Chapter 13
“Stop overthinking it,” Myrna said a couple of hours later as they sat in the combined living room, him with a beer, her with a glass of wine.
“Honestly, I was going to refuse to go unless you could come.” She studied his expression, and gave a small smile when he whipped his head around and stared at her in shock.
She only held up her hand to stop him from commenting.
“I know we haven’t been on the best of terms for the last couple of weeks, but I think we made headway on why you were an ass before Clark arrived earlier.” She smirked at his shocked expression, then chuckled when he threw his head back and laughed.
“Yeah, I have been an ass. We didn’t discuss it, but my main thought when I saw you in your bed and not mine after spending most of the night together, I thought I was a bad lover and you didn’t want to face me the next morning, by remaining in my bed.”
“You know, you’re stupid right?” She gave him the stink eye as she stared at him.
“I’m beginning to realize that.”
They sat in silence for several minutes, sipping their drinks, and staring into the empty and cold fireplace. When he was done with his beer, he set the bottle on the table beside him, and turned to her.
“What size is your home?”
“Not that big,” she said as she looked around with a nod. “Take this common living space, and add about half of the bedroom area, that’s it. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and that’s about it. Oh, I do have a shed with lawn equipment, and then there’s Sally’s stuff in the barn.”
“Do you have any hay, feed, vitamins for Sally?” At her look, he sighed. “I’m just trying to figure out what size trailer to bring with us.”
“None.”
“Why?”
“I have one already at home. If it’s still there and Randy or Gus hasn’t stolen it since I’ve been gone.”
Pedro held up his hand, pulled out his phone, and called Erin. He asked to speak with Agent Wilson, and when she got on the phone he asked if Myrna’s trailer was still there.
“Trailer? Just a minute.” Pedro and Myrna heard her ask the two agents that came with her about seeing a trailer, and she came back on the line. “We never saw a trailer, where was it parked?”
“Beside the garage, when you pulled into the driveway, you couldn’t miss it. It was blue.”
“Do you have paperwork on it?”
“It’s probably in the paperwork you retrieved.
Let me look.” Myrna went to get her papers she’d left on the table, and brought them back to the couch.
It took her less than a minute to find it.
She snapped a photo of the paperwork, and the picture of her standing next to it, then asked for Agent Wilson’s phone number. She forwarded them and heard her sigh.
“No, we didn’t see anything like that. Let me call it into the DA and add this charge. Do you have remote access to your security cameras?”
“When I had them installed, they said I did. I downloaded the app, but haven’t used it yet.
I do know that the trailer was there when I left to go get Sally.
Give me a second.” She accessed her phone app, and after getting in, she went back to activity after she left, and before the agents arrived.
“Shit,” Myrna said, and leaned closer into Pedro, she replayed it, and when he swore, Agent Wilson demanded to know what they saw.
“I sent you a copy to the e-mail I just mailed the paperwork to. You’re not going to like it.” They waited and when she swore, Myrna and Pedro exchanged small smiles.
“Shit, I want you to tell me who that is. I know who it is, but I need you to tell me for the record.”
“Officer Avery Mosher,” Myrna said solemnly.
“I knew it. Shit, I’m going to hang up with you and call the DA directly. Can you be here at Erin’s Way by eleven in the morning?”
“We can,” Pedro said, and they hung up. He looked at Myrna with a smirk. “Looks like we’ll be bringing a trailer from here.”
“Looks like it.” She sighed and settled back in her seat.
She closed her eyes and thought. It was several minutes before she looked at him sadly.
“Why me? Why are those three targeting me? I’m nobody special, I don’t have a lot of money.
I’m a single woman that lives alone, working a modest job.
I pay my bills every month, I tend to my flowers, mow my grass, and love my horse. Why are they targeting me?”
They both remained silent, then Pedro turned in his seat on the other end of the couch and looked at her. “Maybe they’re not after anything you have physically.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Myrna leaned away from him and gave him the side eye.
“Hear me out, I’ve been doing some thinking this last couple of weeks, when I was being an ass.
First, I realized that you have a past, everyone has one.
This is just my personal opinion, but if any man gets jealous of a woman’s past, then he’s an asshole.
” He shook his head and held up his hand.
“I’m not saying I’m jealous, I’m saying I was thinking about what you told everyone when you arrived here, and when I found you on the side of the road. ” He paused and looked at her intently.
“Okay, what did you come up with?” she asked after he didn’t continue.
“What if they aren’t after what you have physically? You know, your home, horse, vehicle, money, or stuff like that.”
“What are you saying?”
“First, answer this, did you lose any memory from when Randy beat you enough to put you in the hospital?”
Myrna gave him a funny look and reared back like she wanted to get away from him, but she stared out into space. It took several moments before she looked at him with a confused look and answered.
“I think so. Besides the bruising, I had a severe concussion. Thank goodness he didn’t break any of my bones, but the concussion is what kept me in the hospital as long as it did.”
“Okay, and who came to your hospital room to take your report?”
“Officer Mosher.”
