Page 36 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

“I really am not against you dropping this one,” she added. When he looked at her, she shrugged. “It’s been a grave for somebody for at least two years.”

“I suspect it’s been a grave far longer than that.”

She frowned. “Do you think that’s what’s going on with the current voice?”

“Yes, whatever this is,” he noted. “I don’t understand why everything keeps changing, but I am sensing something is here.”

“Maybe it’s…”

He frowned at her. “What?” he asked, hating the challenge in his voice.

“Maybe it’s partly because you’re changing.”

He stopped, then stared at her, one eyebrow up.

She shrugged. “You’re not the same person you were when I first met you.

I’m not the same person I was when I first met you.

And every day, in all kinds of ways, we both change a little bit, a lot really, but it’s almost as if we’re one percent different, every day maybe, just because we’re moving forward all the time. ”

“I kind of like that thought,” he shared, a smile touching his lips. “Not everybody wants to consider themselves stuck and stagnant.”

“I’m sure a lot of people are stuck and stagnant, depending on where they’re at in life,” she noted, “but a lot of people aren’t. A lot of people are moving forward, growing, changing all the time. And, if your abilities grow and change with you, then it all makes sense.”

“I don’t really want to be a megaphone for all the people stuck on this side because they can’t leave their bodies behind.”

“But the real question is, why can’t he? What is stopping him?”

“I don’t know,” Simon admitted, with a shrug. “That’s a question I can’t understand myself.”

“Too bad your grandmother isn’t around.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that more than a few times recently,” he muttered, glancing back at her. “She’s definitely somebody I now wish I had paid more attention to.”

“Which is also why she’s probably up there laughing her fool head off at you,” she added, with a smirk.

“I would like to think that maybe she’s up there having a holiday from all the strife, pain, and suffering that people put her through down here.

” As they walked, he thought about that.

“Her life wasn’t easy at all. People judged her, some feared her, and yet, when it came to her, she helped everyone she could. ”

“Of course.”

“If she had answers, they wanted them, but they hated the fact that they had to come to her to get them. Then, as soon as she would give them whatever answers she had available, they would misjudge what she said, particularly if it was something they didn’t want to hear.”

“Did she talk about it?”

“Rarely. She didn’t like talking about it much,” he noted, with a headshake. “There was always a sense that she would help anybody, but just because she offered help didn’t mean that everybody would take it.”

“Of course not. People don’t always want to take advice, but they’re happy enough to dish it out,” she pointed out, looking over at him. “But taking it? Now that’s a whole different story.… How’s Danny working out?” she asked abruptly.

He smiled. “He’s doing just fine.”

“You’re sure? Every now and then I think about him and worry if he’s got his depression and suicide tendencies under control and realize I haven’t even asked about him in a while.”

“He’s doing fine,” Simon repeated, a smile on his face. “He’s still going to therapy, and he still shows up for work every day, which is huge for him.”

“I’ll take that,” she said, with a smile. “We all need to have something that works for us in our lives.”

“He’s also become pretty close with Joe.”

Joe was one of his foremen and was always on Danny’s ass.

Danny had been very depressed when they met him after he became involved as a witness in one of Kate’s cases.

He had been in a bad way, to the point of being suicidal, so Simon gave him a try as a laborer on one of his rehab jobs.

Joe took Danny under his wing, and, since then, things had improved a lot for Danny. “So, how’s that working out for Joe?”

“Fine.” Simon chuckled. “Joe’s got half-a-dozen kids,” he shared, with a laugh, “and has supervised men of all ages and in all kinds of situations for many years. He’s more or less managed to work Danny right into the crew, as well as his family.”

“That’s really good of him.”

“He would say it’s just who he is. And he does it so naturally that calling it a good deed would be a judgment.”

She laughed. “And again, here we are, talking semantics. What seems to be a good thing to me just seems to be a natural thing to him. It’s neither good nor bad, but, because I know I’m not geared for doing it,” she admitted, “to me it seems to be a really good thing.”

“Exactly.” He smiled, as he walked with her around the warehouse. Then he pointed at the very back of the building.

“That’s not a door,” she said.

“No, it’s not, but it looks as if they tried to board it up to stop people from getting at it.”

“So, it just looks…” She stopped and noted bits of plywood were lying around, some of it on the ground, some of it above. None of it looked useful. And none of it seemed to be trying to hide anything. “I’m surprised the plywood is even here, what with the cost of wood right now.”

“Particularly dry plywood like this,” he noted, with a bright smile.

“Yeah, it’s probably worth even more money,” she muttered. “It seems as if lumber twists so badly.”

“That’s why plywood is better than straight lumber, depending on the application. You can still get good kiln-dried wood. You just have to pay more for it.”

“Paying more for it,” she said, with a roll of her eyes, “is one thing, but paying outrageous amounts?… That’s a different story. But that’s what you pay, isn’t it?”

“Not on purpose, but sometimes I have to,” he conceded. “It’s not as if it’s a choice when I need the wood and have projects to be done. Sometimes you pay a little more, especially if it’s holding up the crew.”

“And is that little more here and there where you end up running into problems with buildings?”

“Only if it really impacts the bottom line,” he noted.

“However, the bottom line suffers most of all when delays get us off schedule. One thing I can’t have is a crew sitting idle, just waiting for materials.

So, all too often, it just makes more sense to get materials to keep the crews moving, despite a higher cost.”

