Unspoken

by Dee Henderson

  Five miles on the road going north and Charlotte was still flipping pages and occasionally marking items off. “This is a big place,” he mentioned.

  She smiled but didn’t look up. “Huge is the word you’re looking for.”

  “This is all Graham Enterprises?”

  She slipped the pen into the cover of the planner. “My grandfather’s family acquired the military base when it closed back in the fifties and doubled the footprint of Graham Enterprises. We don’t use all the land for warehouses.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it,” he said dryly.

  She laughed and pointed. “Gate C is coming up on your right. Follow the rock drive past the parking lot for the company’s sales office, and pull up to the gate. Security will recognize the vehicle.”

  He made the turn. The security guard lifted a hand in greeting, then raised the gate to let them enter.

  “We’ll stay on this road for about two miles and go to the admin building.”

  The road took them toward what he thought might be the center of Graham Enterprises. Warehouses began to materialize on both sides of the road. Cross lanes were busy with trucks, and he realized there were two kinds of roads—those designed for cars, and wider, deeper roads designed for the heavy weight of loaded trucks.

  “These warehouses are leased to companies needing overflow space. The next section is our own storage and distribution. Graham Enterprises buys in bulk and ships in smaller quantities, mostly dry goods, paper products. Beyond that is long-term storage, and the rest is Graham family land. All of Shadow Lake is on our property. There’s good fishing this year. Guys have been pulling out nice-size bass, bluegill, and the river feeding the lake has yielded some good-size catfish.”

  Charlotte reached back and ruffled the fur of the dog closest to her. They both were awake now and moving about, occasionally whining softly, no doubt recognizing home. “That warehouse with the green horizontal stripe—that’s the freezer. Costs a small fortune to cool it, and we charge accordingly, but it’s nearly always full. It’s the newest building on the property.

  “We’re a countercyclical business. When the economy is good, nearly all our space gets leased out by other companies, and we essentially become security and not much else. When the economy softens, the warehouses empty out, and we go on buying sprees picking up liquidating inventory, equipment in bankruptcy sales, anything tough to store that is selling for pennies on the dollar. We store it away until the economy begins to recover, and we can then sell it back into the market for multiples of what we paid. We’re only about half full at the moment, which tells me the economy is beginning to soften, but there hasn’t been much merchandise up for sale at prices we like yet.”

  She pointed ahead on the left. “You’ll want the blue building.”

  Bryce parked in the lot on the south side of the admin building. The nearly empty parking lot had three cars, one of which was Charlotte’s truck. He glanced at the time. 3:17 p.m. Right at a five-hour drive with the three stops.

  Charlotte let the dogs out, and they stretched, then loped together across the mowed grass and rolled for the pleasure of it. “So much for the good brushing.” She tossed their trash from lunch into a barrel near a picnic table.

  Bryce stopped beside her to watch the dogs.

  “I let them run loose here. They’ll be fine. Everyone who works here considers them their dogs. When I want them to come back, I ring that bell by the flagpole. They can hear it over most of this end of the property. Once they’ve worn off their energy, most of the time they just decide to follow me around.”

  “It must be dog heaven, all this territory to call their own.”

  “I like to think so.”

  Charlotte led the way up the walk.

  The door opened before they reached it, and an older lady stepped out, held the door for them. “I thought I saw you on the gate video. We’re at 134 and 97,” she mentioned to Charlotte.

  “Pickups?”

  “52.”

  “Who—”

  “Christopher.”

  “Thanks.”

  Bemused, Bryce looked back and forth between the two women as they carried on their abbreviated conversation—about what, he had no idea.

  “John’s hunting for you. Best not be found.”

  “I didn’t drive. He did.” Charlotte nodded toward Bryce.

  The lady laughed. “Better hope John buys that. The 47 is coming in at top of the hour, and 9 is free. Full crew scheduled plus two extra on page. 82 and 12 have come and gone. You want a late lunch for your company?”

