The Upstaged Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Velásquez,” McVie said.

  She didn’t say anything but walked inside the building.

  “If you find anything missing,” McVie said, following her inside, “just let me know. We can still make an arrest.”

  Fenway stepped in and closed the door. The front office was clean but industrial, with linoleum floors that looked like tile, desks a little too low to the ground, task chairs with dusty black upholstery, and pcs and monitors a few years old.

  Mrs. Velásquez looked around the office.

  “Anything missing?”

  “I’d have to check more closely, but it looks like the computers are all here,” she said. She walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled on the handle of the top drawer; it clanked but didn’t move. “The cabinets are locked, too. That’s a good sign.”

  She strode across the room to the rear door, and turned the handle; the door clanked with almost the same noise the file cabinet had made. “This is locked, too. That’s good.” She pulled out a key and unlocked the door, pushing it open.

  “Where did you find the ledger that you gave me?” Fenway asked.

  “It was in the bottom drawer of Domingo’s desk.”

  “Should we look there for the other ledgers?”

  “I already looked through all the drawers the other day. You can see if I missed anything.”

  McVie walked over to the desk with domingo velásquez, owner on the nameplate. He pulled on the top drawer.

  “Locked,” he said.

  “You can look in here while I unlock the desk for the sheriff,” Mrs. Velásquez said to Fenway, motioning to the room she had opened. “The loose floorboard is in back, under that stack of boxes.”

  Fenway looked at the stack of white file boxes five high. “Jeez. Are those heavy?”

  She turned, but Mrs. Velásquez had already left the room.

  Fenway looked at the floor. Instead of the cheap linoleum of the front office, this room had plank flooring—old but good quality. The wood was scratched in places, and the protective coating had worn off in several areas. One floorboard, sticking out an inch in front of the stack of boxes, was lighter in color than the surrounding boards. Fenway pushed the top box about half an inch. It slid easily.

  She picked up the first two boxes and set them against the wall, but the next two were significantly heavier, and the box on the very bottom was so heavy that Fenway couldn’t even pick it up. She tried to push it with her foot but it didn’t budge. Kneeling, she pushed the box with her shoulder and moved it all the way off the discolored floorboard.

  She tried to get the board up using her fingernails but couldn’t get a good grip on it. She finally stood up and found a flathead screwdriver on a shelf next to the door.

  After retrieving the screwdriver, she lifted out the floorboard. Setting it gently to the side, she pulled blue nitrile gloves and her phone out of her purse.

  She turned on her phone flashlight and shined it in the hole where the floorboard had been. A gray bag, about twelve inches by fifteen, and a few inches thick, lay on its side, with a “fireproof” label clearly visible. Fenway quickly put the gloves on and reached down to grab the bag. It was surprisingly light.

  Undoing the Velcro enclosure over the top revealed a black zipper, which Fenway quickly opened.

  The space inside was divided into six sections, each large enough for a spiral notebook, a dozen file folders, or a decent-sized ledger.

  But the bag was empty.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Fenway muttered under her breath. “Piper put her ass on the line for an empty document bag.”

  Fenway got to her feet and walked out of the backroom. McVie was leafing through a drawer full of files in Domingo Velásquez’s desk, and Marisol was looking through a cabinet.

  “Mrs. Velásquez, who else knew about the place your husband kept those ledgers?”

  She looked over at Fenway and bit her lip, thinking for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “I knew about it because Domingo said I might need those ledgers in an emergency. Why?”

  “The ledgers aren’t there. There was a fireproof bag in there, but it’s empty.”

  “I don’t know who else my husband would have told,” Mrs. Velásquez said. “He didn’t talk about those ledgers.”

  “Who did the books for Central Auto Body?”

