Ken shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “All I really had in mind was convincing them that we were clearing out of town—going home to Brentwood and our own business. I thought it would calm their suspicions.”
“By ‘them’ you mean Barrack and our boy Cal out there?” Sandy glanced through the window for an instant. “He’s drooling!” he announced happily.
“Barrack and Cal,” Ken agreed. “Grace too. I’m assuming they’re all tied in together in something.”
“I think that’s pretty obvious,” Sandy said. “But in what? What kind of game are they playing—skulking all over town that way, mysteriously transferring packages from one person to another? And apparently ruining what used to be a perfectly good wholesale tobacco business?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ken said. He waited while cups of steaming soup were substituted for the plates of empty clamshells. “The only explanation that occurs to me,” he said quietly, “is that Grace is a fence—a receiver and distributor of stolen goods. It would explain his lack of interest in the tobacco business.”
Sandy considered the suggestion, his eyes slowly brightening. “I think you’re right. Then Barrack is probably a thief. That’s why he had to be so careful about transmitting that package to Grace.”
Ken nodded. “And maybe Grace uses Cal, on the barge, for transportation. Cal could get the stuff out of New York.”
Sandy stopped with a spoonful of soup halfway to his mouth. “But then what was Barrack doing on the barge? If he’s afraid to have any open contact with Grace, why wouldn’t he also be afraid to show himself around the barge?”
Ken thought for a long moment and then shook his head. “I give up. I can’t think of any explanation for that—unless he’s trying to cross Grace up some way.” He frowned down into his soup. “I wish we’d had a chance to learn more about the Tobacco Mart when we were down there this afternoon. I can’t help but feel that that’s the center of whatever’s going on.”
Sandy filled in the brief wait between the soup and the steak with a thick piece of French bread, lavishly buttered. “It’s certainly too bad,” he said, “that we don’t know just a little more about at least one of those characters. Then maybe we could go to the police.”