The last time I’d felt this angry was decades ago, when Willie Jay Groover went missing.
*
The Brethren kept me awake the entire night. Somewhere around four o’clock in the morning, I finally dozed off, having decided the only way I could end this nightmare was to explain everything to Detective Bradford, including their blackmail scheme of me. I would turn over the jump drive, the “Ellice Littlejohn” folder included. Sam was dead and my keeping secrets hadn’t served either of us well thus far. I was prepared to deal with the consequences if it meant Jonathan and Max would go to prison for Sam’s death. The only thing that still troubled me—why did they kill Sam?
I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing at 6:30 A.M. I rolled over and tried to clear the frog from my throat. “Hello?”
“Hey, Ellice, it’s me, Rudy. Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”
“Rudy?” I sat up in the bed. “What’s going on?”
“I know you get busy and I wanted to catch you first thing this morning. I’ve found something I think you need to see right away.”
Chapter 32
I was a frazzled mess by daylight. I didn’t remember getting dressed or driving into the office. In fact, I was halfway into work before I realized I hadn’t even combed my hair. Luckily, I found a headband on the back seat of my car that I used to pull my hair back on the few occasions I ventured out to exercise. I snapped it across the front of my head and tried to finger-comb my hair before I walked inside the building. When I arrived at my office suite, Rudy was standing at Anita’s desk talking, folder in hand. They both looked at me in astonishment.
Anita asked, “Ellice, is everything okay with you?”
“Yes.” I knew I looked like hell.
“You look a little rough around the gills, girl.” Anita said.
I ignored her comment and proceeded into my office. “Come on in, Rudy.”
He followed me inside. “Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, you just look . . .”
“You said you had something urgent?” Maybe Anita had told him about Detective Bradford’s call about my brother. I decided not to address it. That was my personal business.
“Yeah, right. You remember that meeting you sent me to out in East Hell—oops, I mean the Operations Center in Conyers?”
“Yes.” I didn’t have it in me to laugh at Rudy’s joke. I took off my coat and hung it in the closet. My mind wandered. As soon as Rudy left my office, I would call the detective, meet her, and give her the flash drive. Next, I needed to resign. Maybe I should ask Rudy about the Brethren. But I would have heard about it a long time ago if he knew anything. Besides, he was Jewish and not likely to know about their hate-filled bigotry. I’d just take the stuff to the police and let them figure it all out.
“。 . . so that new manager is right. Something screwy is going on with the orders. There’s no contract for the account and the manager can’t reach the company that placed the order,” Rudy said.
“I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind. What did you say?” I took a seat behind my desk and motioned for Rudy to sit down.
“There’s no contract for an account we’re handling, and we can’t trace the source. Apparently, we pick up a monthly shipment of fifteen boxes out in Shelton. Five are shipped to an address in southern Ohio, five to southern Illinois, and five to an address in Upstate New York.”
“Okay?”
“The shipments started about four months ago. But they started increasing in frequency over the last two months.”
I shrugged. “So a business has picked up some extra orders.”
“I don’t think a business is involved. They’re shipped using a PO box address in Shelton.”
“A post office box? We don’t pick up without a physical street address.”
“Exactly.”
“Who’s shipping?”
“Something called Cavanaugh Industries. But that’s not the best part. We can’t find any such company in Shelton or anywhere else in the state of Georgia. And the shipments are paid through a PayPal account. But here’s the part I think you’ll be most interested in. Two months ago, a shipment of ten boxes went to San Diego, California. An address right on the US-Mexico border. That shipment was addressed to Libertad Excursiones.”
“What?!”
“Yep. I can’t find any corporate address for Libertad in San Diego. The boxes are delivered to a warehouse address there.”