by Bill Bernico
“I suppose it’s possible,” Blake said. “I haven’t needed the second pair for a couple of weeks, so I’d have no reason to check to see if they were still hanging there. I guess someone could have borrowed them without me knowing about it.”
“Let me ask you, Mr. Blake,” I said. “How many men does this company employ? And I’m just talking about this local branch.”
“Oh, I’d say at any given time that we have between thirty-five and forty men on staff,” Blake explained. “You think one of them took my coveralls?”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Who else would know they were there?”
Blake nodded with the realization. “No one,” he said. “So what happens now, Mr. Cooper?”
“At least I may have narrowed the suspect list down to thirty-five or forty,” I said. “Now I talk to all of these men.”
Blake gave me a look that I couldn’t interpret.
“It’s either me, with my subtle ways,” I said, “or the police, with their not-so-subtle ways. Which would you prefer, Mr. Blake.”
“I see your point, Mr. Cooper,” Blake said. “But I think I can save you a little wear and tear on your shoe leather. Not all forty of these men would have even been in town on Saturday. Several crews were delivering households across the state and quite a few more aren’t movers. They’re mechanics and warehousemen.”
“What about your trucks?” I said. “Do they all have to be signed in and out and is the mileage recorded when that happens?”
“I thought you said your witness didn’t see any company name on the truck,” Blake reminded me.
“Just because he didn’t notice a name,” I said, “doesn’t mean there wasn’t one on the truck. Can I get a look at your trucking log?”
Blake reluctantly led me to the garage area and into a small office on the side. He pulled a log book off the shelf above the desk and opened it to the last page, stepping away to let me have a look. “As you can see, Mr. Cooper, all trucks were accounted for on Saturday and there are no mileage discrepancies.”
“I guess it’s possible that the two men used a truck from somewhere else,” I said. “Could I talk to anyone on your staff who doesn’t have a verified alibi for Saturday?”
“Well,” Blake said, “not all of them. Some are out on jobs at the moment but there are still a few here in the lunchroom. Knock yourself out.” He pointed to the door marked ‘Staff Only’ and then led me into the room. Four heads turned toward us as we entered. “This is Mr. Cooper,” Blake told the four men. “He’d just like to ask you all a few questions. I expect all of you to cooperate with him.” With that, he turned and left the room.
I spent twenty minutes with the men and by the time I left them, I was convinced that none of them knew anything about what had happened in my office last Saturday. Hell, I could be chasing a wild goose for all I knew. I thanked them all for their time and decided to say goodbye to Arthur Blake before I left. I opened his office door, leaned in and said, “Just wanted to thank you for your time and say goodbye, Mr. Blake. And then another thought occurred to me. Has anyone left your employ recently for any reason? I mean did you fire anyone or did anyone quit?”
Blake didn’t have to think too hard about this question. “Just one,” he said. “Les Bennett.”
“Where could I find Mr. Bennett?” I said.
“In the cemetery,” Blake said. “He died five or six weeks ago.”
“Well,” I said. “It was just a thought. Thanks again.” I left Blake’s office and returned to my van. It looked like I’d hit a dead end with the moving and storage company. I decided to try some of the truck rental agencies in town.
I talked to managers and clerks at four different truck rental places in Hollywood and came up empty. At the fifth place over on Sepulveda the clerk remembered renting a twenty-two foot truck to two men last Friday just before closing.
“They had it back here, parked on the lot when I came in on Monday,” the clerk said. “Funny thing, though. They paid cash up front plus a hundred dollar deposit, you know, in case they bring it back without a full tank of gas.”
“What’s funny about that?” I said.
“They never came back for the deposit,” the clerk said. “Not that they would have gotten the whole hundred back anyway. The truck took six gallons of gas and they put on an extra forty-eight miles, so they’d have gotten back only thirty dollars or so after expenses.”
I held up my I.D. and shield. “I’d like to see that rental agreement,” I said, trying to use my official sounding voice.
“Right away,” the clerk said, scrambling toward the office. He showed me the rental agreement and I made a note of the name it was made out to—Douglas Avery.
I jotted down the address on Barton Avenue along with the phone number and handed it back to the clerk. “Did you get a look at this Avery’s license?” I said.
The clerk nodded. “Yes,” he said. “The guy showed me his driver’s license and I wrote the number down on the slip. See? Right there.”
I noted the license number on my slip and thanked the clerk. I climbed back into my van and drove to the twelfth precinct to share this information with Lieutenant Anderson. Eric wasn’t back yet so I asked the desk sergeant if I could talk with Eric’s secretary, a woman named Cynthia Brennan.
Cynthia was sitting behind her desk when I approached. “Hey, Elliott,” she said when she saw me coming. “If you’re looking for Lieutenant Anderson he’s not back yet.”
“I know,” I said. “I was hoping maybe you could help me with something.”
“Try me,” she said and then smiled wryly.
“Is that a come on?” I said.
“Elliott,” Cynthia said. “You know me better than that.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “So, is that a no? Are you coming on to me?”
