A renovation that must have cost plenty of money, from what Bree could tell. She wondered if Jack’s profits actually made sense in light of his business. Then again, he’d hired her to find out why he was doing well, not why he was failing.
“Here we are,” announced Liza as she led Bree through one of the small metal doors. Near the wall where they entered, a long counter with cluttered shelving underneath stretched out of sight of potential customers. Light and cool October air spilled through the large, roll-up doors in the front of the room.
Gleaming cars filled the space. Clearly this was the staging area.
Billy’s voice came from under one of the nearby cars. “Who’s there?” He rolled out from under the car on a creeper and sat up shielding his eyes. “Lizzie?”
“It’s Liza, not Lizzie.” Beside Bree, the woman tensed. “I brought the key to the Mustang to you. It must have slipped and fallen to the floor.”
Billy’s flinty eyes zeroed in on the key fob as he marched forward and grabbed it from Liza’s hand. “Good, good. Glad you got that straightened out.” He waved the key. “Gotta go, girls, gotta go. Lots of work to do on the Mustang before the next renter gets to her.”
With that, he strode from the garage, hand raised above his head in farewell.
Chapter 6
“Were you able to get any information on the Mustang?” Bree asked as she pulled a plate of Mac-N-Cheese from the microwave in the Tech Ops kitchen.
She moved to the table where Matthew and Grant were already seated, sipping ale. Outside the windows of the penthouse suite housing their activities, evening shadows lengthened.
“So, like, most cars don’t have a black box, per se,” began Grant. He brushed his overlong blond hair from his eyes and leaned forward. “That is, they do have recording devices, but they only store data if an accident occurs. It’s called the EDR—event data recorder.
"So, I thought I’d maybe get a hit or two from tracking the license plates and stuff like that. But this car—whoa, baby, did I hit the mother lode. Like, you know, when you’re surfing and you think it’s gonna be calm with beginner waves and a really big one comes along and you ride—”
“Grant, focus,” Tugood said softly, his eyes crinkling with humor.
“Right. Thanks, Goodie. So anyway, this car had a black box that someone had rigged to remember routes, speeds, heck, if I look deep enough, I might even find recorded conversations. Like I said. Mother lode. Of data. I downloaded everything I could before I gave the keys back to boss man to get to you, but I’m still mining it for information. Some of the stuff is heavily encrypted.”
Bree took a bite of her dinner. “So, besides having an EDR, which records continuously, it also has heavy encryption, and capabilities far beyond what a normal person would have use for.”
Grant nodded. “As in, like, it has something I would design if I wanted to keep track of someone.”
“Even better than your modified bumblebee drones?”
“Nah, dudette. You wound me.” He grinned, far too amused for Bree to take his complaints seriously. “I’m just saying that someone put thought into that tech. And that rental car companies don’t need to know that much about the people who rent their stuff.”
Matthew shifted in his seat, pushing away the still full bottle of ale. “Couple that with Sasha driving the car and we have—potentially—our first big lead in a long time.”
“All out of the humble Trader Jack’s Emporium?” Bree felt the hairs on her neck rise. “Jack doesn’t strike me as…” She chewed her lip, reluctant to express her thoughts bluntly.
“For what it’s worth, I’m inclined to think Jack himself is clean,” Matthew said. “Criminals don’t usually hire investigators to look into their business. But something at Trader Jack’s isn’t right and I’m glad my best operative is on the inside.”
“So, we’re no longer looking for the reason behind Jack’s unexpected success?”
“Oh, we are. That’s what he’s paying us to do.” He took a pull from the bottle. “I’m saying that when we start looking, we’re going to find much more than the answer to Jack’s dilemma.”
Later that night, Bree entered the closed emporium using a private key, moving carefully until her eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Jack Trayder had supplied not only keys to the buildings, but also access to a private computer. Bree found her way to the office adjacent to Jack’s and booted up the system, searching for more information on vehicle rentals.
