Flo Charts Read online

  Agnes finally grinned. “Is that not boring enough for you?”

  They stared at it for a long moment before a set of jaunty footsteps approached from around the next line of shelves. “I told you, ladies. There’s nothing here...” Bickel came around the shelves and skidded to a stop so fast he left slide marks on the dusty floor. “What the...?”

  Flo lifted a brow. “I take it from your reaction that you didn’t have a tank listed in your inventory?”

  His mouth hung open and his face paled as he stared up at the monstrous vehicle. The knot on his head was like a beacon against the chalky pallor of his skin. “I...”

  “You?” Agnes asked, her brows lowering.

  “I...”

  “Mr. Bickel?” Flo inquired, with growing concern. “Are you okay?”

  “Maybe he’s having a stroke,” Agnes offered helpfully.

  “I...”

  Flo walked over and stood beside him, one hand hanging in the air next to his shoulder, unsure. If he was choking she could pound him between the shoulder blades. But she didn’t think he’d appreciate it if she smacked him upside the head. “Mr. Bickel!”

  “I...”

  Agnes leaned down and looked into his stricken face, waving a hand before his glassy gaze. “Earth to Bickel.”

  The man jerked suddenly and blinked, his mouth snapping shut. “What’s that doing here?”

  The way he barked the question, Flo got the impression he was blaming them. “I think that’s a question for your people, Mr. Bickel. I can assure you Agnes and I didn’t carry it into the building in one of our pockets.”

  He frowned but his gaze never left the tank. “I guess Carey must’a signed the paperwork for this.”

  “The dead guy?” Agnes asked.

  “The owner...or ex-owner I guess.” Bickel frowned as if it had just occurred to him that he was working at a place that had no owner. “I wonder who’ll get the place now that he’s gone?”

  “That’s actually a great question,” Flo told him. She looked around at the half-filled warehouse. Between the goods stored there for delivery and the trucks, she figured the business had to be worth some money. Certainly, the tank alone was worth a good chunk of change. “Any ideas who might inherit the business?”

  Bickel shook his head. “Carey didn’t talk much about family. I got the impression he didn’t have any. I guess there could be some distant relative somewhere who’d inherit.” He frowned at the thought.

  “Okay. Then I guess you need to find that out. And Agnes and I will search his office to see if we can find out anything about this tank.”

  He shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  Agnes reached down and touched her leg, groaning loudly.

  Bickel bared his teeth like a rabid dog. “Okay. I’ll ask around. But nothing leaves that office. You hear me? I’m sure the cops wouldn’t appreciate you messin’ up their crime scene.”

  Flo gave him a tight smile. “You forget, Mr. Bickel. We are the cops.”

  The man shook his head. “Well, I guess if Tom Selleck can pretend to still be a cop at his age, you two can do it too.” He gave a mean chuckle. “I suppose you knitted yourself a gun?”

  Flo let anger flash through her gaze. “Why knit a gun when the knitting needle works perfectly well as a deadly weapon?” She turned to Agnes. “I prefer stabbing in through the sinuses. How about you?”

  “Through the ear works well,” Agnes fixed him with a deadly glare. “Right into the brain.”

  They left Bickel gulping like a fish and headed for the trailer across the lot.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I think my OCD just exploded,” Agnes whined as she pulled a crumb-coated folder off a desk that was covered, edge to edge, with matching folders.

  Flo threw her a concerned look. “You have OCD?”

  Holding the folder between the tips of two fingers, Agnes grimaced. “If I didn’t before I do now. This place is disgusting.”

  Flo grimaced and jumped a little as she found a dried up, dead mouse on the floor next to a dusty metal cabinet. “It is that. I don’t know how the man found anything in this place.”

  “Maybe that was the idea,” Agnes offered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if he was as smarmy as Bickel said and he was doing something shady with US Army equipment like we suspect, then organized chaos would only work in his favor.”

