Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,29
who still sat in the SUV.
“Maybe I should drive myself,” she said.
“No,” Johan said. “We’ll meet them there.” He opened the front passenger door for her.
She hopped in and said, “I don’t want to take your seat.”
He just sighed and closed the door gently, then popped into the back.
“I’m not being difficult,” she announced.
He burst out laughing. “No, of course not.”
She subsided into what appeared to be a bit of a temper fit, and he was happy to see it. So far she’d been far too amiable, considering all that was going on.
“If you’re going to be mean,” she said, “I won’t tell you what I found out.”
“Well, you’ll definitely tell us then,” he said, leaning forward. “What was it?”
She launched into an explanation of what Phyllis had said about her odd relationship with Barlow and the company. Both men were dumbstruck.
“So she goes from being at the top of the company immediately down to the bottom?” Johan recapped. “And comes back after five years to spend—what? The next nineteen years in the basement? Sounds like she’s punishing herself for her stupidity, but, man, she should be well over it by now.”
“Yes, my thoughts too,” Joy agreed. “Phyllis said she and Barlow had had a relationship for years, but I don’t know what ‘years’ means.”
“Right? Like was it really years, like three or whatever, or was it just her saying that,” Johan asked.
“Do you believe her story?” Galen asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “It was an odd thing, even for Phyllis.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said.
“Not too many people would tolerate that situation either,” Johan noted.
“Well, her attitude is very much about her now. I don’t know if she would have had anything to do with this missing ketamine though,” she said.
“It’s hard to say, but you’re right,” Galen said. “It is an odd thing.”
“Thanks for telling us.” Johan settled back. He pulled out his phone, wrote down a few more notes, and sent a message to Levi, asking him to check on Phyllis and the owner.
“And I wonder if he’s had any relationships since?” Galen asked.
“She said all were unsuccessful.”
“In the twenty-four years since he broke up with Phyllis though, there has to be a bunch,” Johan said from the back seat. “So we need to find out who they were.”
“Do you think they’ll have anything to do with this?” she asked in astonishment, twisting in her seat to look at him.
“No, I can’t say that,” he said. “But again what we want to do is make sure we check out every avenue.”
“Got it,” she said. “I was trying to figure out the processes of the company, but there really isn’t anything I’ve found so far,” she said. “The lab and the research side are all separated from the corporate side, at least on the books. Everything that’s done in my building is more of the business, marketing, and accounting side, with a small online research group somewhere within our building too. There’s no manufacturing. At least none that I have any access to. It’s all at the big lab facility.”
“So where did all the extra supplies come from in those lower basement areas?”
“What extra supplies? What basement levels?” she asked. When both men stared at her in surprise, she shook her head.
Johan explained about the three locked rooms on B3 that didn’t show up on the blueprints.
“I had no idea.” She frowned, deeply concerned. “How am I supposed to do my job if I don’t know about this?”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Galen said.
“What does that mean?” Joy asked testily.
Johan explained, “That you’re not supposed to know, so you can’t interfere with their plans.”
Joy’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t voice her fears.
Johan admired her courage. She needed to hear about all they had discovered, so she would be properly informed. “I spoke to the foreman in charge of the loading docks. They bring in truckloads of boxes that are unloaded in the shipping bays, and then his workers distribute everything to where it needs to be, basically those three locked rooms I found.”
“But there shouldn’t be very much here in the way of chemicals and medicines, right?” Galen asked.
“According to my records, just for the big lab down the block,” she said. “All the trials and heavy-duty dangerous chemical-manufacturing stuff are done at the main lab’s research center.”
“Interesting. And I wonder what else happens there?” Galen asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Not sure I want to either.”