Bingo Barge Murder (11 page)

We spotted the Lazar place and drove slowly past it. The red-brick building was half a city block long. The front butted up against the curb on Washington. I rounded the block and cruised past the parking lot, which was on the other side of the structure, out of view of the street. The Lazar and Company Dry Storage sign, attached to a slightly bent metal post, was shiny new. The far corner of the lot was bathed in a pale glow from a streetlight, but the circle of light left most of the lot in darkness.

My headlights swept the area. The space was large enough to allow semi-trucks to turn around and back up to one of two loading docks. In addition, three other gigantic garage doors took up most of the rear of the building. At one end was an employee entrance lit from above by a bare bulb.

No cars occupied the lot, and the windows in the brick building were dark. No one was home. I pulled into an empty area adjacent to the warehouse and parked behind a dumpster. “Ready?” I asked.

“As I’ll ever be.”

We piled out of the truck dragging our implements of crime. Coop had a tire iron, some rope, a couple of screwdrivers, a flashlight, and a flat piece of metal he thought might pop locks open. Before you knew it, he’d be changing his name to MacGyver. Or we were both going to wind up as some prison daddy’s bitches.

I had assorted screwdrivers, an old hammer, a flashlight, a pocket knife of my dad’s, a pad of paper, two pens, and a playing-card-sized digital camera, all stuffed in various pockets of my sweatshirt and pants. Learning from our last illegal outing, we both wore work gloves instead of the hot and sweaty plastic kitchen ones we’d sported on the barge.

We slunk around the dumpster and made our way through the blackness toward the staff door. The air smelled musty, from the dumpster or the building, I didn’t know. The asphalt was in worse shape than the crumbling building. “Coop—” I whispered loudly, “be careful—”

My warning came too late. There was an exhale of air, a clang of metal, and a muffled thud. I froze. Thankfully, I heard no more than the occasional sounds of vehicles on Washington Avenue as they whizzed past. No feet running to investigate, no sirens.

After a second that felt like ten, I whispered, “Coop, you okay?” I could make out his long form still sprawled on the ground.

“Yeah, except for a bit of missing skin. Rita should spend some dough fixing this place up instead of blowing it all on bingo. Where’s the damn crow bar?” After some scuffing around, he stood. We forged on, creeping more cautiously across the treacherous terrain, and stopped outside of the puddle of light cast from a bare bulb above the door.

I said quietly, “Hope you can get it open. What if it’s alarmed?”

“We’ll never know till we try. If an alarm goes off, run.”

“How long do you think it would be before the cops would show?”

“No idea.”

“Oh God,” I whispered. The hair was standing on end all over my body, and my heart was a few beats below stroke-out level.

Sucking in a breath, Coop held it, and then blew it out. “Wish me luck.” He stepped up to the door. It looked like he was on a stage with a giant spotlight shining directly down on him. It’s amazing how fear distorts reality.

Coop slid the thin strip of metal between the jamb and the door, wiggling it up and down. He worked at it for what felt like minutes until the door clicked, then swung open under the pressure of his fingertips. I peered into the black hole in surprise. Neither one of us thought he’d actually be able to jimmy it. We waited for the screech of an alarm. Nothing. Blessed silence reigned. Unless, of course, that blessed silence was a silent alarm that came to the attention of some security company or the fuzz.

We had no way of knowing. I dashed through the outer pool of light after Coop. He quietly shut the door, throwing us into almost total invisibility. We stood very still, ears on high alert. The periodic drone of a passing car outside was muted by the thick walls. The only other sound was our labored breathing.

“I think we made it,” I said, voice low.

“Yeah.” Coop flicked on his flashlight.

The open space felt endless and hollow, easily the size of three basketball courts. Six narrow windows, high above our heads, allowed faint light to seep in, but the slight illumination was quickly swallowed up by the interior darkness. The odor of old grease and dust was overpowering and the air tickled my nostrils, threatening to make me sneeze. To our left, Coop’s light caught two doors on the far side of the raised loading dock.

