Garrett spotted Shelley and Chuck McAllister arriving together a couple of hours later, but the two separated almost immediately, and their daughters shot off in their own directions once their feet touched the grass and gravel.
As always, Garrett marveled at the mysterious connection that bound Shelley to her Chucky. He suspected it had something to do with a combustible merger between cleavage and stock portfolios.
Well, at least she hadn’t spotted him yet. He wasn’t in the habit of playing one-on-one with someone else’s wife. Hell, even if he were, he still wouldn’t be caught alone in a dark pumpkin patch with Shelley Oliver McAllister.
Jacob once said of Shelley’s older sister, “Sabrina Oliver’s a viper. She poisons her male prey, but—” he expelled a harsh laugh, “she’ll lick every inch of his body before she does…and pocket every dollar in his wallet.”
“Gold-digging snakes,” Garrett hissed to a guiltless pumpkin. It was women like that who turned Jacob into the incorrigible womanizer he became.
“Garrett, darling,” Shelley drawled, approaching him.
Oh, sheesh. “How are ya, Shell?”
“Wonderful. What a gorgeous day we have here. And—” She glanced around Seth’s lot and the orchard. “Isn’t this just the quaintest place? Wisconsin is so full of cuteness.”
Garrett spied Cait ushering a few children down the path toward the apple-bobbing station. “Yes, it is.” He turned to face Shelley. “So, perhaps here, amidst all of nature’s wonders, you’ve got some answers for me. Let’s start with whatever it is you needed to see me so privately about.”
Her complexion began to pink up. She pursed her lipstick-slathered mouth and lifted the corners for a quick smile. “There’s no need to get all agitated, honey. I did want to talk to you, but it can wait if you’re not in the right mood. Maybe you need to run around and get some fresh air first.”
God, did she think he was seven or something? Well, he could act childish, if that’s what she required.
“Get to the point, Shell, before I walk away and tell my mother to tell your mother how you’re still playing little games.”
Her pouty rosebud mouth dropped open. “Don’t get all testy with me and make me sorry I recommended you for this position.”
What the hell was she talking about?
“You recommended me for financial director?” he asked slowly.
“Why, sure. The superintendent and I were talking one day last spring. He said the other guy was retiring, and I told him that he should get someone like you. I didn’t think he was listening, so I was surprised. Not that he hired you, of course, but that he took my suggestion.” She flashed a bright smile at him at him. “He usually doesn’t. But, naturally, I was right. I knew you were exactly the kind of person we needed here.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”
She looked at him as though he were as dense as a bowling ball. “Garrett, darling, putting our, um, personal history aside…for the kinds of projects the school board holds close to its heart, we need the right kind of administrators in the office. Ones who’d be supportive. Set a good example.”
“What kind of example?”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She eyed his body up and down. “You know, you’re very trim. More people should be that fit.”
This left him nearly speechless. “I—uh, thanks.”
She nodded. “You always were athletic.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So that’s what my projects are about, silly.” She slapped him lightly on the arm.
He pulled away and motioned for her to continue.
“I hadn’t been living in Wisconsin for two weeks before I realized this was a state with a real consciousness problem.”
“The citizens seemed sleepy to you?”
She giggled. “No, Garrett. Health consciousness. It’s terribly lacking, but how could they help it? What with all these dairy products.” She began ticking them off on her fingers. “Cheese, whole milk, butter, milkshakes, ice cream, frozen custard, even many brands of yogurt. They’re products so high in fat! Plus—” She covered her heart in a show of shock. “Some people actually deep fry their cheese.”
“You don’t say…”
“It’s true! I saw it on the menu the first time Chucky and I went out to dinner here, and I thought, ‘Now this is a state that needs a Fitness Fairy.’”
He covered his mouth to keep from blurting out something extraordinarily inappropriate. “A Fitness Fairy?” he managed.
