by Cindi Myers
He’d grown up in a place like this. His family—his parents and sister—still lived there. Whenever he visited, he couldn’t wait to leave, smothered by all the problems he couldn’t fix.
“It’s not like I thought it would be,” Smitty said.
He glanced at her strapped into the passenger seat of the ten-year-old mustard-colored Chevy pickup. Her blond hair, normally twisted back in a bun, hung loose around her shoulders, the no-name jeans and peasant top making her look younger and softer. More accessible.
He focused on the street once more. A man would be a fool to think there was anything soft or vulnerable about Agent Smith, especially where Jace was concerned. She didn’t exactly curl her lip in disgust when he approached, but the expression was implied.
“What do you mean?” he asked, slowing the truck to allow an elderly couple—her with a walker, him with a cane—to cross the street.
“It’s so quiet,” she said. “It doesn’t look like a place where violence has made national headlines. I expected more press, and people milling around.”
He slid a fresh stick of cinnamon gum into his mouth from the pack that rested on the dash and then gave the truck some gas. “I imagine the powers that be are tamping down any hint of panic,” he said. “From the media reports, the politicians are downplaying the poisonings as an attempted terrorist attack that has already been stopped.”
“What about the dozen potentially poisoned bottles that are unaccounted for?”
“They haven’t released that information to the press and they’re counting on us to find them before anyone else dies.”
She shuddered. “If someone else does die, the politicians will be pointing their fingers at us.”
“If that bothers you, you should be in another line of work.”
She stiffened, just as he had known she would. “I take a great deal of pride in the work the Bureau does,” she said. “As should you.”
“But I don’t waste time worrying about what a bunch of pencil pushers and pontificators think of me,” he said.
“Except those are the people who sign the bills that ultimately pay your salary,” she said.
“They need people like me more than I need people like them.” He glanced at her. “If you remember that, it makes the job a lot easier.”
“Easier to cut corners and ignore the regulations, you mean.”
He grinned. “That, too.”
She made a noise in her throat almost like a growl. Kind of sexy, but if he told her that, she would rightly blow a gasket. Smitty was the poster child for “wound too tight.”
“We need to figure out who has it in for the Strouds,” he said.
“You think that’s what’s behind this?” she asked. “Destroy their reputation by sabotaging their most popular product?”
“Don’t you?”
She didn’t answer right away, staring out at the passing scenery—a park with a bronze statue of a coal miner in overalls and hard hat, lunch bucket in one hand, a pick over his shoulder. Jace’s father could have been the model for that statue, before he got sick.
“Maybe the goal isn’t to destroy the Strouds,” Smitty said. “You said yourself the town depends on the company for jobs. Maybe someone has a grudge against Mayville. And there’s always the possibility that the target was one of the people who died, and everyone else is just a way to muddy the waters.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Whoever it is isn’t being subtle. Ricin isn’t like putting a little rat poison in someone’s soup and hoping you used enough to do the job. It only takes a few grains of ricin to kill.”
“Maybe we’ll know more after we visit the factory.”
“Rogers is supposed to brief us later today, after he and Ramirez meet with the local cops. Meanwhile, we have to move in.” The back of the truck held everything a down-on-their-luck young couple might deem worth transporting to a new home—clothes, kitchen items, a television, and an antique chest of drawers that was someone’s idea of a family heirloom. The Bureau’s support center was known for its attention to detail. They had also supplied identification for Jason and Laura Lovejoy—a surname Jace was certain was someone’s idea of a joke. The rental they were moving into was supposed to be furnished with everything else they’d need.
He turned the truck onto an unpaved side street identified by a leaning green sign as Lover’s Lane.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Smitty sneered at the sign.
“It’s probably just the first suitable place they found to rent,” Jace said. He watched the addresses on the mailboxes at the end of each drive and turned into the rutted lane at the very end of the street. The trailer was a rectangular white metal box with faded blue metal shutters, set well back from the road in the shade of a catalpa tree, the large heart-shaped leaves a brilliant green, the faded orchid-like blossoms littering the ground around the tree.
“Not what I was expecting.” Smitty ground out the words through clenched teeth.
“It fits the profile,” Jace said, shutting off the truck’s engine. “We’re broke newlyweds, remember? Besides, it’s at the end of the road, with no close neighbors to spy on us.”
Smitty got out of the truck, and he followed her up a two-foot-wide crushed gravel path to a porch, apparently made of old pallets, at the front of the trailer. She climbed the steps, inserted the key in the lock and shoved open the door.
They stood frozen for a moment, taking in the dark wood paneling, avocado-green carpet, and faux-leather sofa and matching recliner, complete with duct tape patches. The room smelled faintly of stale cigarette smoke. Smitty made a strangled sound, took a step forward and did a slow turn. “At least it looks clean.” Her eyes met his. “I’ve never lived in a trailer before.”
He had, but he wasn’t going to share that with her. “Let’s unload the truck,” he said, and moved back outside.
