Love and Arson

by Woods, Karen

  Jase walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him. “I agree with Beth. Whoever is doing this has chosen names close to the names of our real suppliers and subcontractors for each stage of the scheme. They’ve only taken the difference between actual costs and the budgeted amount for the project. They’ve never pushed anything over budget. It’s slick. Real slick. We still haven’t been able to find out exactly how much they’ve stolen. It’s over two million in the last three years. Heaven only knows how much further back it goes.”

  “I’m still running searches on the previous years. That’s going a lot slower because the data has been archived and has to be imported into the system,” Dani said. “We should know by close of business today just how much money is missing or at least how much is missing that we have computer records for. Doing this search through the old manual ledgers will be very expensive.”

  “Too expensive. It’s not worth it,” Harry dismissed.

  “Besides, so far only the three of us know about this. If we got other people involved, there’s no way we would be able to keep this quiet,” Beth said.

  She looked at her father. “This is too big to hide forever.”

  “Let’s let the law enforcement people handle this. Look, basically what they’ve done is to skim a small portion off of a large number of projects. We’ve still shown a decent profit each year,” Harry said. “There’s no public shareholders impacted since the company is closely held.”

  Dani recognized that too calm voice as a sign of profound anger. She did the same thing when she wanted to explode but knew she wasn’t in a situation where she could.

  “The thief is a parasite who has a stake in seeing that the host remains healthy,” Dani asserted. “He isn’t so greedy as to kill off the host.”

  “It’s got to be someone inside,” Harry said.

  “Not necessarily,” Dani told him. “Considering how loose the security on the computer was, it could have been anyone with a decent knowledge of computers and accounting procedures. An educated hacker with a well developed sense of larceny, is also a possibility.”

  * * *

  “So, she found the diversion of funds, as we thought she might. It’s not a big deal. We’ll handle it,” Gil dismissed.

  “I don’t see why we can’t just up and leave now,” the woman replied. “The house on Grand Cayman is paid for. We certainly have enough money to live our lives in comfort.”

  “We haven’t made our goal. That’s still a little ways down the road. With Nancy out of the way, and no longer bleeding us dry, it should be much easier. You know that.”

  “The next stage is still on for tonight?”

  “It is. All of you, except Jaime and Nancy’s brat will be out of the house. She’ll take the full blame for Jaime’s abduction, and later for his murder.”

  “I want to leave. We’ve got enough. We can afford to leave.”

  “Just another few months.”

  “You’ve been saying that forever. I begin to wonder whether you will ever have enough.”

  “Now, don’t go getting testy.”

  “Testy!” she replied. “If you want to see testy, I can certainly show you testy.”

  “You’re in this as deep as I am. Don’t threaten me,” Gil warned.

  “You still haven’t answered me. Will you ever have enough so we’ll be able to leave?”

  “We haven’t made our goal.”

  “Goals shouldn’t be engraved in stone. We’re close enough,” she said.

  “Half a million down from our goal. The ransom for Beth’s brat will more than cover that. Harry will pay anything to get his grandson back. We’ll get the money, but all he’ll get back is a dead body. Overall, it’s a good plan. Trust me.”

  “I do trust you. I’ve loved you for so many years. I just want us to have a few years to spend with each other while we’re still young enough to enjoy the time. Is that so much to ask?”

  “We have the rest of our lives, my dear. Just be patient.”

  * * *

  As Jase had promised, the restaurant was quiet and intimate, even at lunch time. He held her hand atop the linen cloth. They talked about a variety of topics, always skirting around what they were both a little afraid to discuss.

  “Are you going to give me an answer?”

  “No,” she said seriously. “Not yet. We both need some more time to really get to know one another. Marriage is too serious to get carried into on a wave of romance. It has to be built on something more solid, like commonalities of interests, shared values, and absolute commitment to one another.”

  Jase looked at her for the longest time. “I don’t understand you.”

