Murder at Fire Bay Read Online Free PDF Page A

some had to be allowed to keep the morale up. Low morale meant people could get snippy, which meant grievances could get filed, which ate up more valuable time. As I made my way to the rec room and back again, I sensed a normal level of conversation, most of it work related. After all, these people were at least in their forties, had been around for years, and knew their jobs.
    Back in the office, I got another one of Abby’s brave smiles. Hopefully, I made some points getting the cup of coffee. We sat in silence for a moment, savoring our coffee, or at least that’s what I wanted Abby to think. Actually, I was thinking over my next move.
    “So tell me, Abby, about these thefts.”
    She proceeded to tell me how the thefts, if that’s what they were, had been going on for some time. There had been five packages that had been swiped or lost in the last month. There might have been some before that, but only in the last week or so had it come to the attention of anyone. To John Q. Public five packages might seem a lot, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of packages, such losses over a period of time tended to get overlooked.
    Since Fire Bay was where it was, meaning Alaska, more packages got sent by the Postal Service per capita than in your larger urban areas. In fact, if it weren’t for the Postal Service delivering foodstuffs to the more remote villages at a relatively cheap rate, village life would have been much harsher than it was.  
    I took a last sip and came back to the present problem. “So what do the postal inspectors have to say about the thefts?”
    Abby started to wring her hands. By now I knew what that meant, but I told myself I would remain calm.
    “The Postal Inspectors haven’t been called,” she said. Then she fell silent, waiting, I’m sure, on an explosion from me.  
    I bit my tongue. “I see,” I said.

 
    Chapter 4
     
    I set my cup down with a feeling of déjà vu, yesterday still fresh on my mind. It was only nine o’clock and I already had the jitters. Yesterday had been a madhouse and today wasn’t going to be any better, what with a postal inspector sitting across from me and doing what amounted to an inquisition of poor Abby. After she had told me about the thefts, I had taken a deep breath and called the postal inspectors first and the Boss second.  
    Happy, he wasn’t. “Bronski! What the hell is going on down there?”
    “Well, Boss, as you might remember, I just got here a couple of days ago!”
    I heard a deep sucking noise on the other end, the cigar was being lit. I grinned. The Boss was going to get himself in trouble someday, smoking inside a postal facility.
    I waited until I heard a long exhale and then continued with my tale.
    “I imagine, what with all the other personnel problems, the thefts got pushed into the background.”
    “Yeah, I should have known things weren’t right down there. The grievances started coming in late last spring. They can be ignored only so long before the crap hits the fan, but I guess you know that.”  
    This was a shocker, coming from the Boss. Normally, he tended to ignore or dismiss grievances, preferring to let them be handled by the labor people. But yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about, having had a few come at me a couple of years ago.
    “Who were the grievances against?” I asked.
    “Oddly enough, it was the supervisor.”
    “Really?” I responded. “I would have thought with his drinking problems, it would have been the O.I.C.”
    There was another sucking noise, and I waited while the Boss coughed his lungs open.
    “Nope.” He gagged. “Except for one or two, they were about the supervisor. I was never able to get to the bottom of it . . . not enough time. At first, I thought the union steward had it in for the supervisor, but the steward won most of them at step three. So they were legit, but some of them were a little nit-picky, if you ask me.”
    “So who’s coming down?” he asked.
    I gritted