Peter knew Deucalion, he had dinner with him just the other day, but he wasn't sure which of his goons Ennis was.
"Is he dumb enough to pull something like this?" Peter asked. If neither Braeden nor Coach had tried to fuck him over the only one left was the guy driving the truck. However, it took a special kind of dumb to just take some of the load without staging at least some kind of robbery.
"No." Coach shook his head but since the focus was not on him any longer, he'd calmed down. "He is, however, dumb enough to stop for dinner and doesn't lock the truck."
"Seriously?" Peter closed his eyes for a second. "Did he say something like that?"
"How the hell should I know?" Coach's voice rose again. "Ask Braeden. She's the one who talked to him."
So far Peter had only gotten the short version from her, mainly that not everything that should have been on the truck had been on the truck, so it might be a good idea to get some details from her. However, Peter was not done with Coach just yet.
"Who knew about this tour?" Peter asked. If there were more people involved he wanted to know.
"You think I'm an idiot?" Coach snapped at him. "Ennis and I loaded everything onto the truck, nobody was helping us and for sure I'm not out in the streets, telling everybody that I'm selling stolen goods."
Peter didn't let his tone impress him, the man was frustrated, he got that.
"When you hired Ennis, did you call him directly?" Peter asked, just to cover all the bases.
"No, I called Kali," Coach said. "Told her that I needed a driver and that I didn't care who she sent over. Should have insisted on one of the twins." He grumbled the last part more to himself than to Peter. But then something seemed to occur to him.
"I had a customer while I was on the phone," Coach remembered. "But I doubt that he got enough information to do anything with it."
"Who?"
"Dunno." Coach shook his head. "A young guy. Was looking for a tripod for his phone." He raised his hands in defense. "Even if he heard me, I'm not an amateur, I never go into detail about the when and where in public."
Peter believed him but he wanted to check on that customer just in case.
"Do you have his name?" Peter asked but no luck, the guy had paid cash.
"What about the camera?" Peter glanced up to the camera aimed at the counter. It was old and he wasn't sure if it was even working.
It was working and Coach even had the recording still available.
"You need to upgrade your security system, seriously." Peter looked in disbelief at the screen. Which wasn't even a flat-screen, that alone should have given him a hint. "And adjust the angle of the camera, would you?"
To Peter, it looked as if Coach had bumped into the camera when he'd set up the shelf next to it and never came around to put it back into the right position.
So all Peter got out of the camera feed was the back of a blurry figure with a mob of curly hair. It did remind him of Isaac Lahey but that guy had been on his mind a lot lately so it didn't come as a surprise that his mind made that connection. Even if this was Isaac, which he highly doubted what would be the chances of that, the image was so bad Peter doubted that his own mother would be able to identify him. This was not exactly an affluent neighborhood and the campus was not that far off, this could be one of several hundred young men with little to no money who would frequent a pawn shop.
This wasn't getting him anywhere, Peter realized.
"I'll talk to Braeden, we'll see from there," Peter told Coach and turned to leave. "Keep me updated."
"Doubt that the stuff just turns up in my backroom again but sure, I'll call you if anything turns up." The sarcasm was dripping off his voice but Peter could tell that Coach was relieved that he was off the hook. Peter would come back to him if he ran out of other leads but for now he went out to his car to have a talk with Braeden.
However, before he even got to his car, his phone rang. He expected to see Braeden's name on the display but instead, it read Kali.
"What now?" Peter wondered and got in the car before he answered the call.
"One of your guys refused to pay one of my guys," Kali said without bothering with a greeting. "Care to elaborate why?" She sounded almost sweet but he could hear the teeth behind her words, she was ready to rip him to shreds.
"Care to elaborate on why one of your guys left with a full truck and arrived with half of the load missing?" Peter countered, two could play that game.
"He says he delivered the truck as it was." Kali dropped the sweet act. "He didn't know what he was carrying and he didn't stop to have a look."
"Interesting." Peter got more comfortable in the seat. "Coach just told me that he and Ennis loaded the truck together."
He gave her a moment to let the words sink in.
"I was about to talk to Braeden, I need more details but from my end, it looks as if your guy has sticky hands and isn't even smart about it." Too bad his smile got lost over the phone but his tone should carry it across just fine.
Peter couldn't care less about the stolen goods, Coach didn't have the Mona Lisa in his backroom, this was about principle. He'd worked with Deucalion and his guys before but not that often. Since he'd decided to stay in New York for a while, Peter had been working on strengthening his network around here which basically meant Deucalion and Satomi. So far he'd focused on Deucalion but he couldn't afford to look weak in front of either.
