Free Hot Storage by Mary Mead Page A

think?”
       I thought about it for a minute and nodded again. “Up to you. I don’t think the Murphy’s will care, although I will have to clear it with Paul or Papa Murphy.”
       Burke scoffed. “You don’t need to worry about me. What can happen? I fall down the steps to the motor home? Just thought it might be a good idea, be around here at night.”
       “I’ll clear it with the Murphys. Get back to you as soon as I know something. Do you really think it will help?”
       Burke took in a few gallons of air and blew it out loudly. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’m running out of ideas. I’ve been on this thing so long I don’t know what to do. It’s one dead end after another.”
       “Do you really think this is a regular deal? Them using my facility to store drugs?”
       “Store? No, I don’t think so. That’s too static, too easy to stumble across. Do I think it may be regular drop off point? Yes. Sadly, I do. If you think about it, perfect place to change loads. Boat comes in late at night, gets unloaded into a rental truck of some kind. Or even a moving van, hell, a turnip truck! Something. Say you’re running late, or daylight rolls around, whatever. You need a place to split up the cargo, someplace to store it till someone else can pick up their half. You can’t just park on the side of the road, Marlena. You don’t want to draw attention to it, you know? What better place than a storage yard? This area of the state there’s not a lot of big warehouses, like a big furniture warehouse or a big materials warehouse. The big buildings in Jade are filled with boats or boat parts.”
       I thought about what he said. We don’t have any major businesses or chains around here. One of the reasons so many of our young people move on is the lack of jobs. Oh, sure, you can flip burgers or work on the docks, help on a fishing boat. There’s just nothing to make a career. No towering levels of high tech businesses humming along broad boulevards lined with brand name coffee shops. Not here. Not even close.
       About the only place readily available to store anything is a storage facility. And Beach Storage was the only one in the area, unless you counted the boat storage yards in Jade and most of those are outdoors.
       “Couldn’t you unload into a boat? Another boat? Like in the boat yards? There’s all kinds of boats stored there, acres of ‘em. Some are pretty good size. At least as big as a Move It rental truck.”
       “That could work, babe. Couple things wrong. You’re unloading a truck into a boat, the boat up on blocks, or a crane so you’re spending a lot more time out in the open to get the boxes out of the truck and onto the boat. Plus, why would anyone be loading cartons into a beached boat? That’s gonna make people way curious. I know it would make me curious, even if I was just a mechanic.”
       I took my turn at sighing. Covered trucks, box vans, all are common sights at any storage facility, some of them even rent the moving trucks.
       I know there’s three major companies with storage in my lot – like Bake It Right, the cakes and cookies people. Their products are in all the grocery stores, liquor stores, even the high school. Their big sixteen wheeler comes in every Monday, pulls up to their unit and rolls a ramp out the side door and starts filling up the unit. After that their local man comes in with a smaller van, loads up what he needs and begins his route, delivering all over our area and Monarch Beach next door. He works every day but Sunday. Monday it starts all over again.
       We’re sort of the distribution center. What works for cupcakes could work for drugs.
       Was there a chance one of my favorite customers was running drugs? That thought upset me a little. How well did I really know these people? Hardly at all. I knew more about T. Tom Tanner from magazines than from him personally.
       The Bake It Right driver came