  “That makes sense.” Flo looked around, her mind spinning. “If that’s the case then most of this means nothing.”

  “And what we’re looking for is probably not out in plain sight.”

  “He’d have to have a safe or something...” Flo lifted a painting of an old car and peered behind it.

  “Or a hidden drawer in the desk.” Agnes sat down in the chair and tugged on the center drawer. It opened about an eighth of an inch and then stopped. She tugged on it a few times. “This seems to be stuck.”

  “Hmm?” Flo lifted a filthy area rug, wincing as chunks of something fuzzy that had probably once been food fell to the floor.

  Agnes’ voice was tight with strain. “I said it’s...” There was a horrendous screech and the drawer flew open. Agnes made a sound of surprise and tilted backward in the creaky chair, the drawer held aloft in her hands.

  “Be careful...” Flo started to warn. But it was too late. The front wheels of the chair tipped off the floor and Agnes crashed backward, her legs flying up to slam against the underside of the desk.

  She hit the tacky paneling behind the chair so hard her head bounced off and slammed back again. The drawer tipped upside down, dumping its contents over Agnes’ head.

  Paperclips, stickies and an assortment of old pencils and broken pens rained down on her as she sputtered and gasped, trying to shield her face with her arms.

  Flo rushed over to help. “Oh my Lord! Are you all right?”

  The front legs of the chair were airborne. Agnes’ feet were sticking up in the air and she still held the large drawer in her hands. Dust sifted down on her from the warped interior of the drawer and she was squinting as something that looked like chewed gum fell and pinged off her nose. “Take this will you?”

  Flo reached up and wrapped her hands around the drawer, but Agnes released it before she got a good hold. The front of the thing dropped like a rock, smacking Agnes across the chest.

  “Argh!” She shook her head and shoved at the drawer. “This thing’s alive.”

  “I’m so sorry. It was heavier than I thought it’d be.”

  Flo managed to drag the heavy wood off Agnes’ chest and ease it to the floor.

  Agnes tried to brush the debris out of her graying brown pageboy but only about half of it would come loose. One large paperclip was wedged in her bangs and a broken pencil with a rubber band around one end was jutting straight up from the crown of her head. For a brief moment, Flo was afraid the thing was embedded in her scalp. “You have a little something...” Flo pointed to the pencil and Agnes reached up and knocked it loose. “It’s no wonder somebody offed this guy. It was probably the janitor, gone crazy from years of trying to transform this room from being a science experiment.”

  Flo tugged on the arms of the chair. “Can you sit forward? I’m afraid those back wheels are going to slide out and put you right on your back.”

  Agnes grasped a dusty cabinet and managed to push herself forward. The front wheels of the chair smacked down hard on the tattered linoleum and a broken pen flew out of her hair, nearly taking out one of Flo’s eyes.

  A soft plop sounded behind Flo and they both did a slow eye roll in that direction. There was a large yellow envelope on the floor beneath the desk.

  Flo frowned. “That wasn’t there before, was it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well then, I guess we found Mr. Carey’s hidden stash.” Flo reached for the overstuffed envelope and peeked inside. She saw a thick stack of bills and a slim sheaf of printer pages. “There are a lot of numbers on these pa
ges.”

  “I’m not real good with numbers,” Agnes told her on a frown.

  “I’ll need some time to go over these.” Flo looked around, grimacing. “And I don’t want to spend another minute in this room.” She spotted a dusty, rectangular black object on the corner of the desk. The printer was covered in folders, barely visible. “Let’s get this thing uncovered and make some copies. Then I’ll put the envelope back where it came from so the police can retrieve it when the time comes.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  A few minutes later the ladies were climbing into Flo’s car when she had an idea. She hesitated, glancing back toward the warehouse.

  “What is it?” Agnes asked.

  “I don’t know. Something about those numbers.” Flo thought about it for a minute and then closed her car door. “I’ll be right back.”