  “I know. That’s why I can’t agree to marry you, not right now,” she told him. “I don’t really understand you either, if the truth be known. Neither of us really trusts the other one. That’s not a good basis for marriage.”

  “Meaning you don’t trust me.”

  “Meaning, we need some time to get to know one another better. Marriage is a lifetime commitment. It’s way too important to rush into, especially on a tide of passion.”

  “I think I’ll still be discovering new things about you when you’re ninety-five.”

  “When I’m ninety-five, you’ll be lucky to be able to discover your teeth in a glass next to our bed,” she replied. “May we both live that long.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  After an early dinner in the kitchen, Dani locked up, activated the security system, then went up to Jaime’s suite with him to watch his favorite science fiction movie. The boy had watched the recording so often that he had obviously memorized much of the dialog well enough to recite the lines with the characters.

  When the movie ended, Dani bathed the three year old and put him to bed, promptly at eight. Jaime fell asleep before she reached the end of his favorite storybook. She retired to her own rooms, a floor beneath the nursery, to take a shower and study some reports.

  Nine fifteen sounded from the grandfather’s clock in her sitting room. Dani heard the sound of the clock, and realized she had fallen asleep, her head resting on her desk. Well, so much for studying the reports.

  She rose from her chair and stretched. Deciding she would make one last check on Jaime before she went to bed, she pulled on her robe over her shortie pajamas and headed, barefoot, to her door.

  The hall light was on as Dani walked out of her room. Someone must have come home, because I distinctly remember turning it off after putting Jaime to bed.

  Jaime’s screams her scurrying up the stairs.

  Standing there, inside his room were two people, dressed in black with black knit ski masks over their faces. The men tried to subdue a kicking, screaming, twisting, Jaime. One of the men held a folded cloth in his hand, trying, and failing, to cover Jaime’s face.

  Dani didn’t know who among them was more shocked.

  Jaime wrested himself out of their grasp and darted away into his bathroom. She heard the lock click.

  “You take care of her while I get the brat,” one man instructed the other.

  At least Jaime was safe for the moment. That was more than she could say for herself. She had no option except to fight these men. God, help me! Give me strength and courage.

  She kept her eyes on the men while trying to think of anything in Jaime’s room she could easily use as a weapon. The baseballs. Jaime’s bats. They weren’t as good as her pistol, but they’d have to do. There was no time to retrieve the handgun. She just had to get to the bats.

  One man began to strike at the bathroom door with his shoulder, trying to force the door open. She only hoped Jaime wasn’t too scared to use the phone in there to call for help.

  The other man stepped menacingly close to her, reached out and grabbed her long braid as it hung over the front of her left breast. He tugged. Hard.

  “Pretty women should keep their noses out of things that don’t concern them, if they want to stay pretty,” he threate
ned as he took a knife from a sheath at his belt and brandished it at her. “You won’t be as pretty when I’m done with you.”

  She leaned into his grasp, removing the tension from her hair. Not giving him time to respond, she kneed him hard in the groin. He cursed at her as he loosed his hold on her. She ran to the shelf of baseball memorabilia and grabbed the first baseball bat she could get her hands on, a nineteenth century bat. She knew it was expensive, historical, a collectors’ item, but nothing was more important than defending Jaime and herself.

  The man straightened, and came at her holding the knife, with both hands, like he knew quite well how to use it in a fight.

  Dani and he danced around each other for a few moments, which seemed like forever to her as the other man continued to try to break down the bathroom door. She tried not to let her fear show.

  Her first blow hit his arm. The sickening, but momen-tarily satisfying, crunch of broken bone followed the thwack of the bat’s impact. His knife clattered to the floor.

  But he kept coming at her, cursing, threatening her.

