Cash & Carry (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 4) (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

The bunkhouse smelled like bacon. No matter what had happened overnight, twenty-two hungry boys had to be fed. It was also chore time, and the halls were crowded with boys intent upon their designated tasks.

Walt was in the kitchen supervising, but discretely so, from his position near the window. Thomas, my favorite dreadlocked fifteen-year-old, creatively choreographed the lineup of bread slices in front of the rotisserie-style toaster with a wood-handled paint brush that had been commissioned as a butter slatherer. Two younger boys with dishtowels draped over their shoulders bickered in undertones about the proper way to turn scrambled eggs on the griddle. If nothing else, all the boys under Walt’s tutelage could get jobs as short-order cooks when they graduated from the camp.

Walt had seen me coming and had my second cup of coffee of the morning ready and doctored the way I liked it. “Sleep?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Then you’ll eat, at least.” Walt motioned toward one of the boys—Collin, I think his name was—at the grill, and I was served a plate mounded with eggs and bacon, adorned with two slices of toast cut diagonally into tidy triangles, with remarkable efficiency about three seconds later.

Thomas gave me a two-fingered salute and a wide grin from his station, then mouthed the word, “Sourdough.”

I grinned my thanks.

“I suppose we need to talk,” Walt said.

“Don’t we always?”

He led the way to his cramped office and closed the door behind us.

“Uh?” I vainly looked around for a safe place to perch my plate and mug and bumped the bulging rucksack that hung from my shoulder into Walt’s midsection in the process.

He grabbed my mug and eased the rucksack off my shoulder. I dropped into the folding chair on the close side of his desk while he sidled around to the other side and returned my mug.

“Is there space for a bigger office for you in the garage?” I asked.

Walt shook his head. “I want the boys to have the new accommodations. But maybe after most of them move over there I can co-opt one of the old bedrooms here for an office.”

It suddenly occurred to me that I’d never seen Walt’s personal living space. He lived on-site, presumably in one of the many bedrooms along the sagging length of the bunkhouse. An absolute dearth of privacy. I wondered if he even had a comfortable chair for reading, or whatever he liked to do at the end of a long day.

I quickly peeked at the edges of the room. There was no place to hide a folding cot in his office, so at least he wasn’t sleeping in here.

“Do you have any worries about what the boys saw?” I flinched at my own words, but I wanted to address the issue head-on.

Walt’s blue eyes were uncomfortably intense, but I held his gaze without wavering. I needed to know the truth.

“No.” He sighed and pulled a stack of folders out of the way so I could set my plate on the desk. “I probed as much as I thought wise, and none of them indicated a full knowledge of what they’d found. I think Latrelle was a little grossed out, but they all assumed it was a survival-of-the-fittest animal thing. Not human.”

I nodded slowly, glad Walt and Des concurred on the subject of the boys’ impressions. I trusted their judgment.

“The FBI doesn’t want the fact that it’s human advertised either,” I said. “They asked Des and Trudy to spread that same misinformation as needed—that it was an animal carcass that made the hounds go crazy. Just a regular day in the forest food chain.”

“Convenient.” Walt wasn’t buying it.

I shrugged. “They’ve identified the body, so it’s the how, not the who, that’s concerning them now.”

Walt’s eyes narrowed to little slits that shot blue light at me like lasers. “You mean you identified the body. You wouldn’t have been out there all night if that wasn’t what you were doing.”

I stuffed half a piece of toast in my mouth. The butter hit me like a shot of old whiskey, and the last of my adrenaline tension drained away.

“Just tell me this,” Walt said. “Is your Numero list one shorter?”

I nodded around the wad in my mouth.

Walt settled back in his chair, seemingly resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t get more information out of me. I’d certainly made a habit of being sparse with details, but he also knew I did it for the boys’ protection. I didn’t want to involve him in my mess any more than was necessary. Instead, he glanced at the rucksack on the floor. “Dwayne’s about to take off, isn’t he? He’s been particularly restless the past week.”

“Last night made up his mind for him,” I said. “Will he be okay?”

