Circle of Shadows (15 page)

Desperately, he looked for the
cause of the leak, to see if he could stop it. He saw that many small holes had
been drilled above the water line, so that when he entered the boat, his weight
had brought them below the waterline, and allowed the water to rush in. There
was no way he could plug them all, before it was too late. His boat was going
to sink!

He was still a long way from
shore. Quickly, he slipped off his shoes and jacket, looking around for his
life vest. It was missing. Damn! Why hadn’t he looked for it before leaving
shore?

As the boat disappeared under the
water, he began the swim to shore. He said a prayer of thanks for being in
shape, and for the many nights he’d spent getting his exercise by swimming year
round in the pool.

Anger that someone would sabotage
his boat with the obvious intent to do him harm, gave him added strength, and
fueled his long, powerful strokes towards the shore.

No one was about this early in
the morning, all the houses were quiet. There were no other boats on the lake
from which to summon help. If he were to make it, he would have to do it on his
own. He had no other choice. He had to do it, or drown. He swam on and on,
muscles screaming with the unusual effort.

When at last, he reached shore,
he lay on the beach for a while to rest, then walked along the shoreline back
to his house.

Thankful there was still some hot
coffee in the pot, he poured a cup and sank down in a chair to drink it.

He took a hot shower, and dressed
to go into his Minneapolis office. Making some toast for breakfast, he pondered
reporting this to the police, deciding against it.

Throughout the long drive to
Minneapolis, he angrily tossed the problem around in his mind. Why had someone
done it? Was it the same person who had been in his office yesterday? Probably
so. What did they want, or hope to accomplish?

Was it connected to the problem
at Adams’
Foods ?
Was someone trying to get rid of him
to avoid being caught at his scheme there, whatever it was?

Chances were that whoever drilled
those holes and removed his life vest, thought he was a soft office worker.
They thought he would be helpless on the water without a motor. They had
expected him to drown instead of only losing his fishing boat and gear.

Was he dealing with a murderer?
Because, he thought with a shudder, if he hadn’t been a good swimmer, that’s
what would have been accomplished this morning out there on the lake. His
murder. They might have gotten away with it too. With him dead and the evidence
at the bottom of the lake, no one would ever have known why he’d drowned. His
death would have been called a boating accident.

What would whoever it was, try
next? Was Lili in danger? What could he do about it?

Remembering that Curtis would not
be on duty tonight, because he’d gone to visit his mother in Iowa, Ken decided
to make it back to Landers in time to take his place.

Curtis might have missed
something. Even if Curtis hadn’t missed anything, Ken decided he would rather
play watchman than do nothing.

***

At her office in Adams’ Foods,
Lili stretched her arms over her head, trying to ease her tired muscles, then
stood and poured herself another cup of coffee. She’d been working for hours at
her desk, even though it was Saturday night. With Ken out of town, she’d felt
restless and anxious. He’d been so cold lately.

She just had to find the problem
with Adams’ Foods’ finances. Somehow, she was sure that she was close to the
answer, if she could only identify it. The answer had to be right there in her
paperwork, somewhere. She was just not seeing it.

Glancing at her watch, she saw
that it was almost ten o’clock. If she didn’t get some food and some sleep, she
wouldn’t be able to get up to open the store in the morning. She yawned and
looked for her purse and keys.

A noise near the front of the
empty, closed store alerted Lili, sending goose-bumps along her arms and making
the tiny hairs along the back of her neck stand up straight. Someone else was
in the store!

Pressing her fist to her mouth to
keep from screaming, she forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly to calm
her pounding heart. The lack of windows except in front near the checkout
counters made the store quiet and dark even though the night-lights were on.

She should have left with the
others. It had been a foolish thing to do, staying here late at night alone.
Perhaps the noise was only her imagination working overtime.

Silently easing her office door
open, she moved out into the hallway, thankful for her soft-soled shoes. She
stopped at the doorway to the main part of the store, straining to hear
anything more. All was quiet.

Slipping through the door, she
looked up and down the aisles before walking toward the front of the store.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim
night lights, she could see around her clearly. Everything seemed empty and
ordinary. Perhaps the noise had been only a can of vegetables, unbalanced and
falling from a shelf, or even, heaven forbid in a food store, a mouse.

She turned to go back to her
office when she heard the distinctive slap of the walk-in cooler door closing
in the meat department. Someone was indeed in here, and was acting as though he
had no need for silence, or caution, either.

