by Bill Bernico
Allen Jeffries, a realtor with an office in our building was just coming in the front door as I was walking over to where Gloria stood waiting for me near the elevator. I turned and waved at him.
“You two forget something?” he said, opening his own mailbox.
I shrugged. “How’s that?” I said, just as the elevator door opened. Gloria and I stepped into the car. Allen was still trying to talk to me from across the hall but I couldn’t hear him. “We’ll talk later,” I yelled, just as the elevator door closed. I turned to Gloria. “What was that all about?” I said. “Did we forget something? Is that what he said?”
“Uh huh,” Gloria said.
“I don’t get it?” I said.
The two of us rode to the third floor and walked down to the end of the hall to our office. Dad, who generally helped us man the office, was taking the morning off to make his dental appointment. I opened the outer office door and started to walk toward the inner office door when I noticed that this little cubicle was empty of everything. The two-seat sofa was gone, as was the chair, end table, lamp and magazine rack.
“What the hell?” I said. “Where’s all the furniture?” I turned to Gloria, who just shrugged.
“Well, don’t look at me,” she said. “I haven’t been in the office for a couple of weeks now. Maybe Dad got rid of it and is getting some updated replacements. Why don’t you give him a call when we get inside?”
When we opened the inner office door, we were looking at a bigger version of the outer office. It too was bare, save for the carpet on the floor. Both of our desks were gone, along with the filing cabinets, our laptop computers and printers, all the chairs, the coat rack and even the waste baskets. It looked like a carpet cleaning company had come in, moved the furniture and forgot to clean the carpet. If that was the case, they also forgot to put the furniture back where it had been.
“Call your dad,” Gloria said.
I walked to where my desk used to sit and noticed that whoever had cleaned us out, had also taken the phones. I pulled my cell phone from my coat pocket, flipped it open and hit the speed dial button for Dad’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Make it quick,” he said. “I’ve got a dentist appointment in fifteen minutes.”
“Dad,” I said. “It’s Elliott.”
“No kidding,” Dad said. “Is that why your name showed up on the phone’s screen? What’s up, and like I said, make it quick.”
“This may be a stupid question,” I said, “but you didn’t take all the furniture out of the office and order new stuff, did you?”
“What are you talking about?” Dad said.
“I mean the office is bare,” I said. “All the furniture is gone and so are the phones. Everything is gone.”
“Are you kidding me?” Dad said. “April Fool’s Day is still two months off.”
“Dad, I’m serious,” I said. “Someone emptied the office over the weekend.”
“Well, I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Dad said. “Call the police and try not to mess up any evidence that they might have left behind. I’ll be in after my dental appointment. Gotta run.”
I flipped the phone closed and turned to Gloria. “He doesn’t know anything about it,” I said.
“Yeah,” Gloria said. “I gathered that from your end of the conversation. Now what?”
I opened my phone again and dialed Eric Anderson’s number. Lieutenant Anderson was a friend of ours who worked out of the twelfth precinct. We’d worked on several cases together in the past. I got through to him right away.”
“Eric,” I said, without preamble, “Can you come to my office right away?”
“Well, good morning to you, too,” Eric said sarcastically.
“Sorry,” I said, “but my cheerful attitude disappeared this morning when we came into work to find out office had been broken into. I’d like you to come over and bring someone from your lab crew. Maybe you can lift a few prints.”
“Did they take anything?” Eric said. “Did you make a list of what’s missing? Did you…”
“It would be easier to make a list of what they didn’t take,” I said. “The paper would be blank. Eric, they cleaned up out, right down to the phones and the trash cans. The office is empty.”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Eric said. “I’ll bring Johnson from the lab. Don’t touch anything.”
“There’s nothing to touch,” I said.
“I was talking about door frames, window sills, and such,” Eric said.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll see you both when you get here.” I closed the phone and let out a deep breath. I turned to Gloria. “We’ve got twenty minutes before Eric gets here. What do you say we go pay Allen a visit? I think he was trying to tell us something earlier.”
“Good idea,” Gloria said. “Whether we like it or not, it looks like we have a case.”
We turned to leave when Gloria stopped short and looked under the sink in the corner of the room. “What’s that?” she said, pointing toward the sink.
“I think it’s called a sink,” I said.
“No,” Gloria said, obviously annoyed. Under the sink. See it?”
We walked over to the sink and knelt. It was a small plastic floppy disc, the kind they used to use in some of the older computers before USB ports and jump drives made them obsolete. I started to reach for it when Gloria grabbed my arm.
“Uh uh,” she said. “Fingerprints.”
I pulled my notepad out of my pocket, ripped a page from it, folded it over the edge of the floppy disc and picked it up. “What the hell would this be doing under our sink,” I said. “Or anywhere in this office, as far as that goes. Neither of our computers uses this old technology.”
“Maybe whoever took all our furniture dropped it,” Gloria said. “That’s the only explanation that fits.”
“Even so,” I said. “Who would even need something like this anymore?”
“Maybe we’ll know more about it if we can see if there’s anything on it,” Gloria said.
