Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum #23)(16)

“The police have already combed through this office, but they don’t always look for the right thing,” Ranger said. “You take the desk, and I’ll go through the file cabinet.”

We pulled on disposable gloves and went to work. I rifled the desk drawers and found that the HR guy chewed nicotine gum. He used nicotine patches. He vaped e-cigarettes. And he smoked Marlboros. If he hadn’t been shot he wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. He preferred fine-point Sharpies. Had sticky pads in a variety of sizes and colors. And he kept a collection of porno mags in his bottom drawer. I guess after all that nicotine he had to relax himself from time to time.

“Are you finding anything?” I asked Ranger.

“Nothing dramatic. There are several large files for unhappy employees. A couple more for problem employees. I’ve copied them for you to read through. It wouldn’t hurt for you to check them out. There’s also a file here with nothing more than a name. ‘J. T. Soon.’ Did you find anything in the desk?”

“Just the usual stuff. Pens and sticky pads and porno.”

He glanced over at me. “Anything I should see?”

“No. I imagine you’ve seen it all.”

“Babe,” Ranger said.

“Zigler has a folder here with a bunch of loose papers. Job applications, health insurance forms, and a handwritten note to run a full background check on J. T. Soon.”

“Anything else on Soon? Was he one of the people applying for a job?”

“No. There’s just this note. Nothing else.”

We stepped out of the office, relocked and closed the door, and replaced the crime scene tape. We peeled our gloves off and tossed them in the trash.

“I have one last show-and-tell,” Ranger said.

I followed him through the double doors that led to the other wing. We walked a short distance down the hall and pushed through another set of double doors into a storeroom. Rows of metal shelves filled the warehouse. The shelves were stacked with paper booties, jugs of vanilla, toilet paper, chocolate syrup, powdered milk, large plastic bags of crushed nuts, towers of empty ice cream containers, cases of strawberries packed in air-tight bags, pallets of shrink-wrapped Bogart Bar wrappers.

“CSI hasn’t released an analysis of the nuts and chocolate coating the deceased,” Ranger said, “but Bogart feels pretty certain they came from his plant. He uses a proprietary mix of specially chopped nuts. So we’re thinking it might be an inside job. And we’re looking for someone who had access to the storeroom and could walk off with a couple gallons of chocolate syrup and not be noticed.”

Ranger wrapped an arm around my shoulders and moved me out of the storeroom. “Let me know when you find him.”

“Do I get a bonus?”

He grinned and kissed me on the top of my head. “Yeah. You’ll get a bonus.”

I had a pretty good idea about the nature of the bonus.

“How much?” I asked him.

“It’ll be priceless.”

“Oh boy.”

We were standing in the hallway that led to the manufacturing plant. Ranger pushed me against the wall and leaned in. “Would you like to know the details?”

There was no space between us. I could feel him pressed into me. His lips skimmed the rim of my ear when he asked the question, and I felt the rush of heat buzz in my brain and flash through every part of me. The heat curled into my hoo-ha with a spasm that was a blink away from an orgasm.

He kissed me, and our tongues touched. The kiss deepened, his hand caressed my breast, and my hand went south on him in search of the bonus.

Somewhere far off a door opened and closed, and we both paused. It was the night guard making one of his rounds.

I guess I should be grateful. I might have been condemned to hell if it had gone any further. It was one thing to have a relationship with two men. It was a totally other thing to have them simultaneously.

I looked around. “So is there anything else to see?”

“Not tonight,” Ranger said.





EIGHT


IT WAS AFTER one o’clock when I crawled into bed with mixed emotions about the next day. I wanted to rush in and root out the killer, and at the same time I felt completely incompetent at doing the job. I set my alarm for seven o’clock, giving me a half hour to shower and whatever, and a half hour to drive to the ice creamery.

The alarm went off, and I hit the snooze button and pulled the pillow over my head. Five minutes later the alarm went off again, and I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower.

I wasn’t sure what one wore to work in an ice cream factory, so I dressed in my standard uniform of jeans, a red short-sleeved V-neck jersey, and running shoes. I scarfed down a cold meatball sandwich for breakfast and poured my coffee into a to-go mug. As I chugged out of the parking lot, I got a phone call from Lula.

“Are you there yet?” she asked. “What kind of job did you get?”

“I just got on the road. I don’t have to be there until eight o’clock.”

“Well, you better hurry. You don’t want to be late on your first day. People hate that.”

“Are you at the office?”

“Hell, no. I’m in my closet deciding on who I want to be today. I mean, I’m always Lula, but I got a multifaceted personality.”