“Okay, then how about . . . a tennis ball?”
“How about something that the person who broke into my cottage Saturday night dropped without realizing it?” I said impatiently.
“Seriously?” His attitude had gone from saucy to serious in record time. “What did you find?”
“A piece of a key chain,” I replied. “From a Maserati.”
I must admit, I found his silence most rewarding.
“Do you realize what it means?” I cried. “It’s concrete evidence that Donald Drayton is the person who broke into the cottage! He’s the only suspect on my list who owns a Maserati. It must have fallen out of his pocket that night. It’s the only possible explanation . . . which means he’s got to be the murderer. It was obvious from the start that whoever broke in was trying to scare me. Maybe he even planned to kill me. But the fact that the man was inside my house tells me how desperate he is not to let anyone find out about his despicable sideline that pays for his exorbitantly priced boy toys.”
“It does make sense,” Nick agreed.
“Nick, when I saw Walter today, he told me that Erin found out the truth about Drayton’s business from Dr. Zacarias at the fund-raiser that night.” I went on excitedly, “Zacarias also told her where Drayton was keeping the animals he was smuggling in illegally. That’s why Erin wrote down the address of that self-storage facility in Bellpoint Beach.”
“Those self-storage places do offer total privacy,” Nick said thoughtfully. “Most of the time, only the renters have keys.”
“Especially the units that are set up like rows of garages,” I added. “They allow people to come and go at any hour of the day or night without anybody to let them in. According to Norfolk Self-Storage’s website, it’s even climate-controlled. That would be critical for keeping the animals alive until Drayton could deliver them to his buyers and collect his hefty payments.”
“It does sound logical, but you still can’t be completely sure,” Nick warned. “We have to consider the possibility that Dr. Zacarias was wrong about what that self-storage facility is used for. It’s possible that Ben and Donald simply keep some of the products they sell in their stores there. Maybe they ran out of room in their main warehouse—or maybe they maintain satellite storage facilities that are located close to each store. There could be lots of explanations.”
“True,” I agreed. “Which is why I intend to find out.”
This time, I got the feeling Nick’s silence wasn’t a sign that he was impressed. This one meant he was nervous.
“Jessie,” he said slowly, “you made me a promise. You swore that even though you were investigating Erin’s murder, you wouldn’t do anything dangerous.”
“I won’t.”
“Oh, really?” he replied. “Let me be clear about this. You plan to sneak into a place where you think illegal activity is going on—probably at night, since it’ll be easier to stay hidden when it’s dark. And you’ll probably go there alone. Unarmed, too, even though you don’t know karate or any other form of self-defense that would help keep you safe. So would you mind telling me how you intend to make sure you’re not going to get hurt?”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him, my tone reflecting my complete confidence in my plan. “I’ve already got that all figured out.”
Just as I’d promised Nick, the next thing I did was make another phone call, a crucial step designed to guarantee my safety during my clandestine visit to 100 Brown Street. Once that was done, I focused on preparing for a stakeout, methodically carrying out every task on my mental checklist. I made sure the gas tank in my VW was full and charged my cell phone battery. Then I changed into a black shirt and pants and grabbed a dark knitted hat that looked roomy enough to tuck in all my hair. The last step was gathering a flashlight, a digital camera, a bottle of water, and—just in case—snacks for energy.
Since it was June, it seemed to take forever for the sky to darken. After looking out the window several hundred times, I finally decided it was time to set out.
As I drove east on the Long Island Expressway, I warned myself that the trip would probably turn out to be a fool’s errand—with me playing the role of fool. Chances were good that I wouldn’t see anything. In fact, I’d probably just sit in an empty parking lot for hours, wolfing down the granola bars I’d brought just so I’d have something to do. For all I knew, I’d even been wrong about 100 Brown BB being shorthand for the address of a self-storage facility.
Even though my rationalizations all made perfect sense, for some reason the butterflies in my stomach weren’t buying any of it.
In fact, my heart was fluttering and my stomach was in knots as I drove through the main entrance of Norfolk Self-Storage. Roughly a dozen single-story cinder-block buildings lined the property. Every one had large doors that opened from the bottom up, giving each row the look of a twenty-car garage.
There didn’t appear to be much action at any of them. Not at nine-thirty at night, which even under the best of circumstances wasn’t exactly the ideal time to retrieve the family’s lawn furniture or store a box of photos from Mother’s Day. The fact that the only illumination came from the few feeble bulbs that dotted each building and the streetlights that popped up here and there along the perimeter of the parking lot made putting things in or taking things out even less convenient.
Of course, that also made it the perfect time for people who didn’t want to call attention to their comings and goings.
Given the fact that no other cars were around, I realized I would be wise to hide mine. After a quick drive around the parking lot, I ascertained that the only place to hide a shiny red VW was behind the two tremendous Dumpsters in the back corner.
The good news was that there was just enough space for me to wedge my car in between the green metal containers and the stockade fence that protruded from the stubby growth of weeds edging the property. The bad news was that someone seemed to have disposed of something extremely malodorous inside one of the Dumpsters, an item that had probably smelled bad enough when it was originally dumped there but now, hours or days later, had reached new heights of stinkyness.
