I shoved my freezing hands into the short pockets of my jacket and trailed along a step behind him.
At the pub, Alex opened the vestibule, unlocked the dead bolt, and held out a hand to keep me back. I watched through the circular window as he moved slowly through the pub and down the hallway. I lost sightof him past the johns. There was a pause, and then the hallway lit from the back. He’d reached the alley.
I nudged the door open and went in. Alex was coming back along the hallway.
“What is it?” I said.
“Someone’s been here,” he said.
“I told you—”
“The office is tossed,” he said.
Tossed? Well, someone had been picking up lingo from watching theCSIs.
“And the storeroom,” he said.
“The…”
The band equipment. I ran.
35
All the cases of our gear in the storeroom had been opened, the cords strewn around. Everything thrown into a heap. The carpet had been pulled up from all corners of the room, and a couple of chairs tipped over and slashed through the cushions. That was just spite. Even the rusty filing cabinet kept in the corner had been pulled from the wall.
I counted speakers and monitors, sifted through the cords and mics. Nothing seemed to be missing or damaged, only moved around, dumped out. A mess. Mischief.
Alex would have to move the filing cabinet; it was too heavy for me. I opened the top drawer. No wonder. It was still full. All the drawers were still stuffed with years of paper, old invoices and tax returns and whatever Alex felt had to be kept for eighty-three years. If the marauders had been looking for a way to cause trouble, they’d missed a trick. If I had been on this wrecking crew, I’d have made confetti out of all this. I’d have done it up,big.
In the dinky little toilet, the bandits had managed to yank the medicine cabinet mirror half off the wall. It hung a little crookedly now, and the mirror was cracked through the middle. The bathroom was asfreezing as usual, the mysterious nor’easter always blowing through there going strong, a thin needle of its whine in my ear. I felt around the edges of the cabinet until I found the draft.
Alex could fix this. The mirror, anyway. He’d never been able to fix the draft.
I went to see the rest of the damage.
I’d expected to find Alex in the office, shoveling out. But he wasn’t there, and actually that room wasn’t much messier than it normally was, just a bookcase knocked over and the desk shoved at a cattywampus angle. The stuff from the shelves now lay strewn on the floor, and the frame of the band poster that normally hung behind the desk was pulled down, resting rather politely against the wall.
The computer was already on. I checked the security system. My hidden files were safe but Friday’s footage and everything since had been wiped.
But by who?
Alex again? Or a burglar who knew to erase evidence of his visit?
I double-clicked one of the copies I’d stashed of the video from Wednesday and watched it at four times speed: cars, bumper bumped, Kyler loading in, cranky guy on the street, Kyler back out, Quin off to make a call or whatever, me and the dogs out, Bern grabbing a ciggie, Marisa making a choice, the truck pulling out, me and dogs back, and then Alex—
I slowed down the footage, hope taking wing…
I’d got it in my head since seeing a hat like Joey’s at the Addison Rose that maybe,maybeit wasn’t Joey that Alex was bullying away from the pub. Maybe it was another guy in a—
Nope. That was indeed Alex shoving, yes, definitely Joey away from McPhee’s. I stopped the video and quit the program and sat thinking until the screen went to sleep.
Alex was in the kitchen at the sink in the back, his shoulders working over something with a brush. I checked the till but the drawer was as full as Alex ever left it overnight. Even the booze was still in place on the back bar.
“That is the worst robbery I have ever seen,” I called through.
On the bar sat the keg couplers, pulled loose. The taps and faucets soaked nearby in the bar sink. He’d have liquid cleaning solution shot through the keg lines in a minute. The bar mats were also pulled, which was probably what he was scrubbing at back there.
“This is every-other-Tuesday morning cleaning, isn’t it, Alex?”
