Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) (19 page)

CHAPTER 24

Mostly what I gathered from the following tirade was that Clarice was furious about being left out. Next time I make a middle-of-the-night dash into a hostage situation, I’m under strict orders to wake her up and take her with me. I think she considers herself my good luck charm or something. Don’t leave home without Clarice is the new mantra that has been drilled into my head.

Then we expressed our newly revitalized solidarity by sneaking out to watch the raid on the freight terminal from a wooded bluff overlooking the property. Dwayne knew just the spot, and he insisted on tagging along, propped sideways in the Subaru’s backseat with his leg stretched out.

A deputy had dropped off the station wagon. Clarice had inspected it thoroughly, but found nothing worthy of criticism. In other words, no stray bullet holes in the bumpers.

She’d bickered with Dwayne about the directions he gave on the maze of backroads, but we were installed in position just in time to see law enforcement swoop down on the terminal with Des and his crew in the lead.

I stuck my bandaged leg up on the dashboard and hooked an arm around Emmie to shift her more comfortably on my lap. It occurred to me that this was a rather unconventional family activity to bring a kid along on. Sort of — but not quite — like going to the drive-in movies. We should have brought popcorn.

At some point Emmie would need to learn that this kind of entertainment wasn’t normal. But I doubted much, if any, of her life had been normal up to this point. Maybe just as well.

I slouched low with the pair of binoculars Dwayne had provided and spotted Hank walking slowly but with purpose, Des at his side.

Hank had jumped at the chance to help the deputies and agents determine what documents and computers should be confiscated from the freight terminal’s offices. I was also glad he was present to defuse the workers’ worries.

Because, even though it was the day after Christmas, the place was buzzing with activity. A steady stream of semi-trucks with trailers backed up to the long row of docks. Forklifts zipped around, unloading, shuffling, reloading the cargo, routing the goods on to their final destinations. Hank had done an excellent job of training his employees.

The mechanics of the business were good, thanks to Hank. It was the motives of the business that were criminal, and that problem was directly attributable to Lee Gomes, along with his boss — Neil Byrnes, and Neil’s boss — Fat Al Canterino, and quiet possibly Fat Al’s partner — my husband, Skip. Remove the upper management, and I still had the bones of a thriving operation. It was possible some of the dock workers and drivers were corrupt, knowingly involved in the theft and fraud being committed, but Hank, in his new capacity as vice president, would help me sort them out.

I’d also need to restructure, reincorporate, and possibly reinvest, but Tarq could guide me through the fiddly legal details. It was a project I was looking forward to.

oOo

It’s a good thing the infirmary at Mayfield has an open door policy, or I might have gone crazy. Clarice banished me to bed immediately after the freight terminal raid wrapped up. I’d had enough of sitting in a recliner to last me for several years, so I grudgingly complied. She also made my prophecy about chicken soup come true. Although I’m unaware of any particular healing properties it delivers for flesh wounds.

Des was my first visitor the next day. He sat awkwardly on a ladder-back chair beside the bed and rested his hands on his knees as though he didn’t know what else to do with them.

I smiled up at him from my nest of pillows. I had the boys’ composition books spread all over the blankets, trying to set the program for what would essentially be an open-mic night without the mic. It would do the boys good to read their work aloud to an appreciative audience.

“How’re you doing?” Des scratched at an invisible spot on the cuff of his olive drab uniform, his brows furrowed. He had something on his mind.

“Better than yesterday,” I answered carefully, waiting.

“Guess who came home last night?” The corners of his mouth inched upward.

“No way.”

Des chuckled and nodded. “I guess even country boys get homesick. Once the situation was explained to them, Waylon and Travis were eager to talk. And get this — being an account manager is so ingrained in Lee Gomes that he actually made them sign a contract for the hit on Hank. Waylon had it crumpled up in his wallet.”

“Wow,” I breathed. “What did you get at the terminal yesterday?”

“The FBI’s still verifying authenticity of some of the designer-labeled goods, but it looks like two loads of electronics, a shipment of wine, several pallets of razor blades, and a flatbed of roofing tiles all without valid bills of lading. Also a refrigerated load of Tillamook cheese that was reported stolen two days ago. The drivers of the electronics and cheese trucks are being held for questioning.”

