Undeliverable

by Rebecca Demarest

  “No, not Atlanta. Savannah?”

  “Savannah, yes, but not an auction either.”

  By this time Ben thought he knew who they were, but he decided to wait out the verbal memory flood. It was much easier to go along for the ride than try to get a word in edgewise.

  “No, a storefront. I’m remembering an armoire.” He gave the name the French pronunciation.

  “No, not an armoire, a chest.”

  “Chest! Yes, that gorgeous piece we picked up for that dear, Mrs. Peterson, wasn’t it?”

  “Absolutely, from that little antique shop. You were the oh-so-helpful man behind the counter!”

  Ben paused to be sure the two men were done, then nodded his head, which he immediately regretted. “That’s me alright. Hard to forget two customers such as yourselves.”

  “We are that, aren’t we, Steve?” The smaller one jabbed his elbow into the side of his companion who laughed.

  “Yes we are, Larry.”

  “So,” Ben clapped his hands together and rubbed briskly, trying to force himself more awake and praying that he would have a moment soon to get to the aspirin in his drawer, “you two are my auctioneering team, then?”

  Steve draped his arm over Ben’s shoulder, his touch feather light. “Have been for ages. We know how this is supposed to go, so don’t you fret none. Is all the merchandise accounted for and transferred to the holding area?”

  “Yes, I was going to do a double check today, but I think it’s all there.” Ben wasn’t sure he was comfortable standing that close to anyone else, especially not with the man’s cologne playing havoc with his headache, but he felt it would be rude to duck out from under the arm.

  Larry snagged Steve by his free arm and started towing him toward the auction bay. “Fantastic. We’ll just go through and order it for the show then. Put all the big ticket items at the back end, keeps the little fish on the floor longer and the big hitters never bother showing up on time anyway.”

  Ben shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back. “Well, I’ll leave it in your capable hands. I’m just going to go take an aspirin and catch up on my paperwork for a moment.”

  “Poor darling. Looks like someone had a rough night, hmm?” Larry winked at him and then turned back to the shelves, waving a negligent hand at Ben. “Go, honey, go. We don’t need you. We’ll holler if something doesn’t line up right. But you go drink some coffee. I find that usually does wonders.”

  Ben’s mouth curled into a half smile. “Thanks for that. Have fun boys.” Even through his hangover and guilty feelings from last night, he found the two men amusing. Though he hoped they’d quiet down once they settled into their jobs.

  Larry and Steve went back to the shelf full of collectibles they had been discussing when Ben came in, arguing over whether to group all the animal statues in one lot or sell them separately.

  No sooner had Ben sat at his desk, with his head in his hands, trying to block out the noise of two separate couples working, then Sylvia banged into the warehouse with a cart full of items.

  “Good morning, Ben!”

  Ben looked up briefly and then away. “Thanks.” It had been years since he’d had to deal with any kind of morning-after conversation, and he just didn’t know what to say anymore. Particularly to someone technically his subordinate whom he suspected of sleeping with him out of pity. It was easier to try and ignore that it had ever happened.

  “I said, good morning.” She crossed her arms and leaned on the cart, frowning. “Though for you it doesn’t look so good.”

  Rubbing his temples, he felt he should apologize for something, though whether it was for giving in to the situation, or drinking more after she left, or just how sorry he was feeling for himself right now, he wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Finishing that bottle after you kicked me out last night? That would make anyone mighty sorry the next morning.”

  Ben tried to drag his stomach under control and squinted up at her. He decided to test the waters just a bit and see how she felt about the whole thing. “I’m sorry for, well,” he lowered his voice so no one else could hear, “taking advantage of the situation last night?”

  “Taking advantage, gee, that’s funny.” She pushed the cart roughly against his desk, turned on her heel, and started to leave, but turned back. “The only mistake you made was kicking me out, idiot. You have no idea what you missed out on.” The crash of her cart briefly interrupted his warehouse invaders before they went back to their tasks. Noisy tasks with lots of shouting back and forth. Or at least it felt like shouting to Ben. After he was sure Sylvia had left, he looked at the cart she’d left behind. There was a bag from Dunkin’ Donuts in the top rack on top of a copy of Tennessee Williams’s plays that had seen much better days. Hope this helps this morning. I have a feeling you’ll need it… was scrawled across the bag in permanent marker. He peeked inside and found a multigrain bagel, still warm from toasting, and a packet of veggie cream cheese. It left him more confused than ever; a nice gesture balanced against her definitely irritated response to his apology didn’t help him figure out what had really gone on the night before besides the obvious.

  Ben grimaced and tossed the bag into the bottom drawer of his desk. Maybe at lunchtime he’d feel like eating something, but now was not the time. Instead he turned on his computer and while he waited for it to boot up, he drained the last of his coffee.

  After entering all of the items in the cart, he went in to the warehouse to shelve them as he hadn’t seen Sylvia again. He went to the bullpen himself to get the next cart, but she wasn’t there either. He felt like he needed to apologize again, this time for this morning. And for asking her to leave last night, as she had made abundantly clear.