"I'll talk to Braeden, see what she has to say," Peter said. "And you should have a heart-to-heart with your guy." With that, he ended the call.
For a moment Peter just sat in the car, thinking. This Ennis guy didn't sound like the sharpest knife in the drawer. He might had a look at the chaos Coach called his backroom and had figured that Coach himself didn't know exactly what he'd sold to Peter so Braeden shouldn't know more than "a truckload" of stuff either. Peter could see how that assumption might have led to the idea that nobody would notice if some of it fell off the truck on the way. Still dumb but Peter got it.
That or Ennis truly had gone for dinner without locking his truck and somebody had stumbled over it and on the spot decided that they absolutely needed some old paintings and a bunch of jewelry. Yeah, that sounded about right. Peter snorted at the idea while he brought his phone back to life. Time for some real answers.
Peter hadn't given Braeden a detailed list of the things he'd been sending over, they were talking about Coach's chaotic backroom here, but he had been able to give her a pretty accurate estimate of what to expect. With some highlights that had caught his eye.
They talked for a few minutes but Braeden couldn't give him more than that what had been on the truck hadn't come close to what he'd told her to expect. So she had refused to pay Ennis until things had been sorted out.
"He's lucky that I didn't put a hole between his eyes," Braeden said. Peter could hear her pacing up and down. It sounded as if she was still at the warehouse. "But I wanted to know what I'm dealing with first. You know, don't shoot the messenger. Benefit of the doubt. Bla bla bla."
"I'm trying to get on Deucalion's good side," Peter reminded her. "Kind of hard if you shoot one of his guys."
"With that guy, I would do him a favor." Braeden huffed out a laugh. "Anyway, I'm still sorting through this mess. There is some good stuff but most of it is just junk. You sure Coach didn't just sell you his trash?"
"Positive. Most of the good stuff didn't make it to you," Peter confirmed. Sure, he'd cleaned out Coach's whole backroom, there had to be quite some worthless junk in the mix, but what he'd seen had been worth the hassle of sorting through the mess. He just hadn't thought that somebody would pick out all the cherries along the way.
Braeden promised to see what she could do with what she had and then they ended the call.
Peter would have loved to talk to this Ennis guy directly, preferably face to face, but he would have to go through Kali for that and he doubted that she would approve. However, with the information that Ennis had loaded the truck himself and with that knew exactly what he was carrying Kali most likely wanted to talk with him as well.
Letting it be for the moment, the ball was in Kali's court now, Peter pondered what to do next. He had been looking forward to a relaxed day but that was ruined now. He wasn't that far off campus and it was almost noon, so he sent a message to Derek on a whim asking if he had plans for lunch. After a second of hesitation, he sent out a similar message to Stiles just with the addition that he had asked Derek as well. He didn't want to give Stiles the impression that he was talking about a date here. His day had started on the wrong foot, Peter didn't want it to continue with a misunderstanding with Stiles.
He got positive answers from both of them and half an hour later he was sitting in the same coffee shop as the other day with Derek, waiting for the two men to arrive.
"If I get treated to lunch like this, you can stick around for a while." Stiles greeted him with that broad grin of his. Derek was kind of looming behind him but he too had a warm smile for Peter.
The coffee shop was filling up with people, mostly students, but Peter had saved them the booth in the corner again that didn't put them in the middle of the crowd.
Stiles and Derek took the bench across from him. Peter wasn't sure if it was intentional but the way they were sitting close to each other made it clear that they were a solid item. However, they somehow managed to include him in their bubble.
Peter hurried to reach for the menu.
"You okay?" Stiles ducked his head to have a look at him.
Peter wasn't sure if Stiles had caught up on him having an emotional moment or if what had happened over the morning was still showing on his face. It was more annoying than anything else and he would laugh over it in a day or two but right now he was just irritated.
"Bad morning." Peter gestured for the waitress to refill his coffee.
"Did something happen?" Derek gave him a concerned look. He was most likely thinking about that student who had promised to keep their secrets just yesterday. But young people were young people, who knew what Isaac would come up with after he'd slept over this.
"Nothing like that," Peter assured him. "I just bought some stuff and not all of it got delivered. Now I'm trying to figure out where the rest is."
"How long have you been on hold?" Stiles asked, way too amused about this. "After half an hour I'm ready to murder somebody."
"You never make those calls," Derek reminded him. "You leave them to me."
"Yeah, because I want to murder somebody if they put me on hold for too long?" Stiles didn't say the duh but it was there. "And usually you're the only one around, you live longer if you make those calls."
Derek nodded touché and didn't argue with him.
By the time their sandwiches arrived, Peter's irritation had melted away and he just enjoyed their banter.