  “I’ll take him by the diner later.”

  “Then I’m late for getting my hair done. Call if you need me.”

  “Will do, H.”

  Charlotte watched the lady head to the parking lot. “Bishop, that was Henrietta Scoop. She runs Graham Enterprises, even if she keeps the title of secretary. Unpacking that conversation for you, there’s a train due in top of the hour, dry goods, so warehouse 9 for the unload. We’ve had 134 incoming semis add their cargo to storage, and 97 semis’ worth ship out. 52 pickups of partial loads, and Christopher managed to draw the short straw as foreman for the night shift. I now know as much as if I’d been here to see the paper and take the calls.”

  “Busy day?”

  “Average to slow. Three trains today. The only thing that didn’t happen was much buying, as Fred liked to do most of that himself, and I inherited the job.”

  It suddenly clicked. “The bubble-wrap story.”

  She smiled. “I bought six million square feet of it. Small bubble, twelve-inch, perforated, one hundred fifty-foot rolls. You see a promo sale for bubble wrap at a store, odds are good we’re supplying it. I’ll take you by warehouses 4 and 5 and show you. It’s kind of cool.”

  “Why six? Why not just one?”

  “It was way too good a deal to pass up. My grandfather would have laughed. The guys did. Earned my stripes with my first buy.”

  “You really like this job,” he said, surprised.

  “Love it. Warehouses fill and unload in a choreography of trucks, trains, and forklifts. I’m a good forklift driver—I’ve got a soft touch for the tight moves, as my trainer likes to say. And there’s only one big rule for running this place—don’t forget where you put something.”

  She pointed down the hall and led the way. She turned on her phone as they walked, and he realized she’d had it shut off for their drive. “Thirty-eight messages. Not quite a new record.”

  They entered what looked like a massive break room, a combination of kitchen and gathering room, with round tables, couches, comfortable chairs. She waved him toward the comfortable seating. “I’ll get us cold drinks. What appeals? We stock everything.”

  “Root beer.”

  She skipped through the phone messages as she crossed to one of the four refrigerators and pulled out sodas, paused to listen to one message. She carried back two root beers. “Not much marked urgent.” She turned her phone off again, dropped into a comfortable chair and opened her soda, tipped it toward him, smiled. “Welcome to Graham Enterprises. It doesn’t look like much—warehouses, lots of gravel roads, miles of grass to mow, but it’s an incredibly profitable company. It’s hard to comprehend the volume that flows through here until you’ve seen it over a twenty-four-hour cycle. Busy days, we’re unloading six trains with eighty cars stacked behind the engines. It takes high volumes, because margins in this business are measured in tenths of a percent.”

  Bryce wondered now why he had assumed she’d find it hard to step into her grandfather’s shoes and run the business. She was comfortable here and spoke of it with the understanding of an owner. “I like your business, Charlotte. I like the fact you like it.”

  “Thanks.” She set aside her soda with a smile. “You’ve politely listened to the Graham Enterprises spiel, but that wasn’t why you made the drive. You came to see coins.”

  “I’m guessing because we came here and not to your grandfather’
s home, the coins are here.”

  “His house is up by Shadow Lake, and we’ll swing by there later as I’m packing group three to ship and can give you a preview. But, yes, the coins I want to show you are here.”

  She tugged a lemon drop from her pocket and unwrapped it. “Bishop Chicago has an inventory floor for coins at about five hundred dollars on up, and your client list is the top five percent of coin collectors. You routinely handle multi-thousand-dollar coins. I want you to consider expanding down in price to the twenty- to three-hundred-dollar coins where most mom and pop coin shops do the bulk of their business, and where most coin collectors are looking to buy. I’ve got some nice coins to sell in that price range.”

  “Got an example?”

  “A thousand Standing Liberty quarters in Extremely Fine to About Uncirculated.”

  “I haven’t seen that grade in quantity outside a major dealer.”

