Chapter 16

 

On a Monday morning a week later, I sat at my desk, feet propped up, wondering again what the hell I was doing here. It was a question that seemed to have no answer. I flapped my tie in my face to generate some enthusiasm, but that didn’t help. I put my feet back on the floor and straightened my back. Nope, that didn’t help much either. In point of fact, I was bored. Bored, bored, bored. Since Ashley had arrived on the scene, my workload had decreased somewhat. That should have left me with more time to think about the Gloria mystery, but I was all thought out. I had thought so much that suspects were popping out of the walls. One minute I just knew so-and-so was guilty, but then it would occur to me why that person couldn’t possibly be the murderer. 

Just as I leaned forward and rested my head in the cup of my hand, the phone rang. I shot straight up to a standing position. At last! Action! Maybe the Boss was calling to move me back to Howes Bluff. 

I decided to play. I picked up the phone. “Hi, Boss!” 

There was a chuckle on the other end. “My, my, he does have you trained. I bet you’re even standing up, eh . . . Bronski?”

I slowly sat down into the chair. Crap! It was Crouch.

“Is that you . . . John?”

“Yes, Bronski, it’s me. Who in the hell else did you think it would be, huh?

“By the way, I know you’re the old man’s pet, but don’t try throwing your weight around again, you got that?”

I decided to ignore the last remark and grinned to myself. The Boss must have pushed.

“So, what do you have, John? Did you get around to looking for fingerprints in the box?”

“Yeah, Bronski, we got around to it and the contents were clean. Not one fingerprint. What’s more, the only fingerprints on the outside of the box were all postal people.”

“Damn,” I said. “Any chance of getting the part back to its owner? He still hasn’t received the replacement part he ordered.”

There was a moment’s pause on the other end. “Let’s hang onto it for another week, Bronski. If nothing else happens that involves the part, then I guess we’ll have to give it back.”

“Okay, that sounds fair,” I said. 

I could hear Crouch chuckle. He knew it hurt me to say the postal inspectors were doing something fair.

“Good. Be seeing you, Bronski,” he said, and hung up.

I put the phone slowly back into its cradle and reflected about there being no fingerprints. Whoever was responsible knew what he was doing. Were there other post offices involved? I hoped the postal inspectors were at least considering the possibility. 

Just then Ashley walked in without knocking.

“What?” I asked with what I hoped was my “don’t you ever knock” glare.

“There’s a man at the back door with a mean-looking old German Shepherd,” she said with her best honey-dripping Southern belle style.

“Very well. I’ll go see what he wants,” I answered. I walked through the maze of cases and shelves with Ashley in tow, which, of course, drew everyone’s attention. Something was going on. I could feel the anticipation rise in the room. I had a hunch my favorite postal inspector was behind what was about to happen. And for once, I agreed with him. 

When my parade and I arrived at the back door, I took a quick squint through the peephole. Ashley was right. There stood a dog handler I knew from Anchorage, and sure enough, there stood one mean-looking old German shepherd beside him. 

I turned to Ashley and gave her my fake friendly smile. “You might want to back up a little. I know this dog. He gets a mite predatory at times in strange places.”

Her face pinched a little, but she did as I ordered. 

I waited until she was about twenty feet away from the door before opening it.

“Hello, Andy.”

“Hello yourself, Leo,” he said. His blue eyes smiled behind his set of wire-rims. Andy had gotten a little rotund the last few years and was the only guy I knew in the Postal Service who got away with wearing his old Vietnam unit’s baseball cap. He was a good man, a family man, and one you could trust behind your back. We went back a long ways—clear to Vietnam. He had been a dog handler there also. He was one example of how friends’ lives can crisscross from time to time. Never, after Nam, did I expect to see him again. I had first run into him years ago in Anchorage on another drug case. We weren’t close friends, but each of us kept track of the other’s doings in the Postal Service.

“I guess you want to look the place over?” I asked.

He grinned. “Yes, Mr. Crouch wanted me and Zippy to have a look-see.”

I nodded and sighed. “Come on in,” I said, and motioned them to enter. “Has old Zippy been to the bathroom, I hope?”