“He’ll be free. Which is all he wants.”

Freedom was what I wanted too. Freedom from the looming threat of my husband’s former money laundering clients and their cruel tactics. For a brief moment, I was irrationally jealous of Dwayne. Just picking up and leaving whenever he wanted to. No ties.

But my ties were the only things holding me together. Without them, I’d be a sorry, dismal woman wandering the woods by myself. If I was going to end up as a heap of bones just like Joe eventually anyway, I might as well go down fighting.

Even though he’d correctly identified Dwayne’s rucksack, I didn’t know if Walt knew about its contents, and I wasn’t going to tell him. Yet another item in a long list of things I wouldn’t tell people, even the people I most respected and loved.

Except this particular secret wasn’t really mine, so I wasn’t at liberty to share it. Besides, blabbing about it would only raise even more questions that I didn’t have the answers to, and I was beyond weary of questions I didn’t have the answers to.

I straightened and pulled my mind out of its useless downward spiral. Back to the land of the living. I sucked in a breath. “In addition to all the other favors you’ve already done for me, can I ask for one more?”

One side of Walt’s mouth lifted. Not really a smile, maybe a grimace.

I plunged ahead. “I guess it’s two things—Emmie. Will you be her legal guardian if anything happens to me, and will you include her in your schooling program? She’s reading like crazy. There’s no stopping her. But she needs direction. And, well, math. Clarice can have her practice multiplication with sets of silverware only so often. We had to add fish forks and soup spoons last week. Emmie doesn’t even know she’s doing multiplication, but she can.” I ran out of breath and stopped.

The light of my life—Emmie. And the most important requests I’d made of Walt yet.

He did that smiling from the inside thing I loved so much and nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same things. Yes and yes.”

“Today?”

Walt chuckled. “It’s Friday. How about if we get a running start on Monday? I’ll do assessments, set up her curriculum. She’ll have company in her grade level. Odell for sure, and Purcel for a few subjects. He has some catching up to do.” Walt leaned forward on his elbows. “This has been good for Eli. He’s actually sitting down to schoolwork these days. Having kids near his own age has helped tremendously.”

I’d been gobbling breakfast and paused to wipe a glob of scrambled eggs off my chin. “I forgot to mention that the body is six to eight weeks old. Which means none of us are in immediate danger—well, not from
that
, at least.” I waved my hand to encompass all
that
. Walt knew what I meant. “I’m so sorry to bring this trouble to Mayfield, but there’s no reason to think the boys—and you—can’t carry on with all your regular activities.”

Walt sighed, and the worry dent for which I was solely responsible settled between his brows. “I didn’t set up this camp so the boys would be isolated from everything bad, Nora. I was just hoping to reduce the distractions, filter what they have to face so it comes at them in manageable portions. They’re doing okay. It’s you who’s getting bombarded. How are you?”

I really, really didn’t want to think about that. In fact, I’d been trying desperately all night and now morning not to think about that. About what the dead body of a known drug overlord mobster on my property meant.

I like pretending. Pretending is good. It might even promote longevity.

My plate was empty, so I stood and gave Walt a wobbly smile. “In need of a nap.”

oOo

I awoke to the deliriously gorgeous scent of cinnamon rolls and immediately sat up and placed my feet flat on the floor. I pushed my hair out of my eyes and sniffed again to deepen the invigorating effect.

I had places to go and things to do.

My newfound resolve might have had something to do with Clarice’s shouting, “You’re normal. Normal. Normal. Normal. Crazy situation. Normal person. Get a grip,” when I’d returned to the mansion dragging Dwayne’s rucksack, sputtering on my last fumes, both physically and emotionally.

Well, that, plus sleep. But Clarice is really good at providing perspective.

And then I tried to stand up.

That was a mistake.

I’d sort of forgotten I’d been in a spinning, lurching, seatbelt-straining near collision yesterday. At least my mind had already shoved the experience into the make-sure-you-learn-valuable-lessons-from-this-unfortunate-incident dusty corner of old history. Apparently, my body had paid more attention—a lot more.