There was more bad news. While the Dumpsters hid my car, they also kept me from seeing anything. Which meant I had no choice but to tuck my hair into the hat and climb out of my car through an eight-inch opening. That was all I could manage, thanks to steel’s unwillingness to yield. I positioned myself between the green metal of the Dumpster and the red metal of my car, a spot that afforded me a decent view of the storage facility’s entrance.
I watched and waited, quickly learning that there’s a good reason why most people don’t wear wool hats in June. Or crouch for long periods of time. Especially near large quantities of fermenting garbage.
Note to self, I thought grimly. From now on, avoid choosing Dumpsters as hiding places.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that lurking in the dark was also incredibly boring. I couldn’t even turn on my car radio, since the whole point of being there was to remain undiscovered. Besides, I wanted to be sure I could hear any unusual sounds—for example, the sound of someone sneaking up on me.
After nearly an hour of entertaining myself by trying to remember every word of anything I’d ever memorized in my life—including the preamble of the United States Constitution, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and the Robert Frost poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”—I was beginning to wonder if it was time to pack up and go home. I knew that meant coming back for more of the same the following night. But at the moment, the prospect of cool sheets and a warm boyfriend sounded pretty darned alluring.
In fact, I was just about to give up when the yellowish beams of a pair of headlights suddenly lit up the night. Someone was driving into the parking lot.
My heart began to pound as I saw it was a truck. Not a big truck, but one big enough to carry, oh, say, cages or tanks filled with animals. Including illegal ones.
It was also unmarked.
Ther
e are a hundred reasons why that truck could be here, I reminded myself. You don’t even know if it’s going to stop in front of the unit that Donald Drayton rents—that is, assuming Drayton really does rent space here, and . . .
I hadn’t even had a chance to spell out all the reasons why I may have been wasting my time by coming all this way, not to mention getting sore leg muscles and probably destroying my sense of smell, when the truck pulled up to the row of storage units one up from where I was crouching.
Which meant it was time for me to come out of hiding.
Thank goodness I was dressed in black, I thought. My heart began to beat even faster as I contemplated sprinting away from my secure spot behind the Dumpster—kind of my second home by this point—and finding someplace new, like a doorway or at least a shadowy corner.
I stood up and jiggled around for a couple of seconds, trying to work the kinks out of my muscles. As I did, I struggled to spot a new post, wishing that last year’s Christmas list had included a pair of night-vision goggles. Even though nothing very promising jumped out at me, I realized that I could at least move to the edge of the building where the truck had stopped.
Making the short trip was pretty easy, since it basically required nothing more than sprinting from one side of the asphalt strip to the other. By the time I did, the truck had backed up in front of the door of Unit 59, which meant its occupants were getting ready to either load or unload. I crouched down again, telling myself to be glad that at least this time the air smelled just fine. Besides, my new hangout on the side of the long building, near the front, gave me an excellent view.
Whoever’s inside that truck might be here to stock up on big bags of dog food—or birdseed, I reminded myself as I watched two brawny men climb out of the cabin and open up the back of the vehicle. Not to mention a million other things that someone might be inclined to stow in a self-storage facility.
I watched the men head toward the door of the unit. One of them pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jeans pocket and checked it in the dim light.
“Okay, we’re gonna have to do this by the numbers,” he said in a gruff voice colored by a thick Brooklyn accent. “Unless you can pick out a—what’s this say, a giant African snail?”
The other man snorted. “Yeah, like who’d want somethin’ like that around the house?”
“I dunno,” the first man replied. “Maybe they taste good.”
Guffawing loudly over their clever repartee, they unlocked the door, opened it by pushing it upward, hit a light switch on the wall, and disappeared inside the storage unit.
I was right! I thought excitedly. This is where Drayton stores part of his inventory—inventory that consists of illegal animals.
Now I need a way to prove it.
I told myself that all I had to do was convince the cops that Unit 59 at Norfolk Self-Storage was worth investigating so that they’d obtain a search warrant and see for themselves what was stored inside. Then, all they’d have to do was get hold of the rental agreement. I would bet anything that either Drayton himself or someone who worked for him had signed it.
The next step, identifying Drayton as Erin’s murderer, was a little trickier. But that was where the break-in at my cottage—and the calling card he’d left behind—would come in handy.
The good news was that I was finished here. All I had to do was get myself out without being spotted.
I was looking back at the Dumpster longingly, wondering if I should make a mad dash toward it or simply wait until the men were gone, when I heard their voices once again. Peering around the side of the building, I saw that one of them was hauling a large wooden crate. The other was carrying a glass tank.
“Creepy, huh?” the man who’d been in charge of the list commented. “I like the cute fuzzy ones much better.”
“Yeah, except the ones with the teeth,” his buddy replied as they stashed their first load in back of the truck.
“Hey, Paul, y’ready for a cigarette break?” the list-checker asked.
“Good idea, Fred, but we better do that outside,” Paul replied. “We don’t want to smoke around all the nice little animals, do we?”
