Murder at Fire Bay (4 page)

I had just got my feet back on the floor and the computer turned on when a knock came at the door to the lobby. I stiffened. That could only mean one thing, an unhappy customer. Crap! Now what?
 

I gave out an authoritative “come in.”

Instantly, an older man burst through the door, his face full of undisguised fury or was it hate?

“Yes, sir?” I said hopefully.

“I’ve been robbed!”

I stood up, as if ready to run after the thief, and resolved to myself that I would stay calm. “Please have a seat, sir, and we’ll talk this over.”

But he wasn’t going to sit down; he wanted to maintain his mad. So I remained standing. I finally got out of him that his name was George Grosse and that he was missing a very important package of machine parts for his charter boat. The parts supplier had sent the parts express and they weren’t here yet, and he wanted to know what I intended to do about it.

I assured him I would look into it ASAP and would get back to him. He stomped out of the office, muttering about finding a lawyer and a newspaper. The word “lawyer” didn’t scare me, but the word “newspaper” did. I knew Fire Bay had a weekly newspaper and it tended to latch onto anything it could. Lord, preserve me, I thought. Save me from the press. As soon as he had exited the lobby, I got on the intercom and asked Abby to come to the office.

A minute later she appeared. “Yes, Mr … er … Leo?”

“Talk to me about Mr. Grosse.”

Her face fell. Her facial expression was so contorted; it looked like a Mack truck had driven over it. She went on to tell me about various thefts that had been occurring. Tears came to her eyes. I could see it was a big source of stress for her.

“Okay, Abby, let’s get a cup of coffee, and then we’ll sit down and talk about this problem. What’ll you have, black, or with cream?”

“Cream, please,” she said between sniffles.

I told her to stay there and I would get the coffee. She gave me a smile that said she was going to be brave. I’m a sucker when women do that to me. Always have been. I can’t figure out if it’s cultural or genetic.

Volunteering to get the coffee also served to get me out on the floor again to see and be seen. Were the troops working or having a good time? Lots of chatter meant loss of production, of course, but some had to be allowed to keep the morale up. Low morale meant people could get snippy, which meant grievances could get filed, which ate up more valuable time. As I made my way to the rec room and back again, I sensed a normal level of conversation, most of it work related. After all, these people were at least in their forties, had been around for years, and knew their jobs.

Back in the office, I got another one of Abby’s brave smiles. Hopefully, I made some points getting the cup of coffee. We sat in silence for a moment, savoring our coffee, or at least that’s what I wanted Abby to think. Actually, I was thinking over my next move.

“So tell me, Abby, about these thefts.”

She proceeded to tell me how the thefts, if that’s what they were, had been going on for some time. There had been five packages that had been swiped or lost in the last month. There might have been some before that, but only in the last week or so had it come to the attention of anyone. To John Q. Public five packages might seem a lot, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of packages, such losses over a period of time tended to get overlooked.

Since Fire Bay was where it was, meaning Alaska, more packages got sent by the Postal Service per capita than in your larger urban areas. In fact, if it weren’t for the Postal Service delivering foodstuffs to the more remote villages at a relatively cheap rate, village life would have been much harsher than it was.
 

I took a last sip and came back to the present problem. “So what do the postal inspectors have to say about the thefts?”

Abby started to wring her hands. By now I knew what that meant, but I told myself I would remain calm.

“The Postal Inspectors haven’t been called,” she said. Then she fell silent, waiting, I’m sure, on an explosion from me.
 

I bit my tongue. “I see,” I said.

Chapter 4

I set my cup down with a feeling of déjà vu, yesterday still fresh on my mind. It was only nine o’clock and I already had the jitters. Yesterday had been a madhouse and today wasn’t going to be any better, what with a postal inspector sitting across from me and doing what amounted to an inquisition of poor Abby. After she had told me about the thefts, I had taken a deep breath and called the postal inspectors first and the Boss second.
 

Happy, he wasn’t. “Bronski! What the hell is going on down there?”

“Well, Boss, as you might remember, I just got here a couple of days ago!”

I heard a deep sucking noise on the other end, the cigar was being lit. I grinned. The Boss was going to get himself in trouble someday, smoking inside a postal facility.

I waited until I heard a long exhale and then continued with my tale.

“I imagine, what with all the other personnel problems, the thefts got pushed into the background.”

“Yeah, I should have known things weren’t right down there. The grievances started coming in late last spring. They can be ignored only so long before the crap hits the fan, but I guess you know that.”
 

This was a shocker, coming from the Boss. Normally, he tended to ignore or dismiss grievances, preferring to let them be handled by the labor people. But yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about, having had a few come at me a couple of years ago.

“Who were the grievances against?” I asked.

“Oddly enough, it was the supervisor.”

“Really?” I responded. “I would have thought with his drinking problems, it would have been the O.I.C.”

There was another sucking noise, and I waited while the Boss coughed his lungs open.

“Nope.” He gagged. “Except for one or two, they were about the supervisor. I was never able to get to the bottom of it . . . not enough time. At first, I thought the union steward had it in for the supervisor, but the steward won most of them at step three. So they were legit, but some of them were a little nit-picky, if you ask me.”

“So who’s coming down?” he asked.

I gritted my teeth. “John Crouch.”
 

The Boss laughed. “Your favorite postal inspector, eh . . . Leo?”

“Yeah, my favorite,” I had answered. And with that I’d rung off. Needless to say, Crouch was not a favorite person of mine. I had had a few run-ins with the s.o.b. Run-ins about rules I thought were in the gray area of postal regulations.
 