Releasing her breath in relief,
she decided that one of her employees had remembered he hadn’t done something
important, such as shutting off the power on the smokehouse or wrapping
machine, and returned. Odd that he hadn’t turned on the overhead lights.

“Who’s here?” Lili called out,
walking confidently now toward the meat department. When no one answered, her
steps slowed, and she turned back to the front of the store and quickly flipped
the switches on all the overhead lights.

She debated calling 911, then
considered how foolish she would feel when the police came if nothing was
wrong.

As she cautiously walked back
through the now brightly lighted store towards the meat department, the walk-in
meat cooler door opened. Arthur stepped out carrying a box of bacon in his
burly arms.

He stopped as he saw her, and
blinked at her in the sudden brightness, his mouth open in surprise. “Lili!”

“Arthur! You scared me half to
death! What are you doing back here? I thought everyone had gone home.”

“Oh, ah, well I had, but then
Mrs. Murdock called to say their bacon hadn’t been delivered to the church, and
they needed it for their pancake breakfast in the morning. So I came down to
get it and drop it off.”

Lili’s mind was reeling. “But why
didn’t you turn on the lights? When I heard a noise in the dark, I thought we
had a burglar again.”

Arthur looked away, setting the
case of bacon down on his meat block. “Sorry, Lili, I...I guess it didn’t seem
dark to me with the night lights on. I could see
good
enough with the light inside the cooler. Anyway, if you turn on the lights, the
night cop will wonder what’s going on.” He looked nervously towards the street.

Lili stared at him. Why should he
be nervous that she’d turned on the lights? None of this added up. Suddenly
Lili remembered seeing Billy roll his carryout cart with a case of bacon out to
Mrs. Murdock’s car just as she had gone for supper tonight. The horrible
suspicion forming in her mind turned to certainty.

Arthur was lying! He was the one
stealing from her store. Her own trusted meat manager, who had keys to
everything. Who could also, of course, come and go without suspicion because he
was next in line to the boss. Even the police officers would not question his
presence at the store, nor his car there at odd hours, since she had given them
Arthur’s name as the person to call if she was unavailable. Her best employee,
her right arm.

Now she saw that he was really
the opposite: her worst enemy. Her stomach lurched with the sour taste of her
new reality; her chest felt too tight to allow her to breathe. Her world was
turning upside down.

With that thought came awareness
of her precarious position. She was alone here with Arthur, and no one else
knew she was here. No one else knew what he’d done. She stood between him and
success.

Fear slid along her veins. Her
muscles felt like slush, treacherous and cold, and as useless to help her move
as melting snow was to a skier. She just stood there, staring at him, frozen
with uncertainty.

Arthur looked back at her, and
his face took on a nasty grin. “So you don’t believe me, Lili? Neither you nor
Mr. Mills is so smart after all, eh? With all your fancy computers, I figured
you would get suspicious sooner or later,” he said laughing harshly. “But I
outsmarted you!”

Red hot anger replaced the cold
in her mind. She lashed out, “You’re the one who’s been stealing us blind,
aren’t you, Arthur? How could you, after all these years with us?”

“Exactly. You got that right.
After all these years! I wasted all those years. I thought Robert would reward
me and the others...leave us shares in the store, or sell it to us cheap, or
something. Instead, he sells it out from under us.”

“So you decided to help yourself,
is that it, Arthur?” she asked, her voice calmer now. She tried to ease away,
to plan an escape.

“I deserved it, after working all
these years,” he shouted furiously, glaring at her.

“So that’s why Anna has been
missing so many things,” Lili chattered on, remembering her keys were in her
purse back in the office. Why hadn’t she called 911 when she’d first heard a
noise and damn the embarrassment if she’d been wrong?

She took another couple of steps
back. Arthur started around the meat case towards her.

Then she turned and ran, her
heart pounding as fast as her feet, making a dash for her office. If she could
get inside, she might be able to lock the door against him long enough to call
for help. Arthur’s footsteps pounded after her as she ran.

She didn’t even make it to the
hallway at the back of the store before she felt his large hand catch her long
hair, and then her collar. They went down together, and his big hand closed
over her wrist and twisted her arm behind her back.

Twisting desperately around, she
bit his shoulder as hard as she could. “Damn it, anyway, Lili. Stop it!” he
growled in her ear. He got his feet under him and yanked her to her feet, then
stood holding her, panting and glaring at her.