  “The safe-deposit box I closed last week had twenty-five rolls. Besides the coins he had stored here, Fred had safe-deposit boxes at various banks across the country. I’ve been closing them as I can get to them.” She considered Bryce. “I’ll take the coins to Wyatt’s in Ohio if you don’t want to pursue it.”

  “I get a choice this time?”

  “This one will be a bit of work. I’ve got a lot of coins to . . .” She paused as her two dogs entered the room. A tall, lanky man walked in behind them.

  “Charlotte.”

  “John.”

  He crossed to one of the refrigerators, opened the freezer, removed an ice pack, opened a drawer and pulled out a first-aid box. He took the seat facing her. “Let me see that ankle.”

  She pushed off her left tennis shoe and put her foot on his knee. Bryce winced when he saw the large, dark bruise yellowing with time.

  John shook out the Ace bandage to remove the twists, then used it to wrap her ankle and hold the ice pack in place. “Stay off it for the next half hour.”

  “Can I have my hat back?”

  “Are you going to listen next time Brad tells you to be careful?”

  She crossed her heart.

  He pulled the ball cap from his back pocket and put it on her head. It read Boss.

  “I don’t want to see you here at midnight. You call it a day by seven.”

  “I’ll knock off early.” She nodded to make the introductions. “John, Bryce Bishop. He came to talk coins.”

  Bryce found himself being summed up in a quick, penetrating glance.

  John looked back at Charlotte. “A conversation not work-related? Good. Have a long conversation. Stay out of trouble.” John got to his feet and tweaked the bill of her hat. “And quit climbing on chairs.”

  “Busted.”

  “The coins are now on your worktable. I hauled over more boxes.” He pointed to Bryce. “Let him do the carrying.”

  “It’s a shipping and transport company. I can snag a couple of guys to carry boxes.”

  “Which is what you said last time, and who was hauling them at ten p.m.?”

  “I’ll do better this time.”

  “Ankle’s never going to heal unless you do.”

  “I hear you.” Charlotte glanced at Bryce. “I’m going to take him over to see vault five.”

  John pulled a pen out of his pocket, picked up her hand, and wrote a number in her palm. “You miss-enter it twice, call me before you do it a third time. They rewired it in alongside the severe weather sirens, so this whole place knows a security breach happened and locks down.”

  “Too many false alarms and it’s going to lose its effectiveness.”

  “Folks are hoping for false alarms. You’re now paying every employee on the grounds a thousand bucks if they can lock this place down within five minutes of the sirens sounding.”

  “A thousand—”

  “Cash gets people motivated.”

  “Gets me motivated to type in the numbers properly.”

  “It’s tied into the security for the level-three vaults, unauthorized movement of equipment, and a few other things I’ve chosen to care about.”

  “How often are you going to ‘accidentally’ trip it?”

  “Once a month. Different shifts.”

  “Give everyone a chance to earn some extra cash.”

  “Basically.” John looked at the time. “The 73 is coming in at five thirty via the east gate. I could use you on the lift.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Who drove?”

  She pointed at Bryce.

  “Better.” John headed out, and the two dogs followed him.

  She watched him leave. “That’s John Key. He’s head of security for Graham Enterprises.” She came back from a reflective moment and looked over at him. Smiled. “So, lower-priced coins. Are you interested or do you want to pass?”

  “Depends on the volume and the price,” Bryce replied, still sorting out the dynamics he’d just seen play out. Those two were close in a way he’d rarely seen before, but he wasn’t sure it was what he had assumed. He forced his attention back to the topic of coins. “The reason we don’t handle the lower-end coins through Bishop Chicago is the high overhead costs of our location. Secure vault space is expensive, and the more volume you do, the more space you need for the pack and ship. So far I’ve concluded we’re better off focusing on the high-end coins and limiting how much we try to press our facilities to handle.”

  “Then let’s talk price. I’ll show you what I’ve got available, and we’ll see if you want to stay with that limit or get creative and go another direction.”

