Summer Disaster - The Devereaux CaseFiles Book 2

Chapter 23

Twelve days passed before Blake's next shipment came into the Ashfield House Museum. He had been waiting for the latest shipment for two weeks and glad that it had finally arrived, he left his house for the museum around ten o'clock that morning. His best man, Amilo, was already at the museum working in the store room, waiting to unload the artefacts with their hidden drug stores.

He arrived to find Carter already there, chatting amiably with a tourist about where the artefacts were from and how they had been acquired. He knew that most of it was a lie and Carter had never been on an archaeological dig in his life, never mind found half the items himself during such an event. But he didn't care about him, the Davenports were small potatoes.

He ignored the curious stare his future father-in-law gave him as he walked into the museum and went straight to the back rooms, through the Authorized Personnel Only door. He wasn't authorized but he didn't care and he knew Carter couldn't complain about it either. They were soon to be family. He would be just as deep in his mess as he had always been, even if he had been an unwitting participant beforehand.

"Amilo, how are things looking?" Blake asked as he reached the store room. He closed the door behind him as he perused the open crates lying on the floor. The loading van was just leaving as Amilo's second in charge, Gunther, closed the shutter door and gave them the privacy they needed for the last part of their extraction job.

His old friend Lester had received the message from Kelly and taken the time to make copies of all the artefacts that were supposed to be dropped off that morning. Blake looked over the fakes and the drugs that were extracted from them, as Amilo explained how their morning was going.

"Everything's looking good boss. This shipment came in nice and clean and quiet.That was Lester's boy who just dropped them off straight from his house so he'll have the real antiquities dropped off at the location you gave him tomorrow afternoon," he explained, admitting that the real antiquities had been in the back of the van along with the fakes. Only one journey was necessary to get rid of them both from Lester's hands, before anyone could catch him at the dangerous game he and Blake were playing. The last thing either of them needed was for one of them to get caught, either with the real antiquities or the fakes, since questions would be asked of both.

"Good. Make sure these make it to their dealer and chase up their payments. I don't want to have to deal with this again until the next shipment,"Blake sighed, unhappy about the last time he had handed over a shipment to his usual street dealers. There had been bullshit complaints about not being able to sell the product, not making enough money to pay for their next shipment and a lot of crap about the recession. He didn't need it and as far as he was concerned,there was no excuse. His product was almost perfect, there was no reason it wouldn't sell and no reason they couldn't be selling shit loads of it for a hell of a profit if they were only smart enough. But they were afraid that by asking too much money, they would lose their regular customers, but that wasn't his problem.

Another thing that he didn't want to deal with was Kelly. "Amilo, have that friend of yours keep a tail on Kelly. He's too quiet for my liking.Normally he would have been on the phone to me by now, wanting paid.I don't like it when he's quiet."

Amilo quickly agreed to get right on it. He turned and prepared to call a guy he knew who could take care of it when he remembered something. "Oh boss, that Carter guy gave us some trouble about getting in here this morning.Said he'd been forced to take on a new guy and too much was happening without his say so for him to keep quiet about it. I think you'll need to have a word with him," Amilo recalled, having seen a fear in Carters eyes that said he was definitely a threat if they didn't deal with him quickly and remind him of who was in charge.