Red Tape (3 page)

As I headed out to my car, I could see Officer Williams across the parking lot. He waved. My knees went weak. I waved back.
Oh, he’s so dreamy.
“Stop it Chelsey, stop it,” I said to myself, “I do not like him, I do not like him.”

My train of thought was cut short by the mayor’s voice. “Hi, Chelsey! How’s the baby?” She was always so thoughtful.

“She’s great; thanks for asking. Do you need my help with anything?”

“No, I’m fine. I have a meeting to get to at the police station.”

“Oh, I wanted to ask you, how did everything turn out with the FBI? I missed a lot; I was out for so long.”

“Case of mistaken identity. Nothing to be concerned with.”

“Okay, well, I hope your meeting doesn’t last too long. Take care!” I said and I waved as I drove off to my parents’ house.

Chapter 4

My alarm clock went off at five-o-three a.m. Perhaps alarm clock wasn’t a nice nickname, but that was my little Mandy—an early riser. I shuffled into her bedroom and lifted her out of the crib. I changed her and dressed her in her turquoise elephant shirt and skirt. I put a little turquoise clip bow in her blonde curls, then took her picture with my cell phone. She looked so cute, I had to upload it to Facebook.

I carried her into the kitchen and fed her breakfast. The doctor let me start feeding her cereal recently and she loved it. I left her in her swing to take a nap while I got showered and dressed for work. I reminded myself to leave early, since it was only two days before the Fourth of July and there would be a lot of visitors on the island this week. I dressed in a beige A-line skirt and black short-sleeved top with my black slingbacks.

Traffic was heavy, as I predicted, but I still made it to work on time. I turned off the ignition and threw my purse over my shoulder. The sun was shining and it wasn’t too humid for a July morning. I falsely predicted it would be a good day. I walked into the lobby and saw Bonnie standing in the doorway to our office with Detective Jose Texidoro.

Detective Texidoro, or as I called him, “Tex,” was a veteran on our police force. He had started as a dispatcher when he was twenty years old. He was now forty-six and could retire with a nice pension and full medical benefits whenever he wanted. He was five feet, eight inches tall, Spanish, and had a little beer belly. Tex had a sarcastic personality, in a “trying to be funny” sense. We joked around a lot and he often had me in stitches.

Tex and his wife Stephanie had been close friends of my family for as long as I could remember. His parents and my parents were neighbors back in the day before I was born. My mother sort of “adopted” him in his twenties when his parents passed away in a tragic car accident, supplying him with plenty of food and a substitute family.

He and Bonnie looked very serious. As I approached them, Bonnie turned to me and said, “Don’t freak out.” Confused, I asked, “What’s going on?” As I looked past them in the office, I saw papers and books in complete disarray covering the floor. Drawers were left open with files sticking out of them. The cash box was on the floor and empty. A chair was tipped over and Bonnie’s computer was busted to smithereens.

My face dropped. I looked at Tex. He turned to me and said, chuckling, “Let me guess, you and Bonnie were fighting over the last of Rodney’s brownies.”

“Not funny.”

“Okay, then, seriously, you two have to stay out of the office for the time being. This is a crime scene. We’ll dust for fingerprints and see if there is any trace of evidence that was left behind. We noticed the money is gone. When we are done, I will need you to try to figure out if anything else is missing. Meanwhile, I want to get a statement from you.”

A couple of officers were already in the office bagging items and hanging up yellow crime scene tape across the doorway. Tex asked me what time I left on Friday.

“Four thirty, and I saw the mayor in the parking lot on her way to a meeting. She could vouch for me,” I said.

“Easy there, Tonto. I wasn’t accusing you of anything. You could take the money without ransacking the office. Did you see anyone in or around the building on that was unusual?” Tex asked.

“Unusual? Do you mean like Robert Triggers sitting at my window for five straight hours with his pet rock, then disappearing without saying a word?”

“Yes, kind of like that.”

