by Penny Drake
“Do you see anyone watching?” Ms. Hawk asked, her voice echoing in my earpiece.
“No,” I said. “Which doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone.”
“Well, this is why we get paid. Keep an eye out.” With that, Ms. Hawk drew on a pair of black latex gloves and strode boldly to the small door, a bag slung over her shoulder. I held my breath. God, she had nerve. The door was locked, of course, with both a deadbolt and a spring lock. Ms. Hawk knelt to examine the locks, then opened a small case from her belt and extracted a pair of tools. The spring lock barely slowed her down. The deadbolt took a little more work, but Ms. Hawk worked patiently at it. I tried to watch in all directions at once, feeling exposed and vulnerable even though I was still in the alley.
One minute went by. Then two. Ms. Hawk’s expression didn’t change. She looked like she had every right to be poking at the door with picklocks and who would dare question her? I, on the other hand, was starting to sweat. Every shadow held a posse of gang members with guns, or a collection of cops with guns, or—
I heard a click, and Ms. Hawk pushed the door open with a gloved hand. I had already pulled my own gloves on, and I hurried into the warehouse after her. Ms. Hawk quickly shut the door and threw the deadbolt. Next to the door, a keypad flashed insistently. A digital countdown informed us we had less than a minute to enter the proper code. Without a word, I pulled a small electric screwdriver from my belt and had the cover off the alarm in seven seconds. Ms. Hawk was already attaching a lead to the netbook she had pulled from her shoulder bag, and she connected it the moment the cover came away. She tapped at the screen while I held my breath.
“It’s not a complicated alarm,” Ms. Hawk murmured. “We should be able to—there.”
The countdown flicked from twenty-eight seconds to two hours. I had no idea where she’d learned that trick, but I was grateful she had.
“That should be enough time.” Ms. Hawk slid the netbook back into her bag. “And much easier to change the timer than hack the access code.”
As one, we turned to face the warehouse. Only a few scattered lights were on, leaving most of the echoing space in shadow. Both of us took out flashlights and shined them around. The place wasn’t that big, as warehouses go. Maybe half a dozen semis could park inside. A catwalk made a lattice overhead, and one section had been walled off for office space.
“I don’t suppose,” I muttered, “that we’ll find any crates conveniently marked Contraband or Smuggler stuff.”
“Doubtful. Let’s spread out.”
There were indeed a few wooden crates scattered around the floor, but the ones I could open were empty. Every sound echoed around me, and I could hear Ms. Hawk rustling around in another section. My senses were on high alert. My own breathing rasped in my ears and my hands sweated inside my latex gloves. Something clattered to the floor and I jumped, my hands snapping into fighting stance.
“That was just me,” Ms. Hawk’s voice said in my earpiece.
I got my heart started again, then moved around a clump of crates and barked my shins painfully against something that made a metallic hissing sound against the floor. I heard Ms. Hawk’s quick intake of breath in my ear.
“And that was just me,” I said, shining my flashlight over the object. Several objects, actually. Wire gleamed in my beam. I stared for a long moment, then said, “Ms. Hawk, you might want to come and see this.”
Crisp footsteps approached behind me, and I played my flashlight over the wire kennels scattered about the concrete floor. Each was big enough to house a German shepherd, or maybe a small St. Bernard, and each one sported a set of plastic dog dishes.
“The Peales are smuggling dogs?” I said. “That’s…unexpected.”
“And I can’t imagine it’s anything as profitable as drugs,” Ms. Hawk said, playing her own flashlight around. I counted over a dozen kennels. They looked to be the sort people put their dogs in before going to work. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
We split up again, and a few minutes later, Ms. Hawk called me over to the office area. She already had the lock open and had turned the lights on. The large room beyond was almost bare. A card table and folding chairs sat in one corner. Two dirty ashtrays lay on top of it. A door opened onto a dirty bathroom with a moldy shower stall. Near the table were piled several cardboard boxes. I rummaged through them.
