Fraudulent Fortune, part 2

The following is the second of two exclusive excerpts from Fraudulent Fortune, a novel privately published in 2003. The author is a geologist and staff writer with The Northern Miner. The 233-page paperback version costs $10 plus shipping ($2.50 in Canada, $5.50 U.S., and $7.50 elsewhere) and is available by e-mailing the author at bealesp@neptune.on.ca

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were desperate for leads, and Albert had given Joe information that would keep him busy for awhile. Joe headed over to the glass recycling depot to find out if that could be of some help. A young, slim man with blonde hair and gold-rimmed glasses was busy with a customer who had just brought in thirteen cases of beer and a dozen liquor bottles. The customer was in the process of counting a garbage bag full of beer cans.

Joe waited patiently for the transaction to be completed. He noticed the attendant seemed a bit nervous, when he caught sight of Joe in his RCMP uniform. The man brought out a pack of cigarettes, lit one and inhaled deeply on the first drag. Joe introduced himself and asked the attendant if he could ask him a few questions about the operation he was running. The attendant replied, “OK, but I’m just an employee here. Perhaps you should be talking to my boss.”

Joe said, “I’m just curious about how the liquor and wine bottles are processed.”

The attendant told him, “It’s pretty straightforward: as soon as I have some spare time, I smash the bottles, right in these empty fuel barrels, and when the barrel’s full, it gets loaded on the truck. Once a truckload of glass has accumulated, it gets taken to the garbage dump. Beer bottles are sent to a recycling plant down south.”

Joe asked, “Is there any chance that any bottles that came in on Wednesday of this week are still intact?”

The young man shook his head in the negative. “No. They would be in this barrel here.” He pointed to a barrel that was full to within a couple of inches of its top. Joe went over and looked into it. The pieces of glass varied in size, but the biggest were about four inches in size.

“Thanks a lot. That’s all I wanted to know,” Joe smiled at the attendant.

“No problem,” the attendant gave a quick smile and allowed his eyes to slide over Joe’s face.

“I wonder what his problem is?” Joe thought. “Perhaps we should be keeping an eye on this place.” Joe headed back to his vehicle and drove over to the RCMP office.

Joe spoke with his supervisor. He told him about checking out the glass recycling depot. There didn’t seem any reason to confiscate the barrel containing the broken glass. Even if the murder weapon were among the glass, nothing would be proven by evidence that had been tampered with. Fingerprints or blood would not prove anything even if they were detected. Joe suggested, “I think there’s some kind of funny business going on over at the recycling operation. It’s just a hunch, but I’d guess that some sort of illegal activity is being run from there. It could be drugs, or it might be fraud, but I think we should have a couple of guys keep an eye on it.”

His supervisor replied, “You know how busy we all are. . . .” and sighed. “I know you wouldn’t be suggesting this unless you really felt there was something going on. . . . I’ll see what we can do.”

Then, Joe broached a sensitive subject. He asked his supervisor, “Did you read the statement that I took down when I spoke with Albert? I’d like to get a search warrant for Ben Lundi’s house,” he said.

Joe knew it was irregular procedure to get a warrant when all they had to go on was an uncertain and unstable witness, but he figured it was the most efficient way to go about the investigation. He wanted to retrieve Jess’s gold before it was altered from its natural state and Albert had seen Ben with something in his hands.