Page 5 of Always Murder (The Last Picks #9)
Millie’s words hung in the air, and for a single, eternal moment, I wondered if this was a nightmare. Or if I’d died, and this was my personal, um, heck.
The woman on the floor blanched. Her hand tightened around a clump of paper towels, which she’d apparently been using to try to clean up the spilled Coke. “I don’t—”
“Are you Ms. Hernandez?” But Millie—uh, Jinx St. James—didn’t give her a chance to respond. “Because I’d like to know why you’ve been withholding information about an ongoing investigation.”
The woman finally recovered from the surprise enough to say, “I’m Luz Hernandez, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about PAUL NAUGHT,” Millie said. “And I WANT SOME ANSWERS.”
The woman got to her feet. And then her expression changed. “Jinx St. James, huh?” She jerked a thumb at me. “Who’s he? Captain Underpants?”
For the record, these were my nice joggers. And it’s not like she was dressed to impress either—for someone who was supposed to be in management, she looked younger than I expected, and she was dressed like she’d be more at home riding a forklift than sitting at a desk.
In a tone of absolute, complete dismissal, Millie said, “That’s our intern, Chaz.” I wanted to squawk. I wanted to object. I wanted to challenge anybody to find a nicer pair of joggers that were officially endorsed by the World E-Sports Confederation. But before I could do any of that, Millie continued, “You’re Luz Hernandez?”
“You bet your butt I am,” the woman said, voice hardening as she seemed to recover her equilibrium. “And you’re not Jinx St. whatever. You’re Paul Naught’s sister. What are you doing here?”
Jinx St. James’s jaw dropped.
“We wanted to talk to you—” I said.
Luz snorted. “You wanted to talk to me, huh? So you broke into a locked office?”
“Your door wasn’t locked—”
“You want to tell me how you got in the building?”
“We’re just trying to help my brother,” Millie said. And then the professional facade crumpled, and she blurted, “He didn’t steal those packages.”
“As a matter of fact, he did,” Luz said. “And if he thinks wearing a stupid Santa suit is going to keep the police from identifying him, he’s out of his mind.”
“Wait, what’s that about a Santa suit?”
“He didn’t tell you? He thought nobody would be able to recognize him.”
A Santa disguise at peak holiday season did actually seem like a Paul Naught idea, but I filed that away for later. “Ms. Hernandez, Paul said it was only his packages that had been stolen. Is that true?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Doesn’t that seem strange? I mean, if Paul were the thief, wouldn’t he have taken somebody else’s deliveries?”
“Nobody said Paul had any brains.”
“But what if it was someone else? Someone who knew when Paul was delivering valuable items?”
“Nobody knows when Paul is delivering valuable items,” Luz said. “It doesn’t work that way. It’s not like we’ve got a list of what’s inside every box.”
“What about someone who knew his route?” Millie asked.
It was a surprisingly good question, and one I hadn’t considered.
Luz frowned. She hesitated a little too long before she said, “No. Nobody.”
“Not even you?” I asked.
“The computer plans those routes.”
“But you have access to them.”
It was the wrong thing to say; I knew it as the words were leaving my mouth. Luz’s face snapped shut. “No. As a matter of fact, I don’t. I work in loss prevention, not logistics, and as far as I’m concerned, Paul stole those packages. He has a record here; he tried to walk off with a video game that he took from an open package, and that was a couple of days after he started. He swore up and down it was a misunderstanding—”
“It was,” I said. “He was trying to live stream it.”
“In an empty box he carried into the lounge? I should have fired him that day, but we’re shorthanded as it is. It was only a matter of time before he tried again.” She pointed to the door. “Now, get out. If I see you on CPF property again, it’ll be trespassing, and I’ll call the sheriff.”
“Ms. Hernandez,” Millie tried.
“Out!”
The rudest part was she didn’t trust us to leave on our own. (Okay, I mean, I get it.) Luz followed us to the front door, unlocked it, and gave us the bum’s rush.
Outside, the day had that diffuse brightness of a gray, cloudy day when the sun just won’t give up. Millie and I made our way back to the car. A semi rattled past us toward the loading docks, doubtless dropping off another load of packages to be delivered to eager residents of the Oregon Coast, and the smell of exhaust wafted up.
“That,” I said once we were in the car, “could have gone better.”
“She was DEFINITELY trying to hide something,” Millie said. “She was SCARED. And DEFENSIVE.” Eyebrows shooting up, Millie whisper-screamed, “WHAT IF SHE’S THE GHOST?”
I gave Millie a long—and significant—look.
“What?” she said.
“You know what.”
Millie squirmed in her seat. “She could be! And anyway it was a good plan. I didn’t know Ms. Hernandez would recognize me.”
“It was not a good plan,” I said. “It was a terrible plan. And you didn’t ask me. You didn’t even talk to me about it. God, Millie, we could have gotten arrested.” I tried to take a calming breath. I tried to let it go. “And Chaz , Millie? Really?”
“You look like a Chaz,” she said weakly.
“How dare you?” I took several more of those deep, calming breaths before I finally trusted myself to say, “Start the car.”
Millie reached for the keys, but her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, and her face changed.
“What?” I said.
“My mom’s asking if I know where Paul is.” Her head came up; worry tightened her mouth. “No one can find him.”