Destiny Unknown Page 17

  The phone rang, startling her. Though she wasn't officially at work, she automatically picked it up. As soon as she heard Cody's voice, she was glad she had. That rich, whiskey tone was enough to chase away the depression. "How'd you know I was here?" she asked, noting her own voice had dropped a notch.

  "Lucky guess," he answered. "Coupled with the fact that you mentioned last night that you might go in later today and when I called your place, I got your answering machine."

  "I'm not sure I'm glad I came in. The manufacture of our surveillance equipment reports the problems we've been having aren't malfunctions but electronic interference within our stores."

  "Well, I have something more interesting."

  "Something more interesting?" she asked, hoping it was a report on the fingerprints. "Did you hear from your friend?"

  "I did. And I have the report. In addition to your prints, we do have a print that appears on all three samples."

  "Ben's?" If so, they had him.

  "No, it's not Ben's. That I'm sure of."

  "Loren's?"

  Cody hesitated, then sighed. "That's the problem, I'm not sure about that. I thought I got a decent print on the picture Loren handled, but somehow I messed up. "Listen, can you stay there for a while? I'd like to dust Loren's desk for prints, see if I come up with a match."

  "I'll be here." She wouldn't leave if Calvin Klein himself came to town and invited her out to dinner.

  Bernadette leaned back in her chair. At last, she was going to have an answer, regain control of her life and her job. The news was too good to keep to herself, especially since there was no longer a need to hold it inside. So what if Anne told Ben or Loren. Ben was innocent. Cody had said that. And once they had Loren's prints, they'd have him, whether Anne let it slip or not.

  "We have a blue light special," she said, stepping out of her office.

  Anne stopped stuffing a letter into an envelope, her frown and wrinkled nose indicating her reaction to the news. "Now you're going to use K-Mart tactics in Morgan's?"

  "No." Bernadette could imagine how Parker would go for that idea. "What I mean is, I'm about to find out who's been causing me a sales rack worth of trouble."

  Anne leaned back in her chair, her look wary, and Bernadette knew she didn't understand. "Let me tell you what's been going on."

  She told Anne about the bank deposit and the report she'd just received on their EAS systems. She also mentioned suspecting Ben. "But he's not the one," she said. "I think it may be Loren."

  "Loren?" Anne frowned. "You're kidding. It couldn't be."

  "We'll know when we get a sample of his fingerprints."

  "Loren," Anne repeated, shaking her head.

  "I know, it's hard to believe. It's been hard for me to believe anyone here at Morgan's would want to do this to me."

  "I imagine." Anne frowned. "You don't suspect me, do you?"

  "Heavens, no." She didn't want Anne thinking that. "Never."

  "I'm glad." Anne grinned and picked up the letter she'd been stuffing. "Well, I'd better get this in the mail basket and my desk cleaned up." She pointed at the clock on the wall. "It's almost five o'clock."

  "Quitting time." Bernadette understood. "I'll be in my office. Cody's coming by to dust Loren's desk for fingerprints."

  Five minutes later, Bernadette's phone rang. Once again, it was Cody. He sounded rushed. "Is Anne still there?"

  Though Cody couldn't see, she shook her head. "I don't think so. It's after five. I'm sure she's gone. Why"

  "I'm down in Loren's office. I'll explain as soon as I come up."

  Bernadette hung up, then went to her door. She might as well meet him halfway.

  When she opened her door, she was surprised to find Anne still at her desk. Everything had been cleared from the top, and Anne was spraying a bottled cleaner over the surface, then following with a brisk rub of a cloth. "What are you doing?" Bernadette asked. Desk cleaning was not part of Anne's job description.

  "The cleaning staff's been doing a terrible job," Anne said, spraying and rubbing. "Dust everywhere." She started on her computer. "Dirt." Even her keyboard was sprayed.

  "I didn't think they were that bad." The cleaning staff at Morgan's was much better than the one they'd had at the Fashion Mannequin in Chicago. Bernadette took a few steps toward Anne's desk. "You're really in a cleaning mood, aren't you." Anne got the back of her chair and the arm rests. "You want to do my office too?"

