Penny joined her, a hand on one hip, the other across her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun while she read the sign over on the building frontage, lettered in black italics.
“Millcreek Fashions. Who in their right mind would run a business way out here?”
Nancy peeled off, striding towards the front double doors. She grabbed both handles and shook them, then turned to Elizabeth and Penny with a quick head shake, indicating they were locked.
“This way.” Elizabeth set off for the loading bay with Penny following along behind. When a man appeared on the dock, Elizabeth called, “Excuse me, I need to speak to one of your managers?”
The guy looked back at the main building where he’d come from, and replied in Spanish with a shrug.
Penny huffed in disgust. “He says there’s no one here. Thinks we came down in the last rain.”
“A manager,” Elizabeth called to him. “Quiero ver al gerente—your manager,” she added.
The guy raised both palms and shook his head, meaning, “I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, like hell you don’t,” mumbled Penny.
At that moment, Nancy joined them, walking quickly from the other side of the building, thumbing back over her shoulder. “Trish’s car’s here, all right. Around the other side.”
“Where?”
They retraced their steps, following Nancy past the front entrance and down the opposite side of the building where several cars were lined up in a makeshift parking lot.
Nancy pointed down the line. “The one on the end. Dark gray Lexus.”
Elizabeth and Penny followed as she marched off down the line of cars to a dust-covered dark gray Lexus at the end, the front grille almost touching the side of the building, windows rolled right up.
After running an appraising eye over the car, Penny let out a soft whistle. “Whoa! Very nice. How’d she afford to buy a car like this?”
“Told me she saved up for it,” Nancy replied. Her dubious flinch told Elizabeth even she didn’t believe it.
Elizabeth tried the door first. “It’s locked.” Then she bent to the passenger’s window, cupping her hand to the glass as she peered in. “You sure it’s hers?”
Nancy pointed at the plates. “Registration’s hers.”
“So where is she?”
“’Scuse me. What are you doing here?” It was a woman’s voice, calling out to them from behind.
All three turned in unison to see a dark-haired woman in hip-hugging jeans and a slim-fitting blouse walking towards them. She looked in her mid- to late thirties, black hair tied back, suspicion forming two lines etched into her forehead between her dark eyes. She paused a few yards from them. “This is private property. Didn’t you see the sign?” she asked, jerking her head back toward the driveway.
“I drove right in here. We didn’t see any sign,” Penny said.
Gesturing towards the Lexus, Elizabeth said, “Can tell me where the owner of this car is?”
The woman’s line of sight crossed to the car. She made a dismissive face before meeting their gaze again. “I don’t know. It’s been there since yesterday but I don’t know who owns it. No one here, I can tell you that much.”
Moving back a few paces, Elizabeth looked up and across the building. “What do you do here? Are you a garment manufacturer?”
Somewhat defensive now, the woman folded her arms, glancing up the signage above. “This is a private business. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“We’re looking for the owner of this car—Patricia Tomes. Do you know where she is?”
“I don’t know anybody by that name.”
“Do you mind if I come in and ask your employees if anyone knows where she is?”
The woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other, head tilting. “They don’t know anything. Like I said, the car’s been here since yesterday.”
“Can’t we just ask?”
The corners of her mouth dropped into an irritated scowl. “I think you better leave now.”
Penny tugged Elizabeth’s sleeve. “I think we should do as the lady says.”
The three of them walked to Penny’s car, each passing the occasional glance back to where the woman stood her ground, glaring after them until they reached the car.
Elizabeth pulled out her phone. “That’s it. I’m calling Delaney.” She dialed, waited, but the phone went straight to voice mail. “Lance, call me when you get this message. It’s Elizabeth.”
“We’re leaving?” Nancy said. “Just like that? What about Trish? I need to know she’s okay.”
“We’ll find her. Look, she could have simply broken down and pulled in here. She could have called for a cab and gone home while the car gets picked up. She could be back at your place right now, waiting for you,” Elizabeth said, although she didn’t believe it herself.