She raised her chin defiantly.
“So you caught me, Arthur. So what? You’ll never get away with any of this.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. I write the paychecks,
remember? You’ve had your last one. You’re all through here, Arthur, and
without a recommendation you’ll never get another job around here.”

His mouth twisted. “Too bad you
feel that way.” He said nothing for a moment as he caught his breath. She tried
to pull free, but winced when he tightened his grip on her wrist.

“There’s another way out, you
know,” he said, in a softer voice. “You were cheated by Robert, too, you know.
Mr. Mills got the cream, while Robert left you the skim milk, or should I say
the short end of the stick?”

She gasped in shock at the gall
of the man. “That doesn’t excuse stealing.”

“You could share in the spoils,
Lili,” he pleaded softly, “and Mr. Mills would never know the difference.”

“How could he not know?” she
asked. Suddenly she was curious to know how he had worked this scheme without
her finding out. How long had it had been going on?

He grinned and eased his grip on
her wrist. He watched her rub her numb hand with her other hand, but didn’t
release her.

“Your old man didn’t notice, and
he was here every day. So how would Mr. Mills notice, when he only shows up
once a week?”

“Ken has everything on computer.
You can tell a lot from reports.”

“Not if someone doctors the
figures. You put garbage into a computer and garbage comes back out. Renee told
me that herself.”

“Renee! She was in on this?”

“Not yet, but I know she’ll help
me. She told me Mr. Mills puts all the stores onto computer, and she types the
reports in for him. She’s falling for me, you know,” Arthur bragged with a
smirk.

“Really?” Lili said, swallowing.
“You believe Ken wouldn’t notice if she typed in any changes in the reports the
managers send him? He’s not stupid, you know.”
Keep him talking. Don’t
panic. How much time do I have before someone driving by wonders why the store
lights were on at night? Will anyone bother to investigate?

Arthur smirked at her. “Renee
says he reads the reports first, then she types them in and files them. I’ll
bet he never even looks at them a second time. He’s too busy running from store
to store. Or taking you out.” He grinned. “Besides, he’s so rich, he’ll never
even notice a few thousand dollars missing now and then, from all those
stores.”

Something Arthur had said earlier
popped back into her mind. “What did you mean, ‘if my father didn’t notice
?’
Were you stealing from him, too?”

“It wasn’t ‘stealing’,” he
objected. “I just added a bonus to my wages.”

“But how could my father not
notice?”

He shrugged and looked away.
“Some restaurants, churches and clubs paid in cash from the money they took in
when they sold the food. When I delivered their orders, they would pay me for
it all. I didn’t always turn the cash all in.”

“But how...,” she began, then
remembered that he often dropped off orders on his way home, or ran the till
himself at supper hour, or on the nights he closed the store.

“Why wouldn’t that shortage show
up in your meat department sales or profit figures?” she objected, trying to
understand. “Even your sales per man-hour were good.”

Arthur smiled slyly. “That’s easy
to fix when you’re running the till, too,” he said. “I rang up the groceries I
delivered under meat, to spread out the shortages, and to skew the figures.
That way you never knew, nor your old man neither.”

Lili felt sick. Another disadvantage
of using old-fashioned cash registers instead of scanners using barcodes. The
person running them could control the information. She had always trusted
Arthur to put the money in the till himself, and mark the accounts paid. Now
she could see what a mistake that had been, and how easy it had been for him to
manipulate the amounts.

No wonder she and Ken hadn’t
figured out what he was doing. If he hadn’t rung the sales up, the till would
still balance, and the shortage wouldn’t show when he didn’t turn in the money.

“Were you the burglar who hit me
that night in the storeroom, too?”

Arthur looked sheepish. “Yeah,
sorry about that. But I didn’t hit you too hard, just enough to knock you out
so’s
you wouldn’t know who was there. That was your own
fault, you know.”

Lili felt fear slide down her
back. If he had hit her once, what else might he do to her now? “My fault?”

“Yes. If you had turned on the
lights when you came in that night, I’d have been warned to leave before you
came back there.”

“But if you could take things out
the front door in plain sight, why bother stealing things at night?”

Arthur shrugged. “There were a
couple of accounts I supplied that you didn’t know about over in Centerville. I
was afraid if I changed the amounts in the charge accounts or reduced the sales
figures too much on the till, you’d get suspicious. Besides, I was behind on
the payments for my Jag.”