She didn’t immediately follow. He lowered the tailgate of the truck and pulled out a square cardboard box labeled KITCHEN. By the time he’d made it up the walkway with this burden, Smitty was waiting for him on the porch. “We have a problem,” she said.
“What is it?” Jace moved past her and carried the box to the kitchen table, a metal and Formica relic from the 1960s. A hipster might have deemed it charmingly vintage, while his parents had discarded theirs years ago as a piece of junk.
“There’s only one bed,” Smitty said.
“The rental agreement said two bedrooms.” The document, complete with their own expertly forged signatures, had been included with all their other paperwork.
“There are two bedrooms, but only one bed,” she said. The faint worry lines on her high forehead deepened.
He shrugged. “So we’ll get another bed tomorrow.”
“What are we going to do tonight?”
“I guess you can either share the bed with me or sleep on the couch.” He gave her a wolfish grin—primarily because he knew it would get a rise out of her.
Sure enough, her cheeks turned rosy and sparks all but snapped from her blue eyes. “Why should you get the bed?” she demanded.
Because we’re equal colleagues and any other time you’d be insulted at being treated with deference because you’re a woman. “Because I’m bigger and taller. You fit the couch better. Of course, I’m always willing to share.”
She twisted the plain gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. He wondered if she would take it off and throw it at him. “That is no way to speak to a fellow agent,” she said.
“No. But it’s how I might speak to my wife.”
She was saved from having to think of a retort by the crunch of tires on gravel. They both turned to watch a silver Honda creep up the drive and stop behind the truck. Agent Davis Rogers unfolded his tall frame from the driver’s seat and stood, hands on hips, studying the trailer. Sun burnished the dark brown skin
of his bare arms and glinted on the steel frames of his Wayfarers.
Smitty moved ahead of Jace to greet Rogers at the door. “This looks like a cozy little love nest,” Rogers said.
“Where are you staying?” Smitty asked.
He tucked the sunglasses into the neck of his pale blue polo shirt. “The Magnolia Inn on the other side of town.”
Jace was pretty sure the Magnolia Inn was a few stars down from wherever Smitty was used to staying, but he’d have bet she would have traded places with Rogers in a heartbeat.
“I’ll help you unload the rest of your stuff and we’ll talk,” Rogers said.
It didn’t take long for the three of them to move the assorted boxes and bags into the trailer. While Smitty opened windows, Jace made coffee, then they gathered around the kitchen table. “Ramirez and I met with the local police department,” Rogers said. “They seem pretty competent and did a good initial investigation, given their limited resources. As we already know, they think the Stomach Soother poisoning was done prior to the safety seals being applied. There was no sign of tampering with the packaging in the bottles they’ve been able to recover.”
One of Jace’s goals working on the factory floor was to determine who might have tampered with the product, and how. “What about the missing bottles?” he asked.
“Stroud’s computer system assigns a bar code to every bottle at the plant,” Rogers said. “Those bar codes are matched to shipments that go to each store. If someone uses a store loyalty card when they make a purchase, they can even tie a specific bottle to a specific customer. They were able to recall most of the suspect medication that way. These twelve bottles, however, never went to a store or made it to a consumer. They disappeared shortly after they were filled.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?” Smitty asked.
“They show up on the records as having been manufactured,” Rogers said. “There’s no trace of them after that.”
“Does that happen often?” she asked. “Maybe employees help themselves?”
“The potential has to be there,” Jace said. “But with these jobs, if you’re even suspected of stealing, you’re out on the street. And I’ll bet they have cameras on the factory floor.”
Rogers nodded. “The local cops say if the Strouds have ever had trouble with employees lifting product, they’ve handled it themselves.”
“What do the Strouds say?” Smitty asked.
“Ramirez is talking to Donna Stroud right now. She’s also making sure everything is set for you two to show up tomorrow as the newest employees of Stroud Pharmaceuticals.” He grinned. “Better you than me.”
* * *
BALLOONS, FLOWERS AND a couple of stuffed animals decorated a section of chain link fence in front of the headquarters of Stroud Pharmaceuticals. A stiff breeze rattled the ends of a ribbon bow tied to a vase of wilting daisies as Agent Ana Sofia Ramirez walked past. She stopped to study the display. The flowers lay in front of a hand-lettered sign on white poster board. “We’ll never forget you, Gini,” it read.
Virginia Elgin, chief financial officer of Stroud Pharmaceuticals, had been the third person to die after using the contaminated Stomach Soothers. The bottle, found in her desk, had been traced to a local grocery store, as had the bottles that contained the tablets that had killed Herbert Baker and Gail Benito, the first two victims. The other five victims, three of whom had died, had purchased their Stomach Soothers from two different stores in a county directly east of Mayville.
Would the missing bottles turn up on yet another store’s shelves, or in the medicine cabinet of the next victim? Were they merely lost in the system, or stashed on a shelf in the killer’s closet, waiting to stir up a new panic?
Donna Stroud was a middle-aged woman with dyed black hair in a sensible cut, dressed for business even on a Sunday afternoon in flat shoes and the type of pantsuit that had never been in or out of fashion. She greeted Ana with a firm handshake. “Thank you for coming, Agent Ramirez. My husband and I are anxious to do anything we can to get to the bottom of this tragedy. I appreciate you meeting with me on a Sunday. I hate to upset the staff any more than I have to.”