I dropped it in my pocket. “I’ll check it later,” I said. “Let’s go down and see what Allen knows. We took the steps down one flight to the second floor. Allen Jeffries’ office was right across the hall from the elevator and stairwell. We walked in and found Allen’s receptionist, Mary, sitting behind the desk. “Is he with anyone?” I said, gesturing toward Allen’s office door.
Mary shook her head. “No, he just got in,” she said. “Go on in.”
Gloria and I opened the door with the frosted glass that spelled out Jeffries’ name. Allen was standing near the window, a coffee cup in his hand. He turned when we entered and smiled.
“You did forget something,” Allen said. “What was it, your toilet paper?” He stopped smiling when he noticed that neither of us found his comment funny.
“You were trying to tell me something in the lobby a minute ago, Allen,” I said. “What was it?”
Allen’s eyebrows furrowed and then he remembered. “Oh,” he said, “I just asked if you forgot something in the office. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see either of you again, but here you are. Tell me, how is the new office?”
“New office?” Gloria said. “What new office would that be?”
“Well,” Allen said, “I just assumed you found a new office, since you moved out of this one. Unless you both just got out of the business altogether.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Whatever made you think we’d moved out or found a new office?”
Allen gestured to a couple of chairs. Please,” he said, “have a seat.”
We both shook our heads. “I’d prefer to stand,” I said. “What’s all this about moving out?”
“Well,” Allen said, “as I was leaving for the day on Saturday, I passed the moving men in the lobby. They were hauling a bunch of furniture out to a truck in the parking lot. When I asked one of the men where all this furniture was from, he just told me he had a work order t
o move everything out of the office at the end of the hall on the third floor. That is your office, isn’t it?”
“You know it is, Allen,” Gloria said. “Who were these men? Were they wearing any kind of uniform with a name on it? Did you get a look at the truck?”
“Wait a minute,” Allen said. “You mean you’re not moving out?”
Gloria turned to me. “I think he’s getting the picture, Elliott,” she said and then turned to Allen. “Of course we’re not moving out. Now what about these men? What did they look like?”
“Like moving men,” Allen said. “You know, coveralls, gloves, dollies, blankets, the works. Moving men.”
“And you say that was Saturday?” I said. “What time was that?”
“Oh, right around four, four-thirty, in there somewhere,” Allen said. “Hey, if I thought there was anything going on, I would have called you or the police. I had no idea.”
I turned to Gloria. “We’d better get back upstairs,” I said. “Eric will be here soon.” I turned to Allen and said, “The police may want to talk to you when they finish upstairs. Are you going to be around?”
“Sure,” Eric said. “Glad to help out if I can. Send ‘em down.”
“Thanks, Allen,” I said, and turned and left Allen’s office.
As we passed Mary again, she said, “So where’s your new office going to be?”
Gloria opened her mouth to explain and then just sighed. “I’ll explain it all later, Mary.”
We returned to the empty office and waited for Lieutenant Anderson and his lab man to show up. There wasn’t even any place to sit while we waited, so Gloria and I rested our butts on the window sill.
“What are we supposed to do about all our records?” I said. “Come tax time we’re going to be sucking seeds if we have to produce any records.”
“That’s the least of our problems,” Gloria said. “I have a backup of everything that was on our laptops. Our big problem now is that someone has and can see all of our past records. None of our previous clients has any confidentiality any more. The question now is, can any of that information be used against us or our clients?”
“Well,” I said, “like you said, you have the backups. We can always buy two new laptops and reproduce what we had.”
“That reminds me,” Gloria said. “You’d better call our insurance man right now and let him know what’s going on. If we’re going to be back in business, we’re going to need to replace everything they took today yet.”
“I’m on it,” I said, flipping my phone open and calling Ned Sweeny. While I was on the phone with Ned, Lieutenant Anderson and his lab man came in.
Anderson looked around for a second and then turned to Gloria. “Gees,” he said, “you weren’t kidding. They took everything, didn’t they?”
“Even the toilet paper,” Gloria said, referring to a wisecrack Eric had made to Elliott on the phone.
Eric turned to the man he’d brought with him and said, “Tom Sullivan, this is Gloria Cooper.” Eric gestured toward Gloria and then turned to where I was standing with my cell phone to my ear. “And that’s Elliott Cooper.”
I acknowledged Eric’s introduction with a polite wave.
“I know Elliott,” Tom said. “We met a couple of months back on that case with that family of killers near Burbank.”
Eric nodded to Tom, who opened his black bag and began dusting for finger prints on the door frames and window sills. After eight or nine minutes Tom turned to Eric and said, “Lots of prints, but it’s a good bet they all belong to Elliott and Gloria.”
“And possibly Clay,” Gloria added. “He works here occasionally. He’s just not in today.”
“That makes sense,” Gloria said. “We just came from Allen Jeffries’ office on the second floor. He said he saw a couple of moving men here late Saturday and said they were wearing gloves. Chances are they didn’t leave any prints.”