I shook my head. “And that was in just a few hours. Think of all the stuff they were fencing through the terminal on a monthly or annual basis.”

“A good day’s work.” Des grinned. “Guess now I’ll have to go back to persuading guys in Sasquatch suits not to stand on the shoulder of the road with their thumbs out.”

I blinked at him. “Are you serious?”

“It’s the local idea of a good practical joke,” Des sighed. “Alcohol is frequently involved.”

I snorted. “Is it possible you were bored before I came along?”

Des smacked his palms on his thighs and stood. At the doorway, he turned. “You need to heal up soon, because I’m cooking. Dinner. You’re booked for Friday next week. Seven o’clock.” He drummed his fingers against the doorframe and left before I could reply.

The two men must have passed in the hallway, because I didn’t have time to wipe the stunned look off my face before Matt slung my tote bag onto the bed. “Got a lot of phones in there,” he said. “I assume the bug detector was yours too?”

“Was?” I asked, my throat suddenly scratchy.

“I might have lost it. You’re not getting the handgun back either.” Matt dropped into the chair Des had just vacated. “A .22 — really?”

“It was the best I could come up with on short notice.” I scowled at him.

“When you decide to obtain a firearm legally, let me know. I’ll help you pick out something suitable and teach you to shoot.”

“Um, thanks?” I pulled the bag toward me and rummaged through the contents. It contained gobs of chocolate Lab hair and dust bunnies along with the usual necessities, as though Matt had vacuumed Tarq’s entire living room and dumped the accumulation in my bag.

“Gotta ask one more time. Have you heard from Skip lately?” Matt said.

I grunted and waggled one of my phones at him. “Don’t ask questions you know the answers to. Are you trying to tell me you’ve lost track of him again?”

“It was one sighting, Nora. One single blip on an otherwise blank radar.” Matt’s jaw muscles contracted and color rose in the smooth skin just in front of his clipped sideburn.

“Did he buy or sell or browse?” I asked.

“Bought.” Matt rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor between his feet.

I also think it’s a good policy not to ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to, but I did it anyway. “What?”

“A bracelet. Diamonds and emeralds. $15,000. Paid cash.”

I sucked in a ragged breath. “A woman’s bracelet.”

Matt gave the faintest nod, his gaze still glued to the floor.

Emeralds and diamonds, just like my wedding ring. Which was now gone.

Good riddance.

Maybe.

I got grapefruit and a Polaroid. Who was getting the expensive piece of jewelry? And how on earth did my husband have time to go shopping when the whole life he’d carefully cultivated — the business, the charitable foundation, the wife — was in shambles?

What, exactly, did I owe Skip? I was having a hard time coming up with a decent answer.

But instead of a husband to have and to hold, for better and for worse, I’d joined a group of people I treasured as much, or more — Clarice, Walt and the boys, Emmie, Tarq. I’d lost one and gained many.

Matt mumbled a few sentences that sounded like apologies and slipped from the room. I wasn’t being very hospitable to my guests.

My third visitor woke me from a nap several hours later by tugging on the bandage encasing my shoulder. “Let’s have a look,” Walt said.

“You’re a Renaissance man,” I murmured. “Extensive first aid skills, teaching all subjects, carpentry, penny-pinching budgeting, old truck repair, parenting a motley crew of boys — is there anything you don’t do?”

“Knit.” Walt frowned in concentration, dabbing antibiotic ointment into my bullet graze. “’Cause you have that covered. I think at least half the boys wore their hats to bed last night.” He taped a clean square of gauze over the wound and eased my sleeve down. “You’re not going to stop until you check all the Numeros off your list, are you?”

I had trouble meeting his stern gaze. “How do you know about that?”

“Clarice isn’t as subtle as she thinks she is.” Walt lifted the blankets off my leg and started unwrapping my second patched spot. His fingers moved deftly even though a line of tense muscle coursed through his neck and across the tops of his shoulders.

We were so fabulous at not talking to each other.

“Are you angry?” I whispered. Then I squeezed my eyes shut because the jagged edges of my skin where the wood splinter had entered and been extracted had crusted dark purple. But it was the ooziness that really got to me. I didn’t want to know that much about how my insides worked.

