until she saw Gunther drive away in his fancy car. She dawdled a few minutes more, just in case he doubled back for something.
Otto was walking the short distance from the office toward the warehouse. He looked up when she pulled into an empty space in front of the building.
“Hey, Otto.”
“Hi there, Peaches. How are you feeling?”
“Back to normal finally. Thanks for asking.”
“If you’re looking for Gunther, you just missed him.”
“Damn,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. “I wanted to catch him before he left. He said he has some papers for me. Any idea when he’ll be back?”
“Didn’t say, but I imagine it’ll be around two, as usual. Anything I can help you with?”
“No, I don’t think so. Did everything get straightened out with your paycheck?”
Otto tapped the envelope sticking out of his shirt pocket. “Yep. Going to cash it right now, in fact.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
“You have a good day now.”
“You, too.”
Tina went back to her truck and pulled out her phone. She waited until Otto was across the lot before she went inside. The outer area was kept unlocked, but it was the inner office where Tina was headed. She knocked first, and after receiving no answer, she tried the knob and found it locked.
After checking the window to ensure the coast was clear, she pulled out her set of rakes and hooks and picked the lock. Her skills were rusty, but thankfully, she hadn’t lost her touch.
Tina slipped into the office and closed the door behind her.
The place still smelled slightly of her grandfather’s pipe tobacco. Quilted flannels hung on pegs inside the door, most likely Rick’s or Kief’s. Gunther preferred his high-end designer outerwear. Framed photos of generations of stern-looking Obermachers hung on the walls along with images of the farm over the centuries.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for exactly. The optimist in her hoped she found nothing to warrant her growing sense of concern, but intuition and experience suggested otherwise.
A quick scan of the desk revealed nothing useful. Purchase orders. Work schedules. A bunch of square notes impaled on a round wooden base with a nail-like spike, a relic from the days before Post-it Notes.
The filing cabinet gave up no clues either. While Gunther’s filing system left a lot to be desired, she found no evidence to suggest her suspicions were anything more than the product of an overactive imagination.
Her hand was on the door when an image of Otto reaching into his pocket flashed into her mind for no apparent reason. For the hell of it, Tina walked over to the jackets hanging on the wall and started going through the pockets. She found gloves, a half-empty pack of chew, some pocket money ... and a key.
It looked old and worn and familiar, as if she should know what it went to but the memory eluded her.
At the sound of the outer door opening, Tina shoved the key back into the pocket and quickly pulled out her phone.
Rick entered a moment later, his eyebrows pulling down hard when he spotted her. “Bert. What are you doing here?”
“I was just sending a group text,” she said, slipping her phone into her pocket. “Do you know if we got the results back on those soil samples yet?”
“We didn’t,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “Where’s Gunther?”
She frowned. She’d seen the manila envelope stamped with the university logo in the inbox beneath the latest seed catalogs. However, she couldn’t exactly say so without admitting that she’d been snooping.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t here when I got here. Are you sure about those results? They promised me I’d have them last week. I need those numbers to optimize the fertilizer ratio.”
“I’m sure.”
“Shit. All right. I guess I’ll call the lab directly. Thanks.”
“How’d you get in?”
She pretended to think about it. “Uh, I turned the knob and pushed?”
“Wasn’t it locked?”
“Sure it was,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and cocking out her hip. “I waited until everyone left, and then I climbed up the drain pipe, squeezed my fat ass through the ventilation window, and mission-impossibled my way into the office. And then, I unlocked it from the inside to make it look as if it had been open the whole time. In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn’t have parked my truck right out front in plain sight. That’s a dead giveaway, huh?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” he rumbled.
“It’s who I am. Let me know when those numbers come in, will you?”