“I wasn’t here over the weekend and the only unusual person that was in on Friday was Mr. Triggers, but police officers kept walking by to make sure I was safe. You could ask them if anyone saw him leave, because I didn’t see where he went.”

“What time do you think he left?”

“He left my window about two o’clock or a little after.”

Tex interrogated me some more about Mr. Triggers. The interrogation included questions about his demeanor. I told Tex that Triggers seemed upset at first that I couldn’t give him all the records he had wanted on Friday. Maybe he broke in looking for them. Perhaps he thought I was lying about getting the records from off-site storage.

I wondered if Triggers did this. He certainly knew what our office hours were. I tried to envision how he got in the building. I started making up scenarios in my head of the crime. I imagined him breaking through a window after dark dressed all in black, wearing a ski mask. I pictured Triggers smashing the door handle with his rock. Maybe he stumbled on the money by accident while looking for records when he broke the lock on the file cabinet where we keep the cash box. So much for my prediction that it was going to be a good day.

I was snapped back into reality with the sound of Bonnie’s voice. “Earth to Chelsey.”

“Huh?”

“Where did you go just now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking about whether or not Triggers broke in here.”

“Maybe you should invest in a more secure safe for the cash or anything of value,” Tex suggested.

“Maybe things happened for a reason—maybe this break-in is enough to convince the powers that be to put money in the budget for a safe,” I said.

“If there anything else you think of, just call me.”

“Wait, before you leave…how did they break in?”

“Your door was kicked or pushed in. It’s so lightweight, it wouldn’t take much strength to bust open. The main building doors were either left open or someone knew how to open door locks without a key.”

“Okay, thanks.” So much for my daydream about how the crime occurred. I probably wouldn’t have made a great detective. I started to think about how I was going to get my work done for the day without having access to the office or my desk. Rodney was out on leave for a couple of weeks again, so I was the one temporarily in charge and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t call it a day and head home. I supposed I could work at Rodney’s desk, since he was out.

I went into the Rodney’s office for the remainder of the day. First on my agenda was to call the mayor. I dialed her from my cell phone to bring her up to speed on what happened. I told her to expect a phone call from Tex. She seemed disturbed by the news, but relieved that no one was around to get hurt during the break-in. I explained to her that the locks on the main doors might have been picked and that the door to the clerk’s office appeared to be kicked in because it was so flimsy. She agreed with me about my suspicion that Mr. Triggers was behind the robbery.

Mayor O’Donnell told me to look into the cost getting an alarm system, better locks, and a stronger door that was less likely to be kicked in. I asked her if I could also look into getting a safe and she agreed. I knew it was all pointless. I would go through the trouble of spending time getting quotes, drafting the proper paperwork, and reviewing where there were funds available for these purchases with our CFO. Then, I would present everything at a council meeting. Council would say there is no money in this year’s budget and they would vote
no
on the purchases. I often felt the current group of elected officials was penny-wise and pound-foolish. If there was better security to begin with, then there would be less money spent in OT for the police and no money spent on the damages to the building.

While I was on the phone with the mayor, the storage company showed up with the boxes I had ordered for Mr. Triggers. Bonnie informed me about their arrival and I followed her into the lobby.

“I didn’t know where to put them all,” Bonnie said.

The boxes were scattered all over the lobby. I went back to Rodney’s desk and sent a work-order via email requesting a table and some help with moving boxes around from public works.

Within forty minutes, several public works employees found me in Rodney’s office and offered to help move the boxes. I walked them down the hallway and pushed open the door to the lobby. I turned around to show them where I wanted the table set up, took a step back, and next thing I knew, I tripped over one of the boxes and fell flat on my back. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that I was fairly sure that all three men from public works got a sneak peek at my white cotton panties. I turned eight shades of red and tried to scramble to my feet. Bonnie was almost on the floor herself, laughing at me. I cursed Mr. Triggers in my head for making me bring the darn boxes over.

“You can claim workman’s comp,” one of the guys said, “We were all witnesses!”

“I’m fine,” I managed to muster.

