“And he’d have had jurisdiction to try and keep people like Merry Michelsen out,” she said. “A motive for murder.”
“Perhaps,” Tucker said. “Mind you, it almost wasn’t going to happen anyhow, whether your father got involved or not.”
That’s new. Sharmila felt her pulse race. That’s something new. “Why?”
“The county had the same poverty trap concerns, concentrations of crime and violence, and what have you. But then Jenkins up and promised to offer twenty full-time jobs for residents who could do labor and needed work.”
“Professor Jenkins said that?”
“Well… I’m using the term in the corporate sense, as most here do, but I think he knew about it. I mean… I assume he did. His CEO, Parker Baird, was leading the negotiations. Said he could get other investors to offer the same. He figured he could create a hundred new positions easily.”
“Did he say where? How? Because I haven’t heard anything about Jenkins expanding.”
Tucker nodded slowly. “I believe so. He owns a cheese factory under a subsidiary. It’s not even ten minutes away, which means they’d be able to get to work easily even without transportation. It looked like one hell of a deal. I can get you the address. I understand they make a fine cheddar. They’ve got a little shop up front, real quaint.”
“A cheese factory?”
Tucker raised both palms to ward off her concern. “Now, I know what you’re thinking: a factory, a trailer park full of meth heads a few miles away, some of them maybe working there…”
“Doesn’t that seem a little suspicious?” she said.
“Now… Parker Baird is a respected businessman. And besides, just to be careful, I had one of our boys do some checking. Making methamphetamine requires certain precursor chemicals, most notably pseudoephedrine. Our investigator’s a former local vice guy and had seen plenty of cook houses, so he knew what to look for. Inspected their stocks, checked their inventories and purchase orders.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Our boy was real thorough, checked their incomings and outgoings, even had someone go in looking for work who knew the business. They had a whole lot of cheese in stock… but no sign of crystal meth, no cook tables. It sure seemed legit to us. He wound up leaving with a wheel of gouda.”
Outside the building, Bob stayed low in the passenger seat of her BMW, his eyes behind a pair of sunglasses, a “San Jose Earthquakes” ballcap on his head.
“Did you get all that?” Sharmila’s voice was clear through the phone’s external speaker.
“I did. Are you done?”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
He’d had her keep the line open on her phone, tucked into the side pocket of her purse. It wasn’t that he lacked faith in her ability to ask a question. He had training in spotting relevant details others missed, changes in cadence, potential lies or white lies.
Tucker had struck him as sincere, but in the context of someone who plays the same character all the time. Was he really that nice and genial? Was anyone? Probably not.
She opened the driver’s side door and climbed in. “Okay. So how did we do?”
“We have something to follow up.”
“The subsidiary business. The cheese factory.”
Bob nodded. “I’ve had run-ins with any number of jagoffs over the years. I’ve never met one yet who was going out of his way to create work for the poor.”
“So it’s hiding something. Maybe that was what my father had figured out.”
“It has to be,” Bob said. “From what Tucker was saying, the housing battle was somewhat lost already. But your father figured out the one position—sheriff—that could intervene without politics getting in the way. He’d have been all over Merry and Baird.”
“So they killed him,” Sharmila said bleakly.
“I need to check this place out. Even if not meth, I think we can make a safe bet that whatever that factory is producing, it sure ain’t just cheese.”
29
Merry Michelsen scratched at the pale red stain on his UCLA sweatshirt and lamented that it wasn’t ever going away. “Dang McDonald’s. Should buy me a new one,” he muttered.
But it wouldn’t be the real deal. He’d bought it at the start of year three, just before the money ran out. And damn you for that, too, Daddy.
Of course, losing his degree had its benefits, too. It had motivated him to turn his sideline selling a little weed and coke into a real career.
He sat in the office at the back of the warehouse along Gilmore Avenue and watched through the picture window as the lab techs worked. The bigger room was filled with equipment, giant drums and flasks, a machine that looked like a vertical cement mixer, tables loaded with Bunsen burners, rows of glass flasks and tubing.
It was all Greek to him. Merry had learned to “shake and bake”—mix methamphetamine precursor chemicals in a soda bottle, then turn them into crystal by cooking them. That was simple enough for anyone to pick up, at least until they blew their arms off accidentally.
But the veritable field of equipment between the office and the front part of the building might as well have been making chocolate, or snow tires, for all he understood.
Across the factory floor, he saw one of the double doors open. Greg Thomas paced quickly around one side of the collected machinery, joining him a minute later.
“Well?” Merry said. “What do you think?”
Thomas scowled. Baird’s assistant had a collarless leather jacket on, blue jeans. Merry realized he’d dragged him away from a day off.
“What do I think? I designed this. I knew exactly what to expect.”
“And? We flipped the switch this morning, so to speak. Everything look okay?”
