by Gale Borger
J.J. nodded and picked up the phone. He asked Alejandro, "You're staying over at Journey's End Bed and Breakfast, right?" At Alejandro's nod, J.J. finished dialing. "Hi, Cheryl? Yeah, it's J.J. Listen, One of your guests is staying on for a few more days. Send his bill for the week to the Sheriff's Department, okay? Yeah, he's working with me on something through the end of the week. Uh-huh, Montoya, Alejan…Yep, you got it, and thanks, Cheryl. Talk to you later–what?" He turned his back to us and spoke in a quiet voice. "Oh, uh, yeah, I guess so. Saturday? I'll see if I can make it, uh, okay, you too. Bye now."
He hung up the phone and Alejandro spoke right away. "Sheriff Green, you don't have to pay my bills. I have money and credit cards. I'm okay–really."
J.J. interrupted him. "Look, as long as you're here working with me, I'll pick up the tab on the room. We still have a lot of work to do on this. Number One priority is to try to get ahold of that boss of yours–Martinez. Next, we retrieve the horse trailer from the airport. We can probably park it out at Miller's farm." He grinned at me, "That will give your mom something else to lord over her friends."
Mag jumped on her cell phone and called Mom. She nodded and waved that it was okay to J.J., and continued talking.
J.J. pressed the intercom on his desk. "Edie? Find Tom, Dick, and Harry. Get them in here pronto."
"Right away, Sheriff Green," came the disembodied voice of Edie, the dispatcher.
Ian raised a brow and looked at Mag and me. I whispered, "You know, the guys we call Moe, Larry, and Curly. Remember, at my place? I don't know their real names. Everyone calls them something different."
"Oh, uh, right. I wonder what J.J. wants with those guys?" Ian whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "Oh, never mind." Speaking louder, he said, "Hey, I need to call this latest development into Milwaukee. I don't want to call Texas until I know who the good guys are in this play. J.J., what do you think? I'll leave it your decision, but I have to let my superiors in on this."
J.J. scratched his head. "I guess you have a point. The only guy we can trust down there right now is a country veterinarian. We need to make sure he's protected, so we gotta trust somebody down there. I'll work on it."
Just then, the three deputies stumbled through the door. "There you are." J.J. said. "There's a change of assignments this afternoon. You," he pointed at Moe, "go with Montoya up to Mitchell field. He has a horse trailer parked in long term. Pay the bill, then take the trailer over to Miller's, and park it behind the barn out of the way.
"You," pointing to Curly, "you get the evidence collection kit and meet me back here in 20 minutes.
"And you" pointing to Larry, "are on patrol. Go fetch Squad Two and gas it up. I'll be at Graff's if you need backup."
He turned to me and his phone rang. He flipped it open. "Sheriff Green. Yes? He did? Thank you, I'll be right down." He slapped the phone closed and narrowed his eyes in our direction. "Change of plans, everyone. That was the hospital. Rob is coming around and I need to be there when he wakes up. I'll have to take a rain check on Chez Buzz." He poked me in the chest. "But you and I are going to talk. Tomorrow. Got it?"
I rubbed my sternum. "Uh, yeah, got it, Chief."
J.J. turned once again to Curly. "Forget the evidence kit for now. I need you at the hospital. They're moving Rob out of ICU, and I am going to put you on the door. I want you to stand watch and not let anyone in that room. Questions? Good. Let's get at it." He chucked my chin as he swept past. We all breathed a little easier.
Ian broke the silence. "Well, why don't we get going? I want to try to beat rush hour traffic." He consulted his watch. "It doesn't look like I'm going to at this point, but I need to get on the road. Is that okay with you and Mag?"
We nodded like a couple of dumb sheep and followed him out the door.
19
The drive back to Mag's was quick and uneventful. Over coffee, we compiled the notes and transferred them to the whiteboard. I uploaded the pictures onto Mag's computer and made prints to add to our report on the evening's events.
I also tried to come up with a believable story to tell J.J. There seemed to be no good way to tell him we planned and executed an illegal break-in, killed two guys, injured a third, and ran off before the cops could question us. I expected warrants would be issued for us by morning.