  Agnes fell in step beside her. “I’ll come too. You never know when a set of stairs or a drawer might attack. I’ll be there to help you.”

  “Or take the attack right off my shoulders,” Flo joked.

  They shared a chuckle.

  “I hope Bickel’s in his office. I really don’t want to run into him.”

  Agnes nodded. “He is. I heard him talking on his phone at the other end of the trailer. I assume it was his office.”

  “Good.”

  A truck pulled into the lot and parked. The big guy who’d helped extract Agnes from the stairs climbed down. The truck shimmied as something big and furry jumped into the freshly deserted driver’s seat and a teeth-snapping snarl filled the air. A big black and tan head popped through the partially open window, teeth showing in a saliva inducing growl.

  Flo felt Agnes tense up beside her.

  “Hello, ladies. I’m surprised to still see you here,” the driver said on a narrowed gaze.

  Flo forced a smile and waved. “Almost done.”

  “Thanks again for your help,” Agnes called out as Flo pulled the door open and they ducked inside.

  Flo turned as Agnes followed her in. “Lock that, just in case. I don’t want any of the employees to know what we’re doing.”

  “Right. We don’t want any evidence disappearing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, what are we doing back here?”

  “I was thinking about those numbers. I realized they could be more than simple identifiers for some unknown merchandise.”

  “I hope so because if we have to map them to all these tiny little white labels...” Agnes shook her head.

  “I doubt Carey was tracking any of these regular items anyway.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he wouldn’t need to hide that information. And then there was the wad of cash inside the envelope. Unless he was taking kick-backs, which is highly possible I guess, he’d be paid through regular channels for the stuff they delivered.”

  “True.”

  Flo stopped in front of the tank. They’d put it back the way they found it, covering it again with the tarp. “Pull that tarp back on the side, will you?”

  Agnes climbed a stack of boxes and did as Flo asked.

  The outside door creaked open just as Flo pulled out her cell phone. She quickly snapped a picture and slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Dang! He must have had a key. Hurry, cover it back up,” she whispered to Agnes.

  The driver’s footsteps sounded on the concrete floor as she and Agnes ducked around the shelves on the outside and came back up three aisles over. Flo smiled at the man standing in the center of the space. He frowned when he saw them. “There you are. What are you ladies doing in here?”

  Flo dug her phone out of her pocket and lifted it for him to see. “I dropped my phone when we were in here before. I just came back to look for it.”

  The man’s gaze narrowed slightly. He glanced at Agnes. “Oh. Why were you in here before?”

  “Just seeing the operation,” Flo told him.

  Agnes nodded but mercifully, kept quiet.

  “Mr. Bickel was kind enough to show it to us. My brother manufactures umbrellas and he’s looking for a shipping company to deliver his products at a more reasonable rate.”

  The man finally smiled. “Well, we can do that.”

  “I think you can,” Flo agreed with a matching smile. “Well...” She held her phone up again and nodded. “We’ll be on our way. Thanks for checking up on us.”

  It was a stupid thing to say and Flo bit her lip with consternation as they passed him and headed for the door. She could feel his speculative gaze on their backs as they left and she prayed he didn’t come after them and ask more questions.

  Fortunately, he didn’t. As they were pulling out of the lot, one of the truck-sized doors opened and the driver came sauntering back outside. He waved before climbing into his truck and backing it into the warehouse.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Have you found it yet?”

  Flo glanced up at Agnes, wincing. “No. And my head’s killing me.”

  “You’re sure the number on the tank will be on those sheets?”

  “No. I’m not sure about anything. But I was optimistic. I guess that was too much to hope for.” Flo sighed. “I’ll admit I’m at a dead end.”

  “Maybe this will help.” Agnes handed Flo the Silver City Tribune.

  “What am I looking at here?”

  “This article.” Agnes stabbed a finger at the newsprint, where a small write-up in the social section mentioned a local military collector.

