Chapter 109

I managed to finish my shower and dress before the Realtor showed up. I met him in the office before Wilson arrived for the day's review of our bugs.

"Hello there," the Realtor said.

"Hello, so do you have the offer ready?" I asked.

"Yes I do. Here you go. You are going to offer $200,000 total for the property known as the Railroad Hotel. This gives the legal description and location. It states you are offering 5% earnest money with the understanding the owner will respond within 48 hours. The rest is just bullshit," the Realtor said.

"It better not be important, I got one bad ass lawyer," I said.

"Do you want me to read it," he said.

"No, I trust you. I just wanted you to know upfront," I said.

"Fair enough, I don't want you to get your hopes up. You are $75,000 below what he thinks is market value." The Realtor said honestly.

"If he says no, I'll come back next year with a 5% lower offer," I said.

"If you don't get the hotel, what are you going to do with the warehouse," he asked. He obviously did his homework.

"The plan as of now is to move the toy and tool chest plant into that building," I said. It was more or less the truth.

"Well I guess we will see within a couple of days," The Realtor commented.

"So?" Wilson asked an hour later. "Are we going to own it or not?"

"Most likely not," I replied. As I said it my phone rang. "Wilson please change this ring tone when I finish this call. I want it to ring like a fucking phone."

"Hello Nate, do you have some news for u?" I asked.

"We are going to be shipping a high value load this week. It is going to be sorted today and out for delivery tomorrow," Nate said.

"Let's see what we come up with. Please stay available tonight." He got to make the final decision, since he had the load at risk.

Since Wilson had been eavesdropping, he had the recording from the bugs on Tiger Lady cued up. We began with the phone calls she made or answered. There were none that sounded anything like an alert to a Hijacker.

Then we went to the cockroach mike under her desk. Someone used her land line to make a call out. The person was a man, so it wasn't her. The man probably wanted to use her phone in case they dumped the phones. It would appear that she was making the alert, when it was actually a man.

"Nate who was in Joan's office at 3PM today?" I asked.

"I will have to check. She wasn't in the office. She was on the floor helping the people sort the load. Everyone was helping to repackage the load. I'll have to call you back." Nate said.

"Nate don't confront him. We aren't sure about anything yet," I informed him.

I turned to Wilson. "How the fuck can we be so wrong, so often?" I asked.

"Sylvia, we did what we had to do in a case like that you followed the evidence. I'm just glad we didn't confront her," he said.

"Get your ass busy and find out where the money is coming from. We need to know before we clear her," I demanded. I sat on the deck drinking coffee and waiting for something to happen.

First it was Nate's call. "Okay the person in her office at 3PM was Jasper our security guard on the gate. He has been seeing Joan according to a couple of the other people. It's been going on for some time though, so no one thought anything of him waiting in her office to speak to her."

"Could he have found out from papers laying on her desk, or would she have had to tell him," I asked.

"Joan probably had a manifest or something akin to it laying around. He could have seen it especially if he checks her office out regularly," Nate said. He sounded like he didn't want his leak to be Joan.

"Is he the guard who was working the night I planted the tracking device on the truck?" I asked.

"No he is the day shift guard four days a week. I think he is a bouncer in a strip club at night and on weekends," Nate said. At least someone said that once a while back. I gave it some thought and decided there was no conflict of interest." Nate suggested.

"Can you tell me the name of the club. I just want to verify he still works for them," I explained. I was actually hoping for more information.

"I'm pretty sure it's called the Pink Lady," he said.

"Okay just act as thought nothing different is happening. When you leave at five or six, whenever you would normally leave, come by my place. We can let you in on what we know, then decide what to do next," I explained.

"Wilson find out if Joan Tiger works for the Pink Lady strip club," I said.

"She seems a little old to be doing that, but you never know," Wilson said. "So are we going to let the shipment go, so that we can trap them."

"Nate can't afford to lose the shipment, if anything goes wrong. We need a better plan."

When Nate arrived at 6:30PM, Wilson and I were ready for him. Wilson played him the recording of the leaked transport information.

After Nate heard the recording he asked, "So what are you going to do?"

"Well there are a couple of things we can do. We can turn this over to the police right now or we can wait till we catch the bad guys in the act." I suggested.

"If it goes bad I can't afford the loss," he suggested.

"Well we need to get them with the truck, so the cops have some leverage to try to find out about your other shipments," I suggested.

"I'm sorry, I just can't afford the loss," he said.

"What if we go in tonight after mid night and transfer the product to a different truck then put in a less valuable load. Then we can have the Sheriff's Deputies reel them in with a load." I suggested.