Lover’s Cross Part VII
My name is Sunny Alexander. And I’m Henry James and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Conclusion
After sharing a passionate kiss with Penny I got out of the car and went to my motel room. I knew what my first order of business was this morning. I pulled out my phone and called Sunny.
“About time you called me back. Still with your girlfriend?”
“No. I’m back at the motel. Listen, can we talk?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“I mean face to face.”
“Had breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I haven’t. Meet me at the motel restaurant in ten.”
“Got it.”
How can two people who’ve worked together in some pretty difficult situations suddenly become total strangers?
Lately, we’d been in some really tight situations where one or both of us could have died.
You can’t go through some of the stuff we have and not grow close to some degree.
Without even thinking about it we’d learned how the other reacted to things. We’d learned to depend on each other’s instincts and intuitions, learned to trust each other’s experience.
Something else we learned last night. When one or the other suddenly goes off the reservation the bond deteriorates pretty quickly.
Sunny was eating a bagel with cream cheese and some fruit when I showed up. I sat across from her in silence until the waiter poured me a cup of coffee and left.
We both started talking at the same time.
“You first.”
“Sunny, listen. About last night…”
“Don’t worry about it Henry.”
“No. I treated you like crap and I want to apologize. There was no damn reason for me going off on you like that. It’s just, well it’s…”
“Been a long time since you’ve been involved in a relationship?”
“Yeah, a really long time.”
It became difficult to talk. Neither of us knew where to go from here. We sat in silence for a few minutes one of us sipping coffee the other munching on fruit and drinking orange juice.
“Okay so what about Monument Lumberyard?”
“Thought you’d never ask James. I spoke with Manny this morning.”
“And?”
“You’re not going to jam me up with the boyfriend thing?”
“Nope. Based on my recent activities I ain’t got any room to talk.”
“Damn grandpa. Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?”
“Give it a rest princess. What about the lumberyard?”
“Manny said he could get a warrant only if we had reasonable doubt a crime was committed.”
“You told him about the receipt, and the pictures of Daryl Hoenig?”
“Had too. Sent him snapshots. We should have something in about an hour.”
“Maybe we should get Penny’s help. You know show her what we have. See if we can get local assistance. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You just don’t get it do you Henry?”
“What, Sunny? What is it I’m not getting?”
“Henry before you fell in lust with this woman don’t you remember she told us Daryl Hoenig never lived in Rockburn?”
“Yeah so?”
“In my mind that was strike one. I don’t think Rick gave us bad intel. I think Daryl did live here. So why would she say he didn’t?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she misspoke. Maybe she was thinking about somebody else.”
“Maybe Henry, but strike two was when she showed up at the restaurant the same time we did.”
“Coincidence. Happens all the time.”
“No Henry, it doesn’t. Not like that. The woman was dressed to kill. A woman doesn’t dress like that if she’s planning to eat alone. They just don’t. Unless they’re trolling for a date.”
“How do you know that was her game?”
“Because I’m a woman in case you haven’t noticed. It’s not like I haven’t had a girl’s night out before. This was different. She knew you and I were going to be there. Which means one thing. She followed us.”
“Why in the hell would she do that?”
“I have absolutely no clue. I…”
Sunny’s phone began to ring. She swiped to connect and held it to her ear.
“Hey Manny what’s up? Yeah, send it to me electronically. Thanks. What’s that? Fine. Dinner’s on me when I get back in town. Catch you later.”
“The warrant?”
“Yeah, let me print it out then we’re on our way to Carbondale. Oh by the way, I had your car washed and detailed last night. Found a really nice place that stayed open late.”
“My car wasn’t dirty.”
“Paleeeze old man. Just because you threw away Ho-Ho and Twinkies wrappers doesn’t mean the car was clean. I wasn’t about to drive around in a car smelling like a Slim Jim.”
Carbondale was a thirty minute drive from Rockburn. Thirty minutes of hell driving a car almost as sterile as a high tech clean room.
We pulled into the gravel parking lot of Monument Lumberyard and hunted down the MOD, a reed thin gentleman wearing jeans, a white shirt with both sleeves rolled to the elbows and a red apron with almost a hundred pins attached beneath his name tag.
“Elmo is it?”
“Yes sir, how can I help you folks today?”
“Elmo we have a warrant here which allows us to look at your security tapes. We believe someone…”
“Let me stop you right there ma’am. We ain’t got no security cameras. Not like somebody can stick a ten foot piece of wood in their pocket and stroll out of here if you know what I mean.”
It’s interesting how you can hinge an entire theory on the legs of a single idea and some old geezer in a red apron can just cut those legs right out from under you.
We thanked Elmo for his time and turned toward the front of the lumberyard when he called after us.
“Don’t suppose you’d be interested in looking at the books would you?”
We stopped and turned around. Elmo led us to a back office area filled with stacks of notebook ledgers.
Inside each were thousands of entries by date, receipt number, the customer’s name, type of purchase and the amount of sale.
“So you two take your time. Them ledgers go back at least fifteen maybe twenty years. If you got a question just come find me.”
“Thanks Elmo. Henry grab a ledger.”
“Wait, let’s do this the right way. Start from yesterday and go backward. The receipt numbers should be numerically sequenced. Can we make out the receipt number on the one you found?”
“Only the last five digits.”
“Well it’s a start.”
When it seemed our odds of finding something was worse than picking a winning lotto number we stumbled on what we were looking for.
The problem was it wasn’t what we expected to find.
“You gotta be shitting me.”
“No Henry I’m not. The last five digits match. He made the purchase five months ago. The very Daryl Hoenig Captain Layne claimed has never lived in Rockburn bought a shit load of wood and had it delivered.”
“We need to know where. Let’s find Elmo.”
READ ON — LOVER’S CROSS VIII
Let’s stay in touch: [email protected]