Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(70)

She also liked the history, which was a microcosm of the shady land deals and corruption that epitomized the valley’s growth in the early twentieth century. Craftsman’s Corner was formerly the country estate of financier Gilbert H. Beesemyer, who was arrested in 1929 for stealing $8 million from Guaranty Building and Loan, a crime that shocked Hollywood and remained the biggest embezzlement in US history for the next three decades. Beesemyer gave investing advice to all the stars and studio heads of the day and was a key player in the development of the San Fernando Valley, which he never saw again. The terms of his 1940 parole from San Quentin, after serving less than a quarter of his prison sentence, required that he never step foot in California.

Green’s Greenery was a corrugated-metal, flat-roofed building that looked like a shipping container. It sat on cracked asphalt on the east side of Douglas Fir Road, which ran along the eastern boundary of the pet cemetery, and was up against a weedy hillside that abutted the southwest boundary of Hidden Hills.

The building had only one door and one window, both in front, and roll-up garage doors along the back, which Eve could see as she drove up, followed by a CSU van. Green’s cyclone-fenced back lot contained two logo-emblazoned box trucks, a pickup truck, pallets of planting soil, and stacks of planter pots and trays.

Eve got out and unlocked the front door, then she and two evidence collection specialists, Fred and Dale, went inside. The front office was empty, the Formica countertop and two metal desks behind it cleaned off. He’d let his office staff go a long time ago. The linoleum floors were scraped, scuffed, stained, and torn from years of use. Straight ahead of them was a door leading to what she presumed was the warehouse/garage and a short hallway that led to an office, a small kitchen, and a bathroom.

Only one of the offices appeared occupied. It was filled with papers, boxes of files, and catalogs, dirty fingerprints on just about everything. The desktop computer was filthy, the keyboard caked in dirt, and the leatherette desk chair was patched with duct tape.

“I don’t think he gets many guests,” Fred said. “What are we looking for?”

“In here? Stolen goods like credit cards, wallets, jewelry, designer bags, that kind of thing,” Eve said. “Also guns, ammo, and uniforms for Southern California Edison, Spectrum Cable, Pacific Bell, Amazon, and other utilities and delivery services.”

“That shouldn’t take long.”

Eve backtracked with Dale and opened the door to the warehouse/garage. The space was large enough to contain a Bobcat mini-bulldozer, a propane-powered forklift, several pallets of fertilizer, numerous lawn mowers, a few eight-gallon propane tanks, several gasoline and oil cans for equipment, rows of gardening tools, Weedwackers and air blowers, racks of PVC pipes, bins and shelves full of various sprinkler and outdoor plumbing parts and, behind all of that, an Amazon van and three vehicles covered with tarps.

She walked over to the vehicles and yanked the tarps off them, revealing a Hyundai Sonata, an old Mercedes C-class with Uber and Lyft stickers in the windshield, and a Toyota Corolla.

It was the three cars belonging to Dalander, Colter, and Nagy, minus their license plates.

“What’s on our shopping list?” Dale asked.

Eve slipped on a pair of rubber gloves. “First I’d like to find their cell phones. But otherwise, the same things your partner is looking for.”

“He’s not my partner,” Dale said. “I can barely stand to look at him.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s sleeping with my girlfriend,” he said. “Well, she was my girlfriend, now she’s his.”

“Ouch,” Eve said.

She opened each car and checked the glove compartments. No phones. Green was stuck with the cars but wisely disposed of the phones, which were easy to destroy and throw away.

Eve left Dale with the cars, went over to the van, and opened the back doors. The interior was full of empty Amazon boxes and several uniforms and hats for Amazon, Southern California Gas Co., Pacific Bell, and Edison.

Pay dirt.

She went back and checked the office. Green was too smart to leave any stolen goods in plain sight or even in closets or drawers, but Fred did find a gun, a box of ammo, a carton of unopened burner phones, and three license plates in a shoebox. The plates belonged to the cars of the dead assailants.

“This is helpful,” Eve said. “It’s none of my business, but did you really have an affair with your colleague’s girlfriend?”

Fred shrugged. “She’s freaky for forensics guys. I’m the third one she’s dated in the unit. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already looking for her fourth.”

“But you’re staying with her until then?”

“Never had so much action in my life. Five, six days a week. The downside is she gets off on me being dressed for work—Tyvek suit, gloves and masks, the whole outfit—and processing her body for evidence as foreplay. At least she’s naked. Then she—”

“TMI,” Eve interrupted, holding up her hands, signaling him to stop.

“So why’d you ask?”

Eve stepped outside and called Duncan, who was out at Green’s house in Oak Park. “Guess what I found.”

“Three cars, the Amazon van, and Amelia Earhart’s plane.”

“Two out of the three. There were no cell phones in the cars but the van was full of utility company uniforms and empty boxes. We also found a gun, ammo, and burner phones,” she said. “Have you had any luck?”