“Yes. You know, like a fairy godmother. Helping the unfit residents of Ridgewood Grove get healthy again. Lowering their cholesterol and blood pressure. Getting those glucose readings down. Teaching them how to do high-cardio, low-impact aerobic workouts. It’s a tough job,” she said solemnly. “And some people—you wouldn’t believe how many!—are really resistant to changing their eating and exercise habits.”
Garrett thought of the junk food wrappers in his car. “Hmm.”
“And events like this are the worst.” She motioned toward the Hoopla booths. “They put butter on everything. Caramel on perfectly tasty apples. Cheddar-cheese sauce on vegetables. Brown sugar on zucchini, for goodness sake.” She shuddered. “And I don’t even want to know how much saturated fat and sugar are in those Kool Kreme Ice Kreamations.”
“I’m sure it’s hideously high,” he said, masking his smile the best he could.
“I knew you’d understand. That’s why I’d hoped you’d help by being a fitness role model. Maybe taking a few staff members under your wing and teaching them how to lift weights or even golf. Anything to get those heart chambers pumping.”
“Well, I—er…”
“It would mean a lot to me.” She gave a deep sigh. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in Ronald. I’d been working so hard with him. Getting him to lay off those frosted donuts. Encouraging him to go for walks after lunch. He seemed to really be in favor of the fitness equipment idea. I can’t believe he’d take the money out of the fund, but I suppose he didn’t expect anyone would be withdrawing from it yet.”
“How much was in the account, Shell?”
“Just a few thousand dollars. We’d hoped to grow it faster, though. Ronald was talking to Doug and Chucky about that when we went golfing together.”
“At Four Gates?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Mike has been very, very supportive of everything sports related, but he doesn’t know the business side like Doug. Or my hubby, for that matter.”
This caught Garrett’s attention. “So did, er, Chucky have an investment plan for the fund? Something at the bank with a higher-than-average interest rate?”
“Oh, yes, of course. He had great ideas. But Doug said Chippenak Chemical had a terrific savings plan already in place. He was going to discuss some options with his uncle and get back to us. Before he had a chance to, though, this all happened.”
“Is Doug anywhere around here now?”
“He said he was planning on coming.” She gazed at a few clusters of people in the orchard, squinting at the figure of someone who had Chippenak’s average build. “I think that’s him over there.”
“Good,” he said. “I’d be interested in talking with him about his strategy. It may have given Ronald a few ideas.”
“Okay,” she said. “But, honey, if you could—” She looked pained. “Would you please try to steer people away from Mr. Koolemar’s booth? I get cellulite just from looking at it.”
***
At the Kool Kreme Ice Kreamations booth, Mr. Koolemar was doing steady business. Cait handed a double-decker cone to a first grader. She smiled at the older gentleman once the child, eyes aglow, had walked away.
“Thanks for letting me be one of the scoopers for a little while,” she said. “It’s fun to step away from the hosting role and watch all the happy faces leaving here with their cones. You make the best ice cream anywhere.”
“Thank you, dearie. It’s my pleasu
re.”
Doug Chippenak stepped to the booth, eyes crinkling. “How’re you doing, old man?” He gave Mr. Koolemar’s arm a friendly pat.
“Doing fine, son. How’s your uncle been lately?”
A look like a dark cloud passed in front of Doug’s eyes. He brushed his fingers through his hair, a nondescript shade of brown but for a few streaks of gray near his temples. Cait thought she heard him sigh.
“Hanging in there,” Doug said. “Had a knee surgery, which was a little rough, but he pulled through. He should be back at the office soon.”
“Glad to hear that,” Mr. Koolemar said. “You give him my best now.”
“Oh, I will. And how about a triple scoop of Honey Crunch Delight?”
“Coming right up.” Mr. Koolemar turned to Cait. “This one’s on the house. You want to do the honors or should I?”
“I will,” Cait said with a smile at the two men.