“I should probably go down and talk to this Jeffries,” Eric said. “When Elliott’s done with that phone call, tell him to meet us down there, will you, Gloria?”
“All right, Eric,” Gloria said. “Thanks anyway.”
Eric and Tom left the office and got in the elevator. Eric got off at two but told Tom he could return to the precinct and thanked him for his time. Eric found Allen Jeffries’ real estate office on the second floor.
Elliott finished his call to his insurance man and closed the phone. “I just have to give him a copy of the police report,” Elliott told Gloria, “along with a list of everything that was taken and he’ll cut us a check this afternoon. Looks like we may be spending the rest of today replacing what we lost.”
“And what happens if and when we catch up with these lowlife thieves and find all our original equipment?” Gloria said. “Are we stuck with two of everything?”
“I guess we work that out with Ned,” Elliott said. “Meanwhile, why don’t you give some thought to what you want in here?”
“I think the first thing we’d better do is go out and find another phone system and answering machine,” Gloria said. “We’re probably losing business as it is. Let’s not lose anymore by not being reachable to potential clients.”
“How about if we split up?” I said. “I’m going downstairs to join Eric in Allen’s office. How about you finding us the phone equipment we need?”
“I’m on it,” Gloria said and hurried out of the office.
I left the office myself and didn’t even bother locking the door. I found Eric on the second floor, coming out of Allen’s office. “Anything?” I said.
“Nothing more than he apparently told you already,” Eric said. “He couldn’t see any company name on the side of the moving truck and it hadn’t occurred to him to get the license plate number. At the time he had no idea that anything was wrong.”
“What about descriptions of the moving men themselves?” I said.
“Generic at best,” Eric said. “Identical coveralls and hats. Nothing memorable about either of their faces. He did get a look at one of the name patches on the coveralls, though. One of the guys had a patch that said, ‘Stoney’. He didn’t see the second man’s patch.
“Stoney,” I said. “Not a name you hear every day. That could narrow it down a bit.”
“We’re on it,” Eric said. “But I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you to let us handle it.” When Eric got a look at my face, he added, “I didn’t think so. Look, I’ve got to get back and start the ball rolling on this investigation. I’ll let you know if anything breaks loose.”
“Thanks, Eric,” I said, and continued down to the parking lot and to my van. I drove to the local van line company to have a talk with the owner. He was in his office when I entered the building. There was no receptionist to screen me, so I let myself in and knocked on the door marked, ‘manager’ and waited. A deep voice from behind the door invited me in.
“Are you the owner?” I said, poking my head into the office.
“Owner’s in Chicago,” the man behind the desk said. “I’m the manager. Blake is my name, Arthur Blake. Is there something I can help you with?”
I stepped all the way into the room, found a spare chair and situated it across the desk from Blake. Before I sat myself down, I fished my wallet out of my coat and flipped it open to my P.I. license and shield, showing it to Blake. “My name is Elliott Cooper,” I said. “I have an office on Hollywood Boulevard near Cahuenga.”
“I can’t imagine needing a private eye, Mr. Cooper,” Blake said.
“Uh, no,” I said. “I’m not here trying to drum up business. Like I said, I have an office and when I went to that office this morning, I found that it had been cleaned out right down to the toilet paper on the roll and the calendar on the wall. There’s nothing left—absolutely nothing.”
“And I can assume that’s not something you planned,” Blake said.
I shook my head. “Not at all,” I said. “Another tenant in my building told me that he saw two moving men th
ere late Saturday moving all of my stuff out to a truck in the parking lot. He didn’t see any company name on the truck, but he did notice a name patch on the coveralls of one of the men. It said, ‘Stoney’. Does that name ring any bells with you, Mr. Blake?”
Blake gave me a strange look, trying to decide if this was some sort of a joke. “Did Sammy send you here?” he said. “That Sammy’s a pretty good practical joker, but he’ll have to do a lot better than this to get me.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“You had me going,” Blake said, “until you threw the Stoney name into the mix. Good one. You go back and tell Sammy it didn’t work.”
I shrugged. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Blake,” I said.
Blake pulled a pair of coveralls off a coat tree and held them up facing toward me. The name patch said, ‘Stoney’. “Stoney,” Blake said. “That’s me, or at least that’s my nickname.” Suddenly hit him that I wasn’t joking around with him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “Do you know of anyone else in this business with that name?”
Blake shook his head. “I’ve been in this business for more than thirty years,” he said, “and I know most of the other players and their staff. No other Stoneys that I know of.”
I pointed to the coveralls. “Is that your only pair?” I said.
Blake hung them back on the hook and shook his head. “No,” he said, “I have another pair that I use when these are in the wash.”
“Do you think I could see them, Mr. Blake?” I said.
Blake spread his hands. “Sure,” he said. “I keep them in the closet right over here.” He led me to a door on the other side of his office and pulled it open, reaching for the hook. The surprised look on his face was genuine when he saw the bare hook. “They were hanging right here,” he said.
“Does anyone else have access to your office and closet?” I said. “Could anyone else have taken them without your knowledge?”