“Come on,” I said, pretending to possess the steely resolve brave people supposedly possessed in ample supply. The only thing I possessed at the moment was still-clean underwear, but I wasn’t sure how long that was going to last. I aimed for a set of stairs that led to the top of the loading dock.

My flashlight revealed cracked and stained concrete. Sand, pebbles, leaves, and twigs littered the floor, probably blown inside when the huge garage doors were rolled up to receive or send out shipments. Our footsteps were silent with the exception of the occasional crunch of a brittle leaf.

We moved cautiously up the stairs. The top of the loading dock was vast and bare. I shone my light on the two doors.

I whispered, “Game show contestant, do you select door number one or door number two?”

“Door number two, please.”

The doorknob twisted easily in my hand. I held my breath and eased it open. Inside, the darkness was so complete that my flashlight barely cut a swath. My nose, however, informed me we were in a very smelly john.

I fumbled against the wall for a light switch. My fingers caught it, and I waited for Coop to step inside behind me. “Shut the door and I’ll turn on the light.”

The door clicked shut, and I flipped the switch. We stood in the can, squinting as our eyes adjusted. I hoped the prevalence of bathrooms in our investigations was not a harbinger that our efforts were about to go down the toilet. A porcelain sink, perilously attached to the wall, sported old-fashioned, gunk-covered spigots for hot and cold. The basin was stained a rusty color beneath each faucet, and in the silence I heard a plink as water leaked from one or maybe both fixtures. The ring in the toilet bowl was the same dirty brown, and the seat was a curious baby blue. Ugh.

“Unless you have to go, I think we can skip this room,” Coop said.

“Yeah—no thanks.”

Coop shut off the light and we backed out.

Door number one was also unlocked. As it swung open, a stench I had no idea how to identify slammed into us with the force of a Mack truck. I flipped the switch, shedding light on a dreary office furnished with an old wooden desk, three battered filing cabinets, and one very dead body reclining in a chair behind said desk.

Coop whispered, “Oh shit.”

The man had been shot smack-dab between his eyes, the point of entry making a neat part in the unibrow that ran from one side of his forehead to the other. His head was tilted back, arms hanging limply over the armrests. He was dressed in a turtleneck sweater and leather bomber jacket. The wall behind him was speckled with something ghastly, and the metallic scent of blood and other vileness filled the room.

Behind me, Coop gagged and ran. I wondered if I’d be next. Forcing a swallow, I tried to breathe through my mouth. Was this Mr. Luther Lazar? My feet were rooted to the spot, and I had to work to keep myself from swaying. Air in mouth, out nose. Do not throw up. I hated throwing up.

The toilet flushed noisily next door, and the sound of running water seeped into the roar of horror that rung in my ears. In another minute, Coop was next to me, his jaws vigorously working a stick of gum. “Sorry about that. I’m okay now. Here, it’ll help.” He handed me a piece of Juicy Fruit. I hoped it would chase the taste of death from my mouth. We both chomped loudly.

“We have to call the cops,” I eventually said.

We chewed some more.

Coop shook his head. “This might be our only chance to find the nuts.”

More gum gnashing. If my brain had been functioning, I’d have been amazed at Coop’s sudden composure. He said, “Let’s see what we can find, and we’ll be really careful not to mess up any evidence.”

My jaw was getting sore. “Okay. So. We’ll call the police once we’re safely out of here, unlike—Dead Dude.”

Coop squinted at the body, head tilted as if he were studying a piece of artwork. “I think it’s a guy that’s come to the Bingo Barge with Rita a couple of times.”

I tried to suppress a gag. The Juicy Fruit was becoming cloyingly sweet. “I think we should get out of here.”

Coop didn’t respond right away, and I knocked him with my elbow.

Tearing his gaze away from the body, Coop looked at me. His eyes reflected revulsion and curiosity. His eyebrows floated at his hairline. “Dead Dude’s not going to do anything. We’ve got to figure out what happened to the truckload of almonds. Big picture and all that. Remember it’s about Eddy, Shay …” He trailed off, his hand slowly dropping to his side, his eyes drawn irresistibly back to the corpse.

