by Curry, Edna
“Don’t touch it!” she admonished, pulling out her cell phone to call the police. “Maybe this time, they can get some fingerprints to figure out who is doing this stuff!”
She stayed for an hour while the policemen who had answered the call checked his car and came inside his motel room to ask questions and fill out their report.
The officer carefully opened the envelope to preserve fingerprints, though he didn’t hold out much hope there would be any. The note was even more chilling than the last time.
“This time it’s only your house and car. Next time, it’ll be your hide if you don’t pay up.”
The officer eyed Kirk suspiciously. “You say you’ve had threats before?”
“Yes.”
“My brother, Detective Lee Kapp, investigated the last one,” Rosie put in.
The officer frowned at her. “I’ll check with him.” He turned to Kirk and demanded, “What the hell are you mixed up in, man?”
“I wish I knew,” Kirk replied.
Rosie explained about the attack on Ken outside of the Latham store and his amnesia. Finally satisfied and promising to tell the fire investigator about this to see whether he agreed that the note might also be connected to the fire as the message suggested, the officers left.
She found herself staring at the double bed Ken was sitting on as he’d answered the officers’ questions. What would it be like if they continued the heated lovemaking they’d begun at the cabin? Where would it lead? Would they end up in that bed?
Realizing Ken was eying her with a hungry expression that suggested similar thoughts, she quickly said goodnight and hurried out to her car. If she hadn’t gotten out of there, she’d have thrown herself into his arms.
And that was never going to happen. Not after he’d dumped her. Never mind that she’d been intending to do the same thing to him, but he’d beat her to it.
Now, if anything was going to happen between them, it would be up to him to initiate the action. Her ego couldn’t take another bruising.
As she drove back to her house, headlights followed her. Her heart pounded and her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Were the men who had left Ken that threatening note following her? She considered trying to reach her cell phone in her purse to call 911, but her house was in the next block. She sped up and glanced behind her as she turned into her drive. The headlights vanished around the corner.
She dashed into her house and locked the door behind her. She leaned against it, waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal. Scamp barked a welcome and she patted his head, thankful for his comforting presence.
Then, without turning on any lights, she straightened and went to the window. The street was empty. Still, she pulled the drapes before turning on the lights and going to the kitchen for a glass of ice water to soothe her parched throat. Had someone followed her, or was she imagining things? If they had, they knew where she lived now. Not that they couldn’t have found out from the phone book or the internet. She wasn’t unlisted. Maybe she should change her phone number and have it unlisted? Or was she being paranoid?
She thought about calling her brother, but what could she tell him? She’d seen car lights behind her at night? Put that way, it sounded ridiculous.
But what if it had been those guys? If they would burn down an apartment building, what would they do to her? Why were they punishing her for what Ken had done, anyway? For that matter, she wished she knew what Ken had done to make them so angry. According to the threatening notes, Ken owed them money, probably a lot if they were going to such lengths to collect it.
She carefully checked that the back door and all the windows were locked. Then she let Scamp out for a run in the backyard and went to bed with Scamp on the rug beside her. She lay awake listening for strange noises for a long time.
Chapter 7
In the Cayman Islands, Ken had settled into a luxury hotel suite under his new name, Ken Lowmer, and was enjoying his wealth. A soft ocean breeze carried the scent of tropical flowers to him from the patio
He nursed his drink in a back booth of the hotel bar and waited for Lisa, the tall, svelte beauty he’d met last night, to join him. She’d balked at going upstairs with him last night, but he was sure he’d convince her to go to bed with him tonight. She’d hinted last night that she would, saying only that she didn’t do that on the first date. That meant she would on the second, right?
Ah, there she was, in a sleek, red dress tonight. Her hair was dark with red highlights. She wore high heeled shoes with tiny straps around the ankle. She sort of reminded him of Rosie except Rosie was a blonde.
Lisa had a long, willowy figure similar to Rosie’s, but he’d bet this gal wasn’t as uptight as Rosie was. And a man had to have some fun before he settled down, didn’t he? It might be months before he’d dare contact Rosie. Insurance companies always took their own sweet time about paying up large claims, didn’t they? She’d hardly expect him to live like a monk all that time.
Lisa spotted him and smiled, then headed toward him with an undulating, swaying walk. He rose to greet her and signaled to the waiter to bring the drinks he’d ordered for them.
She smiled at him and pressed up against him when he hugged and kissed her. Then she slid into the booth beside him and picked up the drink the waiter set in front of her.
“I found the perfect place for you to rent,” she gushed. “You’ll love it. It’s gorgeous and right on the beach. It has everything included. It’s all furnished, ready to move in.”
“Great,” Ken said, saluting her with his cocktail. “Tell me more, Sweetheart.”
She described the rental villa in detail, going on and on about the deck overlooking the pretty beach and the gorgeous furnishings. “It even has a pool, so you don’t have to go into the ocean if you don’t like sand and salt,” she said.
“It sounds like just what I’m looking for,” Ken said, downing his drink. “When can we go see it?”