Nothing seemed to bother Ian as he went through the backpacks and retrieved all the materials we took from the greenhouses. We sat on the living room floor and separated each item by type.
Mag dug in her bag and produced a Ziploc which held a small metal tin with some sort of gook in it. Ian grabbed it from her. "Mag, is this what I think it is?"
She stuck her nose in the air. "If you think I grabbed it from the drug room, you'd be right! I scraped a couple more things too. In all the chaos, I didn't think anyone would miss them."
Ian looked perplexed. "Scraped?"
Mag laughed. "Lifted, took, absconded with, stole, pinched, copped, pilfered, filched, appropriated. What term do you prefer?"
Ian sighed. "I got it. Scraped. Geez, leave it to the school teacher. Here–let me have them."
I sighed. Better add stealing evidence and obstruction to our crimes. Ian was elated. He looked like a kid with his first Tonka truck. He grabbed the bags from Mag and took off for the kitchen. He poked and prodded, held them up to the light and shook them up. He ripped open his backpack and pulled out a hygiene travel bag. I was about to make a smart comment when he unzipped it and pulled out several glass bottles and a few vials. He set everything out on the breakfast bar.
I mentally took a step back.
"Ian, do you carry drug testing kits around with you?"
He didn't say a word but grinned like Wesley with a T-bone, held up a little test tube and twiddled it at us. He laid out the bottles in order and like a mad scientist, began testing. So totally absorbed in his task was he that he never heard Mag and me discuss tomorrow's strategy while we put out the leftovers. He suddenly looked up from the table and held up a vial.
"Eureka!"
Mag and I both jumped. Mag took the vial (which had turned blue) from him, looked at it and shoved it back at him. "Eureka? Eureka what? So you were able to confirm that I snagged drugs from a drug lab. Whoopee, Ian. Wesley could have told us that. How is this significant to Carole and the investigation? Do you think she was murdered with drugs or because of them?"
Ian stuffed all his testing paraphernalia back in the travel bag. "Even not knowing her, I would guess because of." He closed up the plastic bags and labeled them. Mag brought him a box and he packed everything away carefully. He talked while he worked.
"It might pertain and it might not. Either way I have got to get this stuff to a lab where I can work on it. I don't want to get into it right now, but this may be related to more than just the garden center murder.
"I'll see if I can get this connected up to a drug trafficking route we've been working on. I can also find out if they are dealing straight cocaine and heroin, or if this lab was making designer drugs. The guys at the M. B. Lab can find out every ingredient in this stuff. It's really quite amazing."
He must have interpreted our perplexed expressions correctly. He might as well have been speaking in a foreign language. He wrote furiously on a notepad.
"I'm leaving you the office number, my work cell, and my personal cell numbers. If anything happens while I'm gone, call me. I'm also leaving my mother's number in case I get that far. I called her around 1:30 this morning and told her I wasn't coming in. I'll be back as soon as I can, probably as early as tomorrow night. The office can call me, or fax the results here.
"I'm sure J.J. will help us out with that."
I stopped listening after he told us he called his mother. "You called your mom at 1:30 in the morning? Mine would have been yelling for 911!"
"Yeah, along about now, at daybreak she would have started worrying." He zipped his bag shut and looked from Mag to me. He rubbed his hands together and smiled. "Now all I need is
a ride back to my car and I'm off."
I got up and dumped my coffee cup in the sink. "I got you covered. I have to go home anyway and it's on the way. Wes, Hill, let's go." The dogs clambered out the front door. I turned to Mag.
"Oh, and Mag? You're hired again. Nice work."
"Thanks, Buzz. Some vacation, huh?"
"Yeah, some vacation. See ya in the morning."
"Night, Buzz."
"Night, Maggot."
By the time I got the dogs settled, Ian was ready to go.
"I appreciate what you guys did tonight," he said. "You're good, Buzz. You can be my partner any time."
"Thanks, Ian." I rubbed my hip. "I'll sure be a hurting unit tomorrow! I'm really worried about Mag, though. She flew by the seat of her pants tonight and got lucky. I don't want her to start getting all cocky and thinking it goes down this easy all the time. I don't want her hurt or, Heaven forbid, killed."