I fought harder against the urge to hurl. “I know. You’re right.” Still, neither of us moved. “You ever see a dead body before?” I asked, hands pressed hard to my midsection.

“Only in a funeral home.”

I forced one foot in front of another and crept closer to Dead Dude, until I stood directly in front of the desk, breathing hard out of my mouth. The workspace was cluttered with bills of lading, scribbled notes on torn paper, an open ledger, and a paper coffee cup, contents spilled onto the top of everything. I edged around the corner of the desk, my head pounding. On the floor below Dead Dude’s left hand lay a palm-sized black revolver.

I carefully sucked some air. “Coop, come here.”

Coop took a tentative step toward me, then two. Then he was next to me, his face fixed in a horrified grimace. “You think he offed himself?”

I attempted to compartmentalize my fear and study the body as if I were in an anatomical forensics class. One eye was open and the other was closed. How was that possible? I winked my own eye shut, then shuddered. The open eye was blue-gray. Freaky. How in the world did I get stuck standing in front of a dead man? I was a simple coffee shop co-owner who steered clear of the law, didn’t bother anyone, and was, for the most part, a decent human being.

I stifled a groan. “He could have killed himself, I suppose.” I eyed the cadaver. “But Coop, do you think you could hold a gun and shoot yourself right between the eyes?”

Coop formed his hand into a gun and pointed it at the center of his forehead. But where would the gun land after the trigger was pulled? I didn’t think it would wind up on the floor right below the corpse’s dangling hand. That hand would probably land in his lap. I ran that thought out loud as I fought against a wave of nausea. That would really taint the crime scene.

“Makes sense. Someone comes in while Dead Dude—who’s not yet dead—is working, shoots him, and then drops the gun there to make it look like a suicide. You want to find his wallet and see who he is?”

Coop blanched at my suggestion. “Shay, we can’t mess up evidence. And no way am I touching him.”

I sighed. Bile bubbled in my throat, making my Juicy Fruit bitter. “This is an emergency situation. I won’t touch anything but his wallet. You check on his desk.” I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to stop the room from swaying. I could not believe I was about to search a
dead
guy. Oh, no, actually, a
murdered
dead guy. Oh God.

Coop put the desk between the dead man and himself. I gingerly reached out and lifted the zippered edge of his leather jacket. Nothing. I moaned. Tried the other side of the jacket, hoping I wouldn’t have to check his pants pockets. This time I felt a weight within and carefully extracted a wallet from an inner pocket, being very careful not to touch anything else.

“Got it,” I said, and flipped it open. The license was right on top, in a clear plastic sleeve. “It is Luther Lazar. Wonder if Miss Personality knows hubby is dead?” I held the license up to compare the dead guy to the photo. The man on it didn’t look much more alive than the corpse in the chair. It was an undeniable match. I gingerly replaced the wallet. My hand inadvertently brushed against Luther’s cold shirt front, and I shuddered.

Backing away rapidly, I pivoted and headed for the filing cabinets. I stood still, my eyes closed, willing my innards to calm. Then I opened the top drawer of one of the tan-colored cabinets. It was empty. “Huh,” I said. “The whole cabinet is empty. Not a scrap of paper, not a single file.”

“What about the others?”

I stepped sideways and tugged on the top drawer. Empty. The next one yielded a couple of stacks of blank invoices, some pads of note paper, and other assorted office supplies. “Rita did say they’d been getting ready to move. Maybe they cleared everything out already.”

“Maybe,” Coop said, clearly distracted. He was carefully sifting though the piles on the desktop.

I pulled the bottom drawer on the last cabinet open. A few files were jammed in the very back of the drawer. I wondered if they’d been left intentionally or simply missed. The folders held various bills. I paged through them, realizing that every one of them was overdue.

“Hey, Coop, check this out. They’re behind on …” I flipped a page. “The utility bill—damn, get this, by over two grand.” More flipping. “And electric. It’s huge—almost five thousand dollars.” I skimmed through bill after bill. “The garbage company, property taxes. You name it. They haven’t paid anything for months.”