Cynthia playfully slapped my arm. “You bring out the flirt in me, you know that, Elliott? Now, what was that you were asking?”
“Could you plug a driver’s license number into the computer for me and see what comes up?” I said.
“Child’s play,” Cynthia said. “Give me the number.”
I read the number to her and she typed it into her computer and waited. Something came up on her screen and she looked up at me. “Read me that number again, Elliott,” she said.
I slowly read the number to her as she check it with the number she’d typed into the computer. “Nope,” she said. “No match.”
“No match?” I said. “How’s that possible? I copied the number off a truck rental agreement. Okay, try this in the search. Try Avery, Douglas.”
Cynthia typed the name in and hit Return. She got several hits for Douglas Avery and asked if I had an address to go with the name. I gave her the address but it didn’t match any of the four Averys on the screen.
“Try just the address,” I said.
Again Cynthia cleared the screen, typed in just the address and hit Return. She looked at me again. “No such address,” she said. The numbers on Barton Avenue don’t go that high. Looks like someone made up a fake license in order to rent that truck. Sorry, Elliott.”
“Well,” I said, pinching her cheek, “thanks for trying anyway. Would you tell the lieutenant when he returns that I stopped in and ask him to call my cell number, if you would?”
Cynthia smiled and ran her hand over her cheek. “I will,” she said.
This was getting stranger by the minute, I thought. Someone obviously went through a lot of trouble to cover their tracks with the truck rental. I was stumped as to where to look next when my cell phone rang. It was Gloria.
“Did you find anything, Elliott?” she said.
“Just a lot of dead ends,” I said. “How are you doing with the phones?”
“I’m in the office,” Gloria explained. “I’m calling you from our new office phone. Same number as before, naturally, and I already have the answering machine hooked up and ready to take messages, if we get any.”
“
Remind me to put you in for a raise,” I said. “You’re turning out to be my most valuable employee.”
“And?” Gloria said.
“And I’ve decided to let you sleep your way to the top,” I said, laughing at my own joke.
“I don’t think my husband would approve,” Gloria said.
“Screw him,” I said.
“I was planning to,” Gloria said, “but I think I’ll go with the first offer. How long do you think it would take me to screw my way into the president’s chair?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That would depend on how good you are.”
“At my job?” Gloria said.
“That, too,” I said. “I’m just a few blocks from the office. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I flipped my phone shut and turned up Cahuenga and around the back of my building. When I walked into the office, Gloria was sitting behind a small table that was barely large enough to accommodate her laptop and the phone.
“You already replaced your laptop?” I said.
Gloria shook her head. “I took mine home over the weekend,” she said. “So all we need is a replacement for you.”
“Where’d you get the kindergarten table and chair?” I said.
“The office supply store is letting me borrow this until tomorrow morning until we decide what to do about the rest of our furniture,” Gloria said. “I told them our situation and about the insurance replacement policy and they said I could decide later. Which reminds me, I talked to Ned Sweeny about replacement furniture. I asked what happens if after we replace everything we find it all again.”
“Are we stuck with two of everything then?” I said.
“No,” Gloria explained. “We have the option of returning the new stuff to the office supply store within thirty days, or, and I like this option, the insurance company would take the old furniture and let us keep the new stuff. I mean, after all, they’d have to get something for their money, wouldn’t they?”
“I know we may even come out ahead on this whole thing,” I said, “but it just bugs me to have this loose end hanging over my head. I want to know, no, I need to know who took it all and why. But then that’s just me.”
“So what do you want me to tell them at the office supply store?” Gloria said. “Do we replace it all now or are you hot on their trail?”
“Better tell them to bring it all over,” I said. “I’m getting nowhere with this case. We may never find out who or why and we can’t go on scrunched up behind that little desk forever.”
It was nearly eleven o’clock when Dad walked into the office, took a quick look around and then looked at me. I could see he was trying his darndest to suppress a smile. “You weren’t kidding,” Dad said. “They really cleaned you out, didn’t they?”
“I hope you don’t need to use the bathroom,” I said.
“Why?” Dad said and then remembered. “Oh yeah, they took the toilet paper. Now that’s a thorough burglar.”
I explained to Dad what I’d already done to try to recover our equipment. I told him about the moving and storage company, the truck rental agency and how everything so far had led to a dead end.
“What about the guy’s license?” Dad said.
“Checked it,” I said. “That’s a phony, too.”
“So now what are you going to do?” Dad said.
I shook my head. “My idea well is running dry,” I said. “What about you? Is there something obvious that I’m overlooking?”
“Fingerprints?” Dad said.
Gloria got up from behind the tiny desk. “Gloves, apparently,” she said. “They didn’t leave any prints in here.”
“I was thinking more about the rental truck,” Dad said. “Did they check it for prints on the steering wheel or in the back?”
“It’s already been driven by the lot boy,” I said. “And he’s taken it through the truck wash already this morning. Any other ideas?”
“I’d sit and think about it,” Dad said, looking around the office, “but there’s no place to sit.”
