Secure Location - By Beverly Long Page 0,50

then he’d smeared it across Meg’s desk.

They were dealing with somebody who had a screw loose. Technologically sharp, yet bent. It was a scary combination. He hoped the guy didn’t build bombs in his basement.

Cruz punched an address into his GPS that he’d gotten from Tom Looney’s employment application. The man had worked at a factory before he’d been hired on at the hotel. He’d listed his supervisor as H. Looney. It wasn’t that common of a last name and Cruz was betting on the fact that H. Looney was some kind of relation.

Who hopefully knew just where Tom Looney could be found.

When he arrived at the small shop and asked for H. Looney, the woman at the front desk pushed a button and the overhead page went out. “Haney to the front. Haney to the front.”

In less than a minute, a fifty-year-old man who was wiping his hands on a grease rag poked his head around the door. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’m Detective Cruz Montoya. I’m looking for Tom Looney. I know he used to work here.”

The man nodded. “He’s my nephew. He worked here for a couple years after he lost his job at the prison.”

There hadn’t been anything on his application about working at a prison. “What did he do at the prison?”

“Maintenance supervisor. I guess it was budget cuts. He’d worked there a couple years.”

Maybe. Or maybe he’d screwed up there, too, and didn’t want anybody checking those references. “I stopped by his house yesterday. The woman living there didn’t seem to know where he was.”

The man smiled. “Donnetta. Now that’s a hard nut to crack. She’s Bertie’s sister. Tom’s mother,” he added. “I’m his uncle on his daddy’s side.”

“Where’s your nephew now?”

“Doing maintenance work at the food plant south of town, on I-37. It’s a good job.” Haney Looney reached into the pocket of his overalls and pulled out a worn billfold. He opened it and thumbed through a stack of business cards, pulling one out from near the bottom. “Here. He gave this to me just a couple weeks ago.”

Cruz took the card. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m going to pay your nephew a visit. I don’t really expect you to keep this conversation to yourself. I understand how family works. But understand this. If he suddenly goes AWOL, I’m not going to reflect positively upon that.”

“I’m not going to call him. He’s a man. Or at least he says he is. He can answer his own damn questions.” The man turned and left the room.

It took Cruz thirty minutes to get to the food plant and another fifteen to work his way past the guards at the various entrances. The place was tied up tighter than Fort Knox. A sign of the times for sure. No manufacturer in their right mind wanted to make it easy for someone to get inside, tamper with some product and make a couple hundred people sick before the company could get the product off the shelves.

He asked the receptionist to get a manager. She pushed a button, spoke into her headset and in just minutes he was invited into the offices.

The manager was a woman, probably close to fifty. She wore blue pants, a blue shirt and a white lab coat. Cruz gave her his card, explained that he was investigating a crime and that he needed to talk to Tom Looney. She didn’t ask any questions, just led him to a conference room.

It took Tom Looney ten minutes to get to the room. He was wearing a hairnet over his ponytail and there was a pair of safety glasses in his pocket. He was also sweating.

Cruz didn’t waste any time. He slid another card across the table. “I’m here to talk to you about some trouble that Meg Montoya has been having.”

Looney didn’t say anything.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Cruz said. “I don’t much care. But I’m thinking your employer might not like the idea of you needing time off unexpectedly to give a statement to the police.”

Looney shook his head in apparent disgust. “I don’t know what some crazy guy attacking her at the fundraiser has to do with me.”

Now that was interesting. To the best of Cruz’s knowledge, the incident hadn’t made the papers. “How do you know about that?”

The man’s face got red. He hesitated, chewing on his top lip. “I know someone who was there.”

“Define someone.”

The man pursed his lips. Finally, he