Circle of Shadows Read online

  “A virtual madhouse,” Anna, her grocery department manager said. “The men are unloading the truck, two sales reps are waiting, and one of the check-out girls didn’t show up.”

  “Judy?” Of course it was flighty Judy. Why ask?

  Anna nodded. With one large hand, she smoothed back her long brown hair, tucking in the strands that had worked loose from the soft knot tied with a wide red bow low on her neck. Her other hand held her Styrofoam cup under the spigot of the coffeepot. She sipped the steaming fluid, then picked up a cherry Danish and bit into it.

  “Did you call one of the others?”

  “Yes. Sally promised to be here by nine. I’ll tell the reps you’re here, now. I think they’re out by the semi, watching the unloading and talking to the men. Here’s Fred, so they must be finished unloading.” Anna tossed her empty cup into the wastebasket and strode out, tossing a smile and friendly greeting to Fred over her shoulder without breaking stride.

  Lili nodded and turned as a tall, swarthy man stepped into the room, greeting her with a smile. He laid down his overstuffed clipboard and went straight to the coffee machine where he poured himself a steaming cup and selected a cinnamon roll. He took a sip as he turned to her, a friendly smile crinkling the corners of his blue eyes.

  “Good to see you back, Lili. Sorry about your dad; you know we all thought the world of him.”

  “Thanks, Fred.”

  “I need a check for this load today, Lili,” Fred said. With an apologetic shrug, he took a blue statement from his shirt pocket, and handed it to her. “George, in accounting, is hot under the collar about skipping a payment last week. I told him you were at the hospital with your dad.”

  Lili swallowed. Pain slipped down her insides. Why were people so unfeeling? Adams’ Foods had been doing business with this same wholesaler for ten years, yet they couldn’t wait a week for their damned money? Of course, George was just a warehouse employee doing his job. He probably didn’t know one store from another. They were just numbered accounts on a spreadsheet in his computer.

  “Of course, Fred. I know they like one every week. Things just were a little hectic around here.”

  She certainly wasn’t going to admit that Robert had given no one authority to write checks, so that she’d had to wait until Mr. Johnson had read the will and given her that right only yesterday.

  Lili led the way down the hallway, past cement block walls lined with stacked cases of soda pop, and opened the door to her office. It had been her father’s office before, where during her high school days, she had come in to help with sorting and filing invoices at a table along one wall. Now it felt strange to sit in his swivel chair and claim his desk.

  Fred sat in the green plastic chair across from her and pulled out a handkerchief. He wiped the sweat from the exertion of unloading several hundred heavy cases of groceries, meat and produce from his permanently suntanned face. With a sigh of satisfaction, he leaned back and lit a cigarette.

  She opened a drawer and pulled out the checkbook. With a sinking heart, she saw that her father hadn’t bothered to keep a running balance.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was too early to call the bank to find out her current balance. However, it should be sufficient, because Anna had made daily deposits while Lili was absent, but no one had written checks. She wrote the check, vowing to make balancing the checkbook her priority this morning.

  After Fred left, she saw the sales representatives in turn. She accepted deal sheets for later review, and promised to send another check for an overdue account when she’d had time to straighten out her records.

  She couldn’t believe her father had let things get so badly out of hand. Obviously, he’d been feeling much worse than he’d let on for quite a while.

  She’d returned home shortly after his first heart attack, hoping to lift some of the responsibility from his frail shoulders. She’d offered to do so many times over the past two months, but he had stubbornly refused to let her help.

  When the last sales representative had left, Lili stood to stretch her taut muscles, and decided to walk to the post office for a much needed break. She walked through the store, automatically noting what each employee was doing as she took the familiar tour. Out of habit, she ran her hand along the cold metal edge of the refrigerated cases to gauge their temperatures as she walked past them.

  Anna and her helper, Billy, were stocking the shelves from four-wheeled carts, pricing guns clicking in turn. They smiled a greeting to her when she passed. She felt the pride of ownership that she had always shared with her father in this store. Working here was so different from St. Louis.

  Ralph, a young man who had come to work for them when he’d quit high school a few years before, stood in the produce corner beside his scale and wrapping machine, pricing bananas. He was doing very well as the produce manager, Lili thought with satisfaction. Beyond Ralph she could see the dark fringe of hair on Arthur’s almost bald head as he bent over his work in front of the power meat saw. He flipped the switch and the sharp whine of metal through bone echoed through the store. He turned, tossed the T-bones on the meat block to trim and tray, and looked up.

  Smiling a greeting, Lili stopped to chat, forcing herself to once more respond to condolences. The store had, of course, been closed so that all the employees could attend Robert’s funeral, but she hadn’t talked to Arthur then. Although she knew everyone meant well, she was beginning to envy her mother and Aunt Agnes their trip to Arizona for a month. Sunshine and anonymity sounded wonderful, but leaving now was impossible for her.

  In her post office box Lili found a card telling her to call at the window.

  “Morning, Lili,” the postmaster said, handing her a big bag of mail. “Got a bit of a load for you today.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Ellis.”

