We didn’t have to wait long before Eric returned to the front gate. I nudged Greg. We both slunk down in our seats just enough so we could still spy over the dash and got our phones ready to record his departure. As soon as he slipped out of the gate, Eric stuck something into his pocket and removed his gloves. Without removing his hood, he quickly retraced his steps down the street and turned onto the small side street.
“Did you get it?” Greg asked.
I replayed the video. “It’s choppy, but it clearly shows him leaving the place, though it doesn’t have a view of his face. How about you?”
“My photos of him are clear but also no shot of his face. If we need to prove something, maybe we can do it by his clothing.”
“Eric was wearing a navy blue hoodie just like that the day I saw him at the food truck.”
“It’s a common sweatshirt, but you never know. It might be enough to at least cause the police to question him.”
I turned to Greg, needing to sort out the confusion. “Okay, Heide is or was dating Buck. Her youngest son, Paul, worked a short time for Buck and they didn’t get along. Now her oldest son shows up slinking around at an auction facility before it opens.”
“Maybe he’s the one marking the units,” Greg suggested.
I looked to Greg for more of an explanation.
“We are already thinking,” he continued, “that maybe something small and valuable like drugs is hidden in the marked units. Maybe Linda’s clients are really one client: a gang. One side brings in the product and hides it in units about to be put up for auction. They mark the units. Linda comes in and buys them. Her people remove the goods, hand over the drugs to her client, and no one thinks twice. Maybe this kid is marking the units. He certainly didn’t appear to have anything to put inside one, nor did he have anything in his hand when he left, unless it was small enough to slip into a pocket.”
I mulled it over. It was a plausible theory. “It would mean an inside person is involved, like a facility employee.” I looked at Greg, not wanting to state the obvious. “Or an auctioneer.”
He nodded. “Could be either Kim or Tiffany, or both, are involved. Tiffany has had contact with Heide’s sons.”
I thought more about what Tiffany had said to us. “Didn’t Tiff-
any say she liked Eric but that his brother was a goody two-shoes who was always sneaking around? Maybe Paul found out what was going on.”
“Could also be that Buck knows what’s going on or is involved himself.”
My head was starting to hurt from taking in all the information. I held it between my hands to let everything settle, careful not to touch my bruises from the day before. I’d been lucky and had avoided a black eye. “Could be any or all of them are involved. Pick a suspect—any suspect.” I took a deep breath and raised my head. “Tom gets involved with Linda, who works for the gang. Something goes sour and Tom is killed, maybe as a warning or maybe he’s done something to cross them. Ina’s spooked enough before then to flee, but she comes to the auction to have final words with Buck and Tom? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless she was warning them or at least one of them. And it was Tiffany who said Ina came here to say something to them. What if Tiffany’s lying about that?”
“This has more layers than an onion.” I threw up my hands in frustration. “Could be they are all involved: one big unhappy criminal inbred family. The only thing we know for sure is that Tom and Red are dead, and Ina was going to leave the country.”
“You know, sweetheart,” Greg said, looking straight at me. “If Ina wasn’t involved, I’d drop this right here and now. I’m tempted to do it anyway.”
“And leave Ina to rot in jail?” I was surprised.
“I don’t want to do that,” he admitted, “but if she’s involved in something this sinister, then she needs to face the consequences or start talking.” Greg kicked back the rest of his coffee with one gulp.
I waited a few heartbeats, then said, “So what do you want to do now?”
“We’re already here. How about we go to the auction and check those units for X’s like we planned. And we still haven’t spoken to Kim directly. I’d like to hear what she says.” He looked at me. “Maybe you can distract Tiffany long enough for me to get some one-on-one with Kim.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
We waited in the van just a few more minutes before we noticed someone coming out of the office and heading for the rows of storage units. I checked the clock on the dash. It was nine o’clock on the dot. After another ten minutes, I opened the van door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Greg, his hand on my arm again.
“To the office. I need to pee. It’s a long time until the auction starts.”
He looked at me with suspicion but said nothing. He knew I had a bladder the size of a child’s play teacup.
“Don’t you trust me?” I asked with a downturned mouth.
“With my life,” my husband answered. “But when it comes to snooping, absolutely not.”
“So what if I pick up a little information while I’m there? They probably won’t tell me anything anyway.”
“Uh-huh.” He let go of my arm. “Go ahead.” He started opening his door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Maybe I need to take a whiz too.”
“Tell you what,” I said, ready to offer up a compromise. “If we both go in there, we might miss Kim and Tiffany’s arrival, and it would be easier to talk to them before they get down to auction business. How about I go first and you wait for them? Then I’ll come out and wait while you go in.”
He considered the proposal. “That sounds fair. Just don’t take forever.”
I looked around. “There’s a nice clump of bushes just behind the van. It looks wheelchair accessible.”
Before Greg could hit me with a snappy comeback, I was out of the van and heading for Busy Boxes’ office with a lot more on my mind than peeing.
The office was small and sparse, with a clean counter painted robin’s-egg blue with a pale gray countertop. Behind the counter was a middle-aged African American woman with an elaborate braided hairdo. She was wearing a light blue knit shirt with the Busy Boxes name over her heart.