“You think?”
While Elizabeth and Penny got back into the car, Nancy cast an aggrieved look back at the building. “Gimme a sec, will ya? I’m gonna try her.” Nancy pressed buttons on her phone and waited. After a few moments, she shook her head and hung up. “Nothin’. She’s not there,” she said and got into the back seat.
“Well, if the people at Millcreek Fashions don’t want to tell us who they are, and what they do, I know someone who might.”
Penny slipped the key into the ignition. “Who are you calling?”
Elizabeth punched in the number and put up her hand, gesturing for Penny to wait while she put the phone to her ear. The phone rang twice before it was picked up.
“Well, hello,” he said. “Tell me you’ve changed your mind about dinner.”
Slipping into the front passenger seat of Penny’s car, Elizabeth cast a quick look back to find the woman standing with her arms folded, still watching them. She forced a smile into her voice, and said, “I wish I were. But alas, I’m going to ask you another favor.”
“Another one? This is becoming a habit.”
As if she wasn’t already aware of that. “Listen, I need some information about a company in the fashion industry. I’m guessing you’d know most of them.”
The smile in his voice lightened his tone. “Michael Corleone once famously said, ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ I’ve survived many a dip in the road living by those words. Hold on a sec, will you, Elizabeth? Yeah, what is it?” In the background she heard a voice, and she heard him answer, “Thanks, Chrissy. Tell Governor Straussman I’m on the phone and I’ll call him right back.”
For Elizabeth’s benefit, she would have bet, letting her know he was still in tight with Walt Straussman. She gave Penny a pained look, then he was back on the line.
“Sorry about that. Now, who are we talking about and what’s the interest?”
“A little fashion company out in the back of the boonies—place called Millcreek Fashions. It’s running out of an old delivery depot, by the look of it, located thirty minutes south of the city, out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Millcreek?” he said. “Nope, never heard of it. Wait a second, I’ll ask Chrissy.” She waited while a muffled conversation took place. Then he was back. “She says she’s never heard of them. What’s this about?”
“I was just trying to find out if they were a player in the industry. You know: who runs it, who owns them, that kind of thing.”
“Well, neither of us has heard of them and believe me, anyone worth knowing would be on Chrissy’s radar. She’s like a bat.” More serious now, he asked, “Is there anything I can help with, Elizabeth?”
Now she felt in his debt again and wished she hadn’t called him. “No, truly. That’s all I needed.”
“No explanation? Come on, Elizabeth, you can’t just call a guy up, pick his brains, and dump him.”
Feeling somewhat cornered, as though having called him she now owed him a few words of explanation, she said, “It’s nothing. Just something someone said. I thought it had to do with Stacy May Charms. Obviously, I was wrong.”
>
“You think someone at this Millcreek might be helping her? Maybe harboring her or something?”
“I doubt it. If they are, they’re certainly not saying.”
“You mean you’re there now?” The concern in his tone rang clear. “Elizabeth, if these people are doing anything illegal, and you’ve been asking around about their business, it could make them very nervous. You have no idea the lengths some of these lowlifes will go to keep their operations off the radar. If you think Stacy’s out there, call the police, let them deal with it.”
She looked back to where the woman was striding purposefully back to the front entrance of Millcreek Fashions with her phone to her ear. She shot Elizabeth a look, then went inside and the door slammed shut behind her.
“Do you think?”
“Absolutely. Tell me where you are, I’ll have someone come get you.”
“There’s no need. I’m here with my secretary. We’re leaving now.”
She thanked him and hung up, then closed the door and put her seatbelt on.
“Clay’s never heard of them,” she told Penny. “He said to leave, let the police deal with it. He thinks if they’re doing anything illegal, they could start getting antsy, and I agree.”
Nancy sat forward, worried. “So that’s it? What about Trish?”
