I cast a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Sidonie was still absent. “You sure?” I whispered.
“No.” Hank managed a weak smile. “Hunch.”
“You said Skip owns the property and the building. But who owns the business?” I asked.
“I report to a fellow named Neil Byrnes. Never met him. A phone call every few months.” Hank pointed toward the built-in closet unit. “His number’s on my phone.”
I felt through his stained clothing until I found the phone. I held it up, and Hank nodded. I keyed through the menu until I found a listing for Byrnes and copied down the number.
I returned to the bedside. “The guy who hired you quit shortly after you started?”
Hank snorted softly. “Seems he had the sense to get out before things blew up. He was nervous, jumpy. I assumed he wasn’t cut out for the stress of the job. Now, I think he maybe knew too much and realized it.”
“What was his name?”
“Roger Harrod, but it won’t help you. I’ve tried contacting him, and his number’s no longer valid. He moved away, and I don’t have his address.”
“The property tax records you found — where are they?”
“In my office. I locked them in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet on the left. The key’s in the drip tray for the dead plant on top. But Nora—”
“Don’t worry,” I cut in. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Watch out for Lee. He’s the only one who doesn’t report to me, and he’s worked there the longest — six years.”
“And while you’re gone, he’s in charge of the whole place?” I asked.
Hank gave me a brief nod, and his eyes shifted past my shoulder.
I turned. Sidonie was quietly latching the door behind her, a Styrofoam carton in her other hand. When I glanced at Hank again, his face had changed as though he was trying to ease the worry lines from it although the intensity still haunted his eyes.
“Baby,” he murmured. He stretched out a hand, and Sidonie laced her fingers between his. “I want to write a note to CeCe.”
Sidonie flashed the most beautiful smile — perfect white teeth and rosy lips — and found a pen and paper. She cozied up next to him while he printed in big block capitals. CeCe was working on her letters, and he was making sure she’d be able to read his handwriting.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. This sweet family. The daddy in a condition that should not be seared into a four-year-old’s memory, so they had to pass notes to each other. I sat there pretending I was invisible until I heard paper being folded.
Sidonie rose and brought the note to me. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Hank was resting, head tipped back, eyes closed. I walked out of the room with her.
At the end of the hall, I asked, “Are you going to continue staying here with Hank?”
Sidonie nodded, tears in her eyes. “The staff has been wonderfully accommodating. You saw the extra beds.” She leaned in and whispered. “Besides, he doesn’t want me to be home alone with the kids. Nora, what’s going on?”
I pulled her in for a quick hug. “I don’t know. But he’s right. CeCe will be fine with us. Clarice has her doing ‘school’ which consists of counting pennies into piles of ten and Roy G. Biv rainbow drawings and making her own alphabet flashcards. I don’t know which one of them is enjoying it more.” I gave Sidonie what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Be careful.” Sidonie squeezed my arm and returned to her husband’s room.
oOo
I didn’t want anyone talking me out of what I was about to do, and I also didn’t think I could handle yet another person telling me to be careful, so I mashed the accelerator down hard and sped on the county road, letting the station wagon’s back end bounce around as I rumbled over potholes.
I flew past the entrance to Mayfield. The county road looped southwest after fifteen miles and crossed the freeway. The freight terminal sat in the northwest quadrant of that junction, perfectly poised for easy semi-truck access from the I-5 commerce thoroughfare.
It was a big, boxy, concrete building with raised docks for semis to back up to and giant, roll-up garage doors on two sides. The terminal sat isolated in the middle of a large paved area with lots of room for the trucks to maneuver.
Several semis, privately owned — no large trucking company logos in sight — were backed into stalls, and forklifts buzzed in and out of the trailers with pallets impaled on their prongs.
The office entrance was on the corner of the building diagonally opposite the loading bays. I parked and pushed past the reflective glass door into a dreary and neglected lobby. Clearly, the business was not about aesthetics, nor did they receive many customers here.