I showed them where I wanted the boxes moved and where the table should go. I figured Mr. Triggers could sit at the table near the outside of our office so that I could spit on him…er, um, I meant so we could keep an eye on him while he looked through the boxes. I didn’t trust him and I wouldn’t put it past him to take something.

I hustled back to Rodney’s office and closed the door. I needed to hide for a while and nurse my bruised ego back to health.

By the next morning, the police were finished processing the crime scene and we were allowed back in to our office. Bonnie and I started cleaning up and taking inventory. We tried to remember how much money was in the cash box. There was two hundred dollars for starters to make change with. Bonnie wasn’t in the office on Friday, so she wouldn’t have taken in any payments. The receipt books were missing, but I recalled having taken twenty-eight dollars for a marriage license and ten dollars for a death certificate. I turned to Bonnie. “This reminds me, before I left for maternity leave, I thought I had ordered more safety paper for the vital records. Did that ever come in?”

“I thought it did. Did you check the birth certificate drawer?”

“I did, but I only saw one package. Did you use up the whole other package?”

Bonnie said she couldn’t remember, but she would look into the sequential numbers on the paper when she had time.

I didn’t know how we would figure out if any other records were missing. Since I was considered the custodian of records, there are thousands of files in my office. If I discovered that documents were missing, I could recreate the ones that were saved on the network, but for the rest, I wouldn’t know where to start.

Later that day, I gave an update to Tex. It indicated that we were missing two hundred thirty-eight dollars in cash, our receipt books, and possibly a package of safety paper. In addition, the computer was destroyed, there was damage to the door and one file cabinet, and I couldn’t tell if other records were taken.

“Safety paper?” he asked with a goofy grin on his face. “What the heck is that? Is that the paper that keeps you safe from intruders? If so, it didn’t work.”

Sarcastically, I responded, “Ha. Ha. Don’t quit your day job to become a comedian just yet.”

I explained that safety paper is the paper we use to issue vital records—birth, marriage, death, civil union, or domestic partnership certificates. He seemed interested when I explained what they were. I told him that I wasn’t actually sure that the safety paper was missing and if it was, I wasn’t one hundred percent positive that it wasn’t missing before this break-in.

“Are you sure of anything?” he asked.

“I’m sure you can lay off the donuts a tad. I should start calling you ‘Chubby’ instead of ‘Tex.’”

“Oh, bring it on, sister. You sure you wanna go there? You really want me to tell you that you need to take off that extra baby weight?”

“Hey! At least I have a reason that I gained weight. What is your reason? That Donut Palace
is open twenty-four hours?”

“All right.
Touché
. I’m outta here, if you think of anything else that’s missing or any other details, let me know. I’ll let you know if we find any fingerprints.”

A couple of hours later, the office was cleaned up and we were back in business. Bonnie came in to tell me she had tried to research the numbers on the safety paper. She said that she remembered she had opened a pack of paper in December. I remembered that too, because I always place an order for more whenever we open a pack. The ream of paper that was currently in the drawer was the new pack that I had ordered. Bonnie hadn’t remembered to order more paper while I was out on leave. Since the receipt books were missing, she couldn’t tell how many certified copies she had issued while I was out.

“Wait! You really think you issued over five hundred copies while I was gone? That’s an awful lot,” I told her.

We didn’t have a hospital and we didn’t have a funeral home in Sunshine. The only time someone ordered a birth certificate is when a baby accidentally popped out in the toilet like on an episode of
I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant
and that’s not very often. Maybe once a year at most. Most death certificates were obtained by the funeral home in the town where they are located, so we issued very few deaths.

“How many marriage and civil union licenses did you have so far this year?” I asked.

Bonnie took out the log for applications. She told me she issued twenty-seven licenses. I didn’t think that twenty-seven couples would have ordered fifteen to twenty certified copies each. It occurred to me that the finance department would have a copy of our daily deposits as well as the bank records and probably a list of internal account activity. I was about to call them up when the fire alarms sounded.