He pulled work gloves from his pockets and started removing the still upright pieces of plywood. It didn’t take very much to rip it off the wall.

She frowned at him. “Is it supposed to be that easy to take off?”

“Nope,” he confirmed, “but time, weather, and vandalism loosens the screws that we use and the materials they go into.”

“At least it was screws, not nails.” He laughed at her comment.

As he separated the lumber from the wall, she saw the stairs they needed to access the basement.

Even with her help it took twenty minutes to expose an area big enough for them to get through.

Going down there, he now saw the bits and pieces of an electrical box nearby.

“I guess I didn’t really even think about it, but there has to be a ton of plumbing involved too, right?”

“Yeah, and all of that should be somewhere in here as well.”

“And yet—” She shook her head.

“It’s old, and lots of it is just damaged.”

As she stepped in farther, she looked around, turned on the flashlight on her phone and muttered, “This is what I would have expected.”

“Every building has a place like this,” Simon said comfortably, as he moved forward.

“But when we did the search of the building, we didn’t find this. No one came this way.”

“You and I didn’t search the outside of this warehouse because we found the body inside,” Simon explained, “and I don’t think any of the officers who did the rest of the search would have noticed and pulled away all this lumber.

The building hasn’t been condemned, but I’m pretty sure that’s coming. ”

“Particularly after this, but then what would you do?”

“Drop it,” he said. “I would drop it and would clear out the space and would start fresh. More to the point, if we found another body, we’ll have to.”

“Jesus,” she muttered, as she made her way forward. “I guess it is a perfect disposal spot.”

“Not necessarily,” he countered. “It depends on how it came about.”

As they continued on deeper into this area, she noted, “It would also be nice if this had nothing to do with my current cases.”

“I don’t know that it does,” Simon replied. “Not sure why, but I have the impression that this is old.”

“It may be old,” she agreed, “but that doesn’t make it not connected .”

He faced her and nodded. “I hate to think that it is though because, if it’s that old, Jay would have been here for a very long time.”

“Which is what we’re here to find out,” Kate declared. As they stepped forward a few more feet, she looked around and noted, “There is a dusty, musty smell.”

Simon explained, “Old buildings do have a tendency to smell like this.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she muttered. “Old buildings are your specialty, not mine.”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I seem to have gotten my hands into it a bit more than I had expected.”

“As in too much more?”

“No,” he said, with a headshake. “Just more than I had planned on.”

“Of course. You bought this one.”

“And another one,” he admitted. When she frowned at him, he just shrugged and carried on.

“I have faith in you,” she added, as she walked beside him.

He stopped to smile at her. “That’s just one of the weird things I like about you.”

She looked at him. “ Weird ? Am I supposed to call you a damn fool instead?”

He laughed. “Lots of people would. Most would probably be afraid that the takeouts would stop or the boat would be sold.”

She winced at that. “If it does, it does,” she muttered, with a shrug. “I must say though, that I have thoroughly enjoyed the Running Mate , but, if you need the cash, then you need the cash. That’s just simple economics.”

He burst out laughing. “No worries. We don’t have to sell the Running Mate. ”

“Oh good,” she said, with a huge smile. “That makes me feel better.”

“I was joking with my banker,” he added, as he led the way forward, “and told him that I would have to go back out gambling again.”

“I would just as soon you didn’t do that,” she shared.

“If you go into international waters, it’s not illegal.”

“Maybe not,” she acknowledged, “but it sounds dodgy as hell.”

“Maybe so, but it works.” He said it in such a cheerful tone that he knew she wouldn’t know whether he was joking or not. He was dead serious, but she wouldn’t know that.

He walked forward and came through to where a lot of the utilities were located. “So, this is more or less what I expected to see here,” he declared, shining a flashlight over the corners.

“Sure, but is there a body? That’s what we came for,” she muttered.

He looked at her and nodded. “And, of course, the voice in my head is silent.”

“Right,” she muttered, with a scoff. “That seems to be pretty typical, doesn’t it? Find my body, find my body. Oh, you’re looking? I’ll just leave you to it .”

He burst out laughing and then reached over to pull away some moldy fiberglass and some other old material.

Both just crumbled away. And there in front of them was another hole in the wall.

“What the hell is this?” Simon asked, as he peered into it.

He looked back at her and announced, “Another part of a basement is down here.”

“ Great ,” she muttered.

“You stay here. It’s not very safe in this area.”

“If it’s not safe, the whole building should come down.”

“It should,” he agreed, suddenly frowning, “but what I don’t know is exactly what’s back there.” He pulled apart another area, letting them see what passed for a small room, not easily accessible, but somehow it was big enough for the two of them to stand in.

She looked around and shared, “This has a horror movie feel to it.”

“It sure does,” Simon agreed. Then he tapped her on the shoulder and pointed. There against the far wall was another body, and, this time, it was clearly old enough that there was no doubt it had been here for decades. It was just a skeleton against the wall.

“Hell,” she grumbled, as she stared at it, her hands on her hips. “I wonder how long this one’s been here.”

“A long time,” Simon stated. “I just asked Jay if this was him.”

“Any answers?”

“I’m getting silence.”

“Oh no, no, no, no,” she cried out. “There can’t be another one.”

“I don’t know,” he declared, shaking his head, “but we’ll have to tear apart this room to find out.”