  Anne stopped, staring toward Bernadette's office. "I'd forgotten."

  Frenzied gestures were not like Anne, but Anne was frenzied. The spray and the rag worked in rhythm, a squirt here and a rub, then on to another spot. Lots of rubbing. Lots of spraying. Bernadette watched, the knot growing in her stomach tightening with each spray of that bottle.

  You don't suspect me, do you? Anne had asked. She hadn't. Anne had trained her, had been her friend. Anne had been with the company for eighteen years. Parker saw her as a mother figure. Loren hung out at her desk. Ben cried on her shoulder. Anne was the cornerstone of Morgan's, the one everyone relied on, who knew everything about the operations.

  Everything.

  "Why?" Bernadette asked and Anne stopped spraying and looked at her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Anne's hand stilled, and she looked at Bernadette. "I don't understand what you mean."

  "I think you do." Bernadette took another step closer, wishing she didn't see the guilt in Anne's eyes. "I just don't understand why."

  Anne remained motionless for a moment, then slowly set the spray bottle and rag on her desk and sank into her chair. When she again looked at Bernadette, she'd aged ten years. "It shouldn't have been you taking over. Parker should have either held on to control or sold to Austin-Hill."

  "Parker doesn't want to hold onto control," Bernadette reminded her. "And he doesn't want to sell to Austin-Hill, not unless it's the only alternative. You knew that."

  "But to choose you to run the business . . ."

  The smiles were gone, the friendliness. It was disdain Bernadette saw. Disgust. "I never realized you didn't like me."

  "Oh, you wouldn't. You came here so full of yourself. This was going to be your baby. You had great plans. You said it yourself. You were going to change everything."

  "Because Parker wanted things changed. He's been okaying everything." Parker had said he was pleased with her ideas. "And some of the things we are doing are his ideas, like the branch stores in Kalamazoo and Lansing."

  "His ideas were reasonable, extensions of what his father did when he opened the Twenty-eighth Street branch. I taught Parker everything he knows about this company. Trained him in the traditions I learned from his father. He wasn't going off on wild tangents."

  "What wild tangent was I going off on? What was I planning that was so terrible . . . so frightening." She didn't know.

  "Redesigning the floor space. Shifting the emphasis to Internet sales."

  Bernadette shook her head. With all that had been going on the last four weeks, she hadn't even hired a contractor to start on the remodeling, and she wouldn't take credit or blame for wanting to beef up Internet sales. "The Internet is where people look for items. Our site has been way behind the times. Loren is the one who's been harping on that, and Parker understands. He okayed the idea."

  "Because you told him to go with it. I was there," Anne said, pointing a finger and lifting her chin defiantly. "He would have stopped Loren if it hadn't been for you."

  "That's the way you see it." It wasn't the way Bernadette remembered. Things aren't always what you think they are. Those were Cody's words. How true they were becoming.

  "I've worked here too many years," Anne said, her anger sharp and clear. "I'm not risking my pension on an upscale, big city thinker like you. I tried talking to Parker, but he pooh-poohed my fears. You were to have a free hand. That's what he said. A free hand." Her voice trailed off, and Anne shook her head, her shoulders once again sagging. "I knew I had to show him, prove to him, tha
t you were incompetent."

  "So you waited until he was gone, then started doing things to make me look bad." How clear it was now. How cruel.

  Anne looked up again. She was smiling. "Actually, I had everything in place and ready to go before Parker left. It wasn't difficult. I simply scanned your signature into Ben's computer under an innocuous file name, and used it whenever I needed it. The letters of cancellation went out before Parker's wedding. And you did sign that card for the bank. You signed it months ago." Anne grinned. "It wasn't Ben who slipped something past you. It was me."

  Bernadette saw Cody step into the area. Right behind him were Loren and Carl. The three stopped just out of Anne's sight, and Bernadette kept her talking, wanting them to hear Anne's confession. "So you expected Parker to come back from his honeymoon, see what a mess I'd made, and fire me? Then what? Did you really think he'd take over again? Go back to the way things were before he had that stress attack?"