“Yes.” He said it without rancor and continued cleaning the gash, apparently unperturbed by the stomach-churning sight. “But I’ve come to the conclusion I’d be doing the same thing if I were you. Who have you crossed off?”

I concentrated on the crack that replicated a lightning bolt in the ceiling plaster. “Tres, Cinco, Nueve.”

“Not bad for a month’s worth of work. Six more to go.”

“Let’s call it seven,” I murmured, holding my breath as Walt gently pressed the sides of the wound back together. “I can’t just ignore Skip.”

Walt anchored the new bandage with tape. He didn’t reply until the last piece had been smoothed in place. “No, I don’t suppose you can.” He did give me a smile before he left, but it was meager and tinged with sadness.

Clarice knows me better than anyone. She booted me out of my self-pity mire by plopping on the bedside chair with a pad of paper and pen in her hands.

“Dictation,” she announced. “What’s our to-do list?” Moping is not in her dictionary.

Emmie trailed in behind her and climbed up on the bed. She burrowed into the pillow nest and rested her head against my good shoulder. Then she turned to the first page of
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?
and slid her finger under a line of silly rhyme, silently sounding out the words.

“Shopping,” I replied with a grin.

“Goody,” Clarice grunted. “I take it your alternate forms of communication have been compromised?”

“Matt had several hours with all of the phones in his possession, so I’d say yes.” I chuckled. “I want another one of those bug detector doodads, too. They come in handy. And a storage unit in Woodland. How do you feel about adding a trusty used pickup to our stable? That way, I won’t have to abscond with your precious station wagon every time there’s an emergency.”

Clarice darted a narrow scowl my direction, but she scrawled it on the list.

The tools of my new occupation. Mobility, stealth, surprise. I might be a rookie, but I was learning.

SNEAK PEEK

at the next installment in the Mayfield mystery series

HIDE & FIND

A Mayfield Mystery — book #3

Jerusha Jones

When an expansion project results in the discovery of a priceless trove of stolen artwork, Nora Ingram-Sheldon learns just how personal her criminal fugitive husband's quest is. Clues are dropping into place as even more pop up.

But can she trust Skip to feed her the information she needs to keep the boys' camp at Mayfield safe, even as the number of boys under Walt Neftali's care increases? And what is she supposed to do with her newly-arrived, newly twelve-stepping mother-in-law in the wilds of Washington State's backwoods?

Bolstered by the support and sharp eye of her executive assistant, Clarice, and her nosy cadre of neighbors, Nora hurries to fit the disparate pieces together while attempting to evade her husband's increasingly impatient, revenge-seeking former clients.

CHAPTER 1

He swiped a trickle of sweat from his eyebrow just before the droplet had a chance to break free and splat on his pudgy cheek. I’d been querying him about the attributes of the pickup trucks in his lot for the past half hour, and he had yet to make full eye contact with me. Either I am grotesque or he was not blessed with the personality necessary to be a successful salesman.

He wasn’t sweating because of the weather. We were hunched on the leeward side of the cinderblock office, shouting snatches of sentences at each other. A bitter wind swirled and howled, whipping through the evergreen branches of the trees that marked the property line and tearing at the edges of our clothing.

I had a problem. Clarice had dropped me off at G & M Auto Sales on the edge of Woodland city limits before she continued on to purchase a new arsenal of prepaid cell phones. The concept of divide and conquer had made sense when we divvied up the tasks earlier, but I had no way to contact her at the moment. So my only option for getting home to Mayfield before dark was to convince this reticent young man to sell me a pickup, preferably a reliable one.

Not being a mechanic myself, reliability was a matter of conjecture on my part or dependence upon his opinion, which I was beginning to doubt. As far as I could tell, the young man was neither G nor M, but he was the only other ambulatory human being on the premises.

“Let’s go inside,” I shouted in his ear.

He nodded and sidled along the wall until he reached the door. A portable kerosene heater was going full blast in the tiny, cluttered office, and I immediately thawed into sniffy drippiness. I pulled off my mittens and wiped the corners of my eyes. “What’s the newest truck you have out there?”

The young man flipped up the brim of his orange hunting cap and riffled through dog-eared manila folders. “1987 Chevy Silverado.”