Pedro nodded. “How did you get to the hospital? Who called for the ambulance? Where were you when he beat you? What led up to the beating?”
Myrna looked at him in shock and shook her head. “I can’t answer those questions. I remember making a mental grocery list on my way home from work. The next thing I remember, I woke in the hospital. This was nine days after I remember I left home.”
Pedro nodded, then jumped to his feet and hurried into the kitchen to grab the pad of paper they wrote their current grocery list on. He came back and wrote the questions down.
“I’m not going to call Agent Wilson with this tonight.
We can brainstorm what we think the issue is, then they can investigate.
I don’t know who they have as your friend coming to visit, but maybe she can help us come up with a reason as to why an ex-boyfriend of yours, someone you had no contact with for eighteen months with, would suddenly show up, beat the ever f-ing hell out of you, and then steal your horse.
” He looked at her and nodded. “Were they after Sally all along? Or was it something else entirely? Where did you work? What did you do?”
Myrna again looked at him with confusion and shook her head. “My job, what does that have to do with anything?”
‘Humor me, please. It might not mean jack shit, but it might be just the littlest thing that you might have forgotten because of your hospital stay. It might be nothing, but then again, it might be something.” He paused, shook his head, and studied her intently.
“Again, humor me, if it’s nothing, then we won’t tell the FBI when we meet with them tomorrow.
If it’s something, we can give them our theory.
” He smiled then. “From what I gathered, they’re grasping at straws now. ”
“Yeah, I got that impression too,” she said as she rose to her feet, and went to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water for each of them. She handed him his, and settled into the corner of the couch while facing him. While pointing to the paper in his hands, she nodded.
“I was a shipping clerk at a factory.”
“What type of factory?”
“Import export.”
“What was the merchandise?”
“Automotive parts.” As soon as she said that, she straightened up and stared at him in shock. He shook his head at her.
“What was your exact job?”
“The front office would get an order, they’d give it to me, I’d fill out the paperwork, pass it over to the warehouse supervisor, he would pass it to the guy in charge of that shift.
” She shook her head with a snort. “Talking about it out loud makes me realize now that a lot of people touched just one order. Anyway, the shift lead would pass the order to the picker.” At his frown, she sipped her water and settled back against the arm of the couch.
“The picker is the person that takes the order and physically picks the items from the shelves, boxes them up, prints the labels, then, depending on the size of the order it’s either put on a pallet, or if it’s just a couple of boxes, then it’s put in a different location.”
“Why?”
“Pallets get shipped out on freight trucks, boxes are sent several different ways. Mail, UPS, Fed-Ex.”
“Okay, what happens once the order is completed?”
“The picker signs off on it, by putting their initials on it, the shift lead does the same. They put the paperwork in a certain spot, and when the truck is loaded, the paperwork is brought back to me, I do my thing, then call the proper shipping venue that needs to be used. They don’t come right away, it’s a daily thing. ”
“Can you explain that?”
“Okay, not all trucking companies go to all areas of the country. Certain ones are local, certain ones are over the road, or they take the pallets to the airport for overseas orders. Yet other trucking companies take the packages to the docks for shipment via boats. For the domestic orders, we have certain companies that go west, and others that head east.”
“Ah, so if you have an order going to California, then another one to New York, they won’t leave your facility on the same truck.”
“Not if it’s a pallet. If it’s a box, then either the mail, UPS, or Fed-Ex will come and get all of those boxes, then do what they have to do once they get back to their terminal. Once it leaves my facility, I’m done.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Now, a couple of questions, do you physically inspect what the picker puts in the box or on the pallet?”
“No.”
“Do you physically inspect what goes on any outgoing trucks?”
“No, I only look at the paperwork that is given to me from the front office and then what the picker brings back to me.”
“I’m not blaming you, but you never physically see what’s being sent out?”
“Correct.”
“Okay, you say your company is import and export. What we just discussed was the export part of the business, right?” At her nod, he took some notes and looked at her with a frown. “Do you make the labels to put on the boxes or pallets that are leaving your business?”
“No, that’s a different part of my job. I’m the office part, and then there is a shipping clerk that is in the warehouse.
They make the labels. They are the ones that bring the paperwork to me once the labels are made and put on the boxes.
However, these people do not know what’s in the box, they take the word of the picker once their initials are on the bottom on the picking order. ”
“I understand,” Pedro said with a nod, making more notes, then looked at her again. “What about the import aspect of the job. How does that work?”
“A shipment comes in, someone in receiving in the warehouse accepts it, then brings the paperwork to me. They then distribute the incoming freight to the warehouse, and those guys put the parts in their proper place.”
“So, the pickers can pick the orders.” Pedro was matter of fact in his statement.
“Yes.”
“I’m assuming here, but you do not see anything that is brought into the warehouse, the import aspect.”
“Correct.”
Pedro looked at his notes for several minutes before he looked at her with a frown.
“What?” she asked as she finished her water.
“This is all speculation, and hypothetical, but what if something hinky is going on at your factory, and Randy and Gus are behind it.”