“Dry cereal, canned spaghetti, beef stew, beans,” I said. “Food for thought?”
Ms. Hawk was standing in the middle of the room, toying with her hawk pendant. “Where do they keep their records?” she muttered. “There has to be something.”
A black cord caught my eye, and I picked it up. It was the power brick to a laptop computer. “It looks like they don’t leave them here.”
“Eminently sensible of them,” she said. “We should leave, Terry. I don’t think we’re going to find anything helpful.”
I agreed. We still had half an hour on the alarm system, and Ms. Hawk didn’t bother resetting it on our way out. If the alarm went off and anyone came to investigate, they’d find nothing but a locked, empty warehouse.
Outside, I stood guard again while Ms. Hawk relocked the door. We were heading for the alley when Ms. Hawk abruptly dove ahead of me into the darkness. Someone yelped and I heard a thud, but my body was already moving. I rushed into the alley, pistol in one hand, flashlight in the other. My heart pounded the rhythm of adrenaline. I crossed my wrists so my pistol hand was steadied on my flashlight hand, allowing me to sweep the alley with light wherever my pistol pointed. The beam landed squarely on Ms. Hawk’s lithe form. She had someone in a half nelson on the alley ground. Her victim was struggling to break free. I aimed my pistol upward—I didn’t want to hit Ms. Hawk—and scooted around them until I could get to the person she was fighting with. Shadows and the bobbing light of my flashlight made it hard to see.
“Freeze, asshole!” I snarled, pressing the pistol against his temple.
He froze. Ms. Hawk disengaged and backed away, drawing her own pistol in the process.
“Good work, Terry,” she said, and my heart swelled with pride.
“Lie face-down on the ground,” I barked at her victim. “Move!”
“Yuck,” he said.
“What?” I replied, caught off-guard. It wasn’t the response I’d been expecting.
“I’m not lying down. I think someone peed here.”
The tension drained out of me. I holstered my pistol and shined my light more carefully. It illuminated the face of Zack Archer.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Same thing you are,” Zack said. “Sniffing around the warehouse from Uncle Lawrence’s notebook. You mind getting that light out of my eyes? I can’t see the delightful animal snarl on your face.”
I shut the flashlight off. Zack stood blinking in the dim light of the alley for a moment, then leaned casually against one wall. “So what did you find out?”
“Why should we tell you?” I said.
“To save me the trouble of breaking in and finding out for myself. Duh.”
“How are you with alarm systems?” I asked a little nastily. “As good as you are at picking locks?”
“Just as good as Ms. Hawk here,” Zack shot back.
“Mr. Archer can pick locks?” Ms. Hawk said.
Oops. Hadn’t I mentioned that to her? I tried to remember, but so much had happened since I caught Zack with his little tools.
“It’s a hobby,” Zack said with an amiable smile. “Maybe we can trade tips sometime.”
“Can you circumvent a burglar alarm, too?” I asked.
“Meh.” Zack shrugged. “The police almost never answer those, you know. Too many false alarms. If one goes off, you have a couple-three hours before the cops show.”
“And how would you know that?”
“I read the newspapers,” Zack said nonchalantly. “There was an article about it not that long ago.”
“I don’t know that this is the
best place to discuss it,” Ms. Hawk said.
“Yeah, this place isn’t all that fun,” Zack said. “Want to get something to eat? All three of us, of course.”
I looked at those green eyes and really wanted to. But my brain told me it would be a bad idea until I heard back from Wendy.
“No,” I said, turning to head for the car.
“Then at least tell me what you found out,” Zack said reasonably. “I’ll tell you what I found.”
“We didn’t find much of anything,” Ms. Hawk said as we reached my Jeep. “A laptop cord, some dog kennels and some canned goods.”
“Dog food?” Zack asked.
“Spaghetti-Os,” I told him. “Looks like the smugglers had some snacks laid by.”
“Which means they stay for long periods of time,” Zack pointed out.
Something itched at the back of my mind when he said that. I tried to put my finger on it, but whatever it was danced away from me.