  But by lunchtime, he still hadn’t seen her. He had no idea where she was disappearing to this week, but people were sure they had just seen her, and she was apparently getting all her other work done as the shredding pile disappeared at some point. So he sat down to eat the bagel she had left him while trolling through news websites, looking for articles about the new development in his son’s disappearance.

  It took him a moment to realize that Tanya and Jeffrey were standing over his desk. When he finally did look up, Jeffrey grinned. “Off in some fantasy world?”

  “Not exactly.” He shut the window he was currently reading from—which had said the exact same thing as every other news service—and stood to stretch. “Are you guys done with the inventory already?”

  Tanya cut Jeffrey off. “Of course. This was nothing. You should see the amount of pictures we have piling up on our shelves at home. Talk about an inventorying nightmare.”

  Ben felt relieved to see these two out of his warehouse. Maybe he’d feel less overwhelmingly irritated once they were on the road home, and Sylvia would come back to help in the warehouse, which would be excellent, what with the auction coming up so shortly. “Well, good job to the both of you then. Hope you didn’t find things too out of order.”

  Tanya shrugged before brushing some non-existent dust off the sleeve of her cardigan. “Mostly what was gone was what you already reported being stolen from the long-term bay; jewelry, etc. But there are a surprising number of photographs missing as well.”

  “That’s...interesting.” Ben felt a bit more uneasy about the missing photographs as he suspected he knew where those were going. “So, what’s the next step from here? We’re all done, right?” He certainly hoped they were, he wasn’t sure he could handle many more days where he had to constantly watch his back while using the Center’s resources to search for his son. Or thickly accented voices echoing through his warehouse from open till close.

  Tanya sniffed, one eyebrow raised as if she found his eagerness to be finished distasteful. “I will turn in my findings to the auditor. He will decide what happens from here.”

 
; Ben was sure he hadn’t come across a mention of an auditor in Mrs. Biun’s manual, but it sounded distinctly ominous. “What’s an auditor?”

  “The auditor, darling. He’ll get here the day after the auction. He goes from postal facility to postal facility and audits the branches, making sure they’re running on task and efficiently. He’ll know what to do about these things going missing. I’m sure he’ll fix the little blonde...ahem...the problem.” Tanya straightened her sweater set to cover her verbal gaffe and Jeffrey just rolled his eyes.

  Ben was even more worried. If this woman was so out to get Sylvia, regardless of what had just happened between them last night, Ben was determined to figure out whether the woman was going to make things difficult on her. “You’re just giving him the list then, right?”

  Tanya smiled, sickly sweet and full of poison. “And my perceptions of your facility and competencies, of course.”

  Ben could feel the bagel solidifying in his stomach. Perhaps he should have waited a little longer to eat anything. Or perhaps he should have found a useful job somewhere that wasn’t quite so stressful. “You know I only just got here.”

  “And so far you are doing just fine.” The woman leaned over to pat him reassuringly on the hand. “But I report my observations of all the workers attached to the warehouse. Just a fair warning.”

  Now he knew she was planning on bad mouthing at least Sylvia, if not himself as well. This was the last thing he needed to add to his guilt trip and hangover. “Thanks, I think. Headed home now?”

  “Soon as I walk out that door. I cannot understand how you folks operate in this heat all the time.” Tanya fanned herself as she gathered up her purse and started to head to the door.

  Ben shrugged. “Some things you can get used to.”

  “And some things you can’t. Come on, Jeffrey.”

  Jeffrey started to follow Tanya automatically, but caught himself and called after her. “I’ll be along in a moment. Go get the air conditioner started; I forgot my pen back in that last bay.”

  “Sometimes I think you’d leave your head behind.” Tanya left the warehouse, letting the door slam behind her.

  Ben squinted at the tall man, unsure whether he was absent minded or wanted an excuse to talk. “Your pen is in your shirt pocket.”

  Jeffrey shrugged and perched on the edge of Ben’s desk. “I know. I just wanted to let you know that I’m supposed to turn in a report, too. You don’t need to worry about anything. Tanya can be a little overzealous at times, but she’s really good at heart. Particularly when she’s in cooler weather.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” They shook goodbye and Jeffrey had started to walk out when Ben remembered his manners. “Jeff?” The gangly man paused. “Thanks for that.”

  “Of course.” And they were gone. The noise level subsided considerably with only the two men in the auction bay murmuring to each other. There was the occasional outburst of joy when they found something interesting, but for the most part, they kept it to a minimum volume.

  Ben went to check his email for the tenth time that day, and when there was no message from Detective O’Connor, he checked his phone. Still nothing. The worst feeling through this whole ordeal was always the waiting, when something seemed to be panning out but all he could do was wait for someone else to tell him what was going on when he couldn’t be out there in the field himself. It drove him up the wall. He was just about to go back to the news sites when he heard his name being called from the back of the warehouse.

  “Benjamin, oh Benji!”

  “Ben.” He got up from his desk and made his way over to Steve and Larry. “Ben is just fine.”

  Larry was rubbing his hands together briskly and watching Steve carefully load a cart with items from the shelves. “Sure thing. Sorry. It’s just we’re ready to move the auction items into the break room now and get things set up.”