The industrial-strength glue-down carpet was unraveling in rows where the strings had been sucked up into a vacuum cleaner’s bristles. Dings and smudges decorated the beige walls more prominently than the one large poster of a map of the United States with the interstate freeways weaving a tangled web like red veins across the surface. There were no chairs, no signs of a secretarial presence, and no bells to ring for service.
A single male voice sounded muffled in the distance. I couldn’t make out the words, but I’d recognize the cheesy, schmoozy, falsely enthusiastic tones of a salesman anywhere.
I had two options. I could yoohoo loudly or I could start wandering. I chose the latter, stepping lightly.
Anyone can get property tax records from the county. They’re certainly not worth shooting someone over. Hank must have found more — possibly more than he realized — or at least someone thought he had. I needed to see what he’d seen.
A dingy hallway held a series of doors — all open, except one. Directly ahead, a fireproof door was propped open with a sandbag, access to the warehouse area. Sporadic beeping of machinery in reverse and men’s shouts punctuated the salesman’s phony eagerness.
The first doorway led to an equipment junkyard — copy machines, fax machines, shredders, several old behemoth computer monitors and orphan keyboards made of mottled, yellowed plastic. The warped venetian blinds on the window hung at a sloppy angle, letting in stripes of gray light.
The second room contained a wheezing refrigerator, microwave with the door hanging open to reveal crusty food splatters, a sink and overflowing trash can. From the state of the break room, I was pretty sure no women were employed here. Clarice would have a hypertension incident if she saw the unsanitary conditions in which the workers ate their lunches.
The man’s voice rose. “No problem, Bruce. We’ll get right on it. You know we’ll match the dim weighted prices anyone else charges.” He banged the phone down and swore under his breath.
I waited until he started clicketing computer keys before risking a peek around the doorjamb. He was facing away from me, toward the spreadsheet glaring on the monitor. Coffee rings dotted the small part of his desk that was bare. The rest held messes of paper — stacks of invoices, bills of lading, pink and yellow and white triplicate forms with curled edges and more coffee stains. The office smelled of male perspiration, those cheap pine tree cutout air fresheners, and overheated printer ink. I ducked and soft-shoed across the opening.
The last door was closed. I tried the knob and eased it around until the latch released. A gentle push and a faint hinge squeak and a quick glance revealed another office. The dead plant on top of a file cabinet let me know it was Hank’s.
His office was tidy — dusty, but tidy, as though he rarely spent time behind the desk or at the computer. As the operations manager, that made sense. Hank probably managed his crew in person, out on the docks.
I shuffled sideways and reached back to nudge the door closed. Instead, my hand bumped fabric and a rounded, squashy paunch. I jumped.
“Can I help you?” His voice was cold with none of the veneer of friendliness he’d used on the phone.
For a big man, he sure had moved quietly. He towered over me, his head lowe
red as he glared at me from under bushy brows. From my vantage point, I had an excellent view of his comb over extraordinaire — slick strands of pewter hair plastered over a shiny scalp.
My mouth fell open, and my only thought was that the one thing you’re trying to hide is the one thing that is most obvious — for me perhaps as well as for Lee Gomes.
“Mr. Gomes?” I smiled wide, forcing my voice low so he’d have to stoop even farther to hear me. “I was worried about Hank, you know, after—”
His eyes narrowed. Right. Wasn’t going to work.
“I’m a neighbor of the family, and I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help — I expect Hank will be off work for a while. I’m good at typing.” I batted my eyelashes at him. “And balancing accounts. Would you like to see my résumé?”
His hand clamped hard around my elbow.
I winced and pulled my face into a pout. “Ow.”
“Get out,” he snarled. “We’re just fine here. We certainly don’t need the likes of you.” He shoved me ahead of him down the hall.