“Right,” Fred replied. “I’d hate to have to tell the boss that we damaged the merchandise.”
Just a minute or so earlier, I’d been ready to hightail it out of there. But I realized that I’d just been presented with a golden opportunity. Not only had I been given the chance to see for myself exactly what was inside Unit 59, I could photograph it with the digital camera I’d brought along, which would provide me with exactly what I needed to interest the police.
Still hiding at the side of the building, I waited and watched. The men flicked off the light inside the storage area, then took a little stroll as they lit up—fortunately, in the opposite direction. Once they stopped and were standing with their backs to me, I stole through the shadows, toward the gaping door.
Let’s hear it for rubber soles, I thought as I ducked inside the storage facility, relieved that I’d managed to make tracks without making a sound.
Even in the dim light from the street lamps outside, I could see that the storage unit was filled with wooden crates that were identical to the one I’d just seen the two men load onto the truck. Each one was stenciled with a number in black, which I figured was how Paul and his sidekick, Fred, were able to locate the specimens on their list.
Since I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, I decided to focus on taking the photos I needed. I quickly flipped open the lid of the first crate in my path, snapped on my flashlight, and directed the beam toward the bottom. What I saw was what looked like a bunch of rubber hoses that someone hadn’t bothered to coil up very neatly.
“Argh!” I cried as I realized I was staring at a cluster of snakes, their writhing bodies intertwined.
I’ve always been embarrassed by my horror of snakes, even though it’s out of my control. After all, animals are my business, not to mention my life. But this wasn’t the time to consider whether I should have chosen a different career path. Not with Paul and Fred’s cigarettes getting shorter and shorter with each passing second.
I pulled my camera out of my pocket, no easy feat given the way my hands were shaking. I’d barely had a chance to think about how I was going to deal with the flash when I heard footsteps.
“Great,” I muttered under my breath.
I switched off the flashlight, only vaguely aware that I’d broken into a cold sweat. Those footsteps certainly didn’t sound as if they belonged to the two burly guys sharing a Marlboro moment. They were much lighter. Faster too.
But that didn’t exactly make the arrival of someone else on the scene good news.
I was still agonizing over who they might belong to when I noticed they’d stopped. Instead, I heard a loud grating sound, then a thump.
It had suddenly gotten strangely dark.
Glancing up, I saw that the reason was that someone had closed the door of the storage unit.
I was trapped.
My stomach instantly knotted and I couldn’t swallow. I knew I had no time to lose. I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket, hit a few buttons, and dropped it back where it came from.
Even though I was gripped with fear, the feeling was nothing compared to how I felt when a shadow in front of me moved. Which meant that whoever had locked me in here had locked himself in with me.
Drayton? I thought, panicking. Does he know I’m here?
I’d barely formed the question in my mind when I heard a cold, metallic click. One that sounded like the cocking of a gun.
Apparently he does, I thought.
I instinctively turned in an attempt to get away. As I did, I bumped into the wooden crate, knocking it to the floor.
At that moment, an overhead light switched on. I glanced up, expecting to see Donald Drayton standing a few feet away, holding a gun.
Instead, I found myself looking at Darla Drayton holding a gun.
“Darla?” I c
ried, unable to conceal my astonishment.
“That’s right,” she replied. “Turns out there’s a lot more to me than good looks!”
I could see her eyes flashing angrily behind thick smears of blue eye shadow and long, spiky eyelashes. The heels on her black shoes were equally spiky, so high and so pointed they could have been used to build the railroad. A slinky blue wrap dress clung to her curves, both the real ones and the biologically engineered ones. The latter were further emphasized by the deeply cut V-shaped neckline.
My mind raced as I tried to come up with a way of removing myself from her line of fire—literally. The obvious way to escape was to distract her long enough to run. But I didn’t have a lot of options in the distracting department. I wished I had the nerve to pick up one of the writhing snakes beside me and hurl it at her. But as much as I hate to admit it, I couldn’t bring myself to do it—even though at the moment overcoming my fear of snakes appeared to be a matter of life or death.
Fortunately, these vipers had some plans of their own. Plans that apparently consisted of trying to make a quick getaway.
One of them—the longest, thickest, creepiest one—suddenly began slithering toward the door. It was probably only a coincidence that Darla Drayton happened to be standing directly in his path, but I wasn’t about to complain.
“Oooh,” she cried, stepping away as quickly as her expensive stiletto heels would allow. “I hate snakes! Snakeskin is an entirely different matter, of course, but—hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
I’d turned ever so slightly, figuring that I’d take my chances by flinging myself behind some crates and trying to make my way toward the door. I just assumed she was as deathly afraid of snakes as I am.
But not only did Darla not share my ophidiophobia; she was apparently one fashion plate who was as sharp as plate glass. She’d noticed that I was about to copy the snake by breaking for freedom, and she clearly wasn’t about to let that happen.
She took a step closer to me, which also put the gun she had pointed at me a step closer. That made it pretty close. Too close.
Monkey See, Monkey Die Page 25