  “That’s right, my manual said something about the break room doubling as the auction house. Do I need to go do it, or do you guys know how it all gets set up?” Ben hoped they didn’t need his help as he would prefer to be doing everything in his power to keep up-to-date with what was going on with the green truck case.

  “No, no, like I said, we’ve been doing this for years; you just unlock this back door that leads to the room and start helping us haul tables and bring stuff in. Trust us, we’ve got this.” Larry picked up a vase full of dried flowers and waited for Ben to open the secondary door to the warehouse. After he had gotten the door propped open, he turned to get an armload of stuffed animals. He tried to console himself with the fact that keeping busy would make the time go faster, but it didn’t help much.

  The break room was already mostly cleared of the lunch crowd, and Steve and Larry made short work of the last stragglers by suggesting quite loudly that the shift managers were coming right behind them. The tables all needed to be relocated to the back half of the room and set up in tight rows to display most of the goods, while the chairs were brought to the front and set in rows facing the podium and one small table. During the rearranging, the duo somehow produced a locking display cabinet for all the jewelry and valuables.

  After the furniture was placed to their exacting specifications, they shooed Ben back to the warehouse with the cart to get more items. It took ten trips to bring out all of the items for the auction, from books to dolls and figurines, hunting knives, and a child’s bow and arrow set. Once all of the items were in the room, Steve and Larry started arguing over what order to display them in.

  “The vases should go together as a lot.”

  “Nobody will buy them as a lot.”

  “They buy books as a lot.”

  “But people like having lots of books. Vases, not so much.”

  “There’s only three of them.”

  “Fine, try and sell them in a lot. Just don’t forget I told you so later.”

  They wanted all the big-ticket items placed on the last few tables so people actually had to see all of the smaller stuff before they saw the jewelry and valuable statues or paintings. They had Ben move several of the items multiple times before they were happy with the arrangement.

  With the combination of physical activity and caffeine, Ben’s hangover was receding, but he was hungry now and wanted to be done with the constant, irrational changes. “Is this it?”

  Larry flapped a hand at him in irritation. “Don’t be so unhappy with us, Ben. This is an art, not a science. Everything must be arranged in its proper place in order to ensure maximum sales.”

  Ben rolled his eyes behind the men’s backs. “Sure, I get it.”

  Steve snorted and fussed at the dry flowers in the vase. “I’m not sure you do, but that’s okay because we get it and we’re the ones getting this thing working. So you can just go home now while we finalize the inventory paperwork and item sheets.”

  “If you guys think you’ll be okay for the rest of it.” The offer was made out of habit, but he was happy to get back to his house and keep doing research on the murderer.

  Larry came over and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Of course, we’ll be fine. We just wanted to borrow your muscles for this part of it. We really do prefer to be left on our own. It’s soothing; the calm before the storm, you might say.”

  Ben smiled, happy to be on his way, and went to grab his bag from his desk before heading out. “Okay, then. See you in the morning.”

  Larry and Steve waved him off and turned to the radio they were inspecting, debating whether it still worked. As Ben reentered the warehouse, he thought he heard voices again, but he tried to convince himself that it was just the echoes of the crowd that had invaded his space earlier. But as he approached the long term storage bay, he recognized the voice as belonging to Sylvia.

  “It’s just…awkward. That’s the only word I can think of. I’m not sure
if he regrets it or me or what. But he was a dick this morning, that’s all I can say.” She paused as if listening to an answer, but when she continued it was without a pause in her train of thought. “Maybe I just came on too strong. I should have been coy. I just don’t like waiting, you know? No, you can’t know, how could you?”

  Ben backed slowly out of the warehouse, so that he felt certain she hadn’t heard him, before going down the hall and around the corner through the main entrance, making sure to make a lot of noise. When he had gathered his stuff for the night, he made his way to Uncle Shem’s urn, but there was no one standing in front of it any longer.

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Sylvia’s number, more anxious than ever to straighten out what had happened last night, but it went almost straight to voicemail. Two rings, which meant she looked at the caller ID and then rejected it. Calling a hook-up was a lot less angst-inducing when you could just listen to the messages on a machine to determine whether you wanted to talk to anyone instead of shutting them down with the reject call button. Actually knowing someone didn’t want to talk to you instead of just letting the call go to the message machine was worse.

  Ben headed home, stopping briefly along the way to pick up Boston Market takeout—the turkey dinner. He hoped the tryptophan in the turkey might help tonight because he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to sleep; he was pretty wound up between being worried about Sylvia and wondering whether his child’s body was just now being excavated from the soil of some pervert’s farm. And he was all out of alcohol. Besides, Sylvia’s words the night before about drinking too much still stung.

  He ate in front of his computer again, checking news site after news site, doing a new search every ten minutes, hoping for a new development. He left the radio on and ended up falling asleep to it, his head thrown back against his desk chair.

  He just about slid out of his chair at seven a.m. when there was a station break, and a new talk personality came on. He glanced at his watch, swore, and bolted for the bathroom. It was his first auction day, so he couldn’t be late.