“Is two o’clock tomorrow afternoon too soon?”
“Tomorrow afternoon is fine. That’ll give us time to sleep in after tonight,” he said with a wink.
She giggled agreement and slid her hand suggestively across his fly under the booth.
Ah, yes, tonight she would. He caught the waiter’s signal and stood, holding out his arm to her. “In the meantime, the waiter says our table is ready, so let’s enjoy our dinner and… tonight.”
“Okay.” She giggled again, rose and took his arm.
Ken grinned down at her as they followed the waiter to a table in the dining room.
She was one hot number. She’d do for entertainment. Maybe he could even talk her into moving into this seaside villa with him.
Well, for awhile anyway. But he couldn’t let Rosie know about her. Rosie was way too straight-laced to put up with sharing him with other women. But he could do it without her knowing, of course. Passing out plenty of money solved lots of little problems like that.
And speaking of money, he still needed that million dollar life insurance Rosie would collect on him. The money he’d squeezed out of the Minneapolis branch of Latham was a pittance compared to that.
He’d better check on that tomorrow, too, and make sure everything was progressing as planned back in Minnesota. He didn’t dare contact Rosie, or anyone else he knew back there, of course. He hadn’t told her about the insurance policy or his plans. Rosie was too darned honest. She’d never agree to collect that insurance unless she thought he really was dead.
But he was still lurking on several Minneapolis chat lists and the local newspapers put everything up on line now. So he could find out what was going on without anyone knowing about it, even if he was thousands of miles away.
A few hours later, after both were thoroughly satisfied, Ken called a cab for Lisa. They agreed to meet the next afternoon to check out that seaside villa, and then he went online to see what he could learn about what was happening back in Minnesota.
First he looked for his name in the local news,
then the obituaries. Nothing there.
No one on the local chat lists said a word about him either. Well, maybe they hadn’t found his boat yet? Hadn’t Rosie reported him missing?
Finally he found a small note in one chat list saying he was recovering and back to work after being mugged in the Latham parking lot. Huh? What was that all about? How could he be mugged in Minneapolis when he was miles away in the Cayman Islands?
He searched the police report from the past few days and found a short mention of it.
Then he found a small article in the business news. It said he had amnesia and a Latham employee had identified him as Ken Latham, the manager of the Minneapolis store. Supposedly this mugging took place the same night he’d left for the Cayman Islands.
Not one word about anyone finding his boat in the lake without his body or his car being found out there without him. No one had noticed those at all? Not even his nosy lakeside neighbors? How could this be?
Only one possibility came to mind--his identical twin brother, Kirk. When they were boys, they’d often enjoyed trading places and fooling people as to who was who. So Kirk must have come to Minneapolis. He was probably that computer expert Uncle Lester had said he was sending to “help him,” then got mugged and mistaken for Ken. If Kirk had lost his memory, he couldn’t tell them different. Unless he was faking? And only pretending to think he was Ken? But why would he do that?
The muggers were most likely the loan sharks who’d been bugging him for their money. They’d probably thought Kirk was him, too. Too bad they hadn’t finished him off.
A twinge of guilt rode Ken’s gut at the thought, but he pushed it away. He was not going to worry about anyone but himself anymore. It definitely didn’t pay. He’d gone to so much work to devise a plan to protect Rosie and what had it gotten him? The short end of the stick, with Kirk getting the good end, as he had all their lives. Damn it, it just wasn’t fair.
If everyone thought Kirk was Ken, then that meant that nobody was reporting Ken as dead! He wouldn’t be able to collect on that million dollar insurance policy. All his planning would be for nothing. His whole scheme was going to go belly up!
Damn it! If I don’t do something, Rosie’ll even marry Kirk, thinking he’s me! Kirk’s been nothing but trouble all my life. I’d like to kill him!
But what can I do? Maybe I can hire a hit man? But where do I find one from here? And how much will that cost? Damn it, money is getting scarce without that life insurance.
Maybe I can make some money at poker tonight.
Ken headed out in search of some action to see if his luck was changing. There had to be an all night casino somewhere around here.
But when he went back to the bar, ordered a drink and asked the bartender, the man just laughed. “You’re on the wrong island for that, man! Gambling is illegal in the Caymans.”
Ken gaped at him, and then tossed back his drink. Illegal? How could that be? He definitely remembered a large casino, the last time he’d been here with his parents, years ago. Or had that been Grand Bahama Island, not Grand Cayman?
“You can take a plane to a gambling place, though,” the man said. “The hotel has a list of regular tours that go to places like the Bahamas, Atlantic City or Las Vegas.”
“Thanks, I’ll check that out,” Ken said and ordered another drink. The whole point of being here was to be beyond reach of arrest. How had he missed the lack of entertainment? He’d go crazy sitting on the beach without even a poker game to liven things up. Of course there was always Lisa. But she was so boring except in the bedroom.
~ * ~
PI Donald Umber called Lester Latham to report. “I found the motel Kirk registered at, Mr. Latham. But he’s not there.”