I tried dragging my feet, but it didn’t have any influence on my speed or direction. Lee Gomes was a bull of a man — both in spirit and in form. He pushed the glass door open with his free hand, forcing me to duck under his arm as he propelled me outside.
“Don’t come back,” he growled, “or I’ll call the police.”
I cocked my head and subjected him to the full force of my most penetrating glare, but he didn’t stick around to enjoy it. He pulled the door shut behind him, and the lock clicked into place.
Huh. Well, no point in continuing to make a spectacle of myself. The reflective glass acted like a one-way mirror. For all I knew, he was still leering at me from the other side. I didn’t want my image burned in his memory.
I hopped into the Subaru and gunned it out of the lot. I hadn’t given him my name, although I had to assume he might already know it.
CHAPTER 6
What really steamed me was that if Skip owned the terminal building and land, then so did I. One of the joys of not having a prenuptial agreement. I’d just been kicked off my own property.
I raced along the county road, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. I tried to gulp calming breaths. I needed a clear head. Time was of the essence, and I couldn’t afford rash mistakes.
A phone rang from the depths of my purse. I swerved over to the shoulder, scattering gravel and leaving a deep set of tire tracks in the soft mud. The car was still rocking on its springs when I found the right phone and answered.
“Nora? Josh.”
“Oh, hey.” I tried to sound nonchalant. “Thanks for calling me back.”
“No problem. Thanks for using a different phone to call me. Next time we talk, I’ll have a different one too.”
“Things are that bad?” I asked.
Josh snorted softly. “There’s a Shari’s on Lancaster Drive, just off exit 253 on I-5 in Salem. You know it?”
I blinked a few times. Salem was a few hours south, in a different state. “I can find it.”
“It’s open 24 hours. When can you be there?” Josh’s voice had slipped down to a whisper.
My mind flitted over any commitments I might have, any plans. I drew a blank, which was exactly the problem. “Tomorrow? Mid-morning?” I whispered back.
“I’ll park on the south edge of the lot, a black Honda Accord, by 10:00. Don’t go into the restaurant until you see me there.” He clicked off.
I tapped the phone against my palm. I just wanted answers. And everyone — absolutely everyone — was being cagey. Self-preservation? Fear? I chewed on my lower lip. People who don’t know what they’re talking about refer to the long arm of the law. I was learning that criminal organizations have much more far-reaching and tenacious tentacles.
Movement in the rearview mirror caught my eye. A white Jeep Cherokee rolled up close to my rear bumper, a familiar face behind the wheel. I groaned and quickly dropped the phone into my purse. Didn’t Des have a vast, rural county to look after?
I put on my best law-abiding smile, the knot in my gut hoping against hope that Des wasn’t out in this particular corner of the county responding to a trespassing report from Lee Gomes. I rolled down my window.
“You okay?” Des’s words puffed little steam clouds as he leaned down to peer into the Subaru for the second time that day.
“Sure. Just pulled over to answer a phone call.” I widened my smile. “Safety first.” I didn’t mention that I’d been significantly exceeding the speed limit at the moment the phone rang.
Des straightened and scanned the length of road ahead of us. “Running errands?”
“Right.” I mentally expanded my definition of ‘errands’ to include snooping. Just another item checked off my nonexistent to-do list.
“Going home now?” Des ran a fingertip along the top rim of the side mirror. His nails were short and clean, his fingers strong and callused where they should be, a tiny, scabbed-over nick on his thumb. Maybe he hadn’t been joking about the whittling.
“Yeah.” I feared my monosyllables weren’t making a good impression, but I was fresh out of lies. Effusing over the truth at this moment would just get me into more trouble.
Des shifted his weight and studied the tree-infested scenery along the road in the opposite direction, frowning. “All right, then.” He thumped my window ledge and crunched through the gravel back to his ride.
Des waited for me to pull back up onto the road, then followed me — close, but not too close for the icy conditions — all the way to Mayfield. What wasn’t he telling me? Was I under suspicion? For what? I supposed I wasn’t making it easy for him to confide in me.
