A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(33)
The center of his empire was a storage facility he had built not far from here. The land was a twenty-acre remnant of one of those old farms. He had taken out a loan against it, poured a long, narrow slab of concrete, and then erected what amounted to a connected series of ten-by-fifteen-foot enclosures made of cinderblock with a roof of corrugated steel and an aluminum garage door on each one. A year later he’d poured the next long, narrow slab of concrete and built the next set of storage bays. Two years later, he’d built three more rows. Now he always had a new set of bays under construction, barely able to build them fast enough. He was rich.
As he drove on, he still could hardly get over the sting of this morning’s conversation with Chelsea. She was putting him off, keeping him at a distance.
Chelsea couldn’t be actually unkind to him. He had been far too generous and steadfast for that. But she wasn’t responding the way he had hoped and expected. He wondered for a moment. Had her boyfriend Nick told her something about him? He followed the question up and down all avenues in rapid succession.
Nick had been stupid and he had been overconfident. His fight in a bar with that Indian had been just like him—a man revealing his whole nature in one performance, like a character in an opera. But Nick had not been na?ve enough to let Chelsea know that the work he did for Crane was not just renting storage space to people who had bought so much crap that they couldn’t keep it all in their houses. Most of the money Nick brought home had come from the other parts of Crane’s business. Chelsea had liked Nick, but if Nick had told her he was a thief she would have thrown him out. Nick couldn’t have told her anything about Dan Crane. Was there any other way she could have found out? Had Nick inadvertently left something lying around that she could have interpreted as evidence that Crane was paying him to commit break-ins? No again. She would have left. And she certainly wouldn’t have let Crane inside her house.
Chelsea could only believe that Crane was what she could see—a nice guy a few years older who had been her boyfriend’s boss and patron. Nick had been dead almost two months. By now it must have crossed Chelsea’s mind that she no longer had a boyfriend, and that she would have to find another one. Crane was rich, fairly good-looking, and successful. Nick had been what? A big lout. A dolt. A man who had probably been manipulated and used by everyone he met. Nick had been so greedy, and so lazy, that it was impossible not to know what inducements would beguile him. Crane had turned him into a thief by simply offering to include him on a crew he was sending to clear out one of those newly built houses set back from the road. Being a burglar had sounded easy, so Nick had jumped on the truck.
It occurred to Crane that almost the same crew was out right now doing another break-in. He searched his mind to see if he could detect any regret at not having Nick alive to work this trip. No, he felt no regret. The men who were left would just have to work a little faster and lift a little more weight into the truck. He wasn’t sorry he had shot Nick. He had done it because he had wanted Chelsea, but there had been many other good reasons to get rid of him. Having a stupid man know his secrets was too risky.
Crane pushed Nick to the back of his mind for a moment, and went over the details of today’s trip. They would probably be loading up the truck right now. They would haul the merchandise to the storage facility, and put it all into J-17. He had already rented that bay to a fictitious customer who had paid in cash for the first six months. The guys would close the bay, slide the bolt into the receptacle, put the standard padlock on the bolt, and leave. The rental agreement was on the books already, and the rental money was in the safe. Anybody looking for stolen items today would have 164 identical bays to search, and 106 empty ones with padlocks on them. He looked at his watch again. He would check with his spies after five. He always sent two, and made sure neither knew about the other. He asked enough questions to pick it up if someone were diverting merchandise instead of turning it all in to him.
After he killed Nick he had considered starting a rumor that the reason Nick was gone was that he had pocketed a valuable ring from a burglary. After thinking more about it, Crane had decided that he would benefit more from taking revenge on Nick’s killer, that Indian who had decked Nick in the bar fight. Scaring his employees would have been good, but risky. He had to believe that building their loyalty would be better.
He ran through other topics to keep his mind from returning to Chelsea Schnell. Did he need anything at the supermarket? Had he let any bills go too long without paying them? Did he have clothes ready at the cleaners’? He knew that thinking about Chelsea was a waste of time. Thinking about her was not going to solve any problems, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. As he drove, he relived the short visit he had made to her house.
He had knocked on her door, and there she was, behind the screen door. Her image had been slightly unclear, because the screen was like a veil between her and him. What, exactly, had her expression been? Had she been pleased to see him, or only surprised, but not really pleased? Teeth. He clearly recalled seeing the row of small, perfect white teeth as she’d appeared behind the screen door.
A smile. She had been glad. That moment was the one that mattered most, he decided. His appearing at her door unexpectedly had made her smile. She hadn’t had time to overcome some other reaction, hide it, and paste a fake smile on her face. The smile had been genuine, a sincere reflexive impulse from nervous system to facial muscle, without delay or disguise. She had been pleased to see him.