by Mary Mead
He gave me a long, searching look before he finally opened the door and closed it behind him.
I opened the office and promptly checked all the cameras to be sure Paul Murphy was off the premises. Once I was sure he was absent, I put on another pot of coffee and went to work.
With the events of the morning, I had forgotten to show Burke the picture I had printed off. Coming out of the shower, dressed and ready for coffee to find your boss on the couch is not a good start on the day.
I brought the file down at lunch and went over it again, seeing nothing new. I stuck it under the counter to give to Burke the next time I saw him. Whenever that would be.
I just finished that thought when he walked in.
He looked a whole lot better than he had this morning, having shaved and cleaned up. A white collar peeked over a green sweater worn over jeans. He looked a little sheepish.
I waited, giving him the lead.
He glanced around the office, folded his arms and leaned on the counter.
“Are we speaking?”
“Of course. Can I help you?”
Burke chuckled. “How about I say I’m sorry? Really, all I did was open the door. You were in the shower. It could have been a customer, you know. What if someone was stuck in the gate? Or a door fell? I mean, after all, the customers know me, I’ve been around for a while. If it was an emergency I could have handled it.”
Valid points all. He could indeed have handled almost anything, including opening the office if need be. He had keys. There was no way he could have known Paul would come by the apartment. That in itself was unusual. None of the Murphy clan ever came to my living quarters, not even when I was hired. The previous manager had shown me around.
“Apology accepted,” I told him. “It really wasn’t your fault.”
“Thank you,” Burke smiled, and moved around to take a seat at the counter. “Now, how about dinner? Let me take you out for a change.”
I thought about it. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“Afraid to be seen with me? It’s just dinner. At Kelly’s,” he added naming the diner in Monarch that was everyone’s favorite place to eat. “It’s Thursday, chicken and dumplings. I’ll even spring for dessert.”
He looked so sincere, batting his lashes at me while trying not to grin.
“Fine,” I said. “Let me get locked up.”
He straightened up and went to flip the signs. “I’ll help.”
Kelly’s is a diner, a casual place with the best food in the county and the best prices. Always reasonable, always tasty, and almost always leftovers to be brought home and reheated later. If you’re not too late they have wonderful pies from the local bakery.
On our way out I grabbed the folder from under the counter.
We drove to Kelly’s in Burke’s truck, a newer model with all the bells and whistles, exchanging small talk. He asked about the folder I had placed on the seat.
“Something for you to look at later,” I explained. “I finally found a frame with a partial look at the driver of the Move It truck. Thought maybe you might recognize him although it’s not the best copy in the world.”
“I’ll look at it tonight,” he said. “Anything else come up?”
“Not that I can see,” I answered. “It must be happening at night. Somehow they’re getting in and avoiding the cameras. Only other way is careful planning, using someone else to block the view. That would be tricky.”
“The thing is,” Burke began, turning into Kelly’s parking lot, “that unit is not important.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it, babe. That was only nine cartons. A lot of drugs, granted, but not a full load. Were there more? And where were they? That unit was empty, right? Before they put those cartons in?”
“Yes. It was supposed to be. It had one of the little yellow snap tags on the door. I put that on myself.”
He turned off the truck and angled towards me. “I think that was leftovers or extras, that they had filled another unit somewhere close and didn’t have enough room for those last boxes. Or maybe someone interrupted them and they had to dump them off quick. The rest of the load was delivered on schedule, wherever that was. I think they came back to see if those nine were still there, and when they were? They took them.”
“So you think another unit is being used to store the drugs. Couldn’t a dog find it?”
Burke sighed deeply and turned back around. “Dogs could find the truck. Not necessarily the unit. Depends on so many things. So many scents can camouflage the smell of drugs. Coffee, cinnamon, even vanilla can override the smell. Plus, that was careful packaging. The plastic bags, inside a plastic covered carton and wrapped in more plastic. Not a lot of smell coming through all that. Come on, let’s eat. I’ll look at the pictures later. Let’s just get away from it all for a while.”
He stepped down from the truck and jogged around to open my door.
Not accustomed to such actions I had already popped the door and started to step down. Burke caught my arm and held it till I was on my feet.
“Sorry,” I murmured, “not used to help.”
“You don’t need help, babe, I know that. My mama just raised me to be polite to women. All women.”
Glancing at him I could see his grin in the dim light of the parking lot.
“Come on,” he said, taking my arm again, “let’s go eat.”
We had a nice dinner, both of us ordering the chicken and dumplings, which came with a side salad, and iced tea.
We exchanged small talk while we ate, nothing about the case or the events of the morning, dwelling mostly on old movies and a book Burke had just finished and recommended to me.
He paid and we left, me with a Styrofoam box of leftovers.
When we were back at the facility Burke wanted to take a drive through. I opted to be dropped at the gate.
Instead Burke turned in and parked at the bottom of the stairs.