Ian chuckled. "I don't think she's going to run off and join the police force or anything, Buzz, so don't worry. I'll see what the lab boys can find out and I'll give you a call later on today."
"It's a deal, partner." I was about to back out of the driveway when Mag yanked the back door open. I slammed on the brakes and the dogs and Ian flew forward.
"What the hell?"
Mag grinned and held up a Thermos. "I'm going to Milwaukee. Uh, Ian might fall asleep and needs someone to keep him awake. I can also help him with the plants. I can be a very useful mammal when I want to be."
I looked at Ian, who was looking at Mag. I noticed both wore big sloppy grins on their faces. I sighed.
"Get in, Mag." She flew through the door. She nudged Wesley over, but he just grunted and pushed back. Mag happily rode across town sandwiched against the car door by a big hairy butt.
I pulled into the morgue parking lot. Ian opened the rear door and Mag exploded out into the parking lot–ass over tea kettle.
Wesley's butt hung out of the car, his fluffy tail waving slowly back and forth. We got everything transferred to the Beemer. Ian turned and stuck out his hand. I shook it. He said, "Later, Buzz. Get some sleep."
"You too, Plant Boy. Be careful driving."
Ian laughed. "Thanks, Buzz. Mag brought along some of that truck driver coffee she made. Milwaukee's only a 40 minute drive, but I'll probably be good until noon." He checked his watch. "Damn, got to get going, rush hour is coming on fast." They jumped in the Beemer, both waving as he took off down the empty street.
I walked back to my car. Wes had jumped into the driver's seat and was grinning and panting like he was driving home. I wedged my butt in next to his and heaved him over far enough to reach the ignition. I rubbed his ears and sighed. He let out a big doggy sigh and flopped down. Tail waving, he leaned into my hand and grinned.
"Come on, kids, let's go home." Even Hilary grinned at that.
20
Ian sped toward Milwaukee thinking of the connections to a case the FBI had been working on for almost a year. If he could connect the seeds to the ones Jeff Fuller from the Molecular Biology Lab had traced from Mexico across the southern states, they could work on how the drugs jumped from the south, to the northern Midwest. There was no trail leading north, yet the drugs had turned up in Chicago and Milwaukee, then Portage, La Crosse, and Minneapolis, on up through Duluth into Canada.
Mag stretched and yawned loudly. "You're very quiet Ian. Tell me what you're thinking."
He glanced at her. "If these seeds and the cocaine connect up to another case we're working on, we'll have a new connection on where the drugs are going. We need to find out how the heck the drugs jumped from the south to the north, without traces of them in between. Right now, they're traced through Texas, Mobile, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philly, Buffalo, and into Canada, but nothing up this way. The Mexico connection is why I think they might be linked. I just can't figure out how to connect the dots in between."
"Ian, didn't Alejandro talk about the men pulling the bricks out of the horses? Wouldn't that make the connection?"
"I guess in all the confusion I never gave it a thought. Holy Cow Mag, do you think they could transport that much cocaine that way?"
"I suppose they could if they sent it pure and cut it up here."
He blew out a breath. "Wow. At any rate, we'll take the poppy plants we confiscated to the Molecular Biology boys. They can put them through what's called amplified fragment length polymorphism, or AFLP. AFLP is based on polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, just like the RAPD test I explained to you and Buzz, but it's more sensitive than RAPD and can tell us even more."
Knowing Mag would follow, he explained. "Jeff Fuller, the head of MB, took cuttings from some marijuana plants we confiscated during a bust. Using the polymorphic markers in the plant DNA, he was able to find patterns of marijuana fields cloned off the mother plants.
"We mapped the plantings, and you could see the sweep of the cloned plants across the western states. Through the seeds, he was able to link specific shipments of marijuana to weed the DEA recovered off of a suspect during a bust in a different part of the country. This gave us another point where the drugs entered the country.
"Then the marijuana chaff recovered from a non-related building in yet another area, linked the rest of the operation to the shipment, and was followed back to the original grower in Central America. It was the biggest coup we've ever made, and hopefully the beginning of the end of the drug cartels."
Mag stared at him, riveted to his story. "Holy cow! I had no idea that you could trace a plant back to the source like that. So that's what you'll be doing with the drugs we have. How cool is that!"