The list of rental cars indicated eighty percent of the vehicles were standard mid- to upper-range models. A few very high-end items were also included. The Mustang Sasha had rented was listed in the prime, high-end vehicle category. Odd. Not that it wasn’t a nice car, but it didn’t compare with some of the other choices. And it was cherry red. Not an easy car to hide.
She wanted it to be seen.
Bree found a list of client reservations for various cars and copied the files to her flash drive to analyze later. Satisfied, she shut off the computer and headed to the staging garage, curious to get a glimpse of the vehicle in question.
Halfway there, off-key singing from the lunchroom caused her to change directions. Billy Bandergas lolled back in a chair, a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels at his elbow, papers littering the table in front of him.
Scarlett perched in her cage across the room, mimicking Billy’s out-of-tune song.
As Bree edged to the door, out of his line of sight, her foot snagged on something and she stumbled, catching herself against the wall. Billy shot upright, wobbling as he came to his feet.
“Who’s there?”
“Pretty lady?” asked Scarlett.
Bree flattened herself against the wall by the door as he spun toward the opening. She held her breath, looking for a place to hide.
“Oh, Lord, oh Lord.” A heavy thump indicated Billy had returned to his seat. Thank God his drunken state dulled both his perception and his balance. “Scarlett, my girl, old Billy Badass is hearin’ things. Hearing little mice in the corridors. Mice chased by kitty cats.” He chortled. “Kitty Cat, the new girl. Here, kitty, kitty, come to old Billy. Billy’ll show you a good time.”
Sounds of him rising from his chair and lurching across the room had Bree retracing her steps quickly. Her shoe snagged the floor at every step. She ducked through a random door off the corridor and pulled it nearly closed as he passed.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” Billy continued, his singsong voice raising goose bumps on her skin. “Gotta pee, kitty, kitty,” he muttered, heading toward the men’s room. Bree studied her shoe and peeled a discolored lump of sticky candy from the sole. Then she peeked out from her hiding place. No Billy in sight.
Moving rapidly and silently—thanks to removing the candy—she raced back to the kitchen, snapped as many photos of his papers as she could, her heart thumping as Scarlett picked up Billy’s song again. Bree finished, then hustled out via a back door leading to the parking area. She listened through a crack in the door.
“Pretty lady.”
“No, silly bird. It’s Billy Badass. Not a lady.”
“Pretty lady,” Scarlett insisted. Bree shut the door and made her way to her car and home.
Half an hour later, she sat on her couch, her cat, Sherlock, curled at her side. “I was almost caught tonight, Sherlock,” she said as she stroked his ginger fur. “You’ve got to teach me to be a better hunter. You’re the biggest cat I’ve ever known, but you also know how to be absolutely silent.”
Sherlock let out a yowl and batted her hand away. “When you want to be,” Bree concluded, rising from the couch. She headed to the kitchen, Sherlock on her heels. “I tell you, it was as if he had a second sense about him. As if he could see me spying on him even though I knew I was hidden. The bird didn’t help either.”
She pulled milk from the fridge, giving Sherlock a spoonful in his dish before microwaving a mug to make hot chocolate. Not the decadent
kind she’d learned to make from her mission undercover at the Naturalistics labs last summer. The plain-from-a-grocery-store-box kind. But after the day she’d had, any chocolate would do.
“Jack told us Billy was an astute businessman and mentor. I didn’t get that impression at the office today. He seemed easily angered and overly defensive.” She poured chocolate mix into her mug and whisked it briskly.
“But tonight, he was more than easily angered. He was unhinged. Drunk, creepy, and up to who-knows-what with his paperwork. I’d suspect him of embezzling if Jack hadn’t told us the vehicle division was making record profits.
"Something doesn’t add up. Or adds up to too much.” She returned to the couch and set the mug aside while she pulled up the photos of his papers, scattered amid the messy residue of gummy bears. Lines, highlighted in yellow, showed…something. Maybe names and dates.
