Deltona Clocks was a large warehouse structure located behind a small street-front showroom and retail shop. After Lockridge parked the Taurus in front of the retail store, McCaleb reached down to the leather bag on the floor in front of him and removed his gun. It was already snugly held in a canvas holster which he then clipped onto his belt.
“Hey, what are you expecting in there?” Lockridge said after he saw the weapon.
“Nothing. It’s more a prop than anything else.”
McCaleb next pulled out an inch-thick sheaf of the sheriff’s investigative records and made sure the report on the interview with Bolotov and his employer, a man identified as Arnold Toliver, was on top. He was ready. He looked over at Lockridge.
“Okay, sit tight.”
He noted as he got out of the Taurus that this time Buddy hadn’t offered to come in with him. He thought maybe he should carry the gun more often.
Inside the retail shop there were no customers. Cheap clocks of almost every size were on display. Most had an industrial look, as though they were more likely to be found in a classroom or an auto supply store than in somebody’s home. On the wall behind the counter at the rear of the space was a display of eight matching clocks showing the time in eight cities around the world. There was a young woman sitting on a folding chair behind the counter. McCaleb thought about how slowly time must pass for her with no customers and all of those clocks.
“How do I find Mr. Toliver?” he asked as he came up to the counter.
“Arnold or Randy?”
“ Arnold.”
“I have to call back. Who are you with?”
“I’m not here to buy clocks. I’m conducting a follow-up on a Sheriff’s Department inquiry of February third.”
He dropped the stack of paperwork on the counter so she could see that they were official forms. He then raised his hands and put them on his hips, carefully allowing his sports coat to open and expose the gun. He watched her eyes as she noticed it. She picked up a telephone that was on the counter and dialed three numbers.
“Arnie, it’s Wendy. There’s a man from the Sheriff’s Department here about an investigation or something.”
McCaleb didn’t correct her. He hadn’t lied to her and he wouldn’t lie to her about who he was and whom he was with. But if she wanted to make incorrect assumptions, then he wasn’t going to correct her. After listening to the phone for a few moments, Wendy looked up at McCaleb.
“What investigation?”
McCaleb nodded toward the phone and held his hand out. The young woman hesitated but then handed the phone receiver to him.
“Mr. Toliver?” he said into the phone. “Terry McCaleb. A couple months ago you talked to a couple of sheriff’s detectives named Ritenbaugh and Aguilar about an employee named Mikail Bolotov. You remember?”
After a long hesitation Toliver agreed that he had.
“Well, I’m investigating that case now. Ritenbaugh and Aguilar are onto other things. I need to ask you some additional questions about that. Can I come back?”
Again a hesitation.
“Well… we are awfully busy back here. I-”
“I won’t take long, sir. Remember, it’s a murder investigation and I’m hoping you’ll continue to help us out.”
“Well, I suppose…”
“You suppose what?”
“Uh, just come on back. The girl will tell you where I’m at.”
Three minutes later McCaleb had walked the length of the building, past several rows of assembly and packaging benches, to an office at the rear next to a loading dock. There was a short flight of stairs up into the office. Next to the door was a window that allowed Toliver to look out across the workbenches as well as the shipping and receiving dock. As he had walked past the benches toward the office, McCaleb had overheard the conversations of the employees. Three different times he heard a language he believed was Russian.
As McCaleb opened the office door, the man he assumed was Toliver hung up the phone and waved him in. He was a skinny man in his sixties, with brown, leathery skin and white hair fringed around the sides of his head. He had a plastic pocket guard in his shirt pocket, jammed with an assortment of pens.
“I’ve gotta make this quick,” he said. “I have to check the lading on a truck going out.”
“Fine.” McCaleb looked down at the report on top of the stack he carried. “Two months ago you told detectives Ritenbaugh and Aguilar that Mikail Bolotov was working the night of January twenty-second.”
“That’s right. I remember. Hasn’t changed.”
“Are you sure, Mr. Toliver?”
“What do you mean, am I sure? Yeah, I’m sure. I looked it up for those two guys. It was in the books. I pulled the time card.”