  “What do you propose?”

  She tugged five folded sheets of paper from her briefcase and offered them.

  He scanned the pages. Coin, year, grade, price. She was pricing the spectrum of coins, from Bust half-dollars to Buffalo nickels, in grades from Fine to Brilliant Uncirculated. “You’re well below wholesale pricing on most of these.”

  “I’ll make a good profit. And I’m hoping you can buy in volume.”

  “I’ve got no problem with your prices, Charlotte. I feel like a shark snacking on a naïve seller, but I’ll be able to sleep at night—barely.”

  She smiled. “Let me get the keys, we’ll head over to vault five, and you can select what you’d like to buy.”

  She unwrapped the ice pack and slid her tennis shoe back on.

  “You need that ankle elevated and iced for a bit longer.”

  “I’ll wrap it again this evening. It’s not barking at me like it was a week ago.” She put the ice pack back in the freezer, stopped briefly in an office to leave her briefcase, and to open a desk drawer and select keys.

  She pointed to her own truck in the parking lot. She drove them past warehouses, keeping the speed down.

  “How did you pay the estate tax on Graham Enterprises without having to sell the business or some of the property?” Bryce turned to see into one of the open warehouses. “None of my business, but I’m curious just the same.”

  “I had to sell a chunk to cover the tax bill. I sold forty-five percent of this place to a group of employees Fred had chosen—an insurance trust out of New York loaned them the money for the deal. After I’ve finish liquidating what Fred has in personal property stored around here, I’ll likely sell them the rest. I’ll keep part of the family land and Shadow Lake, sell the rest of the land to the trust for future business expansion. As much as I enjoy this job, Graham Enterprises is not my future.”

  “Art is?”

  She glanced over at him. “I wondered if you knew.” She shrugged. “I don’t know yet. But I view this time as an interesting interlude—probably a decade of my life—from meeting my grandfather to wrapping up his affairs for him as he wanted them done. I’ll move on once it’s finished.”

  She changed the radio station. “To your original question, the estate tax matters are still ongoing. The lawyers reached a deal with the IRS. They would file an estate return, which valued the Graham Enterprise business, would make a good faith estimate for ‘
other assets yet to be located and appraised,’ pay the estate tax, then have three years to find all the property and file an amended final estate return.

  “I’m dealing with the tangible things Fred left behind while the lawyers sort out the more difficult ownership matters. It appears Fred and his father took ownership stakes in businesses in place of payments during the Great Depression and when the economy hit severe recessions since then. How do you value two shares of something called HM Construction when the paperwork is sixty years old? It’s keeping the lawyers busy.

  “This place is giving me the same kind of odd surprises. Last week we opened a storage barn we thought held two old farm tractors and discovered a plane—a 1970s crop duster—in apparent working condition. It’s that kind of discovery that just baffles me about what to do with it. Oh—and eighteen canoes painted lime green. Let’s not forget the canoes. I’m actually relieved when I find something like old coins, Mason canning jars, or thirty cases of imported caviar that went bad ten years ago. At least I have a clue what to do with it.”

  A fenced area with posted warning signs came into view ahead of them. Charlotte slowed and stopped at the security gate, entered a code to pass them through. Bryce saw more security cameras, and twice they passed men walking with dogs. “We pay a bit more attention to who comes into this part of the property, not only because the secure vaults are here, but because this part of the former military base was used as a firing range. We still occasionally find after heavy rains an unexploded shell we have to deal with.”

  She pulled to a stop in front of a single-story building that looked like it was built from concrete cinder blocks. “This is the doorway into the berm you see stretching for the next half mile. Most of the berms within this property are actually storage bunkers. The earth above keeps the temperatures steady.”

  She used keys to open two locks, opened the steel door, and turned on lights. They stepped into a small entry room. She looked at the code John had written on her palm, entered it on the security pad. The steel rods barring the next door retracted. She unlocked and opened the inside door. “After you.”