I turned to Gloria. “What about that floppy disk you found?” I said.
Gloria reached into her purse and produced the disc. “I don’t have a three and a half inch drive in my laptop,” she said. “I don’t know how you’re going to check the contents.” She handed me the disc.
“Maybe I can take it to the computer store,” I said. “They should be able to read it for me. I’ll be back later. Dad, you want to come with me?”
“Might as well,” Dad said. “There’s nothing to do here.”
Dad and I drove six blocks to a store that sold and serviced computers and offered software training. I found a clerk in the back of the store. He looked up from his workstation and smiled.
“Good morning,” he said. “May I help you?”
I handed him the disc. “Do you have a drive here that can read this disc?” I said.
“Sure,” he said, extending his hand. “Let me have it.”
I gave him the disc and he slipped it into a different computer sitting next to him. He clicked an icon on the screen and a list of files appeared. He highlighted one of the files and hit Enter. The clerk motioned to me to come behind the counter and have a look. Dad joined me and both our mouths fell open when we saw what appeared on the screen. It was a picture of my office, fully furnished. It looked fairly recent, too. I turned to the clerk.
“Can I see what’s in the other files?” I said.
The clerk highlighted the next file and opened it. It was another shot of the interior of my office from a different angle. The other dozen files contained the same subject matter, all from different angles. I noticed there were twenty-four files in all. Twelve of them had the .jpg extension and the other twelve had something else.
“What are those other files?” I asked the clerk.
“Those are index files,” the clerk told me. This looks like a disc from one of Sony’s older digital cameras. They have a slot in the side for floppy discs and the photos go right on to the floppy disc. It was cutting edge at the time. Almost no one uses them anymore since the advent of flash drives and cards.
“Could you transfer those .jpg files to a jump drive for me?” I said, producing a USB stick from my pocket.
The clerk inserted my jump drive into the USB slot on his computer and then highlighted all the files and dragged them to the drive designated for my jump drive. I thanked him and gave him a five dollar bill for his troubles.
When Dad and I got back to the office, I gave the jump drive to Gloria and she inserted it into her laptop. When she saw what was on it, she had almost the same reaction that Dad and I had at the computer store. “What is all this?” she said.
“The clerk told me that the floppy disc was used in an older Sony digital camera,” I said. “Looks like someone took a bunch of pictures of this office before they emptied it.”
“For what reason?” Gloria said.
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “But if they dropped this one, chances are they were switching out discs when they filled this one up and there’s more than one of these discs floating around.”
“That gives me an idea,” Gloria said. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried out of the office and down one floor to Allen Jeffries’ office. A man was just leaving Allen’s office when she arrived.
“Gloria,” Allen said, smiling. “What brings you back here so soon?”
“Do you have a few minutes to spare?” Gloria said. “I’d like to run an idea past you, if I may?”
“Certainly,” Allen said. “Come on in.” He led her into his office and invited her to sit. “So what’s on your mind?”
“Let me ask you something, Allen,” Gloria said. “You deal in houses and apartments, right?”
Allen nodded.
“Do you also deal in office space?” Gloria said.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Allen said.
“And are the available offices listed with the multiple li
stings?” she said.
“That they are,” Allen said. “Did you want me to find you and Elliott a different office?”
“No, but thanks,” Gloria said. “If it comes down to that, I’ll keep you in mind. No, what I wanted to know was if you could tell me if any offices had recently been rented in the city and where they might be.”
“And I thought you were going to ask me something difficult,” Allen said, clicking an icon on his computer screen. He looked back at Gloria. “All right, what time period do you want to cover?”
Gloria thought for a moment. “Let’s start with everything in the last three months and go from there,” she said.
Allen typed in the parameters and hit Enter. “Well,” he said, “we got ninety-seven hits.”
Gloria sighed. “Let’s narrow that down to the last thirty days and see what comes up.”
Allen changed the time period and came up with fifteen hits. Gloria looked over his shoulder.
“Try all offices rented in the past week, please,” she said.
Allen changed the time period to seven days and ended up with just two possibles.
Gloria pointed at the screen. “Could you print out the list from the thirty day search as well as this seven day search?” she said.
Allen hit a few more keys and his printer spit out two lists. He handed them to Gloria. “You have an idea, I take it?” he said.
“It’s a long shot,” Gloria said, “but it’s all we have to go on. Thanks. I’ll let you know if it pans out.”
Gloria took the elevator back to the third floor and brought her printouts into the office. She handed them to Elliott. “Allen made these printout for me of all new office rentals in the past week, and month. Suppose whoever took everything out of here took it all to furnish an office of their own. It’s as good a place as any to start. I figured we could start with the most recent and work backwards from there and see what breaks loose.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s not like we have any other leads to follow. Let’s split up. We can cover three times as many places.” I tore the month list into strips of five, five and five. The last two names were duplicated on the week list so I threw that slip away. I took one piece of the torn list and gave Gloria and Dad the other two list pieces. “Let’s all keep our cell phones on and let each other know if we come across anything at all.”