She shifted closer to Ian and took in a shaky breath. "Ian, do you have any idea how, uh, stimulating it is to listen when someone speaks with so much passion about something?"
Ian gulped and stared at her. The car began to drift toward the right shoulder. Ian jerked the car back into the lane and stared out the windshield. "Uh, Mag, do you mean stimulate as in inspiring, or, uh, stimulate as in uh….arousing?"
She unbuckled her seatbelt and scooted over so her breast pressed against his arm. She ran a finger along the top of his ear, her moist breath caressing his neck. "Let's just say that if we weren't in big city traffic right now," she ran her other hand up his thigh and settled it between his legs, "I would be jumping on you like Japanese beetles on your prize dahlias, Plant Boy."
She stuck her tongue in his ear and ran her hand over his zipper. She wiggled her fingers and her eyes grew big. "Holy Gigantus Peeniscus! I can't ever again call you Plant Boy with a straight face! Bad Boy maybe…"
Ian turned pink. "Come on, Mag, knock it off. It's no big deal."
She continued to tease him. "No big deal? Why the heck do you bother carrying a gun? You could just beat them to death with that thing! Talk about your Lethal Weapons…"
Ian squirmed and turned dark red. "Mag, I mean it! We're in traffic, now stop. And don't poke fun at him…uh, at it…at me. Oh, shit, I don't know what to call him!"
Mag flashed him a brilliant smile and continued to play. "Just say, 'Happy Birthday, Mag!'"
Ian gritted his teeth and gripped the wheel with both hands. "Mag, we have an audience. I'm awake, so let's talk about something else, okay?" He glanced out the window at smiling faces.
"And, would you please uh, move your hand while you're at it?"
Mag kept stroking and kissing Ian's neck. She began singing softly in his ear, "Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do when I come for you bad boy, bad boy?"
Ian sucked in a breath. "If you don't knock it off, Missy, I'm going to pull off this road and show you what this bad boy can do!"
Mag flopped back into her seat and sighed. "Killjoy! I was just keeping you awake like I'm supposed to. Who said I couldn't enjoy myself while I do my job?"
Ian narrowed his eyes at her, and she rolled her eyes back at him. She pouted and looked out the window. Staring back at her was a truck driver grinning from ear-to-ear and giving her the thumbs up. She
realized he had been watching them while traffic was slow. She blushed and slowly slid down in her seat. Another truck drove past them and blew the air horn. Ian chuckled at Mag's mortification. Mag moaned and pulled a jacket over her head. Horns blared, truckers waved, and people whistled as they passed Ian's car. Humiliated, Mag slid a glance at Ian. He was laughing silently, his shoulders twitching.
Mag huffed and threw the jacket in the back seat. "What the heck was that all about, I wonder? And what is so funny?"
Ian laughed out loud, "CBs, Mag. Everyone within a five mile radius probably knows what was going on in here."
Mag stuck her nose in the air and smoothed her hair. "How immature. Why didn't they just take videos while they were at it?"
Ian sobered and signaled for an exit ramp. "Actually, sweetheart, I did see someone with a cell phone recording as they passed us back about three miles. Let's just hope we're not the stars of some cheesy joke that ends up in your mother's email."
Mag grabbed the dash and stared wide-eyed out the windshield while she absorbed the impact of what Ian just said. "Oh, my God. Ian, you don't really think…"
He stopped for a red light and patted her knee. "No, Maggie, I don't. Seriously, though, I want you to know that when we do make love, it's going to be just you and me in a big old bed and not half of Milwaukee in a BMW during rush hour. Does that sound okay to you?"
She covered his hand with her own and sighed softly. "Perfect, Ian, just perfect."
21
Ian kissed the end of her nose and drove to his condo. Mag walked through the front door and was immediately struck dumb. There was vegetation everywhere. The condo was a corner unit and had both a southern and western exposure. He had an atrium of sorts in the corner and made full use of all that sun. Bird sounds chirped in the background. Tiny frogs sat on lily pads, and koi undulated slowly across the small pond. A waterfall trickled among the flora and fauna, and a huge bamboo ceiling fan turned slowly, the giant paddles creating a soft breeze which rustled through the leaves. "Wow, Ian, that really sounds authentic."