“What do you mean, he’s not there?”
“He called ahead for reservations, then stopped in and registered that day he left Chicago, shortly after the plane landed. He gave them a credit card number and dropped off his luggage, then left again. They haven’t seen him since. Nobody’s used the room, either, so they rented it again, assuming he wouldn’t be back.”
“They’ve still got his luggage?”
“Yeah. They said they’re storing it until he shows up, or someone else who can prove they’ve got a right to it.”
“So where the hell is he?”
“Beats me.”
“Did you check all the hospitals? The morgue?” Lester pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. This was getting way too scary to suit him.
“Yes, Sir. No sign of him.”
“Well, keep looking. He’s got to be somewhere.”
“Yes sir. I’ll do that.”
“And let me know as soon as you find anything, you hear?”
“Will do.”
~ * ~
At work in his office the next morning, Kirk found several invoices that were suspiciously similar. Why had they bought so many computer desks and bookcases from two different companies? Both seemed to be the kind the customers had to assemble themselves.
He searched through the scanned sales reports and couldn’t find anywhere near that many sales of those products.
Suspicion formed. Was Harry sending up duplicate invoices from the floor and collecting the money somehow? Anyone with a computer and basic financial software could make up invoices and print them out nowadays.
He walked down to find Harry and asked him about them.
Harry shrugged. “Those desks and bookcases are products we’ve stocked for years, Ken. But we don’t sell all that many of them at a time, so we usually just order in more as they sell. I don’t remember any big shipment of them all at once,” he said. “But you always handled the ordering and paying the bills, so I can’t be sure.”
“I did the ordering, too?”
Harry looked uncomfortable and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Yeah, you did until you got mugged. I’ve been doing it since then. Rosie told me to. We didn’t know what else to do until you get your memory back.”
“I see. That’s fine. Thanks, Harry.”
“You can see what we have on hand of those desks and bookcases, right over here.”
“Yes, I checked what you have on the floor. You don’t keep any large supply in the back room, then?”
“No, I’m sure we don’t. No point in tying up money like that when you said we needed to watch our purchasing.”
“Yeah. We don’t have a problem with shoplifting?”
Harry shrugged. “There’s always some going on. But it’s usually little stuff that can be slipped under a jacket or into a pocket. We catch somebody now and then.”
“But nothing big has been missing that you know of?”
His assistant scowled at him suspiciously. “We’re a little short handed, Ken, but we can still keep a pretty close eye on anything big leaving this building.”
“Good. “ Deciding he’d get no more information here, and was succeeding only in alienating his assistant, he went back to his office. So what was going on? If he’d been doing the ordering himself, he would have noticed invoices that were for any large shipments that he hadn’t ordered.
Damn, if only his memory would return. He hated to think he could have been the one to blame for this mess, but the possibilities that it was someone else were dwindling fast.
Thinking it over, he decided they needed to do an inventory immediately. Something was screwy somewhere and he’d need a current inventory to be able to better pinpoint where the problem was, even if it proved he was to blame.
He walked into Rosie’s office and asked, “How do we do inventory?”
She stared at him. “What do you mean, how? We count everything on hand, of course. We don’t list the items, just the number on hand multiplied by the price. So we have the total dollar amount, but not the number of each item by name.”
Impatiently he said, “I know that. I mean, does our own crew do it after hours? Or do we hire a service?”
“Oh. We
’ve done it both ways. The last time we did it, we did it ourselves.”
“When was that?”
She frowned. “The first week in January. Why?”
“It’s May. You don’t do one quarterly?”
“We haven’t for the last few years, no. Just an annual one.”
“Then it’s time to start doing that quarterly again. I’d like an inventory done immediately. Call this service and schedule it as soon as they can fit us in,” he said handing her a number. “They’ll do it while we’re open, so it won’t interrupt sales.”
“While we’re open? But… how will that be accurate?”
“It won’t be, to the penny. But close enough. We do a reading of the cash registers before they start and another after they finish, then assume half of the sales while they were here were counted.”
“I see. But why are we doing an inventory now?”
“Because I said so.” Kirk went back to his office. He knew that reply had sounded like his mother had when he was a little boy and asked something she couldn’t explain. But how could he explain that something was very wrong without tipping his hand?
What if Rosie is involved in some way? She handles the bank deposits. What if she’s not reporting all the money? She could be faking the sales reports.
God, he hated the idea that he even could think she might be involved. Not Rosie. Not the woman he knew she was. It couldn’t be true.
He thought of the way she’d sympathized with him over the burglary and helped him clean up the mess. The sorrow in her eyes when she’d seen the broken knickknacks and slashed furniture. He couldn’t imagine that same woman as a deliberate thief.
But he couldn’t take a chance. He had to use safeguards as he tried to figure out what was going on here.
He dropped into his chair and put his head in his hands. If only he would get his memory back, maybe that would solve the whole thing.
Or maybe that would make it worse, if he was the one who was stealing from this store. He knew that was a definite possibility, even though the thought of himself as a thief made him sick to his stomach.