Lili’s mind whirled. His Jaguar?
“But I thought you inherited the money from your mother to pay for that?”

Arthur shrugged. “She didn’t
leave half as much money as everybody thought.”

“So that’s why father thought our
store was losing money. Don’t you realize that that’s why he sold it, because he
thought there wasn’t enough profit in running it for me and my mother?”

Arthur shrugged. “Maybe, maybe
not. Can’t ask him now, can we?”

“No,” she agreed painfully. “We
certainly can’t.” But she could avenge her father. She could see that the man
who had caused Robert to sell her birthright was punished, not rewarded for it.
Helping him continue to steal was not the way to do it.

“Well?” he said, twisting the arm
he still held tighter.

She winced against the pain,
pretending not to know what he wanted an answer to. “Well, what?”

“Are you going to forget this and
help me? Think of the extra money you’d have by going halves with me on this.
Especially when I get Renee to include some accounts from the other stores. She
pays the invoices for some of the stores, she could just type in the wrong
store number and no one would be the wiser.”

With a sinking heart she knew he
was right. If the computer was manipulated so that the losses from one store
were spread among all of Ken’s stores, the percentages would be so skewed as to
make it very difficult to tell where the problem was coming from, or how to fix
it. If Arthur succeeded, and Renee helped him, Ken would be robbed blind. He
wouldn’t know how.

“
I’d
know!” Lili said
incredulously.

“So what? Mr. Mills must be worth
millions already. He can afford it.”

Reason flew away as she heard the
slur against Ken. Arthur’s big mistake, she realized, was not understanding
that she loved Ken, loved him more than anything else in the world. Even more
than Adams’ Foods or her family pride. “You’re crazy if you think I’d even
consider that. Let me go!” She kicked at his shins at the same time as she bent
her head and bit at him again, trying desperately to free her hand from his
iron grip. But all those years of lifting beef quarters and boxes of groceries
had made him very strong. Her struggles were useless.

“Cut it out,” Arthur growled at
her again, only tightening his grip. “I might have known you wouldn’t see
reason.” He gave a yank on her hand, flipping her around against him, then
throwing her over his shoulder easily and carrying her back to the meat
department.

“What are you doing?” She kicked
frantically at him, wondering if he meant to kill her with his knives or meat
cleaver. The thought sent a frantic shudder through her.

“Buying some time for myself. If
you won’t see reason, I’ll have to have time to get away.” He opened the heavy
door of the walk-in meat cooler, lowered her from his shoulder and shoved her
inside. She fell into a heap onto the cold sawdust covered floor, landing on
her rear, her chin slamming onto her knees. Blood spurted from her lip as her
teeth cut painfully into it.

Staring up and him and wiping at
her mouth with a numb hand, she repeated, “You’ll never get away with this!”

“Sorry, Lili. I really did like
you, you know. I used to think you liked me, too. I even fantasized about us
getting married someday. But I guess I never could compete with Mr. Mills and
his piles of money.”

She scrambled back onto her feet,
desperately wondering if she could shove him off balance enough to get past
him. She yelled angrily, “If Ken didn’t have a penny, he’d still be a better
man than you.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged, seeing her
intentions and barring the door with his burly body. “Speaking of money, I’m a
little short of traveling cash tonight. So, I’ll just take the cash we took in
today.” At her gasp of outrage, he grinned. “What’s one more little theft? As
soon as I’m out of the country, I’ll be able to tap my foreign bank accounts. I
had a good New York broker, you know. I planned for all possibilities.”

“Out of the country? But what
about your son? You can’t just leave Sammy.”

Pain swept across Arthur’s face.
For a long minute, he said nothing, and she held her breath, thinking she’d
reached him, that he was going to change his mind.

Then his expression hardened, and
he said, “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that. But Sammy will be okay with his
mother. Maybe someday, when he’s older, I’ll send him the money to join me.”

She let out a sigh. She’d lost.
As he started to close the door, she begged, “Arthur, please don’t do this!
I’ll freeze in here!”

“No, you won’t. It’s only
thirty-two degrees in here. The others will let you out in only...” he looked
at his Rolex, “about nine hours. So long, boss.” He closed the door.

Lili immediately threw herself
against the safety lever that opened the heavy door from the inside. Although
it unlatched, the door would open only a crack. Then it slammed shut again as
she heard Arthur drop something heavy against it to block it.