  “I did, for a long time,” Mrs. Velásquez said, “but maybe two years ago, we get someone full-time. Domingo said with all the changes in the tax laws, and all the clients we got, we need an accountant.” She sniffed. “I was happy. I work too many hours, and I have trouble with numbers anyway. I can manage the Ferris Energy car fleet, but ¡ay! the consulting service, complicated. No matter how many times Domingo shows me how to do it, the balance is always wrong.”

  Fenway’s ears perked up. “Consulting service?”

  “Yes, claro que sí. Domingo told me that this consultant group talked to other energy firms to help them start up, find oil or gas, how to structure the company for tax laws, all that. They had a fleet that was three times the size of the Ferris Energy fleet. I figured that pretty soon they’d make more money off their consulting than their oil.”

  “Was this under the Ferris name? Ferris Consulting, something like that?”

  “You know, that’s the first thing I said to Domingo—that with a name like Ferris Energy, you’d think they’d want to take advantage of their name for their consulting firm. But no, they went with something generic. I guess they didn’t want anyone thinking they were hiring a competitor to consult with them.”

  “A generic name?”

  “Yes. Let me think. It was World something.”

  “Maybe Global?”

  Mrs. Velásquez eyes widened. “That was it. Global. Not World.” She thought another moment. “Global Advantage.”

  “Did your husband keep those ledgers from when you first started working with the consulting company?”

  “Oh, no. Only Rose’s ledgers were kept here. After we did our taxes that year, they went home with me.”

  “Rose—that’s the accountant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did she come from?” Fenway asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did someone recommend her? Did you put out an ad, or get a recruiter, or what?”

  “Oh. I’m not sure. Domingo told me we’d hire a full-time accountant, and he did. She was in here pretty quickly, I guess. Within a week.”

  Fenway nodded, although it struck her as odd. “What’s Rose’s last name?”

  “Morgan.”

  “Did your husband do a background check on her?”

  Marisol Velásquez shook her head. “No, I told you, I don’t know anything about her hiring.”

  “What about her hr file?”

  Mrs. Velásquez smiled. “Most of it’s on the computer, but anything she signed is in the file cabinet there. You looking for her w-4 or something?”

  “No, her address.”

  “Her address?”

  “Sure. If she knows about the financial ins and outs of Central Auto Body, she might know something about what happened with your husband. He might have emptied some account before he disappeared.” Fenway cleared her throat. “You took your ledgers home with you?”

  Mrs. Velásquez shifted uncomfortably. “Well, yes. I mean, I suppose I should have left them here in case Rose ever had to reference them, but she never asked.”

  “And the ledger that you gave to me, Rose was the one who maintained it?”

  “As far as I know,” Mrs. Velásquez said. “It looks like her handwriting.”

  “How do you know what her handwriting looks like?”

  Mrs. Velásquez waved her hand. “I read a note she wrote to one of our mechanics. She’s young. She only got her degree a couple of years ago and this is only her second real accounting job.”

  “Note to one of your mechanics? What kind of note?”

  Mrs.
Velásquez laughed. “A love letter, if you can believe it. The man is young—he’s probably a year or two younger than she is. He’s good looking, too. More handsome than that arrogant cerote who was here on Friday.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “If I was young like Rose, I’d make a play for him.”

  Something itched at Fenway’s brain. “What’s his name?”

  “We don’t need to get him involved, surely.”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Mrs. Velásquez paused. “Rafael.”

  “So Rose wrote a love letter to Rafael?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you—what? Intercepted it? Found it on his desk or something?”

  “No, no, Domingo caught her sneaking it over to Rafael’s desk. He took it away from Rose and gave her a warning about workplace romance.”

  Fenway thought for a moment. “Does Rose have a desk here?”

  “Yes. It’s that one—third one from the end.”

  Fenway walked over to the desk where a newer monitor was set up, and she looked at the two framed photos next to the phone.

