Stone Investigations (Stone Series Book 4) by Bob Blanton (open ebook txt) 📗

On Saturday, after Matthew’s martial arts classes and Emily’sweekly tennis game at the country club they met up.  They were able to meet atEmily’s house since Alex was at Jason’s going over lines before their play thatevening.

“I can’t believe that they just ship the money via UPS.”

“It’s pretty brazen, but I figure it’s also pretty safe. Packaged up in the books, and labeled as books, who would wonder about thepackages.”

“And you still haven’t figured out who picks the packagesup?”

“Not for sure.  The packages look like the ones I saw Mr.Graham putting in his safe.  But, the mail room is open for ten hours; it’stough to catch him in the act.  I’ll try to narrow the time down next week bymonitoring the pickup slips in the mailbox.”

“You know, since they use kids to do the handoffs, maybe hehas kids pick up the packages for him.”

“Why, they’d still have to give them to him?”

“But that way he can avoid being seen in the mailroom.”

“Okay, and the thing about the kids makes sense.  He couldhave them pick the packages up for him while he’s doing something else.  Thatway nobody could testify that he went to the mailroom to get them.  I’ll focusmy check-ins after school is out.”

“What else have we learned?”

Matthew bristled a little at the ‘we,’ but didn’t make acomment.  “I’ve learned that Dante is almost out of pills.  He’s got to begetting a new shipment next week.  He only has enough to last him through theweek, and unless they’re being really tight on the timing of the delivery,he’ll need to be getting them soon.”

“Well, they have been keeping everything else loose.  Yousaid that each of the users is buying a two-week supply and that Emilio has hisusers spread out over two weeks.  So half one week the other half the next.”

“Right, minimizes contact and self-selects for users thathave money.”

“So other than the bag man being in Temecula, we don’t knowanything else about where the money goes?”

“I’m going to check on Graham’s calendars tonight.  See if Ican figure out where he goes.  It looks like he was out of town last weekend.”

“Have you studied up on money laundering?”

“Not that much.  You’re supposed to be researching hisbusiness background.”

“I am, but it’s not easy.  He’s been doing real estatedevelopment for the last four years.  But that’s hard to research.  I did findan L.A. Times article that implied he wasn’t the most honest real estate brokeror developer, but there were only a couple of transactions cited.”

“Well?” Matthew asked.

“I know, but you’re the computer genius.  I’m slow atsearching through online records.  This would be much easier if you could loanme your portal so I could do the surveillance and you could do the searches.”

“Well, we’ve tried that and it doesn’t work.”

◆ ◆ ◆

On Sunday, Emily talked Matthew into driving with her toMission Viejo to watch Brianna’s final in the tournament.

It was a great final; Brianna won the tournament by breakingMariam’s serve on the last game in the third set after having sets one and twosettled by tiebreakers.

“I’m so glad you came,” Brianna gushed as she gave Matthew ahug and a kiss.  “Can you believe I won?”

“I never doubted it.  So, what’s your next tournament?”

“I’m hoping to get into the Phoenix Classic in November. It’s a full week, starting on the 8th.

◆ ◆ ◆

On Thursday of the following week, Matthew saw that Dantesuddenly had four new bags of pills.  He searched the apartment, but couldn’tfind anything that was new.  There wasn’t any packaging material in the trashand Matthew wasn’t about to search the dumpster behind the apartment building,even using his portal that was a nasty assignment.

By the end of the week, Matthew had confirmed that Graham wasgetting the money.  He’d caught him shredding books with the cut-out pages likehe’d seen Dante stuff the money into.  He had a stack of packages that he laterran through the counting machine.  Matthew watched as he made careful notes ona spreadsheet.   He was surprised that he was simply adding a small number nextto the column with what Matthew suspected was the expected amount.  The numbersvaried from minus 2 to plus one.  Probably an error by the distributor incounting with the calipers.

◆ ◆ ◆

Matthew got ready for the Halloween party.  He was going as afairytale prince.  He’d tried his best to get Jessie to pick Peter Pan for hercostume so he could go as Captain Hook, but no amount of cajoling could get thesix-year-old to change her mind.   Matthew finally gave up, realizing that allhe would accomplish was to make Jessica cry.  And he didn’t want to show up atthe party with a little girl who was shooting daggers at him every time she gota chance.

“Oh, don’t you look handsome,” Mrs. Brandt said as Matthewmade it downstairs.  She was fitting the tiara on Jessica’s head, trying tokeep her still.  Jessica, of course, wanted to get a look at herself in themirror in the hallway, which was almost impossible anyway due to her height.

Matthew picked her up and held her in front of the mirror soshe could see the tiara.  His mother made one more adjustment to it sinceJessica was being still and then pinned it into place.

“Okay, you’re ready.  Let’s go,” Mrs. Brandt said.

“Yeah!”

The party was at the Winthrops’ house.  Last year after thekidnapping and recovery of Sonja Stevenson, the Winthrops had opted for a partythat would keep the kids from going out trick-or-treating.  They’d divided thehouse into a small-kid upstairs party and a big-kid downstairs party.  It hadbeen so successful that they had decided to do it every year.

“Call me if you need me to come and get Jessie,” Mrs. Brandtsaid.

“I will, but I’m sure she’s going to hold out until the end. Emily has promised to give us a ride home.”  Matthew was nervous about theparty, not because of his prince costume but because of not knowing how heshould interact with Brianna.  Were they still dating or casual friends; he hadno clue.

Jessica ran off into the house as soon as Mrs. Winthrop openedthe door.  The upstairs had been converted into a not-so-haunted