Elizabeth turned in her seat. “What do you want us to do? Storm the place? They’re not letting us in.” Seeing the concern in Nancy’s face, she said, “Listen, I know you’re worried, but as soon as I get hold of Delaney, I’ll tell him everything—about the car, the tracking system, everything. But right now, Clay thinks it’s probably not a good idea for us to stick around out here. We should go.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Penny hit the ignition and put the car into reverse.
In the back seat, Nancy folded her arms and scowled out the passenger window, saying, “I’m not happy about this.”
“Duly noted,” Elizabeth told her and dialed Delaney’s number again. Again, it went straight to voice mail.
“Where the hell is he? Remind me to call his office when we get home,” she told Penny.
“Will do.” After swinging the car around in a wide semicircle, Penny put it into drive, heading back the way they came.
Sitting forward between the seats again, Nancy said, “You were talking to Clay Farrant, right?”
Penny addressed her in the rearview mirror. “She sure was. Handsome, rich, single; thinks Elizabeth is a beautiful and talented woman. He wants to take her out to dinner and treat her like a princess. Of course, in Elizabeth’s eyes that makes him a skunk,” she added.
“I didn’t say he was a skunk.” Somewhat irritated by the comment, Elizabeth turned to the passenger window and found herself pouting. “He’s already spoken for. I told you that. And besides,” she added in a defensive tone, “he’s not my type. I’m discerning.”
“Hon, you married Richard McClaine. How discerning would you have to be?”
Elizabeth flicked her secretary a razor-edged stare.
Penny looked suitably shamed and said, “Sorry. “I’m just saying.”
Nancy snorted. “Trish went to school with Clay Farrant. She said he always had some scheme or other going on. They called him the Magician. Anything he put his hand to miraculously turned into cash. Now they’re calling him the Magician of Manufacturing. Rich or not, I gotta say, he wouldn’t be my type, either.” Picking up on the loaded silence that followed, she added, “I mean, if my preferences went that way.”
Penny twisted the wheel, checked for traffic, and guided the car slowly down the potholed lane, heading for the exit. “Well, he hit all the right notes when he launched his Rue Xeeba brand, that’s for sure. He’s got stores opening up all over the country. Once that baby floats on the stock exchange, both he and Christine Wentworth will be raking it in.” She did a face shrug. “If he asked me out, I, for one, would not spit in his eye.”
“Let’s drop it, shall we?” said Elizabeth. The whole subject had somehow struck a nerve. After putting her phone away, she leaned her elbow on the window frame, wondering why she seemed to be the only one who gave a damn about the reason Stacy May had run. And what about a little boy whose only wish was to be with his mother? Didn’t he matter?
But hidden among all these questions, something else had emerged deep down in her gut. It was a gnawing doubt she just couldn’t seem to shake. And no matter how hard she tried, it just kept getting stronger: was she really doing this for justice? To prove to the world they’d underestimated her choice of candidate? Or was she terrified that she’d been wrong about Stacy May Charms all along?
Penny hit the signal light and brought the car to a halt while she checked each way for traffic. To the left of them sat the Dumpster and the stack of papers and cardboard cartons.
“Wait. Stop here a second.” Elizabeth snapped off her seatbelt and checked the lane behind them for cars before opening the door.
Penny frowned across at her. “What are you doing?”
“Just give me a minute.”
Elizabeth got out of the car and stepped through the long, dusty grass at the side of the lane to the trodden area in front of the Dumpster. When she lifted the top, the stink that hit her made her face crumple and she automatically dropped the lid. She turned her face away—old food, rotten fish, by the smell of it, all covered in plastic bags and cardboard tubes that had once held rolls of fabric, all mixed together in a toxic cloud. Elizabeth clapped a hand over her nose and mouth, and waited for her stomach to stop roiling.
“What is it?” Penny called from the car.
“Oh, dear lord, I have no idea, but it stinks.”
