“Are t—”
“Stop.” Casey held up her hand. “I’m not playing that game with you. Now shut up and let me think.”
Thinking didn’t help. Instead of coming up with a solution, she was fighting off the image of Evan in his last moments, the sickening feeling of jackknifing, and the realization that she was penniless in the middle of a state where she had no connections that hadn’t been made within the last twenty-four hours.
They’d walked almost a mile further when Death pulled out a mandolin and started singing.
“Aah!” Casey wrenched the mandolin from Death, and it disintegrated in her hands. “You are so…so…”
“Talented?”
“You call that talent? Terrible rhymes and bad rhythm? What was going to be the last word, anyhow? Before I’m forever what? Five?”
Death sulked. “I hadn’t gotten there yet.”
Casey gave a scream of frustration before setting off in a jog.
“Well, if you’re going to be
Casey was a mile down the road before she stopped and bent over, her hands on her knees. She had to keep going. She couldn’t stop now. She was going to be late for her appointment.
But the sun was warm on her back, the sky was a clear blue, and all she could hear was an airplane, so high in the sky it couldn’t possibly see her.
She stayed, chest heaving, and allowed her tears to fall onto the dusty road.
Chapter Thirteen
Davey was waiting for her in his pickup at the front of the parking lot, his head resting against the back of the driver’s seat. Talk radio leaked from the cab, and Casey wondered which annoying host he was listening to, and if he agreed with anything that was being said.
The parking lot was well-lit, and Davey’s truck was the only vehicle in sight. The closest neighboring business was on the other side of a chain link fence, with a parking lot that was just as deserted. On the other side of the building sat a thick grove of trees. Casey waited, listening, but could hear nothing other than Davey’s radio, distant traffic, and the quiet hum of the building’s air conditioner.
She walked in the gate and up to Davey’s truck, tapping on the driver’s side window. He jumped and put a hand to his chest.
“Sorry,” Casey said as he climbed down from the cab. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“S’okay.” He looked her up and down. “You’re looking better, I gotta say. You do something to your hair?”
Casey looked around, but Death was not there to smirk. “Just washed up. You ready?”
“Sure. Tom’s entrance is over here. He’s expecting us.”
An old but clean white Silverado was parked in the spot next to Tom’s door, on the same side as the grove of trees. Davey knocked, and the door was opened by a man about Casey’s age. He wore wrinkled khakis and a light- blue button-down shirt with the collar open, and his hair had lost whatever neat part it might’ve once had. His brown loafers were scuffed, but serviceable, and his glasses sat slightly crooked on his Roman nose. He shook Casey’s hand. “Tom Haab. Nice to meet you.”
Casey liked his handshake, and immediately felt more confident about talking with him. “Casey Jones. Thanks for coming out again after supper.”
“Glad to help. Better make it quick, though. Davey’s daughter needs help with the kids at bedtime.”
Davey grunted.
Tom led Casey to an empty table. “So what do we have?”
She pulled the papers from her bag and set them down in chronological order. “I’ve also got a journal that Evan—the trucker who died—was keeping, and this stack of papers. Can you take a look and see if any of this makes sense to you?”
Tom pulled up a chair and scanned the top papers. “These are truck manifests from a company called Class A Trucking. You can see the logo here.” He pointed to one of the photos, where Casey could just make out the edge of something that looked like a tire on the cab’s door. “It matches some of the paperwork.”
Of course. Casey hadn’t thought twice about the “Class A” on the papers, because she figured it was a rating of the trucks, or the load, or something. And the sketch of the tire was so generic-looking she’d thought it was standard on this kind of form. Exactly why she needed an expert.
“But some of these manifests are different. They don’t have a company logo. These trucks are driven by independent operators.” He squinted at the photos, holding some of them next to each other. “But look—this is the same truck, only on this photo it’s got the Class A logo, and this one it doesn’t. Must be a magnet, or a vinyl patch.”
“Why would they do that?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. But it doesn’t make much sense. Either you’re an indie, or you drive for a company. But see, some of these manifests have Class A listed, and some don’t. It’s strange.”
“Do you know Class A Trucking?”
“Heard of them. They’re relatively new, starting in the last couple of years. I don’t deal with them directly, because they’re in the same business as me, but I’ve known some folks who have.”
“And what is your job, exactly?”
“I’m a broker.”
“Which means…”
“I assign drivers to take loads from here to there.”
“How, exactly?”
“Okay.” He leaned his chair back on two legs. “Say there’s a company in, oh, Colorado, all right? They have a truckload of frozen broccoli that needs to get to Texas by Friday. The guy there knows me, so he calls and asks if I’ve got anybody who can pick it up. I check my truckers, find somebody who’s going to be in that area on Wednesday, and assign them to pick it up.”
“So you’re not driving trucks yourself?”
He laughed. “Heck, no. I could, I’ve got my CDL—”
“Commercial Driver’s License,” Davey said.
“—but I don’t drive unless I absolutely have to. I’m in the business of giving
“So the truckers work for Southwest Trucking?”
“Not exclusively. They’re mostly independent contractors. A few work almost entirely for me, but they’ll take the odd job here and there from another broker when it works.”
“And you pay them per trip?”
“Yup. Let’s say you’re a trucker, and I contact you to pick up the load in Colorado. I’ll calculate how much fuel it’s going to take to drive that load all the way to Texas. Around a thousand dollars, maybe.”
“Wow.”
“I know. Anyhow, we’ve also got to calculate payment for the truckers. So we’ll say the whole trip is two