Although she knew she was no
match for his strength, she had to try. She put her shoulder to the door and
shoved as hard as she could.

The door gave a little. But he
merely slammed it shut again, and she heard more heavy thuds as he added more
weight against the other side of the door. Now, try as hard as she could, she
couldn’t move it.

Then all was quiet. He had left
her here. She was trapped.

The odors of fresh meat, smoked
sausages, and sawdust assailed her nostrils in the dark meat cooler. The only
light switch was outside the cooler, and Arthur had not turned it on, whether
on purpose or not, she didn’t know. Luckily, she wasn’t afraid of the dark like
her friend, Tami, she thought irrationally, then shivered and rubbed her arms.

Darkness wouldn’t harm her. But the
cold would. She stood and felt around for something to cover herself with. She
was wearing only her thin work uniform. If only Arthur kept his aprons or a
jacket in here. She ran her hands tentatively over boxes and shelves in the
dark, but could find only food.

There was little room to move,
since they had just received a large shipment of boneless beef from Allied, and
the huge cardboard boxes were piled high. The other walls were lined with
shelves filled with smaller boxes of bacon, wieners, and various luncheon
meats. Only a small area in the center had been left open for the meat
department workers to move things in or out. This cooler was used for storage
only, all the work of cutting and wrapping meats was done out in the cutting
room.

Fighting the urge to scream, Lili
tried to assess her situation. Sitting on a box, she allowed herself the luxury
of frustrated tears, as she thought back over what Arthur had said.

She got up and tried running in
place to warm herself, then realized doing that would use up the limited oxygen
faster.

Sitting down again, she realized
that she might never get out of here alive. She might never win her battle for
Adams’ Foods. In fact, the whole effort now seemed ridiculous.

She loved Ken. So why had she
been fighting him instead of trying to make him fall in love with her? Now it
might be too late. If she didn’t get out of here, he might never even be sure
what had happened.

When Arthur disappeared, Ken
would guess that he had done this to her. But he would wonder forever how
Arthur had pulled off his scheme. Ken might even think she’d helped him.

What a fool she had been.

Exhausted, she curled up into a
ball and leaned against the cold, wooden wall, letting the tears flow.

***

Saturday afternoon, Ken had just returned
home and begun to relax when his sister, Jill, called him. Ken had always been
close to his sister, though they seldom saw each other anymore.

After the usual family update,
she said, “Ken, I’m flying through Minneapolis tonight, and I have a three hour
lay-over. How about coming down and going out for a late supper? I haven’t seen
you in ages.”

He hesitated, thinking of his vow
to watch Adams’ Foods while Curtis was off duty. But he reasoned, Curtis had
seen nothing in three weeks of surveillance. He couldn’t refuse Jill a visit
just to sit in a dark car for hours. “Sure, Sis.”

“Great. I get in at eight. Pick
me up at the gate.” She gave him her flight number, and rang off.

He drove into the city and spent
a pleasant evening with Jill. Her eleven o’clock flight was an hour late in
taking off, so he waited at the airport with her to prolong their visit. By the
time he’d put her on the plane and driven back to Landers, it was two in the
morning.

The little town was eerily quiet
as he entered it. The quaint street lights didn’t provide a whole lot of light,
but did add character to the town’s main street. Only one rusty brown car sat
on the street, and even the bars were closed.

Exhausted after the long day and
drive, he wanted nothing so much as a hot bath and bed. But something urged him
to check on Adams’ Foods. Everything seemed as usual as he drove past the front
of the store.

He swung around in back, and
stopped in the alley across from the back door where Curtis had said he’d parked,
suddenly determined to take up his duty of night watchman in spite of his
fatigue.

Stopping the car, he surveyed the
alley and parking lot. A lone car sat way at one end and somewhere a dog
barked, otherwise all was quiet.

Yawning, he settled down in the
seat, wishing he had a hat to pull down over his eyes, like the detectives did
in the movies.

Nothing happened. Minutes slid by
and his eyes grew heavy. He called himself a dope for doing without sleep for
nothing.

Restlessly sitting up to ease his
aching muscles, he let his gaze roam around the area again. Suddenly he sat up
straight and really looked at the lone car at the end of the parking lot.
Wasn’t that Lili’s small red Chevy?

Opening his car door, he raced
over to it. Yes, it was her car. It was empty and locked. It seemed all right;
no sign of a flat tire or any visible damage.