  “I didn’t get a chance to tell you at the funeral how sorry I am about your dad. This town’s lucky you’re back to carry on for him. Not much Main Street left with all the big malls only an hour away, so we got to fight to keep what businesses we have, or we won’t have a town at all.”

  “That’s true,” Lili murmured, edging away. Their postmaster liked to go on and on about his favorite subject of saving the small towns from the ‘malling of America,’ and she didn’t want to listen to him talk about it today. “Thanks again. Be seeing you,” she said and slipped back out into the sunshine.

  If Mr. Ellis only knew that a big corporation was taking over Adams’ Foods, he’d really get steamed up. She sighed, wondering how long it would be before the news got around town. She’d have to tell her employees soon, before they heard it through the grapevine. Her lawyer wouldn’t tell, but had she warned her mother and Aunt Agnes to give her time to tell the employees first? She’d been so upset, she probably hadn’t.

  Weighed down with a week’s worth of mail, she returned to her office. She began sorting through invoices, ads, bills, and memos, filing what was important and tossing the rest into the wastebasket.

  Then she remembered that she hadn’t tackled the checkbook. She knew her father had hated balancing it, but she was amazed to find that he obviously had not done it at all. He’d probably trusted the bank to be right all the time. Lili shuddered and called the bank. She was relieved to hear that her current balance was sufficient to cover the checks she’d written.

  “I know it’s not time for your regular statement, Cindy,” she told the teller, “but could you just give me a Photostat of our statement to date so I can check for out-standing checks? I’ll pick it up after lunch.”

  “Of course, Lili. I’ll do it right away.”

  “And please ask Mr. Armstrong if I can see him today.”

  Lili’s toe tapped impatiently against her desk as she waited for Cindy to return to the phone.

  “He can see you at two.”

  “Thanks.” Lili hung up and turned back to her work.

  The phone rang incessantly with people who had been trying to reach her for one reason
or another over the past few days or who wished to give her their condolences. She was getting to the point of dreading to pick it up when Aunt Agnes phoned.

  “Lili,” she said, “we’re waiting for you at Landers’ House. Did you forget we were meeting for lunch to say good-bye?”

  “Oh, dear, is it noon already? I’ll be right there.”

  Lili sighed, grabbed her purse and dashed down the street to the restaurant where they had arranged to meet.

  An hour later she was saying good-bye as Sarah and Agnes stood beside Agnes’ small Winnebago camper.

  “Remember all the things I told you about the house, dear,” Sarah said. “I left a list on the bulletin board by the phone, just in case you forget. Remember to water my African violets and the Boston Fern in the dining room.”

  “I’ll remember, Mom.”

  “Here’s the key to my house, too,” Agnes said, pressing it into Lili’s hand. “If Mrs. Langley sells it, she’ll take care of everything and then you won’t have to worry about it. I’m sorry to give you one more thing to do, what with all the details at the store already, but my children are too far away and—”

  “It’s quite all right, Aunt Agnes. You two just relax and have a good vacation. I have lots of good help at the store, and we’ll make out just fine.”

  “We’ll phone you from wherever we stay tonight.”

  Lili watched them drive out of sight, then walked quickly down to the bank, picked up her bank statement and went back to work.

  The next time she glanced at her watch, Lili saw that she had just enough time to make her appointment with Mr. Armstrong, so she hurried back to the bank.

  Mr. Armstrong’s family had owned the small full-service bank for as long as Lili could remember. She remembered how he had looked the first time she had come to the bank with her mother to open a savings account, his sharp blue eyes peering at her over the counter from his bespectacled white head. She had thought him old then, surely he was old now. Her footsteps made no sound on the soft burgundy carpeting. She walked past the line of teller windows to the rear offices.

  Mr. Armstrong waved her to a chair, and once more Lili suffered through the painful small-talk of memories and condolences. She knew she would be hurt if no one mentioned her father, yet found talking about him painful. She let out her breath in relief when he turned to business matters.

  “Mr. Johnson called to tell me that you were in charge, so if you’ll just sign a signature card for Cindy before you leave, everything should be in order, Lili,” he said.

  “All right. But I wanted to ask you about a loan, Mr. Armstrong.”

  “Personal or business?” he leaned back in his chair and wiped his glasses with a tissue.

  “A business loan. No doubt Mr. Johnson told you that my father sold the majority share to Northern Lights Corporation of Minneapolis?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And I’m sure you know I’m unhappy with that.”

  He sat up and looked at her shrewdly, his blue eyes clear and alert in his lined face. “You always were an independent whippersnapper.”

  Lili shifted impatiently. “About the loan, Mr. Armstrong.”

  “Yes. Well, let’s see. You own twenty-five percent of the shares yourself, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “And Daddy left me another twenty-four, so I have forty-nine percent. His business life insurance should pay off most of our loan with you, so our debt load is small.”

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his ample belly. “Yes, very commendable. I’m surprised that it’s as low as it is, considering how Robert was complaining that the store was losing money.”

  “So I keep hearing. He apparently told everyone else that except his family.”

  “I suppose he didn’t want to upset you.”

  “It’s easier to deal with a problem if you can identify it, sir.”

  “Of course. But, Robert was so protective of you and your mother.”