* * *

“Someday I’m going to get you,” he had bragged. And now, here he sat, slim, trim, gray-headed, white shirt and all, putting the cold eye on a hapless Abby. She had practically melted down into a puddle. When Crouch put that blue-eyed stare on you, you knew you might as well kiss the kids goodbye. I had already learned Abby was a divorced woman with three school-age kids at home. She needed this job.
 

This was a situation Crouch enjoyed, having a victim about to pee their pants.

“Tell me again, Abby, exactly how long these thefts have been going on.”

The asshole had only asked her three times. It occurred to me she was due some representation from the union since she was just acting as a supervisor. While John put the cold stare on Abby, I got up and went out the door. I doubted he even noticed my absence.
 

I made a beeline for a sorting case where Martha sat, gently shoving letters into their respective slots.
 

“Martha,” I said quietly, “I think you’d better come to the office.”

Her green eyes searched my face. “Why?”

I took a deep breath. I was going to catch hell for this.

“Abby is being questioned by a postal inspector.”

Her hand paused in mid-air, her eyes grew wide, and her mouth became a straight line. She uttered only one word. “Hell!”

“Give me a minute to get back in the office, and then knock, okay?”

She nodded. Every Postal Service employee is supposed to be accompanied by a union rep or a co-worker when hauled into the office. Management knows this, of course, but if the employee doesn’t say anything, the manager or whoever, often just forges ahead. John Crouch wouldn’t be happy with me, but I did it for management’s sake as much as for the employee. A lawyer would tear up the statements made by an intimidated employee faced by someone like John Crouch.
 

I had barely sat down when a knock sounded at the door. Crouch gave me a look. I shrugged as I walked to the door. There she stood, drawn up to full height, which must have been just under six feet, ready to do battle.
 

Martha strode past me, clipboard in hand.

“All right, what the hell is going on here? Abby, not another word, you understand?”
 

Abby could only nod and swallow—I suspected her throat had probably turned to sandpaper.

Crouch gave me a dirty look, but I shook my head and put on what I hoped was a surprised, innocent look. He would get no help from me. In a perverse way, I was looking forward to this little encounter.

“I was simply asking a few preliminary questions about a problem here at the post office,” said Crouch.

By now the clipboard was beating a rhythm on Martha’s Levi’s.

“Crouch, you know better than that. Why wasn’t I notified?”

He rose to a standing position. “That’s
Mr. Crouch
to you!”

I remained seated. This was like a tennis match where your head swivels from side to side trying to keep track of the ball. Abby’s head and mine moved in synch from Martha to Crouch and then back again.
 

A smile came to Martha’s face.

“Oh, is it then? John, you know I am equal to you in labor situations like this!”

There was a pause, as the two stood nose to nose. The only sound was the clipboard making an occasional slap on what I imagined to be a classy leg. That image set me to thinking about being a married man and needing to give my Jeanette a call that evening.
 

Since there was a break in the battle, I decided to take a hand and stood up.

“Let’s sit down,” I said. “Shouting at one another isn’t going to fix anything.”

For a minute I thought they were going to stand there forever, but finally Crouch sat, followed slowly by Martha, as if she was afraid he was going to pull something weird. When it came to a man like John Crouch, well, you had to be on guard. He had a mean reputation in Alaska.

I kept on with my platitudes, hoping they would stop glaring at one another. Eventually, they settled back in their chairs and their faces relaxed . . . a little.

“Now, about the thefts,” I said.

Abby now looked at me with nothing short of adoration. I felt sorry for her. She was in way over her head in this matter. She had just had the job of temporary supervisor for a week and she probably didn’t really want the job to begin with. I suspected the Boss had appointed her solely because she had more seniority than most of the station’s employees. If only life were that simple when determining who was qualified to be a boss.

“Tell me, Abby,” I asked gently, “how did you happen to notice the articles were missing?”

“I was doing paperwork when some totals didn’t add up. You know, incoming and outgoing.” She was relaxed now; her hands had stopped their wringing.

“Good going,” I said, and gave her a smile.
 

Crouch rolled his eyes, while Martha kept hers steely, ready to pounce.

I continued quietly with the questioning. I made it plain that Abby was not responsible and indeed deserved praise for coming forward with the problem. Her face radiated even more adoration, which embarrassed me no end. I ended the session with some thoughts on how we were going to catch the thief, if there truly was one. This left Crouch somewhat unhappy, as he wanted a scapegoat. Now he would have to go back to Anchorage empty-handed. Well, too . . . bad.
 

He left immediately, with an admonition to get the situation in hand, or fur would fly, meaning, I suspected, that everyone in the station would get the third degree, overhead lamp and all. I gave him my best cheesy grin as I walked him out the door and told him that, of course, we would give it the highest priority. Which was a lie on my part and he probably knew it. But it would go into his report and his rear would be covered.

As I walked back across the main floor thinking about my next move, Martha sidled up to me with her hand held out. “Well, Mr. Postmaster, you just made points with the Union,” she said with a smile.
 

I assured her it was nothing, just doing my job.
 

She nodded and released my hand. “Uh huh, you don’t like Crouch either, do you?”

She had me there. I didn’t, but I decided not to say as much. Such things can come back to haunt you, so I hemmed and hawed, much to her amusement. She left me standing there in the middle of the floor watching as she made her way back to her case. I sighed. Her Levi’s were really tight.