“Hi,” I said, entering and shutting the door. I spotted the sign for the restroom off to the left of the counter and pointed at it. “My husband and I arrived early for the auction today, and my coffee is going right through me. Mind if I use your restroom?”
Her lips, slick with the color of a ripe plum, parted to give me a toothy, white smile. “You go right ahead, hon. It’s through that doorway to the left. It’s unisex, so make sure you lock the door or you might get unwanted company.”
I did my business but dawdled when I left the bathroom, wondering how to make my next move. The woman working the counter was still alone. With the auction starting soon, I knew I didn’t have much time before people started arriving, including Kim and Tiffany. I wanted to know if Eric van den Akker had a storage unit at Busy Boxes, or even if his mother had one. It still didn’t explain the gloves and hoodie, although a lot of young people wore hoodies, but if the van den Akkers had a unit, it would give Eric a reason to be here.
Sidling up to the counter, I noticed a list of storage unit sizes and prices posted in large letters on the wall behind it. “My husband and I are considering getting a unit here,” I told the woman with the braids. “Do you have a price list I can take with me?”
She gave me her 1,000-watt smile again and held out a sheet of blue paper with the same information on it as was on the wall. I took it and scanned the sheet. Below the price list was a list of rules and information about the rental.
“A friend of ours rents a unit here and highly recommended your facility,” I told her, hoping her lips could be loosened with casual chitchat. �
��It’s also close to our home.”
“That’s so nice. A lot of our customers have been with us a long time. What’s your friend’s name?”
“Um, van den Akker. Heide van den Akker.”
The woman appeared puzzled. “I don’t recall that name at all, and I’ve been here a long time, nearly ten years.”
I put on my puzzled mask. “I’m sure she said Busy Boxes. Maybe it was one of your other facilities?”
She shook her head. “Nope, we don’t have but just this one. Busy Boxes is family owned, not one of those big chains, and that name is fairly unusual. I’m sure I’d remember it. I handle the billing, so I know all our customers’ names, even the ones I never see.” She thought a minute. “Maybe she rents at U-Box-It. They’re located in El Segundo and are much larger.”
“Maybe,” I said, faking a puzzled look.
“But I still hope you’ll consider our facility.” Another big smile. This woman was good at her job.
“We’ll certainly consider it,” I lied to the nice woman. I started to leave, then paused for effect before laying my next question on her. “Do you happen to know which units are up for auction today and their sizes? My husband is only looking for big units today. If they’re only small ones, he’ll want to leave and try to catch another auction.”
Still hoping to land a new customer, the woman punched a few keys on her computer. Soon the printer behind her whirred to life and spit out a sheet of paper. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to me. “This is what we’ll give to the auctioneer today. Looks like it’s going to be two of our mid-size units, but they’re still pretty good size.”
I took the sheet. It was in the same format as the listing Tiffany had shown me the day before except with different unit numbers and size notations. I gave the woman a wiggly finger wave as I left. “Thanks a lot. You’ve been quite helpful.”
Heading out the front door, I saw an SUV pulling up in front of the gate. The driver lowered his window and punched in a code on the security box. The large gate opened. With nonchalance that could win me an Oscar, I strolled through the gate after the vehicle. I didn’t look back, not even when I heard Greg call my name.
From the numbers on the list in my hands, it looked like the two lockers up for auction today were located fairly close to each other. Following the numbers posted on the units, I kept walking, getting closer to the first one. When I got to a T in the road, I turned right and easily found the unit. It was just past the intersection and well out of view of the front gate. I studied the bottom left-hand side of the door of the first unit and saw no marking. I looked over the door in general and still saw nothing. Moving over to the next unit, which was only a few doors down, I scrutinized it. No X. But there was a spot in the lower left-hand corner that looked badly scuffed, like someone had kicked the door or run into it with something sharp.
The storage units at Busy Boxes were the same color as its office décor. The walls were a pale gray stone and the doors painted blue. I bent down to examine the lower corner of the second unit up for auction in less than thirty minutes. If it had the mark, it would be exactly where the scuff spot was now. I felt the scuff with a fingertip. It was rough and flaky, and the paint was coming off. The area was also not dented. This was no abrasion left by a careless bump or an angry kick. The paint appeared to have been scraped off, and the attack on the door looked fresh. It also looked about the same size as the marks left on the doors at Elite. Eric could have been removing the X from this door, not putting one there. Maybe it had been scraped off to alert someone of something—a warning, perhaps, to not buy the unit. Last I knew, Linda McIntyre was still in jail. If she wasn’t available to purchase the unit, did her clients have someone else to stand in for them? Or did they know Linda was out of the picture and had sent Eric in to remove the mark?
Possibilities were coming at me like tennis balls shot from a runaway ball machine, and I didn’t have a racket to defend myself. Matching up ideas with the players was getting difficult without my trusty legal pad. Taking a photo of the mark was out of the question since I’d left my purse and phone in the van.
