2. Chapter 2
Chapter two
Burris
“That Anelya was impressive,” Greg said to me as we leaned against the wall outside of Raymond’s cubicle in the ER.
I nodded. I’d never forget the way she looked, covered in blood, holding his leg together calmly, rattling off his information as help arrived. “She handed the saw to the police.”
Greg shook his head. “So you think it was another sabotage incident.”
“That’s too many of these coincidences. We have to talk to the police now.”
He nodded, his mouth a tight line. “Raymond could have been killed, or lost his leg.”
“Other people could have been hurt, too.” I agreed with him. We’d thought we were handling the strange series of incidents at our factory, but we couldn’t ignore the way it was escalating.
A young woman wheeled a computer towards Raymond’s room.
“Miss? Are you going to ask him about insurance?” I asked her.
“Um, yes?” She looked at Greg and I. “Are you family?”
We get these quizzical looks a lot. We were stepbrothers, and Greg’s dad had adopted me when I was in high school, saying the Grockton name would open doors for me. I’d wanted to have the same name as Greg and my mom.
“She means are we Raymond’s family.” Greg looked at me. “Look, we are his employer. We are covering all expenses related to this incident.”
“I thought it took place at some sort of festival.”
“Yes, we are the sponsors. Plus we are in charge of his health insurance.” I pulled out my phone and called up the company personnel directory. “Let me get you his information to get this started. Then you can send us the bill for anything left over.”
After we’d taken care of that, Raymond was wheeled out.
“I’m feeling no pain,” he said, giving us a small wave. “Off to surgery.”’
“They say he’s going to be fine. He might need some physical therapy, but he will be ok. You wouldn’t have that young woman’s information, would you?” Anna, Raymond’s wife asked us as she followed the gurney out of the cubicle.
“I’ll get it for you, Anna,” I said. “And I’ll send it to you.”
“She was gorgeous,” Greg said, after Anna hurried down the hallway with Raymond and the staff.
“Who, Anna?” I knew who he meant.
“Well, Anna is lovely of course, but you know who I meant.”
“I would have to see her not covered in blood, but yes, I do know who you mean.” Greg and I had been talking about sharing someone between us, as neither of us had luck dating anyone.
One of our college friends was in an arrangement like that with his stepbrother and never stopped discussing how happy they were.
The last time we’d gone fishing with college friends, we’d been complaining about not being able to find people to date, and Jacob had suggested we try sharing.
“We owe her a dinner at least for her help tonight,” Greg said, throwing an arm around my shoulders as we left the hospital.
I elbowed him, but I didn’t disagree with his idea.
***
“Let me get this straight. You two have had a series of these episodes, and they’ve been escalating, and you thought you could handle it?
” Detective Rhonda Wells had gone to high school with Greg and I, and was not impressed by our wealth and standing like many in this town were.
It’s one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to her.
“It took us a while to realize there was a pattern.” The truth was, Stephen, my step-father had always instilled in us a sense of protecting the company.
We were taught that we should be able to handle anything that came up.
So even when we started to see a pattern, we thought it was our job to fix it.
She was tapping on an ipad. “Let’s try to pin down details like dates and locations, and any people who may have been nearby.
I pulled up my notes on my computer.
She looked up. “Who has access to your computer files?”
“It’s on my personal drive, password protected.”
“That’s not good enough, if you access it here. You said most incidents took place here? When did this all start?”
I knew she was right. I looked at Greg.
“Last year some of our expensive cherry wood for the carving competition disappeared days before the event.” He folded his arms in front of his chest. He was leaning against a display table in my office.
“A year ago?” She sighed. “Tell you what. How about you email me that file, but keep talking me through it.”
So we did, continuing with some of the smaller incidents.
“We weren’t sure all those things were involved, but then there was the forty walnut dining sets that were never picked up, and the money reverted on Christmas Day.”
“How does money get reverted?” Rhonda’s fingers tapped on the keyboard attached to her ipad.
“We traced it to a phony credit account that was pulled back. After that we started taking deposits two months ahead.” Greg shrugged.
“I know we are a big company now, but my great-grandfather started this place with handshakes. Some things still need modernizing. My Dad just turned over full control to Burris and I two years ago. We’ve never really had a need to be worried. ”
“What happened to those walnut sets?”
“Donated to various schools, colleges, shelters.” I remembered my administrative assistant Aaron came up with that plan to help remove them quietly.
We discussed the poor review campaign that we didn’t realize was happening for a while, the tires mysteriously blowing on delivery trucks, and various other repairs needing to be done a lot more often on our fleets by March.
“Do you have mechanics on staff?” Rhonda kept taking notes while asking us questions.
I nodded. “They’ve all been with us for years. We have cameras in the garage, and took the head mechanics into confidence. The alarms went off a few times, but nothing was picked up. We got more roadside insurance, but some of the drivers have quit.”