I am so getting old. My back especially. And my shoulders. Knees. Elbows. And a tender spot right below my sternum. Good grief. And even more especially my pelvis. My pelvis and hips were not cooperating. I did not want to know what color they were.

I let out a laborious, gut-wrenching groan but made it fully upright with the assistance of a bedpost.

A hot shower eased away some of the ache, but I ate lunch standing up in order to avoid an embarrassing reoccurrence of an old-lady grunting session. Clarice was still fussing over the fact that she’d missed the opportunity to feed Des and his deputies last night. But her irritation had resulted in a plethora of pans of cooling cinnamon rolls propped all over the kitchen—the cause of the odor that had tricked me into thinking I’d been transported to heaven earlier. However, they gave me an idea.

I called Des and, judging by the raspiness in his voice, was pretty sure I’d woken him up. But he gave me the address of the semitruck driver’s employer.

Then I called Loretta. Tarq was sleeping a lot more now, particularly after the previous night’s crises, but also generally. The cancer was shutting his body down—slowly, but inexorably. Loretta needed to get out of the cabin, needed the pick-me-up of a girls’ day out, even if it was just a series of errands. Plus, I needed a driver since I was without wheels for the near future.

By the time Clarice had packaged several dozen cinnamon rolls into aluminum foil tents to preserve their fresh baked gooey goodness, Loretta had arrived in Tarq’s old Datsun pickup with the nifty homemade plywood canopy on the back. Nothing like touring in style.

Emmie stood by the kitchen door, shuffling from one foot to the other, a notebook and colored pencil set clutched to her chest. I gave her the approval nod, and she rewarded me with a wide grin across her pale face. If the semitruck driver was back at work today—which would surprise me tremendously, but if he was—maybe he’d like to meet the two people he hadn’t killed the day before.

Emmie didn’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from the jostling we’d endured, proving that my hypothesis about the strong correlation between age and physical trauma repercussions was correct.

Loretta had become expert at navigating Mayfield’s washed-out creek bed plus boulders driveway. Emmie and I held the cinnamon roll packages on our laps. I braced my toes on the floorboards for balance, but Emmie bobbled like a pinball between Loretta and me. I pressed my thigh against hers so she could get a little leverage and tried to ignore the objections being registered by every muscle in my body.

“Whew,” Loretta announced once we were safely on the relatively smooth county road. “The company your semitruck driver works for must be rolling in dough if they can just write off a totaled truck and trailer and not sue you for it. I’m impressed.”

Have I mentioned that Loretta, a recovering alcoholic and my mother-in-law, is a glass-half-full sort of person? But to be putting it mildly, I too was curious about this unexpected graciousness on the part of a company I’d never heard of before.

CHAPTER 7

I was surprised to find the company’s address was within a quarter mile of the intersection where we’d had our near catastrophe. It made the driver’s boss’s assertion that the driver was going too fast for the conditions a little more believable. Try making the tight turn into the company’s parking lot with one of those big rigs and see just how much space you’d need to work—I could only imagine. Plus slick pavement and limited visibility due to dusk and road spray.

I was feeling better as Loretta rattled the Datsun through potholes the size of kiddie wading pools in the gravel lot. The huge pole barn building was sheathed in rusting corrugated metal. One of the massive roll-up garage doors was open, showing a long drive-through bay that would accommodate the entire length of a semitruck and trailer. Wet streaks on the concrete floor indicated a truck had just left.

Close to thirty trailers were parked around the perimeter of the lot, most of them in bad shape with big buckles or even ragged holes in their sides, the logos of previous owners half-heartedly scratched off or painted over with non-matching colors. Frankly, the business had a rather depressing vibe, but it was not out of character with the other light industrial plots I’d seen on the periphery of Woodland.

The building didn’t have any signs indicating the name or nature of the business, but the street number over the dented steel, people-sized door matched Des’s information, even though the 4 of 19254 was hanging upside down. I couldn’t see a single person on the property.