While she was busy putting the final touches on Doug’s enormous cone, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Mr. Koolemar was passing a bag of something to Doug, literally under the counter. Doug took it and slipped it into his shoulder duffle.
She turned to look at them directly, but Mr. Koolemar sent her a guileless grin, and Doug gently withdrew his cone from her hand.
“Thanks,” the board member told her. “I’ll take it to go.” He patted Mr. Koolemar again, winked and said to him, “See you in a few hours.” Then, with a parting wave, Doug walked away.
She eyed the older man. “I’m sorry if this sounds nosy,” she said, “but what was in that bag you gave Mr. Chippenak?”
“Just some tokens, dear.”
Tokens!
“But, when Garrett and I talked to you a few weeks ago about our suspicions of theft from the festival booths, you said you collected your own tokens.”
“I do collect them. I just let Doug exchange them for me.”
Cait’s heart started pounding. “But do you have any idea how many tokens were in that bag?”
He shook his head.
“Did you keep track of your customers? How many stopped by?”
He shrugged. “Oh, probably somewhere between eighty-five and one-hundred-twenty. I get to talking to people and I lose count.”
“Mr. Koolemar,” she said extra slowly in an attempt to keep from raising her voice, “do you realize what a difference in total profit there would be if someone snatched just a few handfuls of tokens from your bag every time you turned one in?”
An odd look crossed his face. “But I trust Doug. Known the lad since he was six. Why on earth would he wanna steal from me?”
“I don’t know, but tell me—did he do the token exchanges for you at the other festivals, too?”
“The past couple of years, yeah. And not just for me,” Mr. Koolemar said. “He’s got a circuit. Helps out the other seniors, too. We all appreciate not having to run around so much.” He tapped his hip. “Creaky bones.”
Cait thrust the scooper into a tub of Mocha Madness, gave the old man a tender hug and rushed out of the booth to find Garrett.
***
Garrett and Cait tailed Chippenak around the festival, watching from a safe distance as he went booth to booth.
That sneaky ferret. Garrett thought of him at school board meetings. Always so reserved but pleasant. So boringly ordinary. Mundane and seemingly harmless. The guy blended in. Acted appropriately. People tended not to suspect people like that, but they should have. Garrett bereted himself. He should have.
Well, he’d make up for his negligence now.
Chippenak stopped at a total of eight booths, seven in addition to Mr. Koolemar’s. All booths run by elderly men. He’d chat with the vendors, slap their backs, lean in and whisper a joke of some kind and then take a bag of their tokens. He’d slip the bag with the vendor’s name printed on it into a black duffle he’d slung over his shoulder and move on to his next prey.
Working to stay well hidden, Garrett and Cait followed Chippenak for half an hour before they got the proof they needed.
It happened right after the board member bought a spiced cider. He sat under an apple tree in a far corner of the orchard, sipping then gulping the drink until it was empty. Still holding his cup, he set down his duffle and slipped a free hand inside.
What was he doing? It was too far away for Garrett to see exactly, but Chippenak seemed to be tugging on something inside the duffle. Loosening the tops of the eight little bags, maybe? After a few moments, Chippenak pulled a ninth small bag out of his duffle—this one completely empty. He set it near his thigh.
He then leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes. He rubbed his graying sideburns then took a slow sip of his beverage.
From his empty cup, Garrett remembered. He nudged Cait to see if she’d noticed. She did.
One “sip” at a time, Chippenak pretended to drink cider but instead dipped his cup into his duffle bag, filling it with tokens. He brought the cup to his mouth as if to drink from it then, lowering the cup carefully, he let the tokens slide into the single small bag he kept near him. From a distance, unobserved, no one would guess the lackluster board member was doing anything but enjoying an autumn drink under a shady tree.
But Garrett and Cait knew differently as they watched Chippenak repeat this procedure a dozen times, transferring hundreds of dollars in tokens from the other bags into his.