Bree enlarged the photo and peered at the grainy image, moving it about to try to capture all the writing.
Yes. Names. Dates. And at the top of one page, the description of the Mustang. She scanned through the other pages, seeing three separate vehicles and, again, lines of highlighted data.
Her senses tingled, and she knew, cocoa or not, she wasn’t going to sleep tonight. Instead, she scooped Sherlock in her arms and padded to the computer to compare the data she’d gathered from Jack’s office with the data from the sheets she’d seen Billy studying.
Chapter 7
“Dr. Watson.” Bree’s supervisor glared at her as she tried to smother a yawn. “Between quickie vacations and what I assume are late nights, I’m getting the impression work is interfering with your social life.”
She groaned and pulled her coffee closer, blowing on it before sipping. Damn Matthew Tugood, and damn her for agreeing with him. Making annoying Troy Evans Bree’s department supervisor had been a mistake.
Putting him in charge of the chemistry side of the business was intended to keep him too busy to notice the company’s secret division where Matthew, Bree, and the rest of the spy team worked. But…the power went to his head and he tended to micromanage Bree whenever he could. Which was usually at weekly department meetings.
“Care to fill us in on what you’ve been researching lately?” Troy asked. “With your teaching contract up, we need to discuss your next assignment. Or is it another special project?”
Special projects. Another tactic she and Tugood had dreamed up to explain her time away from the company on missions. It worked, however, Troy resented sharing her time with another division.
“I’m still spending sixty percent of my time with Energy Unlimited,” she said, citing the catch-all company they’d created to lure the energy terrorist Zed from hiding. “The other forty percent was—as you point out—allocated to my interim teaching post at Terrance University.”
“Which means, as of now, you have forty percent of your time free?” Troy’s raised eyebrows and relaxed facial muscles indicated genuine interest rather than his typical sneer.
Bree considered carefully, thinking about the hours she’d be required to spend at Trader Jack’s—away from the chemistry building and Troy’s oversight. She glanced around the room. Her friends, Kiki and fellow operative Milt Shoemaker looked to her with interest.
The rest of the science team kept their noses buried in their own papers, likely thinking about what to say when Troy called on them.
Norah Kingston, the department admin with an affinity to all things Goth, slouched beside Troy, her jaw working on a wad of gum. Today, unlike other days, she refrained from blowing and popping bubbles.
“Are forensics and crime lab analytical services still our primary income generators?” Bree asked Troy.
“They are.”
Kiki took up the conversation. “Our incoming sample load has quadrupled since the company started working on these contracts. I’ve hired and trained a dozen new analysts, but we’re still barely keeping up.”
Troy’s lips compressed, and for the first time, Bree saw worry lines etched around his eyes and lips.
“I propose I work with Kiki and the analytical team to see where their needs are greatest. Energy Unlimited has had good success with automated sample handling. I’ll see if any of those methods could help process our sample queue.” She was spinning lies, but with a grain of truth. Surely Grant could create programs to help the chemistry labs.
Troy’s face relaxed. “I think that investigation would be a good use of some of your time.”
“It will require some off-site evaluations before I can bring it in-house,” Bree cautioned.
“Just don’t disappear entirely from the department. I like to see the people who report to me on more than an occasional basis. It reassures me that you’re not just taking it easy on company time.”
Bree nodded, allowing Troy the last word to let him save face. Given that, he turned his attention to the rest of the department, grilling each team member in turn.
As she left the meeting, Norah waylaid her. “Bree, you are the Troy whisperer these days. I can’t believe how much he’s calmed down since the first months when he took over. He hasn’t threatened to fire me once in the past month and I know it’s all due to you.”
“I doubt it. He’s just learned to judge you on your competence, not anything else.” Bree cast a glance over Norah’s outfit du jour, which consisted of a tight black lace dress with strategically placed orange spiders. Woven throughout were orange strands in a spider web pattern. Ending just below her knees, the dress was coupled with shiny faux leather boots.
