And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(19)

At the rear of the store, he passed through a towering glass door that slid open to a lumberyard surrounded by a twelve-foot wooden fence, the planks set edge to edge like the wall around a frontier fort. Lumber was slotted into wood racks along the perimeter, protected from the elements by an overhang. A small guard shack with a bright-orange traffic arm controlled the vehicles leaving the yard.

It was warm in the sun, but the creeping shade within the tall walls chilled the damp air. Ann Crawford was wearing a black coat with a hood. When she saw him coming, she stamped her foot and threw her head back, a you-gotta-be-kidding-me gesture. He could tell she wasn’t entirely surprised to see him. Alissa might have warned her he was on his way. The nosy blond at the service counter didn’t strike him as the type who would do Ann Crawford any favors.

Ann handed her bar-code scanner to a skinny bald guy breathing through his mouth. “I’m going on break,” she said. She grabbed her purse from the guard shack and walked away from Packard. He followed her off the property. “Can’t smoke in there by the wood,” she said over her shoulder.

They went around the traffic control arm and crossed the street. They stood by the curb on the other side as she lit a cigarette.

Hard living had aged Ann’s thin face with lines and wrinkles and dark rings around her eyes. Her hair was shot through with streaks of gray, and she wore it pulled back, with long straight bangs that covered her eyebrows. She was only a year or two older than Packard, but she looked old enough to be his mother.

“How long you been working at Wellards?”

“Since the beginning. Put in my application when they were hiring for the grand opening. I like working the yard. You get more smoke breaks if it’s not busy.”

Packard nodded his understanding. “I wanted to talk to you about Jesse.”

“Figured as much. He turned up yet?”

“No. I assume you haven’t seen or heard from him either?”

Ann shrugged. Now he knew where Alissa got it from. “Alls I know is I woke up yesterday and my car was gone and so was he.”

“How’d you get to work yesterday and today?”

“Yesterday I got a ride from a girlfriend. Today she had to take her kid to the doctor so I walked. It’s only a mile and some.”

“Why didn’t you report your car or your son missing to the police?”

Ann took a long drag on her cigarette. She had a wide upper lip, deeply crimped from years of sucking air through a tiny filter. Smoke came out of her in sputtering clouds as she talked. “You think this is what I needed today? A cop showing up at work to question me about where is my lazy pothead son? You think my boss is going to be happy about this?”

Packard couldn’t argue with that. He asked her to check her phone for the last time she’d had a call or a text from Jesse. She started to look it up on her phone, then stopped. “He can’t call or text me because his phone is in my purse. I found it in his room and kept it.”

Both Jesse and Jenny were without their phones. Intentionally.

“Can I have it? I’ll make sure he gets it back.”

Ann rooted in her purse and handed him a Samsung phone with a cracked screen. She didn’t know the password. “You can keep it far as I’m concerned. He don’t own nothing until I get my car.”

“Where’s Jesse get the pot?”

Ann shrugged again. “I don’t know no names.”

“Is he dealing or just smoking?”

“When you find him, you can ask him.”

“You mentioned pills last night. Where does he get those?”

Ann looked away and smoked the last bit of her cigarette. She dropped the butt and stared at the ground while she stepped on it. “Like I said, you gotta ask him. I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

Packard believed her. Ann Crawford would rather maintain her ignorance than take responsibility for the actions of her almost grown son. He was going to do what he wanted, and the less she knew about it, the better. She had her own problems.

Packard pocketed his notebook and pen and followed Ann back inside the lumberyard. She went up to the skinny, bald guy covering for her. “Give me my scanner,” she said. He handed it over and slouched away.

“I’d like to go with you back to your house and go through Jesse’s room. I can get a warrant if I have to, but it’d be a lot easier if I can just get your permission. Can we do that?”

“Damn it, Packard. You’re gonna get me fired if you haul me out of here right now when it’s not my break.”

“When is your break?”

Ann pulled the flip phone from her pocket and looked at the time on the front. “I get lunch an hour from now.”

“I’ll come pick you up in an hour. I’ll bring you a burger or a sandwich, whatever you want. We’ll go back to your house, have a look at Jesse’s things, and then I’ll drive you back. How’s that?”

A navy-blue pickup pulled up to the gate with a load of drywall in the back. Ann took the printed receipt from the driver, scanned the bar code printed at the bottom, and looked over the load in the back before she pressed a button in her booth that raised the traffic arm. They both watched the pickup drive away.

“I want Arby’s roast beef. Large curly fries. Diet Sprite,” she said.