath.

  “Apparently, I have two birth certificates, one with my adoptive parents’ names that I’ve used all my life for school and sports, and one with the Keenes’ names that seems like the real one. I recently got the second one from Ramsey County records. I’ve asked the same questions as you are. I’m an engineer; I look at everything logically and mathematically. I was verbally directed by my adoptive parents to talk to a lady named Edna Phelps who lives in St. Paul. They were told that it was part of the sealed adoption.

  “I found the woman and spent a couple of days with her asking tons of questions. What she told me is that our parents were living in an apartment in St. Paul at the time Frances…went into labor. She had arranged for a midwife delivery at home because they didn’t have much money. After I was born in the apartment, there was a problem and Frances was taken to the hospital where you were born later. Someone from the private adoption agency apparently stayed in the apartment and took care of me. That means a different doctor or midwife delivered you in the hospital.”

  “What about officers’ union health benefits?” Connor posed.

  “Frank was just out of the academy and hadn’t joined the union yet. That’s what Edna told me.”

  “Can you give us your contact information for Ms. Phelps?”

  “I’ll give you everything I know and everything I have. This whole situation has disrupted my life, too. By the way, there’s something else I need to get off my chest. I was at the hotel where the auction was taking place, and I saw you get kidnapped, Laura. I’m the one who made the anonymous 911 call.”

  After a couple of moments of silence as she heard the corroboration of what Connor had told her the night before, Laura spoke.

  “So we’re twins.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  Connor could see the shock settling into her face.

  “Do you have a copier in the back, Laura?”

  “Yes, by the half-bath door.”

  “Mind making a copy of this letter?”

  She knew he was sending her away deliberately.

  “I can see that you two are friends—” Justin began after Laura left.

  “Laura Keene and I have known each other all of our lives. Whatever is changing in her life will affect me, as well. I sincerely hope, Mr. Carlson, that everything you’ve told us is the truth.”

  Carlson nodded.

  “Edna Phelps told me I needed to find Laura Keene. She said it was crucial that we find each other.”

  Connor’s expression didn’t change.

  When Laura returned and gave Justin his original of the letter, Connor’s phone buzzed.

  “Sorry, gotta take this. Give me a minute.”

  The two siblings stood on opposite sides of the counter looking at each other, while Connor stood by the front door, his back to them.

  “What did this person Edna Phelps tell you was the reason for all the deception?” Laura asked, searching Justin’s face for traces of her parents. The way genes sometimes worked made it hard to tell, as it apparently was now.

  “Safety. The Rage family has been under threat for decades. Most of us have been removed for want of a better word.”

  “So you were hidden.”

  “And they kept a good watch on you themselves.”

  “Did she tell you why the Rage family is in danger?”

  He shook his head.

  “She did not. She said that I needed to find you, and I guess together maybe we could help each other and put an end to the threat.”

  Connor returned, and Justin handed him a business card with his information on the front and Edna Phelps’s address hand-written on the back.

  “Do you have a phone number for her?”

  “No, I wasn’t able to find a phone number. She’s older and has a caregiver come in a couple of times a week. They didn’t want me to have that information. I have no idea why. Look, I know I dropped a bombshell on you. I felt exactly the same way when my parents told me I was adopted, under a sealed adoption, and gave me this letter. It took me almost eight years to get up the courage to open it. My feelings are very mixed. Can we at least agree to talk again?”

  “Of course. What’s your cell?”

  She texted him with a message from hers.

  “Now we have each other’s phones. You understand that I need some time to digest this.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m still not over it myself. I have a life in Mankato, a job with a great engineering firm, and a girlfriend I would one day like to marry. Take your time, all the time you need.”

  “What about your job?”

  “I’m on a leave of absence. I told them I’m exploring parts of Minnesota where I’ve never been. It’s not a lie. They don’t expect me back anytime soon.”

  “I don’t know what to do next, Justin.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  He shook Connor’s hand before he left.

  Chapter 26

  Laura turned to Connor in stunned silence.

  “Could it be true?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that you can’t tell anyone, not Harry or his brothers, not your girl friends or anybody else. I’ll try to find out more about this Edna Phelps myself. A lot of what this guy tells us Phelps told him is not in the letter. We need to check it out.”

  He watched the shock in her eyes become a puzzled frown.

  “What did you text to Sven? I saw you by the window giving him the wave away sign and he left.”

  “I told him the guy was trying to find you to give you some information he thinks he found out about your family. I have to get back to work, now, Laura, but you call me if anything else weird comes up, anything at all. Or if Carlson comes back.”

  “Can we talk this evening about it?”

  “I might be a little late, but, yes. I’ll bring Chinese. Try to put this aside until I come tonight. Please,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her on the forehead. “This is a big thing, and you do not have to deal with it alone.”

  * * *

  In a room darkened by boarded up windows, a woman whose hair was red by design and not by nature sat drumming her finger tips on an old card table. She was focused inward for more than six full minutes, during which time, nobody else in the room with her breathed, moved, or spoke.

  Background noise of pill bottles clicking together and rattling, copy machines running, paper folders folding, printers printing, bottles being boxed up, and tape rolls screeching to seal boxes reached their ears.

  “Tell them to shut up so I can think,” Ruby Howe directed.

  Two men behind her immediately left to halt all of the work.

  The silence in the old building was deafening. Then someone sniffled right next to her.

  She dragged her eyes up to the culprit.

  “Leave the room, Simms.”

  Elijah Simms padded silently out of Ruby’s presence. The door slammed behind him.

  “What did Simms give as his reason for the sloppy labels, Bucky?”

  “He was sick yesterday,” Bucky Swindell replied.

  “You mean he was drunk again. Or stoned.”

  “I didn’t see him drinking, Ruby, so I can’t be sure. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but he wasn’t all there. Had a
bleeding gash in his arm that he couldn’t even feel.”

  “Stoned. Turner, I want you to verify, on the down low, how many of our product he’s taken.”

  Bronco Turner nodded his understanding.

  “Might take a couple of days.”

  “You two keep your eyes on him. There’s no place in my organization for screw-ups like him. One mistake and we’re out of business and in jail.”

  “Got it.”

  “And try real hard to take care of our problem sooner rather than later. I don’t like losing money.”

  * * *

  Connor brought Chinese take-out around seven that evening. She was waiting in the kitchenette behind the shop for him. He didn’t think she looked any better now than she had at the initial shock earlier in the day; in fact, it looked like her brain was on overload.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he suggested. “We’ll have more room.”

  They ate in silence at her big kitchen table, side by side, but Connor could see the problem was eating away at her.

  Then she came out with it.

  “Why would they want to protect him and not me? They should have hidden us both if what we think has been happening is true.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t hide your birth. He was born earlier than you by a few hours with a midwife in their apartment. Justin said the Phelps woman told him they had to rush your mom to the hospital for the second baby. That birth made you visible to the world, even if they put you up for adoption later. Maybe you were both supposed to be born in the apartment and both hidden. Just a guess, but that might explain why his original birth certificate listed his adoptive parents as his birth parents. How it eventually got changed, I don’t know.”

  She looked doubtful.

  “The timeline for all this is bothering me. I’m really confused, Connor. If Mom said she and Daddy tried for years to have a baby, how could all of that happen while they were in college and grad school? I’ve seen the date on their marriage license. None of this makes sense.”

  She put a hand on either side of her head to curb the madness of the situation.