Ms. Hawk nodded. “Perhaps they do. Now would you be so kind, Mr. Archer, as to tell us your findings?”
Zack leaned against the hood of my Jeep. “I found a lookout post on the warehouse roof.”
“Go on,” I said.
“I climbed to the top to see if there was an easier way in, and I found a pile of old clothes wrapped around a ratty sleeping bag. Judging by the condition of the clothes, no one’s been up there in quite a while.”
“How can you tell that?” Ms. Hawk asked.
“There was a bird’s nest in them. I also found these.” He held up a pair of binoculars that looked old enough to have stormed the beach at Normandy. “Someone’s been watching this place, though not for a while now.”
I thought of the notebook and its records of all the comings and goings. “Uncle Lawrence?”
“Sounds likely.”
We split up and climbed into our respective vehicles. Zack rattled off in his VW bus. I drove back to Ann Arbor in a puzzled fog of whys. As in, why had Uncle Lawrence been watching the warehouse? Why were the Peales smuggling dogs? Why did Zack’s comment about the smugglers needing the food because they stayed for long periods bug me?
I thought about it as I pulled into the Biemers’ driveway and I thought about it as I undressed and I thought about it as I climbed into bed, but nothing came to me. Eventually I fell asleep and dreamed that Ms. Hawk was calling to me in the Peale mansion, but I couldn’t get through all the junk to find her. I finally reached her, but she was Zack instead, and he fell into a deep pit before I could touch him.
In the morning, Ms. Hawk called to say she was working on something else. Would I be willing to go back to the mansion and look around some more to see if anything else turned up? I told her I would be happy to and was just clicking off when the phone chirped again. It was Wendy Schultz.
“I’ve got the goods on Zack Archer, hon,” she said. “You sitting down?”
I sank to my bed. “Go,” I said.
“Mr. Archer has quite the interesting history. Three arrests for B-and-E and burglary.” Gum cracked in my ear and I heard Wendy’s chair squeak. She had to be sitting in front of her computer terminal at work. “The first two times he was released for lack of evidence. The third time was the charm. He was sentenced to two years, and he served ten months. His mug shots are pretty cute. A real looker, hon.”
“I know,” I said faintly. “Where did all this happen?”
“Detroit once, Ann Arbor once, and Grosse Isle once. That last one is where he got sentenced. He stole some valuable artwork from a private collection.”
Treasure, I thought.
“Lots of notes on him in here, too,” Wendy continued. “He was suspected—but never arrested—for several other break-ins. Museums, galleries, private homes.”
“When did he serve his sentence?” I asked.
The gum cracked again. “Six years ago, hon. There’s nothing about him after that, actually. Either he went straight or he got a lot more careful.”
I grimaced. Zack did say he had gotten into trouble for breaking into someone’s house when he was young and stupid, but he had said it was on a dare, not that he made a career out of it. “Is there anything else?” I asked, dreading to hear an answer.
“Last known addresses are all in Detroit or Ann Arbor. Do you want those?”
“Not really.”
“Mother’s name Eileen Archer, once a resident of Ypsilanti, now deceased.” Crack, crack.
“Father’s name is…oh. That’s odd.”
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
“Apparently this guy has his mother’s last name and not his father’s. A little strange but not unheard of these days.”
I grabbed the phone with both hands. “What’s his father’s name?”
“Says here it’s Arthur Peale.”
Chapter Eleven
Clouds drifted overhead, partially obscuring the sun and cutting back on the heat. I leaned on my yellow Jeep and stared at the mouldering mansion, trying to think. Zack had said his father’s real name was Arthur, but he hadn’t said anything about being a Peale. Was he a Chicago Peale or a Detroit Peale? Belinda hadn’t mentioned any other relatives and unless she was a fantastic actress, Zack had been a total stranger to her. A Chicago Peale, then. Was he in on the smuggling? No, that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have had to sneak into the warehouse if he was.