On a few occasions the sneaky ferret glanced around, probably scanning for prying eyes, but apparently he didn’t see anything that alarmed him.
“For someone who seemed so unobtrusive at school, so normal,” Cait said, “he sure is despicable.”
“That he is.”
“But I wonder, why does he think it’s worth it? Stealing thirty dollars from one vendor, fifty from another?” she asked. “So he’ll get a few hundred in the end, maybe, but that’s still petty cash compared to what big corporations have on hand.”
“No kidding,” he said. “I checked into Chippenak’s employment history. The guy’s been making a six-figure salary for a decade. He’s not strapped for cash in any obvious way.”
“But even if he had been, why steal from these old men? Why not do his thievery at Chippenak Chemical where he could embezzle half a million and maybe get away with it because he’s the VP?”
“How do we know he’s not doing that, too?” Garrett said.
“I guess we don’t, it’s just—”
“Shh. He’s leaving.”
They followed him as he wound his way through the orchard and toward the booth where tokens were exchanged for cash.
Cait looked at her watch. “Darn. It’s after two o’clock.”
“What’s the problem?”
“That means the expenses for hosting the festival have already been withdrawn from the purchasing booth. Profits can now be distributed to any vendor who wants to turn in tokens.”
“And just look where Chippenak’s headed…”
Cait sighed. “This year,” she said, “I chose a foolproof person to handle the cash. Someone I trusted implicitly with both her honor and her math competency.”
“Your friend Jenna?”
“I’d trust Jenna with my life, Garrett,” she said, giving him a serious look. “But for this I wanted someone who wouldn’t make even a single mathematical miscalculation, which is why I enlisted a professional statistician. Dianne.”
He looked toward the booth and, sure enough, Chippenak was leaning casually against the table, having a friendly conversation with Cait’s golden-haired sister-in-law.
“Did you tell her to be on the lookout for any suspicious behavior?” he asked.
“Absolutely, but this wouldn’t raise a red flag. The elderly vendors, I’m sure, told Dianne a ‘nice young man’ would be exchanging their tokens for them around this time. And here he is pulling out not eight but nine token bags.”
“And there he is getting the cash back,” Garrett said. “What is their value this year, Cait? About a d
ollar per token?”
“A dollar and fifteen cents.”
“Ah,” he said. “So calculation work is required on the part of the booth attendants.”
“And, thus, we have Hard Workers A, B and C.” Cait pointed. “Dianne, Worker A, is faithfully using her calculator, with Marlene next to her, B, trying to quickly count tokens so they can return the correct amount of money. And Loni, C, is scribbling fast, trying to record the names of the vendors to whom the cash belongs. Dianne won’t allow anyone to make an error. Period.”
“But Doug’s brought so much to the booth, and they’re all so busy being fast and accurate, none of them have noticed the way he repositioned the bags. The way he pocketed the unlabeled, cash-filled sack after the tokens were counted, so he got the money but didn’t have to explain who that ninth token bag belonged to.”
“Sneakier than a skunk,” Cait said.
“A ferret.”
“A weasel.”
“A bored board member.”
She looked up at him in surprise. “Do you really think that’s what it is? That that’s what this is all about for him? Boredom?”
“I don’t know, Cait. Maybe. But I do believe it’s high time we found out for sure.” He pulled out his cell phone and got the New Brighton police on the line.
“We have a situation here you need to take a look at,” he told them. “Right now.”
But, before the local officers could arrive, Doug glanced right at them. He must have sensed they’d been watching because an astonished looked crossed his face. Within seconds, he’d eluded their attempts at long-range surveillance, slipped through the happy festival crowd…and disappeared.
STEP 12:
After about a half hour,
add in the sliced candied cherries, the milk chocolate chips
and the shaved dark chocolate.
What could be a better combination?
~From Mr. Koolemar’s Top Secret,
Kool Kreme Ice Kreamations Recipe Book, pg. 97
Sweet Temptations Collection Page 36