In It For the Money

by Cathy Perkins

“Can you?” Challenge lit Penick’s eyes.

  “Dealers’ tips are different than food service workers,” she said. “Tipping depends on the individual gambler and their perception of a good time, wins, and whether they like a particular dealer. You aren’t going to see a set percentage of ‘sales’ or overall cash intake for the casino.” She drummed her fingers across the top of the closest chair. “I can have my staff run a regression analysis on the tips for the past few months. That might pinpoint which dealer is involved.”

  “Do it.” Penick reached around and again picked up the DEA’s forms.

  After a few more details—and signing a lot of forms—she stepped out of the room.

  Frank was right on her heels. “Thanks. I hated to drag you into this, but it was the fastest way I could think of to get rid of them.” His jaw tight with anger, he hooked a thumb toward the conference room. “That kind of dealing, we don’t need in the casino. And the last thing I want is a couple of DEA cowboys hanging around.”

  “Cowboys? You don’t have much room to talk while you’re wearing that hat.”

  A smile twitched the corner of his mouth and some of the tension left his body. He pulled off the cowboy hat and spun it. “DEA’s a different culture. Not buttoned-down like the feebs. Those guys are so anal about the rules. These guys don’t even admit there are rules. Or they make them up as they go.”

  “Good to know. Don’t turn your back on them?”

  The smile left Frank’s face. “I wouldn’t. And I don’t want to be around if the bullets start flying.”

  She grimaced. “I’ll make it a point to avoid the bullets. Being shot at isn’t my favorite pastime.”

  “I imagine you have nightmares about—”

  She cut off the trip down memory lane. “How and when do we want to tackle this?”

  “Today, if you can.” He shoved the hat back onto his head.

  She shook her head. “I’ll have to juggle schedules. It’ll take time.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She cocked her head and studied him. “Do you actually believe one of your people is selling drugs right here in the casino?”

  “Ballsy if they are.” He shrugged. “The Fentanyl is real. People are buying it somewhere. The press hasn’t picked up on it, which buys us time. The DEA guys came in from the supplier side. They usually focus on the front end of the distribution channel instead of the users.”

  “I still have a hard time seeing the Tri-Cities as a drug mecca.” She shrugged.

  “How much do you know about Fentanyl?” Frank folded his arms and rocked back on his heels.

  Her turn to shrug. “It’s a narcotic. More powerful than heroin.”

  “Damn stuff’s a nightmare. And it’s everywhere. In its pure form, as little as two milligrams is lethal.”

  Yikes. “So, it has to be cut. Diluted.”

  He nodded. “A lot.”

  She shifted her purse to her other hand. “Super Agent in there didn’t mention processing locally, but if it has to be diluted and pressed into pills, it isn’t just the users who are at risk. It’s everyone in the supply chain who might come into contact with it.”

  Frank’s expression was grim. “Up to and including first responders and law enforcement. You pick up a brick, you don’t know if it’s coke or Fentanyl. Do it bare handed, Fentanyl will kill you.”

  She suppressed a shudder. Thank God JC wasn’t involved in this case.

  “As far as distribution...” Frank shifted his weight and thinned his lips. “Some bastard typically purchases a kilo of Fentanyl powder for a few thousand bucks from a Chinese supplier. Next he cuts the hell out it and presses it into hundreds of thousands of pills. The asshole at the top of the supply chain can make millions. You do the math. If a batch has less than two milligrams of Fentanyl per pill, he can clear about 500,000 pills from one kilo of pure Fentanyl.”

  She swore under her breath. “No wonder they’re willing to take the risk. How’d the DEA agents pick up on a big enough supplier to bring them here?”

  Frank frowned. “They haven’t shared that detail. I think Lawson is targeting that part of their investigation. Based on his clothes, he’s working undercover as a laborer.”

  She ran a thoughtful hand over her cheek. “Part of me thinks it would be helpful to know what they’re doing.”