  "I would have liked that, but no, I had another plan." Anne's smile took on a malicious angle. "Gene Hill talked to me when he saw Parker wasn't going to buy into his offer. All I had to do was convince Parker to sell to Austin-Hill, and I would not only have a guaranteed job for the rest of my working years, I would get a raise and a bonus."

  "So you became a Judas."

  "I did what I had to do."

  "Including nearly killing my sister's dog?"

  That reminder caught Anne off guard. "Mopsy eating that sponge was an accident. I had to get something from your desk. I didn't think about Effie's dog when I moved your chair."

  "Yet you were responsible for those defective sponges?" Otherwise it was too much of a coincidence.

  "I was responsible." Anne grinned. "But don't ask what was on them that kept them from absorbing liquids. Gene Hill gave me the spray. He said it was some kind of a chemical mixture that kept insulation from absorbing water. All I had to do was apply it to a few of the sponges on the sales table. I knew Ben would come to me once he started getting complaints. It wasn't difficult to slip in a couple more of the treated sponges so he thought those he'd pulled from a new box were also affected." Smugly, she watched Bernadette for a reaction. "There wasn't anything wrong with that order. You sent back two thousand perfectly good sponges."

  Bernadette understood. Once the company checked those returned sponges and made their report, she would have looked like an idiot. "And what about the EAS system? How did you get it to malfunction?"

  "That was easy." Anne's pride in her accomplishments made her willing to talk. "A few years back, my son had problems with a neighbor, one of those ham radio operators. My son bought a device that jams radio frequencies. It messed up that ham radio guy, and it worked just fine on those EAS systems. All I had to do was wait until everyone was out of the store, then I would come back in and set it up near one of the units. Connected to a timer, the jammer came on at varying times." She grinned. "You don't know how hard it was to keep a straight face when you were moaning and groaning about them malfunctioning. And you did almost catch me one time." Anne nodded, remembering. "Scared the bejeezus out me that night you were here around midnight. If you'd checked back of that cleaning van, you would have seen me. Thank goodness lover boy showed up and distracted you."

  "What about the shoplifters?" Carl asked, identifying his presence and stepping farther into the area.

  Anne turned, seeing the three men for the first time. The haughtiness slipped away, resignation and defeat once again taking hold. She didn't follow Cody's passage to Bernadette's side, but kept her gaze on Carl and Loren. "I didn't have anything to do with those shoplifters, Carl. Honest."

  "Oh, come on." Bernadette didn't believe that. "They knew which departments to hit, which salesclerks didn't pay attention. And disabling those EAS systems certainly made it easy for them to walk off with the merchandise."

  "No." Her denial was strong, the fire of innocence back in her eyes. "I didn't tell them anything. I didn't even know who was doing it until they were caught Friday."

  Carl only half acknowledged his acceptance of her story. "They wouldn't have had it so easy, Anne, if you hadn't been messin' with our security."

  "Nothing I did was really illegal." Anne spoke with conviction. "I sent a few letters. Caused a few inconveniences."

  "The transfer of company money to a private bank account qualifies as a felony," Cody said bluntly.

  But Anne held on to her denial. "It wasn't a lot of money. I programmed it so it would only transfer a few pennies from each account. I don't even know how much was transferred. What? Maybe twenty dollars a day."

  "Ten cents or ten thousand. It doesn't matter. It adds up." He wasn't going to let her off. "It also nearly cost Bernadette her reputation. All I can say is thank goodness the bank president asked me some questions before taking any action." Cody looked Carl's way. "I don't think we'll need her fingerprints after all. I think it's time you took over."

  "Anne—?" Carl held out his hand.

  Anne remained seated at her desk, her lower jaw trembling and her eyes misting. Carl walked over and gently helped her to her feet, finding her purse as he did. "Come on," he said softly, encouraging her to walk with him. "We need to talk down in my office. I need to write a few things down."

  She looked at him, her gestures imploring. "I just wanted Parker to see she wasn't the right person to put in charge. If he wasn't going to run Morgan's, he needed to sell. For our sakes—yours and mine. You understand that, don't you, Carl?"