  Silver City Man Buys Military Equipment

  Flo quickly skimmed the article. “A survivalist.” Shaking her head, she settled the paper down onto the table in front of her. “Those people are nutty.”

  “Not always. Some are, for sure. But there are a lot of people who stockpile food and supplies just in case of a natural or other disaster. That’s not crazy. That’s just smart.” Agnes crossed her arms over her chest, frowning.

  “I take it you stockpile?”

  “I do. And it makes sense, Flo. Think about that last hurricane that hit New Jersey. Within only a matter of days people were dumpster diving. That’s just nuts. It pays to be prepared.”

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t lump everyone together.” She smiled at her new friend. “Tell me, what do you stockpile? Rice? Canned soup?”

  “Blech. No, I stockpile much more useful foods. Stuff I’ll actually eat. I’ve got twenty boxes of Twinkles Cakes on the shelf right now.”

  “Twinkles? That’s not food, Agnes. Those things are nothing but baked chemicals frosted in more chemicals with whipped chemicals inside.”

  Agnes got a wide grin. “Exactly! Do you have any idea what the shelf life of a box of Twinkles is?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A millennium?”

  “Almost.” Agnes frowned. “Well, it would be that long if I didn’t eat them all within the first couple of weeks.”

  “You ate twenty boxes of Twinkles in two weeks?”

  “Of course not, Flo. I had fifty of them to start. I ate thirty boxes.”

  “Oh good heavens.” Flo shook her head and looked down at the article again. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to this man. If the tank is going to him then there’s nothing illegal going on after all.”

  “Except for the fact that Carey had all that money and didn’t tell his manager about the tank in the warehouse.”

  “There is that.”

  “Hello, ladies!”

  They looked up to find the pretty Activities Director at Silver Hills hurrying toward them across the lobby.

  In her thirties, lean and pretty with dark brown hair and green eyes, Trisha Colombo, or TC as she was called by the residents, had gone out of her way to make Flo feel at home from the first day she’d been at Silver Hills. They were fast becoming good friends. “Are you busy?”

  Flo stood up, taking the newspaper with her and folding it in half. “Actually, we were just heading out to run an errand. What’s up?”

  TC frowned. �
��Well, I scheduled a service for Betty in the small chapel for later today and I was hoping you’d come.”

  “Of course, hun. What time?”

  “Five o’clock? It’ll be a short one. I just wanted to give the people who knew her a chance to say a few words before everyone goes down to dinner.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  TC nodded, frowning.

  “Is something else wrong?”

  “Yes. I mean, it wasn’t unexpected, I guess but...”

  “What?”

  “Royal Davvid passed this morning.”

  “Oh no. That’s too bad.”

  TC nodded. “You knew he had stage four brain cancer, right?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “Royal insisted he wanted to come home in the end. He was tired of being poked and prodded and filled full of what he termed ‘poisons’.”

  “I understand those chemo medicines can be bad.”

  “They can.” TC teared up, sniffling. “He was only forty years old, Flo.”

  “Aw, TC.” Flo pulled her friend into a hug. Royal Davvid had been an avid gym rat so he and TC had gotten close over the last months. It had been a surprise to everyone when he’d announced he had cancer. He’d seemed so strong and healthy.

  TC skimmed a quick look toward Agnes. She frowned, looking down at her hands. “Yes. Erm...there’s something you should be aware of, Agnes. It’s crazy, I know but...well Eliza Kemp’s been talking...”

  “About what?” Agnes frowned.

  “Tolstoy actually.”

  Flo was surprised by the change in subject. “What about the cat?”

  “When hospice opened the door at Royal’s this morning, well, Tolstoy came running out.”

  “How in the world?”

  TC shrugged. “Who knows. People have been coming and going there for days. Everyone’s been trying to keep Royal’s spirits up and keeping an eye on him. The cat probably slipped in and nobody saw him. But...”

  TC looked so upset, Flo was really worried about what she was going to tell them. “Spit it out, TC. You’re scaring me.”