Page 33 of Flash Freeze

“HPD steal from the FBI?” he asked, turning to her wide-eyed. “I mean, is she married, engaged, going steady …”

Pegged you. Athena smirked. “I thought you were married to the job.”

“Yeah, well, you got lonely,” he retorted. “Found yourself someone attractive and younger.”

Athena froze, glancing from mousy, frumpy, nerdy Karen Shoops to the self-stylized Humphrey Bogart detective. Mentally, she pictured hard-bodied, sizzling-hot Flash next to Karen and wondered how Bach could compare the two.

“Shoops is smart, dedicated, a little green, but she’s a solid agent. Needs more confidence. I don’t know her personal history,” Athena admitted, ashamed for not making more of an effort to get to know her team members. In her defense, she’d been spending her time getting to know her girlfriend.

“To answer your question, she’s single, and if there’s a man—or woman—in her life, she hasn’t talked about them at work. But I’ll tell you this,” she added in a steely tone, pinning him with a frigid stare. “If you take advantage of one of my agents, I’ll see you soaked in bleach and tossed in the bayou. That is not a threat.”

Blanching, he sat back, putting some distance between them. “I believe you. But, yeah, she’s cute, smart, eager, and you shut me down quick enough. I’ll have you know I’m a born-and-bred Southern gentleman who would never take advantage of a woman. Sure, I enjoy flirting, but, if she’s not into me, it’s hands off. Truce?”

Athena scowled at him. “So far, the gentleman thing has held. Just see that it stays that way. Now, I need to finish going through all the initial interviews. Find a useful thread to pull, will you?”

Bach retreated to Howard’s vacant desk, and Athena opened the folder. She continued to read through similar testimonies regarding the morning of the fire, though the expected contradictions occurred. “The meeting started at 10:00.” “Mr. Booker ushered us into the conference room around 10:15.” “The EPA inspector shooed us all away at 9:45.” “I smelled the smoke first.” “I heard and felt the blast first, then the smoke.”

Employee opinions about CEO Whitmore were generally negative, while most liked Booker, calling him compassionate, relatable, hands-on, and concerned about operations and the workers. Then she pulled up an interview between HPD Officer Bell and purchasing manager Elena Ortega. At first, it read like the others. She was attending the office meeting, discussing progress and challenges of the week, plans for next week, what to do if Nolan cited them again, etc. Then came the explosion, the smoke, alarms, screams, and panic. Mr. Booker led them all to safety before the fire spread, then went back inside to find other employees.

Bell: Let’s talk about your work as purchasing manager. By all accounts, the plant hasn’t been up to code for some time. Were you really in such bad financial straits that you couldn’t make the required upgrades?

Ortega: That really wasn’t in my purview. I oversaw the purchasing of raw materials for our products, finding the lowest bidders and best deals and making the arrangements. I also made purchases for safety, sanitation, and office products within our budget.

Bell: How did that line up with the profits? Were you able to purchase everything you needed? Was the plant making or losing money?

Ortega: Well, you’ll have to talk to Mr. Ellis in accounting. I mean, sometimes when I got a glance at the overall figures, the numbers didn’t seem to add up to me. But Mr. Booker assured me that everything evened out. All I had to worry about was making the necessary purchases within the allotted budget.

Bell: What do you mean by not lining up?

Ortega: I don’t know everything that goes into balancing credits, debits, payroll, and profits. I just know Mr. Booker made sure everyone was paid on time and nobody got laid off. Maybe there wasn’t enough money being made to enact the EPA’s required upgrades; I don’t know. I just know that at the end of the day, Mr. Booker made sure we were taken care of, from assistant manager right down to the janitor.

Her interest piqued, Athena thumbed through until she came across Tyson Ellis’s interview and pulled it. This one had been conducted by a different officer—Romero. She skimmed through, looking for questions about the company’s finances, but he never asked any. Athena silently fumed. Why didn’t he ask about the money?

“Bach, you need to teach a class to your officers on how to conduct an interview,” she said, irritation in her voice. “We need to call in this bookkeeper, Tyson Ellis. The records might be gone, but surely he remembers most of what was in them, seeing how he entered the information.”

The detective glanced at her with confusion. “Sure, but what does that have to do with my officers’ interviews?”

“Officer Bell asks the purchasing manager pertinent questions about discrepancies in spending-to-profit ratio, and the witness says the bookkeeper, Ellis, would know. But Officer Romero never broached the subject during his interview with Ellis.”

“They were instructed to ask the witnesses about the explosion and the fire, where everyone was,” Bach said. “Nobody was thinking it might be an inside job in the first hour after the incident. I’ll have him brought in now.”

Athena sighed. He was right. Still. “Thank you. So we’ll have Walsh and Ellis this afternoon. What I really want to find is a big, solid arrow pointing to Charles Whitmore.”

“Who knows?” Bach posed brightly. “Maybe when we obtain a search warrant for Redstone Ranch, we’ll find he’s missing a pipe wrench.”

“You hear that, team?” Athena announced. “Get me probable cause to search Redstone Ranch.”

Chapter 16

Flash popped open a bottle of Mountain Dew and dropped onto the firehouse sofa beside Waylon. It was only mid-afternoon, and it had already been a busy day. She knew things would get crazier as the winter weather approached. Snuffles sprang into her lap, licked her nose, turned a few circles, and settled into her comfy spot. Flash took a swig from her bottle.

“Remember, when all the snow hits the fan, I’ve got a pickup truck,” Waylon said. “You call if you need to go somewhere. It’s too dangerous to try driving a motorbike on ice. Besides, you’d freeze your butt off.”

“I know. Thanks, Waylon. Do you have all your supplies?”

He huffed out a laugh as he lazed casually beside her. “I’ve got supplies for years—a freezer full of venison, cases of beer, canned beans, and bottled water to last through Armageddon.”

“A generator and gasoline?” She arched a brow.