  The first picture showed three women in hiking clothes, all in their early twenties, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a waterfall. In the second photo, a young woman in a cap and gown stood between a man and a woman in their late forties or early fifties. All of them were grinning ear to ear. Fenway looked at the pictures more closely. The woman in the middle of the hiking picture was the same as the woman in the cap and gown. She was black, with large, bright eyes and high cheekbones, and tight, dark brown ringlets cascading out of her cap in the graduation picture. In the hiking picture, she wore no makeup and her hair was hidden under a Dodgers baseball cap.

  “This one’s Rose, I take it?” Fenway held up the graduation picture so Mrs. Velásquez could see it.

  “Yes, that’s her. A few years ago, but she still looks the same.”

  “Has she been into work this week?”

  Mrs. Velásquez shook her head. “No, with Domingo gone, there’s no point. She told me her mother was sick anyway and she could use the time off.”

  The itch in Fenway’s brain grew more insistent. She looked under the desk.

  “Did Rose have a laptop?”

  “No. She worked on a pc.”

  “Like everyone else?”

  “No, most of the mechanics had these workstations that connect to a central system. It was just for customer information, invoicing, orders, inventory, that kind of thing. Rose had one of the only real pcs.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “What?” Mrs. Velásquez sounded shocked and hurried over to Rose’s desk, and McVie looked up from the cabinet he was leafing through. Fenway ducked underneath the keyboard tray and found the monitor and keyboard cables dangling.

  “The pc’s gone,” Fenway said.

  “The pc’s gone?” Mrs. Velásquez asked faintly.

  “Do you think Peter Grayheath took it?” McVie said. “I know most of the other equipment is here, but if Rose’s pc was the one with all the accounting files on it, he might have taken it.” McVie looked at Fenway. “You were asking Mrs. Velásquez who else knew about the floorboard hiding space. Was it empty?”

  Fenway nodded. “I found a fireproof document case, but that’s it—no ledgers, no documents, no nothing.”

  “We should probably pay a visit to Mr. Grayheath,” McVie said.

  Fenway looked at McVie, again trying to convey information to him telepathically, but this time his attention was divided between the missing pc, the missing ledgers, and the mysterious man who had shown up to “keep an eye on” a business that wasn’t his.

  After they all performed a more careful search of the office, they found nothing else missing—nothing obvious, anyway. Mrs. Velásquez showed McVie and Fenway the door and said she needed to get paperwork taken care of. “I’ll bring everyone in tomorrow,” she told them wearily. “We have cars to service, and I can’t delay the customers any longer.”

  Fenway got into McVie’s car and they drove out of the parking lot. Once they were a couple of blocks away, McVie glanced at her. “You’ve got something on your mind, Fenway.”

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t think Grayheath took the pc?”

  “I don’t think he took the ledgers, either.”

  “Who, then?” He paused. “You think it was Rose?”

  “That’s who I think it is, yeah,” Fenway said, “but didn’t it strike you as odd that Domingo Velásquez had that love note from Rose?”

  McVie was quiet.

  “I wonder if that love note was really for the young mechanic, or if it was for Domingo Velásquez.”

  McVie slowly nodded. “And if Domingo took the ledgers, and if Rose took the pc, and Rose wrote that love note to Domingo… maybe they’re holed up together someplace?”

  “It’s just a theory,” Fenway said. “I couldn’t ask too many more questions without freaking her out.”

  “Your gut’s been right before.”

  “My gut’s been wrong before, too,” Fenway said, “but it’s an avenue of inquiry worth pursuing, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What do you think? Should we go to Rose’s house now?”

  “I don’t think so,” McVie said, glancing at his watch. “It’s almost midnight. They’ll be there in the morning.”

  They were silent for a moment, and the unasked question hung heavily between them.

  “Um, Craig,” Fenway said, at the same time McVie said, “Listen, Fenway.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Fenway said. “You go.”

  “No, no, go ahead.”

  Fenway took a deep breath. “I know tonight was our first real date, and it got all kinds of crazy-messed-up.”

