A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(35)

“No, no. Don’t worry. Twenty-five is right. And even if it wasn’t, I’d cover for you just so you wouldn’t need to get word to him now while he’s inside. Any communication between you and him could bring attention to us. You did your job. Now let him do his.”

“I will,” said Harriman.

“Good. Are the guys back from Orchard Park yet?”

“They got back a while ago. They went out again to repaint the sides of the truck so it won’t say Sears on it.”

“All of them went?” asked Crane.

“No. Steel and Slawicky stayed back to do the inventory and put the stuff in storage.”

“Maybe I’ll go down and take a look.” Crane took off his sport coat and hung it on a wooden hanger, then put it in the closet, rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, and walked to the stairs. He descended to the first floor and walked past the small-size units in the hallway. They looked like narrow closet doors, but they were deep enough to hold most things that were really valuable, and they had built-in four-button locks that made customers feel safe leaving things they might not want to entrust to a garage door with a padlock on it.

He went out the door and walked down the long roadway between two storage buildings, past bay after bay. He could see J-17 from a few hundred feet away. The roll-down door was open a couple of feet from the bottom so there was air inside, but no passerby could see anything that was going on in there. He approved of that precaution. In the summer those bays could get pretty hot, and with this humidity, they could be awfully uncomfortable.

When he reached the bay, he pulled up the door and watched the two men spin toward him. Steel was taller than Crane, thin and dark with close-set dark eyes, and Slawicky was wider and older, with thick, muscular arms. He had blond hair and a small, round nose. Crane said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He had, actually. If they were hiding something from him, he wanted to know.

“No problem,” said Steel, but he looked a little sheepish because he had jumped.

“Right,” said Slawicky. “Harriman would have called us if he’d seen a customer or a cop heading down here.”

Crane wondered. Had Harriman called them to let them know that the boss was on his way out to the bay? Possibly. If he had a chance he would check Harriman’s phone for recently called numbers. He stepped closer. “What did we get?” He realized he had said it in a way they would resent. “I really mean what did you get? I was driving around wasting my morning while you guys did all the work.”

Slawicky waved toward a coffee table a few feet away, where small objects were piled in neat rows. “The best stuff is on the table.”

Crane picked up a stack of money with a thick rubber band around it. He read the slip of paper under the band. “Three thousand four hundred and sixty. Not too bad. It pays for expenses, anyway.” He set the money on the table and turned his attention to a jewelry box that was made to look like a hardcover book. He opened it and lifted a thick chain necklace, bounced it up and down on his palm to feel the weight, then looked at it more closely. “Feels like gold.”

“We haven’t tested it yet.”

“I’ll bet I’m right.” He picked up a tennis bracelet studded with small diamonds. “This is all pretty good stuff. Assuming the diamonds are real, this would be about five grand new.”

“That’s about what I figured,” said Steel. “There are a couple of pairs of diamond earrings too, and an emerald ring.”

“What else have you got?”

Slawicky said, “The furniture is all good—all new and high-end. We also got a couple of Apple laptops, both over there.”

Crane said, “That could be really good. Salamone’s got people who might be able to hack their way in and see if anything on their hard drives leads anywhere. They might be able to do some online banking or something.”

“That pillowcase over there is full of financial stuff we found in the little home office they had. We took it without looking too closely, but there’s a tax return, and that will have social security numbers and all that. We also brought the paintings and sculptures because they looked real.”

“Salamone’s people will have to decide about that stuff. They don’t usually want anything that’s one of a kind, but maybe they can sell it in another country or something. Good job, you guys. And you didn’t have any trouble?”

“No,” said Slawicky. “It was the usual thing. We backed the truck into the driveway all the way to the house, opened the cargo bay, and brought big cardboard boxes down the ramp and into the house on a dolly, like we were delivering a refrigerator, stove, washer and dryer. Everybody worked fast, wore gloves and hats, and cleared the place. If anybody saw anything, they don’t know what they saw.”

“Great,” said Crane. “I’ll leave you guys alone, and go do some work in the office.”

The others didn’t offer any more information, and as he walked back to the office neither of them ran after Crane to tell him anything he needed to hear privately. He would see each of them alone over the next day or two.

Crane climbed back up to the second floor and into the office, and went to sit at his desk. He was still thinking about Chelsea. She was always in the back of his mind the way there were always a few programs running on a computer behind what he saw on the screen. He had thought of a few theories about her, but he had made no progress figuring out what she wanted. The one idea he’d had that seemed promising was to remember everything he could about her relationship with Nick Bauermeister. Thinking about her with Nick wasn’t pleasant for him, but whatever Nick had done, she must have liked it.