It was an old joke between the dog handlers and postal people. Nothing can be more trying than a dog thinking he sees a fire hydrant. Andy raised his eyebrow and nodded. Zippy, I swear, glared resentfully at me for a moment. I watched as man and dog walked slowly up and down cases and shelves filled with boxes. I have always marveled how a dog can discern the smell of “weed” or coke from all the other smells. German Shepherds are about the best with noses five hundred times more sensitive than humans. 

After about twenty minutes of searching, Andy and Zippy wandered over to me by the door. “We haven’t found anything as yet. How about I turn Zippy loose to look around by himself? Sometimes he does better on his own. I call it dog intuition.”

“He won’t bite anybody, will he?” I was feeling good that morning.

Andy just shook his head, and Zippy yawned, showing me his teeth. What that meant I had no idea. I looked at the employees in front of the cases, hoping they weren’t squeamish about a dog sniffing around. But if there were drugs, we needed to find them.

“Sure, go ahead.”

Andy removed the leash, muttered a command, and Zippy started at a fast walk, nose to the floor. We watched as he retraced his steps over the floor. I could tell some of the women were not too happy having a big dog sniffing around their cases, but it was necessary. From across the floor, Martha gave me a glare that would fry an egg. 

To pretend I wasn’t feeling the heat, I asked, “Can he smell stuff on people if they’ve been handling drugs?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve seen Zippy pull off some great finds. He is so darn smart. But he’s getting older. It won’t be but a year or two before we retire him. He . . . ” An excited yip came from a storage locker by the wall. It was the same place I had found the box with the prop. Zippy was so excited that Andy had to pull him from behind the locker. While Andy patted the dog, I looked. Sure enough, there sat a small box wrapped in brown paper about six inches square. Without further ado, I put on some plastic gloves and carefully extracted it. Naturally, everybody crowded around, wanting to know what was going on. 

I held it up. “Just a small box, everyone. Please go back to your cases. You’ll no doubt hear in the near future what’s in it.”

There was mumble here and there. Mumbles that meant, “Yeah, sure, just like the post office always does.”

I waited until everyone had drifted back to work and then to motioned Ashley. She came over with the appropriate concerned look on her face.

“Go to the office and give the postal inspectors a call,” I said. “But first, go tell Andy not to leave until I talk with him.”

She nodded and left to do my bidding. That left me standing there with the package. I looked at the return address and, sure enough, it had the address of the parts place in Portland. Presumably, it was addressed to another boat owner here in town. It was interesting to me that another package had come through so quickly after the previous attempt and the fact that it had been left in the same place. Evidently, the suppliers were anxious to make up for lost revenue.

Andy ambled over. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah, don’t leave for Anchorage until I find out from Crouch what to do with this package. It may be he’ll want you to bring it back.”

“Sure thing. I think I’ll go outside and walk my dog,” he answered.

I looked up to see Ashley motioning at me. I nodded and walked to the office.

“He’s on the phone,” she said.

“Good,” I said, “I’ll take it from here.”

I walked into the office, closed the door, set the box down where I could keep an eye on it and picked up the phone.

“Well, Bronski, looks like you have an active supply house going there.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.” 

He went on to say that the Postal Service had yet to come up with anything down in Portland. An undercover man was going to take a job with the parts house to see if he could dig up anything. Meantime, I was to keep my eyes open for every package that came from the warehouse. We agreed it would be wise to keep what info we had close to the chest, especially since it looked like one or more of the employees were mixed up in this scheme. “By the way, just go ahead and send the package you have up with Andy.”

Sure thing,” I said and we rang off.

For once, old Crouch had seemed almost human. I decided not to strain my brain wondering why. There was a knock at the door. 

“What?” I growled.

“Andy wants to know if he can leave now,” Ashley said quietly.

“Tell him to hang on, I’ll be right there.” 

I proceeded to put the box into a plastic garbage bag I had in a bottom drawer of my desk. With that done I went to the back door and handed it over to Andy. “Make sure this gets into Crouch’s hands and his only, okay?”

“Sure thing, Leo,” he said with a smile. That was only one of the things I liked about him. He was always friendly, even in the most trying of circumstances.