Penny had gotten out of the car to join her. “What do you expect? You go opening Dumpsters sitting on the side of the road in the sun, they’re gonna stink. What are you looking for?”
Still holding her hand to her nose and mouth, Elizabeth stood grimacing while she waited for the nausea to pass, when her attention snagged on the flattened-out cardboard cartons neatly stacked in bunches tied together with twine.
“I need a knife. Or some scissors or something. What have you got?”
By now, Nancy had also gotten out of the car to join them, a puzzled expression tweaking up one side of her lip. “I don’t carry scissors, but I’ve got this.” She yanked a set of keys from her pocket, selected a tiny blue pocket knife with a two-letter logo on the handle and flicked out a tiny blade. “It’s not too sharp. I use it for doing my nails. Trish got the pink one. What do you want it for?” She passed it across.
“That’ll do.” Elizabeth took the knife and squeezed one finger beneath the twine on the first stack of boxes, and sawed the tiny blade back and forth until the ties gave way and the boxes cascaded apart like a deck of cards. She lifted the top carton and turned it—nothing on the reverse side. The second one was the same—all packaging documentation had been removed, leaving an empty square of rough white paper where it had been torn off.
Penny moved a little closer, taking and stacking the discarded cartons as Elizabeth sorted through them. “What are you looking for?”
On the underside of the second-to-last box in the pile was a torn label with a partial address scrawled across it that read: Carringwa—
“This is it.” Angling the flattened cardboard towards Penny, Elizabeth tapped the label with her fingertip. “Carringway Prison. I’d bet my life on it. This is how the drugs are being smuggled into the prison. I knew it. I knew Stacy May Charms had a damn good reason for breaking parole and running. She figured out how the drugs were getting in and now someone wants to shut her up.”
“I don’t understand,” said Penny. “How could anyone ship drugs into the prison from this place? And in cartons? That’s a lot of hooch.”
“It’s somehow incorporated in the fabric. Or the buttons, maybe. I’m sure of it.”
“So why didn’t Stacy just tell you about it when she had the chance?”
“Because every time I spo
ke to her, we had a prison guard in the room—either Trish Tomes or Kathy Reynolds. Who knows, maybe she even thought I was involved.”
Penny finished the thought. “So if she didn’t know who she could trust, she figured she was safer not trusting anyone.”
“Exactly. Stacy and Amy were both on the same work detail when, somehow, they both discovered how the drugs were coming in. Now Amy’s dead. Stacy said she was murdered but no one believes her. They think she was just another drug addict who’d gotten hold of a syringe that Lois Hankerman brought in. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Stacy said Amy would never use again, that someone killed her. And that’s why Stacy ran. And whoever is behind this Millcreek,” she said, waving dismissively toward the building they’d just left, “is the same person who’s running the drug operation. That’s the person who murdered Amy and threatened Stacy and her son. And knowing what happened to Amy, Stacy’s got no doubt that they’ll act on that threat. Her son was in real danger.”
“Why didn’t she just tell Warden Glassy? Why break parole and run? I mean, she could have told me, couldn’t she?” This was from Nancy, who had followed them back to the car and gotten in while listening to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth twisted in her seat to face her. “Okay, think about it: Stacy and Amy discover drugs being smuggled in, right? It’s a well-run operation. It would have to be. In a prison like Carringway, there’s a gauntlet of security checks and metal detectors to run. They’d pick up anything coming into the place. I know, I’ve seen how many checks visitors are subjected to.”
“Everyone is. It’s Corrections policy,” Nancy told her.
“So the only way you’d get something in through the back door is if someone in a position of authority knows what’s going on and approves those shipments. So who can Stacy trust that she can tell? You? The prison officers? I doubt it. She can’t even talk in front of them. Then Amy dies, and Stacy gets the threat: ‘You tell anyone what you know—you die. Or worse still, here’s a picture of your son. Connect the dots, you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out what would happen to him.’”
The Elizabeth McClaine Thriller Boxed Set Page 49