  One corner of his mouth turned up. “I’ve got a guy from the Task Force who’s...helping.”

  “In addition to Super Agent back there?”

  “Guy’s a douche.” Frank’s smile was more genuine this time. “Yeah, someone local gave me a head’s up on the rumors a while back. We were already watching for patterns when those two showed up.”

  She pursed her lips. “And you want me to help narrow it down so you know which dealer—or dealers—to watch.”

  “Yep.”

  The irony of the situation hit her as she drove away from the Tom Tom. She was working with Frank Phalen.

  And she couldn’t say a word about the whole mess to JC, who probably already knew the DEA agents were in town looking at drugs, which of course JC hadn’t mentioned to her.

  She wanted to bang her head against the steering wheel.

  Could her life get any more screwed up?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Celebration (Kool & The Gang)

  A cozy blaze crackled in the fire pit on Bookwalter’s back terrace. On a Tuesday evening, happy hour drew a thin crowd to the winery. Holly and Tate had the patio nearly to themselves. They pulled chairs close to the fire pit and settled the bottle of red wine on the table between them.

  “Want to sit inside?” Tate raised his chin at an enclosed section of the patio.

  “I like it out here on the open terrace—at least until it snows.”

  Propane heaters hissed discreetly from the patio’s edges. Vines climbed the latticed windbreak at the far end of the terrace. Most of the leaves had dried and blown away, but a remaining few shifted in the faint breeze, a soft rustling counterpart to the muted patter of conversations and light jazz piped through the outside speakers.

  Holly gazed at the flames flicking inside the fire pit. It seemed like only yesterday she’d sat on this same terrace waiting for JC, only to end up targeted by a lunatic.

  Tate poured merlot into her glass and topped off his own. “What shall we drink to?”

  “Not being in jail?”

  “Smartass.”

  She sighed. They should be celebrating the successful launch of his product.

  Yeah. Not so much.

  She shifted in her chair and sipped her wine. When she was young and her family lived in California, she and Tate had been like brother and sister. They’d stayed in touch after her family moved to Washington. While Tate was in the Marines, they Skyped and texted on a regular basis. In spite of that, until he’d shown up in the Tri-Cities with an idea for a car part, she hadn’t actually seen him in several years.

  “Fill in some blanks for me,” she said. “Mom’s good about hitting the high points, so I knew you drove the extreme circuit after you got out of the Marines, then you went to work for Mikhail, or rather, Quality Distributing.”

  Tate nodded. “I need a regular paycheck. Benefits.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  Both her parents had given her a small ownership stake in the family accounting practice. Of course, since they’d made her a member of the LLC instead of an employee, she wasn’t paid a fixed salary. And since she was taking a leave of absence from her Seattle job, she wasn’t drawing a salary there, either. Which meant, she stayed broke.

  “The next thing I heard was you wanted to make a part for a truck—sorry, rig—and did I have any contacts that could manufacture it?”

  “So? What’s your point? You introduced me to George. Here’s to us.” Tate slumped in his chair.

  “It’s a good part,” she told him.

  “That broke,” he countered.

  “You’ll get past th
is.” She nudged his knee with her toe. “We haven’t had time to catch up. Whenever you’re in town, all you’ve done is work on getting that really amazing part into production. Take me from there to here. How did you design this part?”

  He stretched his legs in front of him. “Don’t you remember when we were kids? I always had a motorcycle or a car I was upgrading.”

  She nodded. There had always been a torn-apart car in some stage of renovation in his parents’ garage. “They usually looked like crap—bondo and duct tape holding it together.”

  He looked offended. “They weren’t that bad.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, they were.”

  “The motors were great.”

  “Like that matters when you’re in high school?”

  “It mattered to me.”

  “Point. Okay.” She shifted around and got comfortable. “Tell me about the rockcrawlers.”

