He climbed onto the hood of the Escalade and then onto the roof. He reached overhead, punched the smoke detector that was attached to the ceiling, and the fire alarm went off. He jumped down, and we ran out of the garage and hid in the wooded area.
Lights went on all over the building and after a minute the alarm went silent. Ten minutes later the lights began blinking out and there was no sign of police or a fire truck.
“They must not be hooked into an alarm company,” Morelli said.
My cellphone rang. It was Briggs, whispering so low I could barely hear him.
“You gotta get me out of here,” he said. “I saw feet. Big naked feet. I think they might have been dead but I don’t know for sure.”
“Were they attached to something . . . like a body?”
“They were sticking out from under a sheet.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the second floor, under a desk, and there’s a guy sitting in that little lobby area reading a paper. I can’t get past him.”
“Hang tight,” I said. “We’re on it.”
I disconnected and looked at Morelli. “He’s under a desk on the second floor and can’t get past some guy in the lobby.”
“Call him back and tell him to make more of an effort. I’m missing a really good ball game.”
“He said he saw naked feet sticking out from under a sheet. He sounded a little freaked.”
“Were they live naked feet or dead naked feet?”
“He said they might have been dead but he couldn’t be sure.”
“So much for the ball game,” Morelli said.
We went to the door beside the drop box and found it locked.
“They must have noticed the door was unlocked when they went around checking smoke detectors,” Morelli said. “This makes things more complicated.”
We were standing there hoping for a brilliant idea when the garage door rolled up. We flattened ourselves against the building, the door went totally open, and Kruger’s red Jaguar glided out of the garage and down the driveway.
“She’s going to work,” I said.
The door started to roll down, and Morelli and I slipped under it and into the garage before it closed completely. A moment later we saw the light go on over the elevator, indicating it was in motion.
“Someone else is coming down,” Morelli said.
We scrambled into a dark corner behind some packing crates and watched the elevator doors open and the Yeti come out carrying two insulated chests. He loaded the chests into the van, got behind the wheel, pressed the remote for the door, and drove out of the garage.
Morelli grabbed my hand, yanked me across the garage at a full run, and we slid under the door just as it closed. He was instantly on his feet and sprinting across the lot, through the small patch of woods. He had the Buick cranked over by the time my hand touched the door handle.
“Briggs can wait,” he said, peeling out of the lot. “I want to see where the van is going.”
We caught sight of the van just as it left the park and headed south on Route 1. It got off at Spruce and fifteen minutes later it turned in to a private fixed base operations facility at Mercer Airport. The van pulled up to the FBO gate, was admitted onto the tarmac, and drove up to a midsize business jet. The two insulated chests were handed over to the captain, and the Yeti drove the van off the field and back to the access road.
Morelli called the plane’s tail number in to one of his contacts and asked for owner information. He listened to the answer, thanked the person at the other end, and put the Buick in gear.
“The plane is owned by Franz Sunshine Enterprises,” Morelli said. “And it’s filed a flight plan for a Nevada destination.”
“I guess it’s not a big surprise that Sunshine owns the plane, since the chests came from his clinic.”
“I wouldn’t mind knowing what was in those chests,” Morelli said.