  "I understand." Carl paused in front of Bernadette. "Do you want me to call in the police?"

  Cody expected her to say yes, saw her start to form the word, then she stopped, her gaze on Anne, and he understood. Gone was the efficient, ever proper secretary. The woman leaning against Carl for support was the one who didn't understand, and her arrest would be her destruction.

  "Take a full report," Bernadette said quietly. "Get everything down in writing and have her sign it. She's not to come back to work, not until Parker's back. We'll let him decide what to do."

  Carl eased Anne out of the area. Nothing was said, not until Loren spoke. "Thank you for not pressing charges."

  Bernadette looked at him. "I never realized . . ." She shook her head.

  "She's a good person. Really she is," Loren insisted, tears slipping down his cheeks. Unabashed, he swiped at them and sniffed. "I've known her for eight years. She's been like a mother."

  "I know." Bernadette nodded, a sigh of her own escaping as Loren walked away. Cody slipped an arm around her shoulders, holding her close. She leaned on him, and he felt the tremor of held back tears. "I didn't want it to be her," she whispered. "Not her."

  "I don't think she understands how serious what she did was."

  "I . . ." Bernadette looked up at him. "I thought she liked me."

  "You invaded her territory." He'd seen it before. Envy. The newcomer picked on by the established group. He and his sister had been the newcomers when their mother remarried.

  "What is it about me?"

  He sensed her fears. Understood them. "It's not you."

  "Isn't it?"

  "She wouldn't have liked you even if you'd been Mother Teresa."

  "I come on too strong."

  She wasn't listening. "You're a leader, leader's have to be strong. Decisive."

  Bernadette shook her head. "You lead by playing games. You build a team. I don't know how to do that."

  "You can learn. I can teach you." He wanted to teach her, to be her guide, and be guided by her. To discover the meaning of life and happiness with her. The depth of love. "There is nothing wrong with you. I wouldn't be in love with you if there was, wouldn't want to marry you."

  He hadn't planned on proposing to her that way. He should have expected her reaction. Shaking her head, she stepped back and away. "It wouldn't work, Cody. In six months, you'd change your mind."

  He didn't touch her, but he tried to hold on. "I'll give you six months to see I won't change my mind, if
that's what you want. I'll even give you six years, if that's what it takes. But I'd rather spend that time as your husband, loving you and being with you."

  "You don't understand." Separated from him, she pointed at Anne's sparkling clean desk. "She saw it." Her gaze went to the door of Parker's office. "He saw it, though it took him three years."

  "They saw where you didn't fit into their lives. I see how right you are in my life."

  "You see a fairy tale, but life isn't a fairy tale."

  "What can I say to convince you that I love you and that's not going to change?"

  "Nothing."

  * * *

  Nothing described the next three days. Nothing was the same at Morgan's. Anne wasn't at her desk, and nothing ran as efficiently. Nothing would take away Bernadette's memory of Anne wiping the fingerprints off her desk, of her glaring her disdain or of her being led off by Carl.

  Nothing was the same away from the store, either. She expected Cody to try to see her, to try to convince her to change her mind. At the very least, she expected him to pester her with phone calls.

  From nine o'clock on for the next three nights, she waited, unable to concentrate on anything else, always a little tense. Even Mopsy waited, lying on the floor facing the phone or watching her pace the apartment. On Thursday night, as on the nights before, Cody didn't call and it was after eleven before she started to bed. She was just putting down fresh water for Mopsy when the silence in her apartment was disturbed. The first trill sent her heart to her throat and squeezed all air from her lungs. Straightening, she stared at the phone as it trilled again. Mopsy barked, impatient to begin the ritual of being held on Bernadette's lap and scratched behind the ears.

  On the third trill, Bernadette closed her eyes, biting down on her lower lip and willing herself not to move. It was after the fourth trill that the answering machine clicked in. She heard her voice and message. Then she heard her sister's voice. "Darn it all, Bern. It's barely morning here. You should be in bed back there. Where are you?"