A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(95)

She said, “What would they be doing at the storage place?”

Lloyd looked very tired and a bit distracted, and Jane recognized the look. He had tensed a muscle and reawakened the pain. “I don’t have any idea. Probably nothing illegal. People like them don’t do anything. They tell people to do things and take a cut.”

“I saw an SUV come in with him and then I saw two men carry a big cooler into bay J-19. That’s what made me come inside the gate to take these pictures.”

“There’s your answer. He was putting something into storage. He brought men because he’s too old to carry things himself.”

“Come on, Ike. You’re holding out on me. Give me what you know and I’ll leave.”

“I told you who these men are. That’s all I know without getting a warrant and taking a look in that storage bay. For obvious reasons, I can’t do that now.”

Jane lifted her loose scrub shirt and pulled out a manila envelope she’d had stuck in the elastic top of her pants.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a record of what I’ve been doing—copies of the pictures I’ve taken. There are shots of the stolen stuff hidden in Nick Bauermeister’s basement, pictures of Chelsea Schnell with Daniel Crane at his house, the shots I just showed you, the two storage bays that Malconi’s men visited. You can tell the cop you give them to that he doesn’t have to be careful with them. No fingerprints or anything.” She held up her hands to show him that she was wearing surgical gloves. “Now go back to sleep. I’ll try not to bother you again.” She turned to go.

“Wait.”

“Wait?” she said.

“What time is it?”

“Just about nine thirty.”

“In a few hours there will be search teams at Nick Bauermeister’s house and Walter Slawicky’s.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because at Slawicky’s, they may find the rifle.” He watched her for a reaction. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“One of the things.”

“It would prove Slawicky shot Bauermeister himself.”

“I’m not so sure he did,” said Jane. “I don’t think he would have gone to the police voluntarily unless he had an unbreakable alibi. I think he just supplied the rifle and the false story about what happened to it.”

“Who, then?”

“The one who gave Slawicky the money for all the cool stuff.”

“Salamone or Malconi?”

“I don’t know. If they’re the Mafia, why would they bother with people like Slawicky? They must have people on their payroll who do that kind of work. I think it was the one who had a reason to want Nick Bauermeister dead. The one who wanted his girlfriend.”

As she slipped out the door of his bedroom she heard a car pulling into the driveway. She looked out the side window of the house and saw Lloyd’s wife coming to a stop in the garage. She could see bags of groceries in the back of her station wagon. In a moment she would be carrying bags through the side door into the kitchen. Jane went out the front door, moved along the front of the Lloyd house to the next yard, and then walked quickly to her car.

MORNING WAS HELL FOR DANIEL Crane. The sun was blinding, punishing. He drove to his storage business at ten because he couldn’t think of a better place to go. As he drove he kept remembering things that he would have to fix as quickly as he could. There was still quite a bit of merchandise he couldn’t explain stored in his bays along the J row. Every month he had stored things his crews stole in bays registered to fictitious people. Now that he was being charged with a felony, there wasn’t much to stop the police from checking to see if those renters were real, or just aliases for Daniel Crane. There would then be nothing to stop them from going through the bays, maybe with a list of items that had been reported stolen in burglaries in the area. Then they would find the body in the cooler.

Crane would have to do something to be sure Slawicky had actually sunk the rifle a few miles offshore in Lake Ontario, and not kept it somewhere with Crane’s fingerprints still on it. And he couldn’t just ask him. If Slawicky had kept the rifle as a threat to hold over him, then asking would make him even more defensive and paranoid. For a moment Crane considered killing him, too. Jimmy Sanders was still at large, and it had been in the newspapers that Slawicky had gone to the police and given information about him. If Slawicky died now, there would be a suspect already wanted in connection with a murder. But he remembered that Salamone had warned him not to take steps like that on his own again. Maybe he would just bring the problem up with Salamone.

As he drove up to the storage facility his eyes rested on the big sign: BOX FARM PERSONAL STORAGE. He thought he’d like to change the name. When he’d thought of it, the name had sounded pleasant—an old farm with acres of storage spaces—but the words seemed creepy now, maybe a cynical, slangy way of referring to a cemetery. He knew it was too late to change it now, after years of building the business, but he wished he could.

He pulled through the gate and drove to the office, then saw the big sedan parked in his reserved space. Salamone. What was he doing here? Salamone had never come this early in the morning. Crane got out of his Range Rover, entered the building, and climbed the stairs.

He stepped into his office and found Salamone’s two companions had made themselves comfortable. Cantorese was sitting behind the second desk, where the man on duty usually sat to watch the windows and monitors and answer the phone. Cantorese sat back in the chair with his feet up on the desk, so Crane could see the soles of his shoes. Part of Crane’s mind noted that even the man’s feet were wide, feet made to hold up a three hundred fifty pound body. Pistore was sitting in the customer chair near the desk, the first time Crane remembered seeing him seated. Neither of them reacted to the sight of Crane coming in.