“That has been happening around town at other places, too,” Greg said. “We discussed it at the Chamber of Commerce.”
She nodded. “It has, that’s true, but more randomly. This feels targeted. The campaign is working to shake confidence here.”
Greg nodded. “The reviews have started to hurt sales some in the US, but our Canadian sales are still strong.”
“Now that’s interesting. Any particular region of the US?” She asked.
I looked at Greg. “Mostly here in the South and spreading out.”
“So it could be a local grudge. I’ll need a list of former employees.”
“Aaron is putting that together already. I asked him to when we called you this morning.” I nodded towards my assistant’s desk outside my office.
“Our payroll funds were cut in half last week. We thought it was an error.”
“What did you do?”
“Covered it.” I said.
“Of course you did.”
“We were going to call you after the festival, as a smoke bomb went off in the employee lounge last Friday after the afternoon shift. No one but maintenance was supposed to be here, but an employee forgot her lunch bag and came back for it. She had to go to the doctor with asthma issues.” Saying this out loud made me realize that things were escalating badly even before Raymond’s accident.
“We thought it was a prank. It was outside a window.” Greg said.
“All right. So now you have a saw that was tampered with at a high profile festival.”
“Yes. We are happy to use private funds to help with testing or overtime for this investigation if need be,” Greg said. “We were thinking about a private investigator friend from college as it is. Bryan is meeting us at the diner in an hour to talk to us about checking things out here.”
“You could do that of course, but I might have another idea, too.”
An hour later, Greg and I were headed to the diner in town for lunch, with Rhonda.
“You know you don’t have to feed me,” she said.
“Yeah, but now you can coordinate a little with our friend. Plus I know you cops love the diner.” We’d teased her like a sibling since high school when she’d competed against us for academic and athletic awards.
“We can’t talk much about the situation in that diner. It would be like broadcasting it.” She reminded me.
“Fair point.” I said. “But he’s waiting for us in his car first, and we’ll talk in our car first.”
“Everyone will see that.” Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Whatever. At least they won’t hear it.”
“We’ll tell people we are setting you up with him.” I grinned.
“Please. Like I’d need help from two workaholics like yourselves.”
“Are you seeing anyone, Rhonda?” Greg asked as he turned our SUV down the street with the diner.
“No. Are either of you?”
“No.”
***
Bryan got out of his car and walked over to ours, sliding into the back next to me. I’d let Rhonda have the shotgun seat.
“Detective,” he said, after I introduced them.
I’d been joking before, but I noticed they held each other’s gaze for a few seconds longer than necessary.
Rhonda was a basketball star in high school, but was also on the Homecoming court.
She’d always had dates for dances but had been friendly with everyone.
I couldn’t remember her ever having a serious relationship.
But then again, neither had we. Like Rhonda, we’d been busy with college, then our careers, moving up in our professions.
“I was thinking I’d establish some of the police academy students as interns for the next few months,” she told him.
“That’s a great plan,” he said. “I’d like to also be there as a potential buyer for a large chain on the west coast. My cousin works for that chain and can back up my story.”
She nodded. “This is all coming together.”
“Now we can’t talk about this plan in the diner, but we can talk as old friends.”
“We’ll pretend we are setting you two up,” I said, unable to resist.
Rhonda shot me a look, but kept a smile on her face.
“That would certainly do my new reputation in town a lot of good,” Bryan said. “Rhonda, are you sure you won’t mind?”
“Of course not. It’s not like we’ll get married.”
***
As we all walked in, I noticed that Bryan held the door for Rhonda, then slid into the booth next to her.
I paused before taking my own seat as my gaze caught on Anelya, sitting at the counter enjoying what looked like four different small pies.
“We will be right there,” Greg said to our friends.
They barely noticed us, already talking at the table.
“Anelya?” I asked as we stood next to her.
She looked up, and I could see the resemblance to her sister Carolina, who was on the other side of the counter. They had the same smile, though Anelya had dark hair and a strong, taller frame. Her brown eyes seemed to warm as she smiled at us.
“Hello,” she said. “I hear Raymond’s surgery went really well.”
Greg nodded. “Listen, we’d like to take you to dinner as a thank you. Are you free tonight? Both of you, of course,” he gestured to Carolina.
Good idea, I thought. She might be more at ease with her sister.
“I’m here until close tonight,” Carolina said, “But Anelya is free.”
Anelya shot her sister the same type of look Rhonda had just sent me in the car.
I grinned.
“That is totally unnecessary. I’m glad I could help.”
“We are so grateful,” Greg continued. “There’s a new pub in town. It’s not very fancy, but one of our former employees and her husband just opened it. We like to eat there as often as possible to bring in business. Please join us there tonight.”
Smart again, I thought. I knew Greg was interested in this woman, as I was, but that did not seem like a full court romantic night and more like supporting one of our employees.
She nodded. “What time?”