I heard voices coming from the front. Most likely the noise was coming from people gathering for the auction. I wanted to get back to Greg and tell him what I’d discovered, but I didn’t want to just pop out from among the units. It would be difficult to explain to Kim and Tiffany what I’d been doing, and if they were involved, it would only tip them off that we might be onto something.
Remembering there had been a map of the facility on the back of the price sheet the woman in the office had given me, I turned it over and studied it. Like Elite, Busy Boxes was a warren of small roads winding in and around the storage units, just smaller. I prayed not all the roads eventually turned into dead ends, forcing me to head back the way I’d come and right into the crowd. I was in luck. From the map, it looked like if I backtracked a few steps to the primary road but kept going instead of turning toward the gate, I would eventually be able to circle around the property back to the front gate from a different direction, arriving at the gate after the auction crowd was at the first unit and out of sight.
I took a few cautious steps down the road to the intersection and glanced around the corner. A lot of voices, joking and chatting, filled my ears, but they were still in front of the gate, not inside. I dashed across the intersection to the other side of the road and started following the map to circle behind everyone, and just in time. I had barely made my first left down a small side drive when I heard the crowd making their way to the first unit. From the sound of it, they were just on the other side of the bank of units I was passing. We were parallel, just moving in different directions.
My calculations were correct. By the time I made it to the front gate, the crowd was gone, leaving me to make my escape. Waiting for me by the van was Greg, and he didn’t look too pleased.
twenty-two
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” Greg said, his arms crossed in front of him.
“Sure you will,” I shot back. “Especially when you hear what I found.”
“Glad you were productive, because I got nothin’. Kim and Tiffany wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“They wouldn’t say a thing?”
“Well, not exactly nothing. Kim did tell me she’s said everything she’s going to say to the police and no one else. And while she’s very sorry about Red and Tom and what’s happening to Ina, she doesn’t give a damn what happens to Buck Goodwin after the way he treated Tiffany.” Greg aimed his key fob at the van and unlocked the door for me. “Tiffany stood next to her, looking sad and compliant.”
As I climbed into the van, Greg made his way to his side. “Aren’t you going to use the restroom?” I asked when he opened his door.
“I used the bush.” He shot me a boyish grin. “You were right, it was up to ADA regulations.”
While Greg tucked his wheelchair behind his seat, I grabbed my cell phone and called Andrea Fehring. I got her voice mail.
“Call me,” I said into the phone. “I think…no, I know we’ve stumbled onto something important.” Just to be safe, I also left her a text message: We may have proof Eric van den Akker might be involved. Call me.
“Where to now?” asked Greg after I told him of my findings at the unit.
“I don’t know. There are so many moving parts to this thing, I’m not sure where to start. Did you recognize anyone among the bidders today?”
Greg nodded. “That Vasquez guy was here, and an Asian couple I remember being questioned the day Tom was found.”
“Did you see Mazie Moore? She’s a very short, very stocky black woman.”
“No one like that. There were a few African Americans in the crowd, including one couple. Someone called the guy Ted.”
I thought back through my mental list of the people at the initial auction. “That might be the Hu
dsingers. I think his name was Ted. He took off as soon as the police were called. Someone said—I think it was Buck—that Ted Hudsinger had had scrapes with the police in the past.”
“Think he might be a good candidate to be mixed up in this?”
“Who knows who’s involved, but I’m sure if he has a record, he was at the top of the police questioning list.” I dropped my head in weariness. “The way this is going, for all I know, my mother could be the mastermind behind it.” I looked up. “I’d love to know why Mazie Moore changed her plans to go into business with Linda, but she has a couple of stores, so if she’s not here, it’s difficult to say where she’ll be.”
“We could call her stores and ask if she’s in,” Greg suggested.
“True, but if she’s involved, a call could spook her into running for cover. I’d also like to talk to Buck Goodwin before he goes underground again. I wonder if he’ll be with Comfort Foodies again today?”
I got out my cell phone and looked up the food truck’s schedule. “Looks like they will be at Cal State Fullerton from eleven to two today.”
“Good. I’m dying to give them a try. At least I hope we can eat and talk at the same time.” Greg started up the van. “If we hustle and traffic isn’t bad, we might get there just before they open and the kids start to swarm.”
It wasn’t difficult to find Comfort Foodies once we got to the campus and parked. There were several food trucks lined up in one of the school’s main plazas. Greg had made it to the school in record time, and we arrived at the stroke of eleven. Some students were milling around, waiting for the trucks to open for business, and when the trucks lifted their service windows, the hungry kids surged forward. It was still early and the lunch trade probably wouldn’t hit its stride for another forty to forty-five minutes.
We approached Comfort Foodies from the side with the idea of seeing them before they saw us. Since Heide had never met Greg and Buck had, Greg took the side closest to the service window where Heide was clearly visible, taking orders and money. I took the side closest to the back door at the end of the truck. It was open slightly and I tried my best to peek inside. From what I could tell, there were three people inside the truck—two men and a woman. The two men were working in the back, probably cooking and preparing the food, while Heide worked the front. I looked again and identified both Eric and Buck slinging hash. Good. They were both on my chat list for the day.
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