Jeffery Deaver - Twisted - The Collected Stories of Jeffery Deaver

She continued, telling Ralston, “Then we distill the raw turpentine into a couple different products. Mostly for the medical market.”

“Medical?” he asked, surprised. He took his jacket off and draped it carefully on the chair next to him. Drank more iced tea. He really seemed to enjoy it. She thought New Yorkers only drank wine and bottled water.

“People think it’s just a paint thinner. But doctors use it a lot. It’s a stimulant and antispasmodic.”

“Didn’t realize that,” he said. She noticed that he’d started to take notes. And that the flirtatious smile was gone completely.

“Jim sells...” Her voice faded. “The company sells the refined turpentine to a couple of jobbers. They handle all the distribution. We don’t get into that. Our sales seem to be the same as ever. Our costs haven’t gone up. But we don’t have as much money as we ought to. I don’t know where it’s gone and I have payroll taxes and unemployment insurance due next month.”

She walked to the desk and handed him several accounting statements. Even though they were a mystery to her he pored over them knowingly, nodding. Once or twice he lifted his eyebrow in surprise. She suppressed an urge to ask a troubled What?

Sandra May found herself studying him closely. Without the smile — and with this businesslike concentration on his face — he was much more attractive. Involuntarily she glanced at her wedding picture on the credenza. Then her eyes fled back to the documents in front of them.

Finally he sat back, finished his iced tea. “There’s something funny,” he said. “I don’t understand it. There’ve been some transfers of cash out of the main accounts but there’s no record of where the money went. Did your husband mention anything to you about it?”

“He didn’t tell me very much about the company. Jim didn’t mix business and his home life.”

“How about your accountant?”

“Jim did most of the books himself... This money? Can you track it down? Find out what happened? I’ll pay whatever your standard fee is.”

“I might be able to.”

She heard a hesitancy in his voice. She glanced up.

He said, “Let me ask you a question first.”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you sure you want me to go digging?”

“How do you mean?” she asked.

His sharp eyes scanned the accounting sheets as if they were battlefield maps. “You know you could hire somebody to run the company. A professional businessman or woman. It’d be a hell of a lot less hassle for you. Let him or her turn the company around.”

She kept her eyes on him. “But you’re not asking me about hassles, are you?”

After a moment he said, “No, I’m not. I’m asking if you’re sure you want to know anything more about your husband and his company than you do right now.”

“But it’s my company now,” she said firmly. “And I want to know everything. Now, all the company’s books are over there.” She pointed to a large, walnut credenza. It was the piece of furniture atop which sat their wedding picture.

Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and obey...

As he turned to see where she was pointing, Ralston’s knee brushed hers. Sandra May felt a brief electrical jolt. He seemed to freeze for a moment. Then he turned back.

“I’ll start tomorrow,” he said.

Three days later, with the evening orchestra of crickets and cicadas around her, Sandra May sat on the porch of their house... No, her house. It was so strange to think of it that way. No longer their cars, their furniture, their china. Hers alone now.

Her desk, her company.

She rocked back and forth in the swing, which she’d installed a year ago, screwing the heavy hooks into the ceiling joists herself. She looked out over the acres of trim grass, boarded by loblolly and hemlock. Pine Creek, population sixteen hundred, had trailers and bungalows, shotgun apartment buildings and a couple of modest subdivisions but only a dozen or so houses like this — modern, glassy, huge. If the Georgia-Pacific had run through town, then the pristine development where Jim and Sandra May DuMont had settled would have defined which was the right side of the tracks.

She sipped her iced tea and smoothed her denim jumper. Watched the yellow flares from a half dozen early fireflies.

I think he’s the one can help us, Mama, she thought.

Appearing from the sky...

Bill Ralston had been coming to the company every day since she’d met with him. He’d thrown himself into the job of saving DuMont Products Inc. When she’d left the office tonight at six he was still there, had been working since early morning, reading through the company’s records and Jim’s correspondence and diary. He’d called her at home a half hour ago, telling her he’d found some things she ought to know.

“Come on over,” she’d told him.

“Be right there,” he said. She gave him directions.

Now, as he parked in front of the house, she noticed shadows appear in the bay windows of houses across the street. Her neighbors, Beth and Sally, checking out the activity.

So, the widow’s got a man friend come a-calling...

She heard the crunching on the gravel before she could see Ralston approach through the dusk.

“Hey,” she said.

“You all really do say that down here,” he said. “ ‘Hey.’ ”

“You bet. Only it’s ‘y’all.’ Not ‘you all.’ ”

“Stand corrected, ma’am.”

“You Yankees.”

Ralston sat down on the swing. He’d Southernized himself. Tonight he wore jeans and a work shirt. And, my Lord, boots. He looked like one of the boys at a roadside tap, escaping from the wife for the night to drink beer with his buddies and to flirt with girls pretty and playful as Loretta.

“Brought some wine,” he said.

“Well. How ’bout that.”

“I love your accent,” he said.

“Hold on — you’re the one with an accent.”

In a thick mafioso drawl: “Yo, forgeddaboutit. I don’t got no accent.” They laughed. He pointed to the horizon. “Look at that moon.”

“No cities around here, no lights. You can see the stars clear as your conscience.”

He poured some wine. He’d brought paper cups and a corkscrew.

“Oh, hey, slow up there.” Sandra May held up a hand. “I haven’t had much to drink since... Well, after the accident I decided it’d be better if I kept a pretty tight rein on things.”

“Just drink what you want,” he assured her. “We’ll water the geranium with the rest.”

“That’s a bougainvillea.”

“Oh, I’m a city boy, remember.” He tapped her cup with his. Drank some wine. In a soft voice he said, “It must’ve been really rough. About Jim, I mean.”

She nodded, said nothing.

“Here’s to better times.”

“Better times,” she said. They toasted and drank some more.

“Okay, I better tell you what I’ve found.”

Sandra May took a deep breath then another sip of wine. “Go ahead.”

“Your husband... well, to be honest with you? He was hiding money.”

“Hiding?”

“Well, maybe that’s too strong a word. Let’s say putting it in places that’d be damn hard to trace. It looks like he was taking some of the profits from the company for the last couple of years and bought shares in some foreign corporations... He never mentioned it to you?”

“No. I wouldn’t have approved. Foreign companies? I don’t even hold much with the U.S. stock market. I think people ought to keep their money in the bank. Or better yet under the bed. That was my mother’s philosophy. She called it the First National Bank of Posturepedic.”

He laughed. Sandra May finished her wine. Ralston poured her some more.