“Is that the red one?” I’d noticed it right off, and that was a drawback. Far too flashy. Chrome everywhere and a roll bar with KC lights.

“Yep. Sweet, huh?” He hitched his thick lips to the side and shot a stream of dark juice into a jumbo-sized McDonald’s cup on the corner of the desk.

I involuntarily flinched backward a step. “How about the brown pickup next to it?”

He shrugged, shuffled a couple more files. “1982 Dodge Ram, 203,000 miles, two owners, runs okay.”

“Do you know who the two owners were?” I asked.

He grunted softly, but pawed through the pages in the file. “Yeah.” His voice cracked, and he flushed beneath his hat. He cleared his throat and continued, “Phil Riggs. It was his old man’s truck, and he must’ve inherited it. I dated his daughter once.” Another shrug. “She was picky, that one.”

I didn’t dare ask which man she was the daughter of. Nonetheless, I instinctively trusted her judgment if she'd sent this young salesman packing. “How much?”

“Uh, $3500.” His voice had turned cagey.

I scowled at the grease smudges on the top of his hat. “With that mileage? Try again.”

His big feet scraped on the floor under the desk, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “Oh, uh, handwriting’s a little messy here. I think it’s — yeah — must be $2500.”

“I’ll give you $1800 — cash — if it starts on the first attempt.”

“Oh yeah, it’ll do that.” He jumped up and snagged a key ring off a hook on the pegboard behind him.

I pinned the paperwork to the truck’s hood with my forearms and signed on the dotted lines as the engine idled roughly underneath. Then I counted out eighteen crisp Franklins and slapped them into the young man’s outstretched palm. He was sweating again.

“I’m going to call tomorrow and talk with your boss,” I shouted cheerily over the wind. “And tell him what a help you’ve been.”

He swallowed, and for a fleeting second I got a glimpse of his skittery baby blue eyes — wide, but not so innocent.

I chuckled to myself as I pulled out of the lot. Nothing like a good threat. Those nice bills would be tucked into the office safe tonight, where they belonged.

I barely had time to get to the bank. The rest of the wad in my pocket needed to be deposited in the account I’d set up last week. Just maintaining the impression of being an upstanding citizen who uses the usual government-regulated financial channels. Never mind that the cash had actually crossed the Canadian border hidden in bags of wood pellet fuel. Undeclared, of course, but I have good reasons for that.

The wind blew me through the front doors of the bank, and I quickly filled out a deposit slip. The only teller still on duty waved me over. Her sleek silver and black hair was trimmed in a neat bob, and she had just a touch of burgundy lipstick left after a long day of smiling at customers.

“You’re Nora Ingram-Sheldon?” Big brown eyes blinked at me while her fingers clicked on the keyboard. She was one of those old-school types who could fly over a 10-key without looking.

I nodded.

“You must be new in town,” she murmured.

“Down the road a way,” I replied, “at Mayfield.”

“If you’ll excuse me just a moment?” She disappeared into a backroom before I had a chance to form words.

My stomach shot straight into somersaults. Something had sent her scurrying. Was my account flagged? Had the FBI issued wanted posters or do-not-serve notices to all the local banks?

I glanced around quickly for video cameras — there were several suspended below the acoustic ceiling tiles. The closest camera steadily blinked red in a most unnerving fashion.

“Here you are, sweetie.” The teller was back. She ripped my deposit receipt off the printer, stuffed it in an envelope and slid it across the counter to me. “Better hurry.” She tipped her head toward the door where an elderly man in a blue security guard uniform waited, a clutch of keys in his hand.

He wished me a good evening in a gravely voice and held the door for me. I managed a wobbly smile of thanks and ran for my truck. Was I seconds away from being identified? Halted? Sirens blaring? They already knew my name.

For what crime? I wasn’t sure, but it could be any number of things.

I slouched in the seat, panting, and watched through the bank’s large plate glass windows as lights inside the building were flicked off one by one until only the dim after-hours fixtures glowed directly over the teller counter.

I’d crumpled the envelope in my fist. It was an odd extra touch, considering the nature of the transaction. I smoothed it flat and extracted the receipt — and something else. A note.

Nora, I have your pouch — from your husband, Skip. He said you’d come. I’ll leave in about 15 minutes, in a green Buick. Please follow to my house. Selma.