Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [37]
Great. Roelke swallowed more irritation as he introduced Chloe and brought Marge up to speed.
Marge hitched her pants up. “Is something missing?”
Chloe spread her hands. “I don’t have an inventory of the artifacts stored here. All I can say is that some things were messed up in the kitchen.” She led the way inside.
The galley was so small that the three officers had to proceed one at a time. Roelke went first. The space didn’t look any better than it had on Tuesday—dark, cluttered, worn. Depressing. “What’s different?” he asked.
“These ledgers were shoved farther over on the counter than I left them.” Chloe pointed. “And some of my papers were shuffled.”
They convened back outside. “So basically, you aren’t aware of anything that got stolen,” Hank said.
Chloe gave him a level look. “No. But finding a padlock on the ground is cause for concern, I’d say.”
Marge shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “When were you last inside there yourself?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I locked it up about five, before going home.”
“Are you sure you didn’t forget to hook the lock?” Marge asked. “Maybe you just thought you did. Maybe it didn’t quite catch.”
“I locked it,” Chloe snapped. “And even if it hadn’t caught—which it did—it would still be hanging here, wouldn’t it? Not on the ground?”
“Maybe your hands were full, or you were in a hurry, and you dropped that lock yourself,” Hank said.
“Hold on a minute,” Roelke told Hank and Marge firmly. He had no real authority here, but he wanted to intervene before Chloe started throwing punches. “Who else has a key to these trailers?” he asked her.
She looked startled. “Well … the head of maintenance. Stanley Colontuono.”
Stanley? Roelke took a mental note and filed it away.
“And Ralph Petty, the site director,” Hank added. “He’s got a master for everything. Have you called them?”
“No. But—they wouldn’t have cause to be here without letting me know,” Chloe pointed out. “And that wouldn’t explain why the lock was on the ground, anyway. I can’t believe any employee would be so careless.”
For a moment no one spoke. Then the radio clipped to Hank’s big belt crackled. “VC to Security.”
He pulled it free. “Security here.”
“We’ve got a family in the parking lot, locked out of their car. Can you give them a hand?”
“I’m on my way.”
“It’s a Jeep Cherokee, Illinois plates, third bay. VC out.”
Hank replaced his radio with an air of authority. “What we’ve got here is, not a whole lot.” He nodded at Roelke and Marge. “Sorry you got called in for nothing.”
As Hank drove away, Marge pulled at her belt again. “It seems to me if someone was really trying to break in, he would have taken a carload or two of those antiques.”
Chloe folded her arms over her chest.
The deputy caught Roelke’s glance and jerked her head toward her car. “Nothing here to follow up on,” Marge said as they walked away from Chloe. “I think the security guard is probably right.”
“Perhaps.”
“I’ll do some extra drive-bys.” Marge opened her car door. “Isn’t that the woman from the car wreck? She seems high-strung.”
“I think she’s just trying to do her job.”
“Aren’t we all.” Marge shrugged. “Catch you later, McKenna.”
Roelke walked back to Chloe, who watched the deputy drive away with her lips pressed into a tight line. “It seems the mounties think I overreacted,” she said.
“You did the right thing to call. What you didn’t do right was charge inside an isolated trailer when you saw the missing lock.”
“I thought someone might still be inside!”
“Exactly. You should have called for help, let one of us do the looking.”
“These trailers and the artifacts inside are my responsibility,” she snapped.
A tiny bird serenaded them from a pine branch overhead, chickadee-dee-dee. Roelke waited.
“Oh, shit.” The tension left Chloe’s posture and she sat down on the trailer steps abruptly. “All I could think when I saw that door unlocked was that someone came here searching for that blasted ale bowl.”
“Do