  She swung at him, low, intending to take out his knee. A second crunch of bone followed the sound of wood shattering as it struck cloth and flesh. The man wouldn’t be going anywhere under his own power for quite a while, probably not until after extensive surgery and a long, agonizing, period of physical therapy. She couldn’t think of anyone who deserved it more. He continued screaming in pain, cursing at her. She backed away from him, well out of his reach and dropped the broken bat.

  Before she could retrieve another bat, the second man launched himself at Dani, shouting curses and threats. His knife was bigger than the first man’s.

  The man lunged at her several times with the knife, catching her robe sleeve, as well as her arm. It hurt so bad she thought she’d faint. But she struggled to stay focused. This man would kill her if she let him. And then he’d hurt or kill Jaime. She worked her way around the room towards the bats again. She needed a weapon.

  “You should stay out of things that are none of your business,” the man warned.

  It might have been wishful thinking, but Dani thought she heard the sound of sirens approaching.

  The panicked look in his eyes told her she wasn’t hearing things. “Damn you, woman! You’ll pay for this!”

  “You aren’t taking Jaime anywhere. Leave now and never come back,” Dani ordered.

  “Brave words from a dead woman,” the man snarled.

  She reached behind her for a bat, and found she wasn’t where she thought she was.

  The last thing she remembered was seeing his large fist come at her face.

  Chapter Twenty

  When she came to, a male voice said, “Ah, you’re back. Good. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  She looked at him. Focusing in was difficult. The embroidery on his coat read Mike Sullivan, M.D., she thought, but it was hard to read because everything appeared double and slightly offset to her.

  “Four. But I think you’re really holding up two.”

  “How’s your vision?”

  “Besides seeing everything double?”

  “Yeah, besides that,” the doctor replied, concern and humor mixed in his voice.

  “My whole head hurts.”

  The doctor nodded. “Your left orbital floor fractured. You have fractures in other bones in your face, as well. We saw that on the CT scan. These types of breaks are common in facial trauma. That break of the floor of your eye socket saved your eye from rupturing. Right now, there is a lot of swelling, trapping the nerves, and your eyes aren’t tracking together very well. That’s giving you the double vision. I’m going to call an eye specialist to evaluate you more fully.”

  “I feel really dizzy.”

  “That’s not unexpected. You have a concussion. Can you tell me your name?”

  “Dani Devlin.”

  “Count backwards from one hundred for me by threes, Dani?”

  “One hundred, ninety-seven, ninety-four, ninety-one, eighty-eight, eighty-five, eighty-two, seventy-nine, seventy-six, seventy-three, seventy, sixty-seven, sixty-four…”

  He cut her off, “Good enough. What’s the next holiday coming up?”

  “Labor Day. First Monday in September.”

  “Nothing wrong with your mental functioning. Let’s check on your reflexes.”

  “Okay, Dani. I’m going to admit you overnight for observation. Your concussion needs watching,” he said a few minutes later, after finishing his evaluation of her neurological and mental state. “Besides, I want to have you looked at by a couple of specialists during the next few hours.”

  “For my eye and for what else?” she asked.

  “I want to have you evaluated by a neurologist, just to be on the safe side.”

  She closed her eyes. It was just too difficult to stay alert.

  The next time she woke up, she was no longer on the gurney. She lay in a bed in which the head was elevated somewhat. The smell was of disinfectants. An IV drip flowed into her left arm. Her head felt strange, and her neck hurt. She still wore a cervical collar to immobilize her head and neck.

  The room was dark. She could hear the breathing of several people and hushed whispers. “Who’s there?” Dani demanded.

  “Thank God,” her father stated as he rose from the chair and flip on the light over her bed. She shielded her eyes from the brightness. She looked over to see Steve Anderson sitting in the corner. Jase stood by the window. She still saw everything double. It was giving her a worse headache to look at them. So, she closed her left eye and covered it with her hand. Only having one eye open eliminated the double vision.

  “How do you feel?” Harry asked.

  “Dad,” Dani demanded, “is Jaime okay?”