So what the hell was his angle? I took a long pull of coffee from my canteen. It was possible everything he had done from the beginning had been a ploy to get his hands on the Peale family papers. I didn’t want it to be. I slapped the hood of the Jeep in frustration, and the metal stung my palm. Dammit, I liked Zack. Against all probability, I did. He was funny and handsome and…reliable.
I chewed over that thought for a long moment. Zack was reliable. It was strange, but there it was. He always turned up when he said he would, he was ready and willing to help even when there was nothing in it for him. Hell, he even turned up when I didn’t want him to. Unlike most of the other men in my life, who came around when it suited them and left equally quickly. Noel had been like that.
And now Zack had to go and do this to me.
Strictly speaking, he hadn’t done anything illegal on this case—unless he had been the one to pick the back door open. Strictly speaking, he hadn’t even lied. He had just withheld information. I had withheld information from him, come to that.
Was I telling the truth to myself or making excuses for him?
The house’s blank windows stared mutely at me, as if it were begging to be put out of its misery. I sympathized. I was getting tired of this case, tired of threats, tired of dusty lies. And I didn’t want to go inside again, even on Ms. Hawk’s orders.
Shit.
I spent several minutes wandering the perimeter of the house. A squirrel cheebled at me again, but I ignored him. The dry, dead grass crackled beneath my boots, and I sipped coffee from my canteen. Zack was a shit. A not-quite-lying bastard. On the other hand, so what? People lied to me all the time. Noel certainly had.
Unbidden, more memories of Noel slid into my mind. I met him at a frat kegger when I was a freshman at Michigan State. He was a junior. We got married within a year, and both of us dropped out of school, which pissed off my parents something fierce. Noel got a job selling educational software and training teachers how to use it. He traveled a lot, and when he was home, his main form of recreation involved various illegal substances. I didn’t use, but I watched. I felt alive when I was with Noel, like I was living on the edge. After life with an overly strict father, Noel was exactly what I needed. Or so I thought.
One day while Noel was on a sales trip, three gorillas barged into our house and demanded money in the order of twenty thousand dollars. I was terrified.
“Tell your husband that if he doesn’t pay up by the end of the week,” one gorilla said, “we’ll break your left arm and your right leg.” He stiff-armed me, and I fell against the coffee table. One corner dug painfully into my
side. “Go to the cops, and we’ll kill you.”
They left, and I called Noel in a panic, demanding to know who these guys were. Noel admitted that he had borrowed money from them to buy drugs.
“But don’t worry about it,” he drawled. “They’re all talk. Besides, I’ll get the money soon.”
I clutched the phone against my ear. “How? We’ve got maybe two thousand in the savings. They’re asking for twenty.”
“I’ve been skimming money off the top of my sales,” he said proudly. “I overcharge the school districts and keep the difference. Don’t worry about a thing, sweets.”
I worried. Two days passed, and I couldn’t raise him on his cell phone. I called his work number to see if he had checked in. They told me Noel had been fired, and the company was filing charges of fraud and embezzlement. That same day, the three gorillas came back and told me Noel had three days to fork over the cash or I’d pay the price. They didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t heard from Noel, or that he had lost his job.
Then my friend Stace took me out to lunch. I had intended to keep the story to myself, but ended up making a terrified, tearful confession to her.
“I don’t know what to do,” I sobbed over a tray of McDonald’s French fries. “I’m completely alone.”
“Try this,” Stace said, and handed me a card.
I glanced at it. “Hawk Enterprises?”
“They solve problems for women,” she said. “And you sound right up their alley.”
I remember being nervous as I walked into the offices of Hawk Enterprises and I remember being awed as I shook the hand of Diana Hawk. She wore a snappy blazer in green silk and the silver hawk pendant. She exuded quiet power, and I half expected an electric shock when I accepted her hand. I told her the entire story from start to finish, and when I was done, she nodded thoughtfully.
“I think we can help you,” she said, and I felt a relief so profound, I nearly fainted. “The fee will be two thousand dollars and two favors.”