In an accomplishment worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize—or at least a local version of one—Bree had convinced Troy to overlook Norah’s dress habits. She’d also convinced Norah to stop needling Troy at every turn. Hence today’s bubble gum chewing without popping bubbles.
“I’m glad I could be of help,” Bree added, giving Norah a warm smile. “But I know you didn’t call me here just to thank me.”
“Guilty as charged.” Norah’s grin lit up her tiny open cubicle. For once, her lips weren’t stained either indigo or blood red. “I was wondering if you could convince him to let us have a Halloween party at the office. You know, dress up for the day, decorate the offices, that kind of thing. Please.” Her eyes widened in the plea.
Bree assessed Norah’s outfit again, wondering what qualified as dress up for Halloween in the young admin’s book. “I’ll try. It would be good for morale if we had a little fun.”
Norah squealed, jumping up and down a few times before embracing Bree.
“Norah,” Troy’s grumpy voice called from his office. “I need your help on these reports, please.”
“Coming, Oh Mighty One,” Norah called. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “See, he even said please.” With a wink, she hurried into Troy’s office.
Bree checked her watch. Half of the morning was gone, and she needed to be at Trader Jack's by one. Just enough time to have a business lunch with Kiki, consult with Grant about lab automation, and do a quick change into her Cat Holmes costume.
Taking it easy on company time had never been so much work.
“Automating sample logging and processing for the labs shouldn’t be too hard.” Grant’s voice drifted through a crack in the bathroom door where Bree was transforming into Cat Holmes. “What do you know about the steps they take to get a sample ready for testing?”
“Not much,” Bree confessed as she pulled on jeans and a pullover blouse in a shade of light pink. “If you could set up a time to chat with Nate, I’m sure he could fill you in.”
“Nate? You mean the old guy that runs our mobile lab?”
Bree, focused on painting her lips Cat Holmes coral, didn’t answer. Although her friend Nate was well past retirement age with a shock of white hair, she’d never though of him as an old guy. His energy and thoughtfulness in transforming a vintage motor coach into a mobile Sci-Spy lab still amazed her. Nate’s part in the espionage teams had hel
ped her solve more than one mystery over the course of her work.
“That’s the one.” Bree parted her hair in the middle and combed it through with some artificial blonde highlights. She then focused on the rest of the makeup that would transform her appearance. Make the nose appear longer. The eyes wider.
“I like him. He’s like, you know, an old D&D wizard dude who holds the magical key to completing your quest.”
“I didn’t know you were a gamer,” Bree commented as she placed her normal clothes in a locker. “I thought all of your time outside of work was spent on training for extreme sports.”
“Even athletes need down time. I started when I was recovering from a couple broken bones.”
“More like a couple of dozen broken bones, in your case.”
“Maybe,” Grant conceded, “but I—Dudette!” He stared at Bree as she exited the changing room. “You look, like, totally different. You’ll have kids asking you to the prom dressed like that.”
“So, I’ll pass as younger?”
“For sure.” He scratched at the patchy beginnings of a beard. “I knew you were, like, a chemist-turned-superhero, but man. That change is bang on. All that and a bag of chips.”
Bree frowned at him.
Grant shook his shaggy head. “I need to tutor you in urban slang if you don’t want to blow your cover, dudette. You are seriously living up to code name Wonder Woman, but you’ll blow it if you talk like Dianna Prince.”
Her head began to pound from his mix of urban slang, superhero talk, and Dungeons and Dragons style gaming references. “As long as people don’t look too closely, I’ll be fine. I’m working with people who wouldn’t know urban slang if it played on the radio.”
Grant snorted. “Radio. That’s a good one.” He turned back to his bank of computer screens. “I’ll get with Nate and see what I can do to help the labs. I assume it’s okay if I call on your BFF Kiki?”
Studying Scarlett the Grey Page 4