Chapter 4 - THE LIGHT ABOVE THE SHOP FLOOR
Grant and I remained in the shadow of a stamping press while footsteps crossed the second-floor office.
The shop had closed at five.
According to the schedule taped beside the employee entrance, no evening shift was running that week.
“Should we call the police?” I whispered.
“We haven’t seen a crime.”
“You brought me into a locked building because my dead husband told us to watch someone.”
Grant glanced toward the glowing window.
“Thomas still owned seventy-two percent of this company when he died. As executor, I have authority to enter.”
“And me?”
“You are the newly appointed trust supervisor.”
“I never agreed to that.”
“No. You married the man who appointed you.”
My anger returned.
Thomas had known I would never accept such a role if he had asked directly.
A printer started upstairs.
Then a man descended the metal staircase carrying two banker’s boxes.
Caleb.
He set the boxes beside a rear loading door and returned upstairs.
Grant quietly photographed them.
“What could be inside?”
“Records he doesn’t want the auditors to see.”
“What auditors?”
Grant looked at me.
“The ones Thomas hired three weeks ago.”
Another fact my husband had concealed.
Caleb returned with a shredder and an armful of hanging folders.
This time Grant stepped into the open.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Caleb nearly dropped the folders.
When he saw me, shock became fury.
“You brought her here?”
“Thomas did,” Grant replied.
“My uncle is dead.”
“Yes. His instructions aren’t.”
Caleb set the files down.
“This is company property.”
Grant raised the brass key.
“Currently under the control of Thomas’s estate.”
Caleb looked at me.
“You have no idea what you’re standing in.”
“Then explain it.”
He laughed once.
“You think Tom married you because he spent fifty-six years dreaming about a nurse on a bus?”
The words found their target.
Grant moved between us.
“Careful.”
“No, she deserves to know.” Caleb pointed toward the accounting office. “He needed someone outside the family. Someone people would believe. Someone with a reputation for honesty and no history with the company.”
I looked at Grant.
“What is he talking about?”
Grant’s silence told me Caleb was at least partly right.
Caleb continued.
“Tom knew he was dying. He knew the board would question every decision he made near the end. Then you arrived. The long-lost sweetheart. The devoted nurse. The perfect grieving widow.”
I felt suddenly foolish in my black funeral dress.
“Did Thomas marry me to investigate you?”
Caleb’s expression shifted.
Not triumph.
Fear.
“He married you to destroy me.”
A door opened above us.
Sophie stood at the top of the staircase.
Her face was wet with tears.
“Dad,” she said. “Tell them what’s in the boxes.”
Caleb stared at his daughter.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“You told Mom you were going to clean out Grandpa’s office.”
“I am protecting this family.”
Sophie descended slowly.
Thomas’s final words to her returned to me.
Six ten.
He had not been reminding her of childhood visits.
He had been telling her when to come.
Sophie reached the shop floor and handed Grant her phone.
On the screen were photographs of checks, payroll summaries, and bank transfers.
“I took these from Dad’s desk three months ago,” she said. “Grandpa told me not to send them to anyone until he was gone.”
Caleb’s face hardened.
“You went through my office?”
“You used my college account.”
Jenna had opened the investment account when Sophie was born. Thomas had contributed to it every Christmas.
Sophie swiped to another photograph.
Three withdrawals totaling eighty-four thousand dollars had been moved from her education fund into a consulting company registered to Caleb.
“That money was temporary,” Caleb said.
“You told Mom the market dropped.”
“It was a loan.”
“Why did Grandpa tell me to photograph the employee medical fund?”
Caleb looked toward the loading door.
Grant picked up the top box.
Caleb grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t.”
Their struggle lasted only a second, but it was enough to overturn the box.
Folders spilled across the concrete.
One landed near my shoe.
MERCER EMPLOYEE EMERGENCY HEALTH TRUST.
Inside were invoices for people whose names I recognized from Thomas’s circled payroll report.
Cancer treatment.
Cardiac rehabilitation.
A child’s insulin pump.
Each approved payment had been reduced or delayed.
Beside those documents were transfers to Caleb’s consulting company.
Grant crouched and began gathering the records.
“How much?” he asked.
Sophie answered.
“Almost six hundred thousand dollars.”
Caleb turned on her.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know Mom’s medical bills weren’t six hundred thousand dollars.”
Jenna had multiple sclerosis. Thomas had told me she struggled with fatigue but had never mentioned financial trouble.
Caleb’s anger collapsed into something smaller.
“I was going to put it back.”
“With what?” Grant asked.
“The company was supposed to win the aerospace contract.”
“It didn’t.”
“It could have.”
Grant placed the files back in the box.
“This building is being secured tonight. You are suspended from all company operations pending a forensic audit.”
“You can’t do that.”
Grant looked at me.
“Actually, Nancy can.”
Everyone turned toward me.
Thomas had appointed me chair of the temporary ownership trust.
I had known him for one month as a husband.
Now I held the future of forty-three employees, a frightened teenager, and the man who had humiliated me at my own wedding.
Caleb shook his head.
“He used you.”
May you like
I looked down at the ledgers inside Thomas’s box.
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m going to find out how much.”