  “I’m in charge now, and I want to have control. I don’t want to have to answer to this Minneapolis corporation. I can put up my shares as the collateral, if you’ll give me a loan to buy back those shares from Northern Lights.”

  “Well, now, it’s not quite that easy, Lili.”

  Lili stared at him incredulously. “Forty-nine percent isn’t enough collateral? Mr. Armstrong, I personally know a dozen people you gave loans to, who had only half that much equity in their business.”

  He nodded and sighed. “You’re right, of course. I can easily make you the loan on that. But having enough collateral or getting the loan isn’t your problem, Lili. Getting Northern Lights to agree to sell back the shares is your problem.”

  Lili frowned. “I know that. But before I talk to them, I needed to be sure you would make me the loan.”

  “Mr. Johnson told me he didn’t think NL Corporation would even consider selling, but you never know. If they agree, come see me, and I’ll write it up. I would rather see local control of our businesses, too. I hope you can work it out, Lili.”

  He sat up and held out his hand to her. The interview was plainly over.

  She shook hands. “I appreciate your time, Mr. Armstrong.”

  She signed the signature card for Cindy and walked the short block back to the store. The sun had gone under a cloud, suiting her mood. He was right, the biggest job lay ahead. Northern Lights wasn’t likely to do an about face and sell something they had just bought.

  Suddenly she wondered if her father had told the corporation that Adams’ Foods was losing money. After all, why would they buy it, if they knew? She smiled, feeling better. Maybe when they found out, they would be happy to sell their shares back to her.

  When Lili walked back into the store, Sally waved her over.

  “There’s a man back there talking to Arthur who’s been waiting to see you for half an hour. I told him you’d gone out to a meeting, but he insisted on waiting.”

  Lili’s heart flipped over as she followed Sally’s pointed finger. It was Ken Mills, the man she’d met at the motel pool last night. The man she’d dreamed about last night. How had he found her? Maybe someone at the motel had told him who she was. But that would mean he’d been interested in her enough to ask about her.

  Her voice uneven, she thanked Sally and walked back to talk to him. “Hello again, Mr. Mills.”

  He turned as she spoke his name. Surprise and shock spread over his features when he recognized her.

  “Lili! It’s nice to see you again, too. You’d left when I came back from my phone call last night.” He reached out to take her hand in his. “I wanted to ask you to have a drink with me.”

  Lili’s pulse sped up to an alarming rate at his warm touch. She did her best to keep her voice on an even keel. “I’m flattered that you looked me up. Did someone at the motel tell you where to find me?”

  His sandy brow crinkled into a puzzled frown. “Someone at the motel?”

  Now it was her turn to be confused. “Sally said you were waiting to see me?”

  “Sally?” he asked, his voice soft.

  She was intensely aware that her hand was still captured in his, and removed it. “The girl at the check-out.” Lili tipped her head toward the bleached blonde at the front of the store.

  “Oh.” He frowned, his eyes darting to Sally, then back to Lili. “Oh! You mean you’re Robert Adams’ daughter? But—”

  Lili’s eyes narrowed. “What does my father have to do with this?”

  She was suddenly aware of Sally watching them with interest from up front, and Arthur listening from behind his meat counter. Mr. Mills saw her concerned glance and took the situation out of her hands.

  “I’m here on business, Miss Adams,” he said more formally.

  He hadn’t just looked her up because he’d met her last night. She was wrong. He was only a business contact, perhaps a sales rep from a manufacturer. No, not that. Something in his manner told her he was someone more important. That something was se
nding tingles of foreboding up and down her spine, in sharp contrast to the tingles of awareness of him she had felt there a moment before.

  She swallowed and hoped her voice sounded even. “I see. Then perhaps my office would be a better place to talk.”

  She led the way to the back of the store, and into her office, gesturing for him to have a chair.

  Suddenly nervous, she turned to the table in the corner and filled a cup of coffee for herself. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yes, that would be nice.”

  His voice still sounded soft and polite. Why did it seem to carry a note of sympathy? “Cream or sugar?”

  “Just black, please.”

  She handed the cup to him, picked up her own and sat down. Sipping the hot brew to ease her dry throat, she looked at him across her desk, waiting for him to explain his business with her.

  “I was sorry to hear about Robert’s passing.”

  “Thank you,” she said automatically, wondering how he had known about her father’s death.

  “Mr. Johnson didn’t tell you to expect me?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “No.” But the mention of her lawyer did it. She suddenly knew who he was, who he had to be.

  “You’re from Northern Lights Corporation.” It was a statement, not a question. Lili couldn’t keep the flat, hard tone from her voice.

  His voice stiffened in response. “Yes.”

  “So soon? My father is hardly cold in his grave. Couldn’t your corporation have waited a bit to come to take over?”

  Bright green sparks of anger flared for a moment in his hazel eyes. Lili watched him draw a deep breath, and he appeared to regain control.

  “I don’t blame you for being upset,” he said. “Mr. Johnson told me he didn’t think Robert had told anyone about the sale. It would have been much better if your father had introduced me to you himself.”

  “You’re wrong.” Lili’s voice held a bitter edge. “It would have been much better if he had never made it necessary for us to meet at all.”