The Datsun pickup squealed to a stop near a terracotta planter full of dead weeds. Loretta shrugged at me over the top of Emmie’s head. “I guess if nobody’s around then we get to eat those cinnamon rolls all by ourselves. At least we could say we tried to deliver them.”

Emmie giggled. “Clarice will know. And she’ll be mad.”

“Pity. That sounds entertaining,” Loretta chirped.

I rolled my eyes at her and slid out of the pickup, carefully cradling my tin foil packets. Things were definitely getting goopy inside—the cream cheese frosting had probably melted all over the place.

Not only was the steel, people-sized door not very welcoming as a business entrance, it was locked. I pounded on it with my fist as politely as possible.

“Maybe they close early on Fridays,” Loretta said.

It was hard to know since there were no informative postings on the exterior of the building—no little clocks with the hands arranged to indicate when the owner would return or a list of business hours, or an in-case-of-emergency phone number, not even a sign threatening towing for inappropriately parked vehicles.

“But that other big door is open.” Emmie shifted her load of cinnamon rolls, and Loretta quickly bent to keep them from falling.

I tried knocking one more time then conceded temporary defeat, and we trudged across the gravel along the front of the building to the open maw of the giant garage door.

“Hellooooo,” Loretta called into the cavernous space.

The place was full of junk. Literally. Piles and piles of rusty metal junk that towered way over our heads. I suddenly wondered when I’d last had a tetanus shot.

“Cinnamon rolls,” I shouted, because if that wouldn’t entice people out of the shadows, then nothing would.

“There’s a light coming from under that door.” Loretta pointed toward the far front corner to a studded-out room that only had Sheetrock on the inside of the walls. The room stopped at one story even though the ceiling of the pole barn itself was probably three stories high, and it was likely the room into which the steel door I’d just banged on opened.

“Maybe the person was on the phone and couldn’t get up to answer the door.” Loretta strode inside, leading the way through the maze of spare parts of indecipherable purpose.

I’d been thinking less charitable thoughts and chided myself for it. An employee of this company had essentially spared Emmie’s and my lives yesterday. So what if they didn’t want to open their door to us. They were under no obligation to do so. Maybe it was a by-appointment-only type of business.

There was no obvious organizational system to the junk, except that the closer we got to the little enclosed room, the newer the junk seemed to be. Less rust, more paint. Car parts from models I recognized. And big chunks of things like boilers or industrial machinery.

Loretta was almost within arm’s reach of the door when it opened. The man, with a shock of red hair salted at the temples and dressed in greasy Carhartt cargo dungarees and a plaid flannel shirt, was saying something, but his voice trailed off as he stared at us with stunned bewilderment, as though we’d just caught him in the popping flashbulbs of a paparazzi mob.

“Hello there,” Loretta said. “Boy, do we have a treat for you.” She snatched a packet of cinnamon rolls from Emmie and thrust them just below the man’s chin, backing him into the room as she kept right on walking.

The man’s eyes darted from side to side, and he let out a little
urrp
, stumbling in his hasty retreat. There was no escaping Loretta’s good intentions.

Emmie and I crowded close behind her, and we filled the overheated little room to capacity.

Another man and a young woman were also in the room—clearly an office of some sort—and it appeared as though we’d intruded upon the tail end of a conference. The young woman sat behind a cheap melamine desk, and she was tapping a stack of papers into order next to a computer monitor.

“Oh, hey Laney,” I said, and the questioning look that had been on her face as she’d raised her head slid into fleeting, wide-eyed terror, her lips bloodless.

The men’s heads were on a swivel, trying to deal with the influx of females into their little enclave. I decided I’d better take charge of the situation before the wrong conclusions were leapt to.

I propped my tin foil packets on Laney’s desk and turned, sticking my right hand out toward the better-dressed second man, assuming he was the manager. “I’m Nora Ingram-Sheldon. I was driving the pickup truck involved in that mess with your semi yesterday.”

Upon closer inspection, the second man wasn’t so well-tailored. He looked more like a sales rep, with the way they’re always a tad overdressed for the situation, hoping to make a good impression, but they invariably have a tag showing or loose threads hanging which reveal the inferior quality of their best clothes.