  “But it’s okay,” McVie said quickly. “I mean, we like—I like, anyway, working with you. It wasn’t a normal date, but I always like, uh….”

  Fenway cocked her head to the side. “You always like what?”

  “It’s cheesy.”

  “Cheesy? That’s stopping you from talking?”

  He coughed. “I like seeing how your mind works.”

  Fenway smiled. “Thanks. Me too. I mean, I like working with you. It’s not the same as a date, though.”

  “Right.”

  “And sometimes, at the end of a date, if things are going well, some people stay over at the other person’s apartment.” Fenway tapped her fingers on the console between the two front seats.

  “And sometimes people don’t even need to go on a real date to do that,” McVie said, a little cautiously.

  “Sometimes.”

  “So,” McVie said.

  “So,” Fenway said.

  McVie turned onto Estancia Canyon Road, only about a half mile from Fenway’s apartment. “You’re wondering about what’ll happen the rest of the evening.”

  Fenway nodded. “Kind of. Yeah.”

  “But?”

  “It’s late.”

  “Yeah.”

  They turned into Fenway’s apartment complex. McVie pulled up slowly into Fenway’s parking space. He debated for a moment, then put the car into Park.

  Fenway smiled. “Awfully bold move, Sheriff.”

  “I didn’t think we were done talking.” He smiled slyly. “Can’t be rolling out into the middle of the parking lot. Safety first.”

  “Of course.”

  Fenway returned McVie’s smile, and then leaned over and kissed him.

  The kiss was gentle at first, but it ignited something in Fenway. She pulled him closer with her right arm, their kiss growing more intense with each second. Her left hand moved from his bicep to his chest, finally tracing the line of his uniform shirt from his collarbone, slowly snaking down to his sternum, down to his navel. She put her palm flat on his stomach, her fingers inside his shirt between the buttons. He wrapped his right arm around her, moving from her shoulder blade, and then down, in time with her hand moving down his stomach. Then Fenway broke from the kiss. He
r heart beat quickly and she gasped to catch her breath.

  “Wow,” said McVie to himself. Fenway could feel his abs tighten, and his hand was tense on the small of her back.

  “Dammit,” she said. “I wasn’t going to invite you up tonight.”

  “You don’t have to,” McVie breathed, kissing her lightly on the lips.

  “No,” she said, “no, I kind of have to.”

  McVie kissed the side of her face. “Maybe I don’t want to come up,” he said playfully.

  Fenway’s hand traveled from his stomach to his thigh. She could feel him tense with the movement. She leaned forward and breathed in his ear. “Lying to a peace officer is a serious crime, Sheriff.”

  “Guilty as charged,” he said, kissing her neck.

  They pulled apart from each other and got out of the car, not speaking, the electricity between them pulsing in delicious anticipation as he followed her up the stairs, while she fumbled in her purse for her keys.

  II

  Thursday

  Chapter Ten

  Fenway woke up, the side of her face hot, and opened her eyes. Weak gray light came into the room, washing out the colors of the dresser and nightstand. She blinked; she was lying on top of McVie, her head on his chest. Her cheek stuck slightly to his skin before separating as she pushed herself up.

  “Hey,” McVie said. “Good morning.”

  That had been the third night they had spent together, but for the first time, he was still in bed when she woke.

  “Hey yourself,” she said, attempting a playful tone but hearing brusqueness in her voice. Her tongue tasted awful, she needed a shower, and she was keenly aware that both of them were still naked. She turned her head to look at the bedside clock. It was 6:20.

  “I’ve gotta get moving,” she said. Her heart pounded in her ears and her shoulders were tight. She rolled off McVie onto her back, and she covered herself with the sheet.

  McVie looked surprised. Fenway had pulled the covers off him and she tried to keep her eyes on his face. “What do you mean, you’ve gotta get moving?” he asked.

  “I—uh—there’s a lot of work to do. We missed the interviews with the students after rehearsal last night, for one thing.”