“What kind of a hole?”
“Let’s just say he is one messed-up puppy, okay? Does nothing all day but sit in the basement watching TV. I thought maybe Josie could light a fire under him. She’s such a supportive person. Believed in me so much that I didn’t want to let her down.” He cleared his throat uneasily. “I take it that Paulette’s spoken to you about what’s been going on. I’m glad. It’s about time.”
“What can you tell me, Hank?
“Not much, to be perfectly honest.”
“You have no idea what’s happening?”
“None. And it’s putting me in a really uncomfortable position. Like last night at Rut’s party-Mrs. Tillis went to the trouble of baking me a marble cake and she thinks I’m rude because I didn’t thank her. I never
“It’s not just marble cake that’s going missing from your route. Paulette told me about the batch of mail that was found on Johnny Cake Hill Road.”
He nodded grimly. “That’s serious business. Stealing Christmas tips is one thing, but Paulette can’t tolerate-
“Would you mind schooling me a little?”
“Not at all. Ask me anything you’d like.”
“How long does it usually take you to complete your route?”
“Three, four hours. Depends on the volume of mail and the weather.”
“Do you keep to the same schedule every day?”
“Paulette’s real good about letting us make our own schedules-just as long as the folks get their mail. I’m usually here sorting by eight o’clock so I can get onto the basketball court with my high school girls by 3:30. Some of the others start later and stay later. And whether we want to take a lunch break or not is up to us. I just pull over somewhere quiet and have a quick sandwich in my truck. A lot of the others take a full hour off. Three of the girls drive their trucks back here and power walk to the health club at The Works. They’ve got a weight-loss contest going on. Whoever takes off the most pounds by New Year’s Day wins a weekend in New York City.”
“Hank, do you ever leave your truck unattended?”
“Well, yeah. Every time I have an accountable to deliver-that’s your certified mail and express mail. If it has to be signed for and scanned then I have to get out and knock on the front door. Same thing’s true when I have a parcel that’s too big for the box. Like a lot of folks get those forty-pound cartons of Florida oranges every month. I swear, those oranges all show up here on the same day. Hernia Monday, I call it.” He flashed a toothy grin at her. “If nobody’s home I try to stash the parcel out of the elements. Or bag it in plastic.”
“Do you leave the truck unlocked while you’re busy doing that?”
“Never. Not a chance. You never, ever leave your truck unlocked.”
“Do you drive the same truck every day?”
“Yeah, we all do.”
“So your truck is
“Well, it is but it isn’t. It’s not like they let us drive the danged LLVs home. We’re not even allowed to keep a set of keys on our key rings. The truck keys and scanners spend the night in the safe in Paulette’s office, along with any accountables that we weren’t able to deliver. That’s standard operating procedure. This is the U.S. Mail, Des. There’s nothing slipshod or haphazard about anything. It’s a secure operation. And this is a secure building. It’s locked-down plenty tight at night.” Hank glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Listen, I really should load up and run. How about we talk some more later?” He hesitated, his jaw working on the nicotine gum. “And also maybe?…”
“Maybe what, Hank?”
“Can we keep it just between the two of us?”
Des narrowed her gaze at him. He had something on his mind. Something that he wished to tell her in private. “Sure thing,” she said, handing him one of her business cards. “Call me any time, day or night.”
“I’ll do that.” He pocketed her card just as Paulette came striding toward them, a clipboard clutched to her chest. She raised her eyebrows at them curiously.
“Hank’s going to contact me directly if he sees anything out of the ordinary,” Des explained, showing her a smile.
Paulette showed her a smile right back. Or tried to. It came off more like a pained grimace. “Excellent. And I’m glad I caught you, Hank. I need to know how the transmission is doing on that old ’94 of yours.”
“The tranny on my LLV is okay.”
“I thought you told me it was getting balky in the cold.”
“It’s okay,” he repeated.
“Are you sure? Because I’ve been ordered to report on the mechanical status of all ten of our vehicles by the end of the year.” She tapped at a form on her clipboard. “Money’s tight. If yours needs retrofitting now’s the time to speak up.”
“It’s okay,” Hank barked at her. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Well, you don’t have to bite my head off. I’m just doing my job.”
“And now I’m doing mine.” He rolled his cart off toward the loading dock.
Paulette watched him go, stung. “I’m afraid things are getting a little tense around here. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize, Paulette. I’ve given some thought to your situation. Officially, my feeling is that we ought to notify the postal inspectors right away.”
She looked at Des hopefully. “And unofficially?…”
“If you want to wait a day before you notify them I’ll do some nosing around. Does that sound okay?”
Paulette let out a sigh of relief. “I don’t know how to thank you, Des.”
“No need to. I haven’t done jack yet.”
CHAPTER 6
Add this to the list of 297 things that Mitch Berger, proud child of the streets of New York City, never thought he’d find himself doing: standing out on a rickety wooden causeway over the freezing waters of Long Island Sound in the middle of a blizzard pushing around a John Deere professional-grade snow thrower. The damned thing was a monster that had a fourteen-inch steel augur and a whopping thirty-eight-inch clearing width. Six forward speeds, two rear speeds, dual halogen headlights and a dash-mounted electric chute-rotation control. It even had heated handgrips. He could feel the warmth through his work gloves as he cut a swath across the causeway with grim determination. Mitch was dressed for outdoor labor. He wore his arctic-weight Eddie Bauer goose down parka over a wool fisherman’s sweater, twenty-four-ounce wool field pants, merino wool long johns, insulated snow boots and his festive C.C. Filson red-and-black checked mackinaw wool hat with sheepskin earflaps, the one that made him look like a Jewish version of Percy Kilbride in a Ma and Pa Kettle movie. But, hey, he needed every layer. Not only was it snowing like crazy but it was starting to get really, really windy out there on that narrow causeway.
Mitch was a screening-room rat. A man who got paid to sit on his butt in the dark. Working a snow thrower? Not part of his normal job description. But this wasn’t a normal day. His neighbor, Bryce Peck, was dead. A foot of snow had fallen. And someone had to get the causeway cleared so that the damned hearse from Dousson Mortuary in New London could pick up Bryce and deliver him to the Medical Examiner in Farmington. The hearse was hours late because of the storm and the poor guy was
Mitch had stayed there with a shaken Josie while a detective from the Troop F barracks conducted a follow- up interview with her about Bryce’s state of mind and history of drug and alcohol abuse. Then a death investigator from the M.E.’s office had shown up to ask her pretty much the same questions all over again. It had been painful and tedious for Josie, but she’d remained calm and composed-despite the fact that the bald, middle-aged death investigator could not stop undressing her with his eyes. No wonder Des didn’t get along with most of the men on her job.