  “He’s fine. Scared, but he’s fine,” Jase said, answering for Harry.

  “Thank God,” she said.

  “How are you feeling?” Steve asked.

  “I’m in a lot of pain. So I guess I’m alive. Did the police get them, Dad?” Dani demanded.

  “Jaime said there were two?” Bob Hunter questioned from the doorway. She looked at him. He carried several cups of coffee in a cardboard tray.

  “Crime rate so low here you can afford to spend this kind of time at the hospital waiting for me to wake up, Chief Hunter?” she asked.

  Bob spoke, kindness in his voice. “Thankfully, yes. Jaime said there were two men?”

  “There were...The one you got had a broken arm and knee?” Dani asked.

  “Yes,” Bob replied after a brief hesitation.

  “Too bad,” Dani said. “I’m just sorry I didn’t take out both of his knees, or bash his fool head in.”

  Steve laughed. She thought the sound was nervous. But what did he have to be nervous about?

  “What did you do to him?” Steve asked.

  “His knee snapped when I hit him. I knew he wasn’t any further threat for the moment,” Dani said, yawning.

  “You were lucky. This will heal with a minimum of scaring,” Harry said.

  “Scars don’t bother me. Will I keep my left eye?”

  “The doctor says he doesn’t think this was permanent,” Jase said. “But you’ll have to take it easy for a while. It should heal fine. Are you still seeing double?”

  “Yes. I can’t stand it. The headache’s less if I keep my left eye closed.”

  “Understandable,” Steve said.

  “Steve, I guess our next tennis match is off.”

  “Not off, just postponed,” Steve promised. “I do expect to see you on the court facing me as soon as you’re feeling more like yourself. Although playing you when you’re recuperating might be the only way I could beat you.”

  “Do you mind if I record this conversation?” Bob asked.

  “Do I have a choice?” she asked.

  “Not really,” the police chief said.

  “Then, I guess I don’t mind,” she replied.

  “This is Bob Hunter. I’m interviewing Mary Daniel
le Devlin. Also present are her father, Harry Devlin, her intended husband, Jason Wilton, and Steve Anderson, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for this county,” Bob said into the recorder.

  Dani glared at Jase. He simply smiled at her, challenging her to contradict that statement of their betrothal.

  “The time is oh five thirty hours on Sunday, July 16. The location is her hospital room. Miss Devlin has not been read her rights since she is not a suspect, merely a material witness and victim. Dani, can you give me a description of the men who attacked you?” Bob Hunter asked.

  “Both of the men were wearing black ski masks and gloves. I never saw either of their faces.”

  She thought for a minute. “The second man— the one who hit me— his glove didn’t quite meet his shirt cuff. He had a tattoo on the front of his right wrist. It was red, bright red. He was fair skinned Caucasian. I didn’t see any of the other man’s skin.”

  Bob asked, “Are you sure about the tattoo?”

  “He was right handed. Or at least, he wielded the knife with his right hand. Believe me, I didn’t take my eyes off him once he came at me with that knife,” Dani said.

  “Of course, you didn’t,” Steve said. “I know I wouldn’t.”

  Bob asked, “Tell me anything else you remember about either man?”

  “The second man’s shirt cuffs were French. That was not an inexpensive shirt bought off the rack. It was an older shirt. The cuff was more than a little frayed. He wore gold cuff links. Not new. Some sort of engraving. Initials, I think. That elaborate, overly ornate, baroque script. I didn’t really get a good hard look at it. But I think it was a C and an E or an S.”

  “You remember anything else?” Bob asked, his voice completely skeptical. “What color were his eyes?”

  “Brown. Almost black,” she said without hesitation. “There was hardly any gradation between his irises and pupil. The hair I saw on his arm was dark with a little gray in it. So, he wasn’t young. The skin under his eyes was black, but I think it was some sort of makeup, like the kind that football players use under their eyes,” Dani replied, trying to fill in the blanks.