The Grim Reaper's Dance

“Until the next time,” Casey said.

Mrs. Halveston wouldn’t look up.

“And each time it got a little worse,” Casey continued, “and soon you were transporting things you knew were wrong. What was it? Weapons? Drugs?”

“Oh, no!” She did look up at that. “We would never—”

“What were you hauling?”

“Nothing illegal. Just TVs, and frozen cauliflower, and…whatever they wanted.”

“So the present to the nephew was just a test?”

Mrs. Halveston’s lips pinched into a hard line. “I guess. To see if we’d do what they asked without question. We’re not supposed to transport things, you know, other than what’s listed on the manifest.”

Just like they weren’t supposed to drive with a false license.

“So…I don’t understand. Why did they need to test you to see if you’d drive legitimate loads?”

Mrs. Halveston sighed heavily. “Because half the time they’re not legitimate.” Her shoulders slumped. “They’re stolen goods.”

“What?”

“It’s a huge money-maker, apparently.”

Crime often was. “How does it work?”

“A couple of ways. One is to simply show up at the warehouse with what looks like a real order. They load the merchandise onto your truck, and you leave. They don’t even know they gave it to the wrong person.”

“Don’t they recognize drivers?”

“Oh, honey, do you realize how many drivers there are?”

Tom had told her. What had he said? One and a half million trucks on the road at any given time? Which meant there were many more drivers than that.

“Some suppliers might use only the same drivers from the same trucking companies, but these guys would know that. They go for the places that see different faces every day. Besides, the drivers are driving for Class A Trucking, too, so if they seem familiar…” She shrugged. “It makes sense.”

“So Class A isn’t doing the stealing?”

“Not technically. When we drive a legitimate load it’s through Class A. When it’s stolen…we’re on our own as an independent driver.”

So for Class A’s real orders they would put the logo on their trucks. When they drove a bad shipment, they took it off. “What’s the other way to steal loads, other than just showing up and taking it?”

“Paperwork.”

“How so?”

Mrs. Halveston leaned her elbows on the table, her head sinking down. “It’s all so complicated. But if I sell you a load of soup and I don’t have soup, I’m going to have to get it from somewhere. I buy the soup from another place, get it, and then sell it to my customer at a mark-up.”

“Not exactly stealing.”

She gave a little laugh. “Not exactly. But my customer has no idea where I’m getting the soup, and the people selling me the soup don’t know I’m selling it again for a profit. They could be selling directly to my customer, but I’m getting in the way.”

“Sounds like regular business.”

“It could be if it were up front, I guess. But the way it’s done here, it’s harming both the original seller and the customer through a dishonest business practice. I told you it was hard to explain.”

But Casey did understand the term stealing. And she thought she knew what was going on with the drivers. “Class A hires drivers who can’t drive elsewhere, then blackmails them into hauling stolen goods.”

Mrs. Halveston’s head sank even further.

“What did they have on Pat Parnell?”

“Oh, that poor man. He had a family, you know. A wife and children—I don’t remember how many—and then had that unfortunate affair out in California. Every time he would drive out that way he would meet up with his lover, and…” She shrugged.

So Pat Parnell had lost his family over another woman. That was awful, surely, but Casey couldn’t see how that could be used as blackmail anymore, since his wife obviously knew and had left him.

“The affair,” Mrs. Halveston said quietly, “was with a man.”

Oh. Casey remembered the notes in Evan’s journal. Carl Billings, SF. The name of the other party, and, most likely, San Francisco, if he’d been heading out west, to California.

Mrs. Halveston continued. “His wife divorced him and took the children, and the company he’d been driving with—a conservative Christian outfit out of Bingham, said they couldn’t have people like him driving for them, and fired him.”

“But other companies wouldn’t be that way. Why couldn’t he go somewhere else?”

Mrs. Halveston shook her head sadly. “He and his wife had just built that house. When she divorced him, she left him with the house and all of the debt. He couldn’t contest it—plus felt he didn’t have a right to. Jobs would come in, but free-lancing full-time wasn’t enough to satisfy all the lenders. Until Class A called him. I guess they knew him from somewhere. Told him they’d give him a better-paying job if he kept it quiet. The way he acted it was like they were his saviors. Now look where it got him.”

Casey could picture it. A man sinking deeper and deeper, and suddenly a lifeline. He grabbed it, and it only got worse.

“It was all too much for him,” Mrs. Halveston said. “What with losing his family, and his job, and then the bank called and said they would be foreclosing. He went to them to ask for help, but they turned him away.”

“The bank?”

“No. Class A. He couldn’t go drive for anyone else, because the guys had him over a barrel. If he left to drive for another company, they’d turn him in for something—believe me, they had plenty with all the jobs he did for them—and he’d lose everything for sure. Besides that, they hold his money. They say they’re short on cash and they’ll pay after his next job, or after the supplier pays the trucking bill. Half the time we don’t see a paycheck for three or four months. But what are we to do? It’s the same for the others. We all have something to lose.”

“Hank Nance?”

Wendy nodded. “Turn him in for crossing state lines, and he’d owe all those months of child support.”

Probably the months listed in Evan’s notes. “And John Simones?”

“Paying his son’s dues. Got charged with date rape at college, and John had to cough up the money for the legal fees. He took the job with Class A because it paid better, but now they have him on the wrong side of the law, since he’s been driving stolen goods.”

“But if Westing and Dixon turned any of these men in, wouldn’t it just lead back to them?”

She snorted. “To whom? You can bet your life they don’t have their real names on those false papers. Not like they have the drivers’ names. Whether they’re the drivers’ fake names or the real ones, they have the truckers in their pockets.”

Casey knew Wendy was right—she couldn’t remember seeing any names on the manifests other than the truckers’. Dixon and Westing were listed as Class A’s owners, but if that company was supposedly doing the legitimate work, they wouldn’t be connected to the other. Besides, it would be their word against truckers who were breaking the law just by getting behind a wheel.

Westing and Dixon were taking a huge chance, though, with their names on the business. Their boss’ name wasn’t anywhere. “Mrs. Halveston, do you know the name Yonkers?”

“Like in New York?”

“No, like in a person. Is the name Willie Yonkers familiar?”

She shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

Exactly what Casey thought. If Willie Yonkers was involved he kept it a secret from just about everyone.

“What are you going to do?” Mrs. Halveston’s eyes were bright with tears and fear. “If they know I met with you they’ll quit having Mick drive, and that would just kill him.”

“I’m not going to tell them.”

Mrs. Halveston scraped her chair back and stood. “I need to go.”