I slowed, used my turn signal properly, and pulled into the ivy-masked entrance, waving over my shoulder. Des flashed his lights once in acknowledgment and sped past. My personal escort service. I wondered just how many people knew of my exact movements, no doubt following my little blipping indicator on blue screens.
oOo
I found Clarice all alone in the kitchen, scrubbing fifty years’ worth of baked-on grease off industrial-sized cookie sheets. If she was resorting to this level of deep cleaning, it was a sure sign of boredom, and I didn’t feel so bad about proposing my harebrained and semi-desperate idea.
I pulled her outside for a chat in the cold. I was suddenly paranoid about bugs of the listening variety. To the best of my knowledge, the FBI hadn’t had unfettered access to the areas of the mansion we were living in, but it’s not like the place was secure. Even though I’d given them permission to watch me, I wasn’t sure just what all that entailed or to what level of detail. To ask my main contact, Special Agent Matt Jarvis, now would indicate I was considering not being watched. I didn’t want to put them on high alert, especially when I was about to do something — yet again — illegal.
Clarice’s face is wrinkled like rivulet tracks in the desert. I needed the input of the experience behind those creases. It came in handy that she’d been arrested once. At least she’d know what I might be getting into.
“You are most certainly not doing this by yourself,” Clarice huffed when I finished, her lips pressed into a tight pucker. I’d known I was running that risk before I’d started talking, and I blew a sigh of relief.
“You’ll serve as lookout?” I asked.
“I’m going in with you. Somebody has to run the copy machine.” Clarice’s eyes behind the cat’s eye glasses were stern. “We both know your deficiencies, girl.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then thought better of it. “What about CeCe,” I asked instead.
“Cinch,” Clarice snapped. “Eli’s spent all morning trying to convince her she’d like sleeping in a bunk bed better than the bed we have set up for her. I might just relent on the issue and ship her off to the bunkhouse.”
“Eli’s here?” My voice pitched up, even though I wasn’t surprised. The kid knew everything about everything that was happening at Mayfield and was adept at sn
iffing out whatever was more interesting than his own schoolwork.
“They’re playing some kind of addition game they made up. He’s been entertaining her for hours.”
If I didn’t know better, I might have inferred from her tone that Clarice resented being supplanted as CeCe’s favorite companion. I bit back a grin.
Back in the kitchen, Clarice and I held forth in an artificially longwinded conversation about needing a few things CeCe had forgotten at home and Clarice’s desire to leave the Gonzales’s freezer stocked with home-cooked meals. All excellent reasons for us to drive to their house tonight and spend a long time there.
Then I took a walk. The silent woods suited my mood, offsetting my fidgety exhaustion, both physical and mental, soothing my mind. It was incredibly tempting to consider wandering off between the trees and never returning.
I wouldn’t be the first. Dwayne Cotton, Mayfield’s resident hermit had done it, decades ago. Bodie Ramsay, the newest boy at Walt’s camp for the unwanted and reforming, had done it.
But I’d leave behind a horrible mess that endangered my friends. Nope. Better to blunder through than to go AWOL. Far better.
I found Walt in the cubbyhole he calls an office, a strange offshoot of a storage space beside the river rock fireplace in the end of the bunkhouse that functioned as a classroom for the boys. The boys — except Eli, that is — were hunched over laptops and books at their desks, making that soft, shuffling murmur that indicates deep thinking and concentrated study. A few pairs of inquisitive eyes followed me as I tiptoed through the room, but I held a finger to my lips and grinned back at them.
Walt was in a similar pose, elbows planted on the desk, hands supporting his head, as he scowled at a stack of composition books in front of him. I quietly latched the door behind me and slid into the chair opposite him. If Walt had his preference, he’d be outside, cold and wet, doing some kind of hard labor, rather than stuck behind a pile of paperwork.
Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 4