Turning off the engine, he reached for the door handle. “Stay,” he said, and hopped out to come around and open my door for me.
“This isn’t necessary,” I told him as he helped me down from the truck. “You could have just dropped me off. Go take a look around. I can manage the stairs just fine.”
Burke tugged the arm he was holding and drew me close. “I asked you out. That is a form of date, like it or not. I will see you to your door.”
“Mama again?”
He laughed out loud, and hugged me against his side. “Yep, that’s it. She would shoot me if I just dropped you at the gate.”
I leaned against him for a minute, careful to keep my box of leftovers to the side. “Does your mom live close by?”
He let me go quickly and stepped back, guiding me towards the stairs with a hand on my back. “She’s dead,” he said flatly. “Years ago.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” He had never mentioned family and I felt rather foolish.
“No need. Long time ago.” He glanced at me and his look softened. “You didn’t know.”
I led the way upstairs and unlocked the door. Burke followed me in, closing the door behind him. While I put the leftovers in the fridge he took a seat on the couch, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. Déjà vu.
“If you’re that tired you better head home.”
He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Is that a request? Or an order?”
“Take it any way you choose. Thank you for dinner.” I remained standing.
He took the hint and stood up, pulling his keys from his pocket.
“You’re welcome, Marlena. I enjoyed it. Hope we can do it again.” He was moving for the door as he talked and I followed a step behind him. At the door he paused and turned back to me, darting in and giving me a quick kiss. “Thanks for going with me.”
“I had a good time, too,” I said, easing back a step. “You be in tomorrow?”
He smiled and stepped outside. “Yes, boss. I’ll be here.”
&n
bsp; I stood in the open door and watched him down the stairs. “Take a look at that file,” I called after him. “I left it on the seat.”
He waved a hand over his shoulder. “Will do. Good night.”
“Good night, Burke. Thanks again for dinner.”
He waved again and drifted into the dark at the bottom of the stairs.
I locked up behind him.
True to his word he was on the lot when I opened the office. I could see the cart parked near Building 3 although he wasn’t in sight. I went in and started the coffee, figuring he would be in shortly.
By the time the coffee finished he came in looking much better than the last few days. He was flushed from the sun or the effort, putting some color in his freshly shaved face. His eyes were bright and clear.
“Good morning,” I said when he came in, handing him a cup of coffee. “You started early.”
“Yes, ma’am. Wanted to get after it.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Got an idea I wanted to run past you.” He paused long enough to sip coffee.
“Go ahead,” I told him, lifting my own cup.
“That space along the fence, in the back, space 29.”
I nodded.
“How about I bring my motor home down here, park in that space? I can watch the place from there, give us another perspective. Maybe see something at night. What do you think?”
I thought about it for a minute and nodded again. “Up to you. I don’t think the Murphy’s will care, although I will have to clear it with Paul or Papa Murphy.”
Burke scoffed. “You don’t need to worry about me. What can happen? I fall down the steps to the motor home? Just thought it might be a good idea, be around here at night.”
“I’ll clear it with the Murphys. Get back to you as soon as I know something. Do you really think it will help?”
Burke took in a few gallons of air and blew it out loudly. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’m running out of ideas. I’ve been on this thing so long I don’t know what to do. It’s one dead end after another.”
“Do you really think this is a regular deal? Them using my facility to store drugs?”
“Store? No, I don’t think so. That’s too static, too easy to stumble across. Do I think it may be regular drop off point? Yes. Sadly, I do. If you think about it, perfect place to change loads. Boat comes in late at night, gets unloaded into a rental truck of some kind. Or even a moving van, hell, a turnip truck! Something. Say you’re running late, or daylight rolls around, whatever. You need a place to split up the cargo, someplace to store it till someone else can pick up their half. You can’t just park on the side of the road, Marlena. You don’t want to draw attention to it, you know? What better place than a storage yard? This area of the state there’s not a lot of big warehouses, like a big furniture warehouse or a big materials warehouse. The big buildings in Jade are filled with boats or boat parts.”
I thought about what he said. We don’t have any major businesses or chains around here. One of the reasons so many of our young people move on is the lack of jobs. Oh, sure, you can flip burgers or work on the docks, help on a fishing boat. There’s just nothing to make a career. No towering levels of high tech businesses humming along broad boulevards lined with brand name coffee shops. Not here. Not even close.
About the only place readily available to store anything is a storage facility. And Beach Storage was the only one in the area, unless you counted the boat storage yards in Jade and most of those are outdoors.
“Couldn’t you unload into a boat? Another boat? Like in the boat yards? There’s all kinds of boats stored there, acres of ‘em. Some are pretty good size. At least as big as a Move It rental truck.”
“That could work, babe. Couple things wrong. You’re unloading a truck into a boat, the boat up on blocks, or a crane so you’re spending a lot more time out in the open to get the boxes out of the truck and onto the boat. Plus, why would anyone be loading cartons into a beached boat? That’s gonna make people way curious. I know it would make me curious, even if I was just a mechanic.”