  “Usually the problem with building a rockcrawler is the gearing.” He drank some wine, then lifted the glass to study the contents. “This is a lot better than the stuff I usually drink.”

  “Noted.” Holly raised an eyebrow. “And...? Gears?”

  He placed his glass on the table and leaned forward, elbow braced on his knees. “Let’s say your rig had a manual transmission with 5.13 gears and 27-inch tires. Even if you swapped out a 4.24:1 Trail Tough transfer case, the crawl ratio would only be 70:1—”

  “Stop.” Holly held up a hand, palm out.

  “What?” A puzzled expression twisted his eyebrows.

  “The only words in that entire sentence I understood were manual and transmission. Skip the technical detail. It’s wasted on me.”

  “But—”

  She enunciated each word. “I don’t care. You made a better suspension part. Period.”

  He scowled at her like he’d done when they were kids. “Do you know what a Ford Ranger is?”

  She picked up her glass. “There are about nine million of those trucks in eastern Washington. Even I know what a Ranger looks like.”

  “The Ranger has a torsion bar front—”

  She again held up her hand, stop style.

  He blew out a long sigh. “Okay. Try this. Rockcrawlers climb over boulders, up steep inclines, through gullies, whatever the course designer can dream up that looks impossible. Suspension is critical to surviving a run over the course. The Ranger’s suspension design makes it more complicated than the Toyota Tacoma. The Tacoma’s more expensive than the Ranger, but the Toyota is super popular with the off-road crowd, partly because of that simple suspension. You probably noticed a lot of them at the event last weekend.”

  Like she knew what the trucks had started out as, after people did weird stuff to them. Giant wheels, no fenders, roll cages. She stifled a shudder, remembering that the roll cage should have saved Danny Shaw’s life.

  “I’m afraid to ask what’s running through your head.” Tate’s words busted her runaway thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  “The expression on your face.” He shook his head. “Don’t ever play poker.”

  “What is it with guys and poker?” JC had told her the same thing. A blush warmed her face when she remembered what he’d done to prove—attempted to prove—his point. She folded her arms. “I was thinking about Danny.”

  Tate’s amusement faded. “I had no idea he planned to run using my part. It’s so new on the market, most people tell me if they are. I should’ve picked up on it when he showed up in that Ranger.”

  She really didn’t want to talk about Shaw. The rest of what Tate had said clicked on the marketing-potential light.

  She smiled and raised her glass in a salute. “Your design works on the Ranger. All those millions and millions of underserved Rangers.”

  “Yep. Explorers too.” He flashed a quick grin. “With the right setup, it has higher clearance, more flexibility, and you get a better ride quality with my suspension. We plan to double the aftermarket reach because guys can install it on their home rigs too.”

  She settled deeper into her chair and sipped her wine. “The one they drive during the week?”

  He threw an exasperated look at her. “Quit interrupting. Yeah, it gives them a better street ride.”

  “And it looks cool?”

  He rocked a hand. “If you know what you’re looking for.”

  “So, how is yours different from a regular suspension?”

  He drank some wine and seemed to think about it.

  “Use simple words.”

  He gave her another exasperated glare. “A suspension system, a shock absorber, in simple words—”

  “Smartass.”

  “—boils down to a tube full of thick fluid that pushes back against bumps in the road. A standard shock absorber is about one and a half inches in diameter.” He held up a thumb and forefinger. “Mine is wider, closer to three inches.” His fingers separated.

  “So, more fluid stuff.”

  “Right. The important part is controlling the flow and the temperature of the fluid. Mine has a lot more valves inside that regulate the fluid flow. The valve system is complicated to make—that’s where George and Precision Cascade came it.”

  “George has been pretty excited about the suspension whenever I’ve talked to him.”

  “It’s a great component. It also has more travel than a regular suspension.”

  “Is that why the trucks sit so far off the ground?”