“We appreciate your cooperation,” Ana said.
“I’ve reviewed all the information you gave local and state law enforcement,” she continued when she was seated in front of Donna’s desk, a scarred oak model whose surface was obscured by towers of precariously leaning paperwork. “When did you discover that some of the product in the batch in question was unaccounted for?”
“My son brought it to my attention yesterday afternoon. I notified the state police right away.”
“That would be Parker Stroud, the plant manager?”
“Yes. He was in charge of verifying the inventory reports and noticed the discrepancy. Everyone is putting in overtime, trying to determine how this could have happened.”
“Has anything like this ever happened before—inventory going missing?”
“No!”
Ana didn’t hide her skepticism. “You’ve never had an employee decide to, say, help herself to a box of something?”
“No.” Donna leaned across the desk toward Ana. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for that sort of thing. Employees and their belongings are subject to search at any time, and we have closed-circuit TV monitoring all parts of the factory. Beyond that, we’re very careful about who we hire. We screen potential employees thoroughly, train them well, and I’m proud to say we have an industry-high retention rate. We have employees who have worked for Stroud for twenty years.”
“So you don’t have anyone you suspect might be responsible for contaminating the Stomach Soother tablets?”
“No one.”
Donna Stroud looked Ana in the eye when she spoke. She was clearly weary, and frightened. But Ana didn’t think she was lying. “We’re hoping our agents here at the facility will be able to spot irregularities you may not have noticed,” Ana said. “We appreciate your willingness to allow us access.”
Donna sat back. “It’s not as if I have much choice, is it? But I’d like to be allowed to inform Parker about what’s going on. After all, one of the agents will be working under him, and the other will be right in his office.”
“No.” Ana spoke as firmly as she could. “It’s imperative that as few people know about this operation as possible. If you’ll remember, that was part of the agreement we reached that allows you to keep the rest of your facility still operating. If you don’t feel you can uphold that agreement...” She let the words hang, an implied threat.
The lines around Donna’s mouth tightened. “I understand.”
Ana stood. “The Lovejoys will be here for orientation at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow.” She handed over a business card. “If you think of anything that might be helpful to the investigation, or spot anything suspicious, don’t hesitate to call me. That’s my direct number and I’ll answer anytime, day or night.”
Donna stood also, weariness bowing her shoulders. “Thank you, Agent Ramirez,” she said. “I hope you can get to the bottom of this quickly. Then we can at least begin to get back to normal.”
She escorted Ana out of her office. They passed a side door marked V. Elgin, CFO. Ana stopped. Donna followed her gaze to the door. “As horrible as all of this is, it’s even more horrible, losing Gini,” she said, her voice tight with emotion.
“I understand she died here, at the office?” Ana asked.
Donna nodded. “She came back from lunch and was working in there, with the door closed. One of the admins went in to discuss the agenda for an upcoming meeting and found her.” She put a hand to her mouth. “We thought at first it might have been a heart attack. She suffered from chronic heartburn and we thought maybe it was something more serious after all.” She cleared her throat. “When they told us it was the Stomach Soothers, we couldn’t believe it.”
“What d
o you know about ricin, Mrs. Stroud?” Ana asked.
“They—well, the local police chief—told us that was what was in the Stomach Soother tablets. I know it’s deadly... Maybe something terrorists have used elsewhere? Do you think this was done by terrorists?”
“We haven’t reached any conclusions at this point. I won’t take up any more of your time.” She left the office, aware of Donna and several other women watching her walk away. She felt sorry for them, ordinary people caught in such a nightmare. But she wouldn’t let her pity get in the way of doing her job. The most likely scenario involved someone inside the factory contaminating those tablets, which meant the Strouds and everyone who worked for them were potential suspects.
As she turned onto the sidewalk, she noticed a man standing in front of the makeshift memorial. He was young, early-to midtwenties, wearing new-looking jeans and a blue dress shirt unbuttoned and untucked over a gray T-shirt. She stopped and studied him. He looked out of place. Lost.
A trio of women, possibly factory workers on the weekend shift returning from a lunch break, approached. Ana caught their eye. “Who is that man?” she asked.
The oldest of the trio, an African American woman in her forties, glanced toward the memorial, and her expression changed to one of sorrow. “That’s Miss Gini’s boy, Leo.”
“Gini Elgin?” Ana clarified.
A very pale woman with hair the color of carrots nodded. “He’s real tore up about his mama’s passing.”
The third woman, brown-haired and freckled, made a face. “It’s terrible about Miss Gini, but that Leo always was a little odd.”
“What do you mean, odd?” Ana asked. Leo had moved closer to the memorial now, actually standing on some of the flowers, head bowed, hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans.
“Just, odd,” the woman said.
“Not friendly,” the older woman said. “Real quiet. Now, Miss Gini was as friendly as could be, and not what you’d call quiet.”
