Dawn Stewardson - Unexpected Outcome

He laughed. “But you have narrowed it down to just a couple of suspects, right? So by this time tomorrow…”

“Don’t I wish. I haven’t even met half your staff yet. I basically spent the morning at the warehouse. And this afternoon Noah introduced me to some of the people here, but I reached the limit of what I could absorb pretty fast.”

“Let’s hear about the morning, then.”

Good. They were where she wanted to be, topic-wise.

“Well,” she began, “I talked with all three men for a bit, and made a point of mentioning that I’ll be chatting with every employee in the company. So they know they’re not being singled out. Then I sat down with Stu Refkin and suggested he tell me about a typical day.

“Rather than do that, though, he cut straight to the chase and said he assumed I knew about the arson and the lost containers. Then we went from there.”

“I’m not surprised,” Robert told her. “Stu’s always direct.”

She smiled again—more genuinely this time. Robert had a knack for putting people at ease.

“He couldn’t have been more direct,” she said. “He began by saying that neither he nor his men have a clue who set the fire. As for the containers, he admitted there’s no excuse for what happened. Said Tony should have checked the number unloaded against the delivery form. Period.

“I don’t mean Stu was trying to distance himself from the blame,” she continued. “Actually, it was quite the opposite.

“He said there’d have been no problem if he’d waited around until the ship arrived. And that he would have if he hadn’t had plans.”

“Right. He’s been saying that from the beginning. In fact, none of them has changed his story in the slightest. Whether they’ve been talking to me, the police, the insurance adjuster…”

“I should ask about something,” Dana said when he paused.

He waited.

“You said ‘whether they’ve been talking to you.’”

“Uh-huh?”

“Did they talk to Larry and Noah, too?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I was the one who went over what happened with them.”

“But why would it have been you rather than Noah? I mean, if he’s in charge of the day-to-day operations…”

“You know something?”

“What?”

“For a fake OD consultant you’re pretty good. The administrative lines here are more blurry than they should be.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“Yeah, well, until we hired Noah, Larry and I basically ran things by the seat of our pants. I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but the financial side of the business was always a mess—because neither of us is good with balance sheets and whatever.

“When it came to other things, whoever heard about a problem first would take care of it.

“And as they say, old habits die hard. So you have that, plus the fact the staff—especially the oldtimers—have always come to Larry or me, and…

“Well, they sometimes still do, and then we tend to jump on things we should leave to Noah.”

She nodded. She didn’t need to be a real expert to know people didn’t change their behavior patterns easily.

“But getting back to what I said about how consistent the fellows’ stories have been,” Robert continued, “is it common for people to slip up and contradict themselves? If one of them did have something to do with either incident…”

“It happens. More often in the movies than in real life, though.”

“Stu’s worked here for thirty years,” Robert said quietly.

“I know.”

“And he’s a good manager. I can’t recall the last time we had a serious problem in the warehouse—before all this stuff started happening.”

Fleetingly, she recalled her father saying he was surprised the warehouse people hadn’t been fired. They probably would have been in most companies.

But thirty years and no problems obviously counted for something with Robert—which made her like him even more than she already did.

Glancing at her notes, she checked to see what else she should mention, then said, “Stu made sure I knew all three of them had taken lie detector tests. And that I’d been told they’d asked to take them.”

There were a few seconds of silence then, before Robert said, “Do you figure there’s any chance Stu was in on what happened? That he knew ahead of time the delivery was going to be short? That he and the captain…”

“I don’t think there’s much chance. Although one thing bothered me.”

“Oh?”

“The plans he had. The reason he didn’t wait for the ship to arrive.”

“He’d promised to meet his wife. She wanted to look at some furniture.”

Dana nodded. “I already knew that’s what he told Detective Tanaka. But when he told me I had a feeling he was lying.”

“Oh?” Robert said again, more slowly this time. “Did Tanaka get that impression, too?”

“If he did, he didn’t mention it. But I’m good at knowing when people aren’t telling the truth. My father’s a cop. He taught me what to look for when I was just a kid, so I’ve had years of practice. And I don’t think Stu was meeting his wife.”

“Then what do you think?”

“That if anyone asked her she’d back him up. The names of the stores they went to would probably be on the tip of her tongue. But it wouldn’t prove anything.”

Robert gazed at her, looking decidedly unhappy. Finally, he said, “So, assuming you’re right, he just doesn’t want anyone to know what he was really doing that evening.”

“Exactly. Which is why I’m not entirely ready to write him off as innocent.

“On the other hand, I give a lot of weight to the results of those lie detector tests. It isn’t easy to beat them.”

“Only Larry seems to figure it is,” Robert said.

NOAH WAS NOT A MAN WHO lurked. Yet he knew that was the only word to describe what he was doing at the moment.

Virtually everyone else had left for home by now, but here he was, standing partway between his office and the front door, lurking.

Glancing at his watch, he wondered how much longer that woman would be spending with his uncle.

It didn’t matter, though. However long it was he’d still be here. He wanted the answers to some questions and he intended to get them.

He paced to his office door, then back down the hall again, almost banging into Chris Vidal, their director of logistics, who was coming out of the main office area.

“On your way home?” Chris asked.

“Shortly. I’m just waiting to catch Robert,” he added when the other man obviously expected more.

“Oh, well, if you’ve got a minute, tell me what you think of these new rates Intercoastal Vans has in mind.”

Chris dug a couple of sheets from the folder he was carrying. “They’ve changed the formula for their weight, volume and distance calculations, and I don’t think it’ll be to our benefit. But the explanation’s so damned convoluted…”

Noah skimmed the pages, hoping Dana didn’t make good her escape while Chris had him captured.

“Yeah,” he said when he was done. “I’d say you’re right. We’d really get nailed on some of those overweight charges.”

“I’ll give them a call in the morning, then,” Chris said, sticking the papers back into his folder. “Talk to them about a guaranteed max.”

“Good idea.”

Noah watched Chris disappear into his office, then went back to thinking about Dana—and assuring himself he wasn’t paranoid. There was no way he’d merely imagined that she’d been covertly watching him this afternoon.

Oh, she’d been very subtle about it. If he hadn’t found himself gazing at her so frequently, he’d never have realized what she was doing.