  Tate shook his head. “That’s lift. Lift just lets you fit a bigger tire, and that gets your rig higher off the ground. Travel is the range of...”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Travel is how much it...lets the rig go up and down. Think of it as…pavement driving is a setting in the middle of the range.” He held his forearm level, then raised and lowered his hand, pivoting from the elbow in a flapping motion. “Travel is the movement up and down as it goes over obstacles.”

  “Okay.” She considered the implications for a while. “And it’s designed for a Ford?”

  “Yep.” He picked up his wine glass and swirled the contents.

  She nodded slowly. “I helped George with his subassembly manufacturer search, but until this past weekend, I wasn’t involved in the marketing plans. Nobody’s chasing that market?”

  “Nope.”

  “So, new part. Lots of market opportunity. The marketing strategy is to make a name for the part on the circuit first. Then go for the aftermarket?”

  “That’s the plan.” He grinned. “We have a great ad sequence planned. The tag line is ‘Tough enough for the rockcrawlers. Safely brings your carpet-crawlers home.’“

  “Seriously?”

  “It made a great video trailer. The clips cut back and forth between the course and suburbia. Usually with an ad you see cars zooming around—Don’t try this at home. Closed course. Professional driver. All that jazz. We decided to shake it up and have the slow-mo on the rigs and then the bat-out-of-hell, trying-to-get-to-school-on-time sequence with the moms.”

  “Sounds great.” She raised her glass in a toast of approval. “Like I said, you invented a great part.”

  “Thanks.” He clicked his glass against hers.

  “With your experience on the circuit, you’ll make a good spokesman for it.”

  “Spokesman. Designer.” He again stretched his feet toward the fire. “Mikhail asked if I wanted to come into Quality Distributing as a designer instead of in sales. I didn’t want that.”

  “Why not? Wouldn’t that give you a built in backer?”

  Tate shook his head. “If I worked for Mikhail, he’d own the rights to anything I invented.”

  “Ah.” She frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  Tate shrugged. “I’d rather keep my options open. I wanted to bring products to market—make them—instead of selling the design. Which was where you came in.”

  She grinned. “Glad to know I’m useful.”

  “Hey, I’m appreciative.”

  She si
pped her wine and studied her cousin. “When I talked to George on Monday, he was trying to get access to the part from Shaw’s rockcrawler. The part that failed. Has anyone confirmed what actually broke?”

  “Inspectors are still all over it.” Tate scowled. “Preliminary report says it’s my design.”

  “So, all your plans are shot to pieces if the part breaks.” She shook her head at the irony of the bad timing. She placed her glass beside his.

  He crossed his arms, slouching deeper into the chair. “Yeah.”

  “But you tested it. It never broke when you were working with George on the final design.”

  “I can’t explain it. George and I are considering the possibility someone copied it. Used cheaper material.”

  “The problem you mentioned to JC? About the other parts that broke during competitions?”

  Tate’s lips thinned. “We just don’t know enough at this point.”

  “Something tells me we better figure it out.”

  He nodded slowly. “Before someone else ends up dead.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bad Reputation (Joan Jet, covered by Avril Lavigne)

  Holly tossed the Wednesday morning newspaper on her desk along with her purse and briefcase. “I can’t make lunch today. What about tomorrow?” She shifted the cell phone to her other hand, slid her laptop from the case onto the docking station, and punched the on button.

  “Tomorrow’s good,” Laurie said. “Can we go someplace quick? I have a staff meeting at one.”

  “No problem.” They settled on a downtown restaurant. “While I’m thinking about it, are we doing book club this week?”

  Laurie’s laughter spilled from the speaker. “The library asked us not to come back.”

  “Gosh. Imagine that.” Holly laughed, as well. “Wait a minute. Can they do that?”

  “Apparently. We’re trying to find another place to meet.”

  Holly pulled out her desk chair and sat down. “Our fearless leader about had a cow when I sent next quarter’s reading list around. She thinks we should read something more...significant.”

  “I can hear her saying that.”