He also flashed the large, insincere smile of a top commission earner as he grasped my hand in return. “Shane Bigelow, president and CEO.” Then he wrapped his other very warm hand around mine as well, and I shuddered. It creeps me out when men do that.

“This is Rod Kliever, our operations manager,” the cheap suit nodded toward the red-haired man who was backed into a corner, still scowling with a wary eye cast in Loretta’s direction, “and I take it you know our office manager, Laney, here.” He released my hand so I could shake with the others, although Laney’s limp, barely-there grip left something to be desired. She refused to make eye contact with me.

Mr. Bigelow made a fuss over Emmie, calling her ‘little lady’ and patting her on the head too hard.

She wrinkled her nose but dredged up a display of good manners which made me proud. “We brought cinnamon rolls to say thank you,” she said in a tiny voice, pressing against my side. Better than kicking him in the shins, which is what I wanted to do. I gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze.

“Well, well, well.” Mr. Bigelow rocked back on his heels. “We’ll just have to share these goodies with the guys, eh, Rod? That’s mighty kind of you.”

“Are you in the transportation business, Mr. Bigelow? I own the freight terminal two exits south of here along I-5.” I figured I’d offer what was already public knowledge in an attempt to get a few more details about my benefactor.

“Call me Shane, please. We can certainly be on a first name basis.” He bunched his lips and sucked in air as though making sure all his teeth were in place before continuing. “Repairs, mostly. You saw the trailers out in the lot? Got quite the backlog, but we’d be happy to expedite any business you send our way, if any of your freight contractors need structural work done on their trailers.”

“You have a great location, so near the freeway. Do you deal with emergency repairs too?” I aimed my question at the operations manager, Rod Kliever, but he appeared to be mute, his ears now almost as red as his hair.

“Sure, sure.” Bigelow was all smiles. “Anything you need. Anything at all.” His palm landed, hard and demanding, right between my shoulder blades, and he pushed while flipping the deadlock on the steel door and opening it with his other hand. I was scooted out of the office in record time.

Loretta guided Emmie out right on my heels, forming an ignominious little caravan. Her face was pinched into a suspicious frown.

“Bye now,” Bigelow called with what was supposed to look like a friendly wave before he slammed the door shut.

I flinched, and my ears popped as though the air pressure had dropped with the slam. The bolt shifted back into place with a loud click.

Loretta and I jumped again, in unison this time, as the garage door at the far end of the building also came clattering down.

Sealed up tight. No signs of life. I stood there shivering in the cold, feeling as though I’d just been startled out of a bizarre dream.

“Not exactly customer service oriented,” Loretta grumbled as we climbed into the Datsun.

“And no work crews. What guys was he talking about?” I added. “They can’t only work nights.”

Emmie sighed. “We should have kept the cinnamon rolls.”

Loretta trilled a delighted giggle. “I won’t tell you I told you so, sweetheart. Where to next? Someplace nicer, I hope.”

I chewed my lip as we headed south, stewing. I still didn’t know the name of the business to which I owed gratitude for a non-lawsuit. Why didn’t Bigelow hire more people if the business was that busy? With the unemployment rate in Woodland, he would have had a line of applicants out the door—provided the door was unlocked—if he advertised positions.

And all that scrap metal inside the building—I hadn’t spotted a single piece that appeared to come from or belong to a semitrailer. But I’m not a journeyman welder or carpenter or whatever type of skilled craftsman I would need to be to recognize the materials and tools of the trade. If the company did, indeed, repair semitrailers then it made sense they wouldn’t mind so much about needing to repair the one I’d helped wreck the evening before.

Still, it seemed fishy. Absolutely fishy. I agreed with Emmie—what a sad waste of cinnamon rolls.

I wondered if Selma had details about her daughter’s employment. But I didn’t want to worry her. She’d been so relieved when Laney had finally landed another job that paid enough for her to rent her own apartment. I hadn’t asked if Laney was happy at her new job.