I took my turn at sighing. Covered trucks, box vans, all are common sights at any storage facility, some of them even rent the moving trucks.
I know there’s three major companies with storage in my lot – like Bake It Right, the cakes and cookies people. Their products are in all the grocery stores, liquor stores, even the high school. Their big sixteen wheeler comes in every Monday, pulls up to their unit and rolls a ramp out the side door and starts filling up the unit. After that their local man comes in with a smaller van, loads up what he needs and begins his route, delivering all over our area and Monarch Beach next door. He works every day but Sunday. Monday it starts all over again.
We’re sort of the distribution center. What works for cupcakes could work for drugs.
Was there a chance one of my favorite customers was running drugs? That thought upset me a little. How well did I really know these people? Hardly at all. I knew more about T. Tom Tanner from magazines than from him personally.
The Bake It Right driver came in from Arizona every week. He had mentioned the drive several times, how early they had to get up, the weather between home and here. He had mentioned stops in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara at different times.
I had been by when they were unloading, the cartons rolling quickly down the steel conveyor belt to be stacked in the unit. I couldn’t swear in court what was inside those cartons. They were a nationwide company, had been for years, and I was pretty sure they made enough off their bakery line that they didn’t need to dabble in drugs.
Still, it underlined how easy it would be to store and distribute drugs from my facility. The major problem I faced was finding out if and who.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Burke interrupted.
“Lot to take in,” I said. “Put like that, it could be anyone. Well, anyone with a van or truck.”
“Exactly,” Burke agreed. “It’s a big ball of string, babe. If I can find a loose end the whole thing will unravel. It’s finding that string. And there’s always the chance they moved on.”
“And how do we know?”
Burke sighed again and stood up. “Gonna start by getting my motor home in here. If the boss says okay.” He pushed his chair in and looked at me. “How about pizza and a movie tonight? I’ll buy the pizza, you pick the movie.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll call Papa Murphy right now.”
“Thanks. Let me know,” he tossed over his shoulder on his way out.
After Burke left I went around Paul by calling Papa Murphy and getting his permission to move in the motor home. Asking Paul for permission to have Burke living here, even temporarily, was not something I wanted to do. He had the wrong impression already. Why add to it?
When Burke came in around lunch time I told him he could bring in the motor home. He thanked me and reminded me we had dinner plans before once again taking off.
I spent the afternoon going over the customer list.
Being blessed with an excellent memory has its drawbacks. More than four hundred customers were listed. Some were couples or families and I could remember a lot of them. The stinkers rose to the top like helium balloons, followed by the long timers, those who had been here the longest. No way could I recall them all.
A handful were here longer than me. Could I reasonably eliminate them due to longevity? The only people I could actually eliminate were the owners – Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, Paul and his wife, who came in at times, and Patrick, who only visited the site when helping his mom.
The only other customer I could eliminate was Randy. He was from a different generation where integrity and honor were highly valued and a man was as good as his word.
I knew I didn’t have anything to do with it so that pared down the list of suspects. By about seven. It’s a start. Maybe Burke had the right idea with the motor home. The dark hours might hold some answers.
About an hour before closing Burke rolle
d in, literally.
The motor home was beige with brown striping and looked about twenty five feet long.
He had to climb down to enter his code, then hop back up, shut the door and get through the gate before it closed. I found it entertaining to watch him hop around, since I could have just pushed a button in the office and opened the gate.
I watched the cameras to see him pull in and park along the back fence. Some customers have to back and saw a dozen times to get situated. Burke did it the first time, pulling head in rather than backing like most. A wide tinted window split the rear of the vehicle when it was in position, giving the tenant an excellent view. In this case the view encompassed the rear aisle around the buildings as well as the west side of the facility.
He was still inside when I closed the office and locked up for the day.
I took a quick shower, pulled on my sweats and turned on the television to look for a movie. The local news was on with the weather so I hesitated to get the forecast. The weather guy did the report then told us to stay tuned for the latest on the double murder in Jade Beach. I didn’t know there was a double murder in Jade Beach, so I waited through a half dozen commercials.
The update the anchor promised amounted to nothing, just saying there was nothing new in the search for whoever killed two young Latino men found dumped near the freeway. I was ready to change channels when they showed pictures of the two men in better days.
The one on the right was identified as Carlos Reynaldo Esquibel. I didn’t even look at the second guy. I focused on Carlos. He looked familiar. He looked a lot like the picture I had copied from the office tapes. I hit the pause button and went to get the folder.
By the time Burke showed up with dinner I was pretty sure this was the same guy. The television was playing Pong with the station logo so I could hold the image of Mr. Esquibel. I already recorded the segment in case I needed it later.
Burke knocked and came in, going directly to the kitchen with a square box. He called out from around the corner “you want beer or soda?”
“Beer, please,” I answered. “Come look at this.”
“Can I get dinner first? I’m starved.”