Circle of Shadows (2 page)

“Then I’m glad I came late. What
an unusual hair color! Not red, not blonde—is that what they call strawberry
blonde?” he exclaimed, staring, then apologized, “I’m sorry, it’s lovely.”

Lili smiled. People always stared
the first time they saw her hair, and no one ever believed it was her natural
color. She had given up explaining it in grade school, and now ignored or
laughed off such remarks. “So I’ve been told.”

The young, dark-haired desk clerk
made her way carefully across the wet cement, and called, “Oh, Mr. Mills,
there’s a phone call for you.”

“Be right there.” He climbed up
the ladder and grabbed his towel from one of the lounge chairs.

Lili watched, mesmerized by the
sight of his long, bare muscular legs and slim hips as he stood on the wet
cement above her. He rubbed himself dry quickly, his mind obviously on the
phone call. He turned back to her and looped the towel around his dripping
trunks. “Nice meeting you, Miss—ah?”

She tore her gaze from the hand
tucking the towel in below his bare midriff, and smiled at him. “Lili,” she
supplied.

“Same here, Mr. Mills.”

“Ken.”

She watched him wave and turn
away to follow the desk clerk through the door into the lobby. With a sigh,
Lili returned to the dressing rooms and stepped under the shower.

Quite a hunk, she thought as she
drove home. Too bad he was just someone passing through. She hadn’t met an
interesting man for months.

***

Back at the motel, Ken hung up
the phone and hurried back to the pool, but Lili was gone.

Damn! He should have asked her if
she would have a drink with him before he’d left, instead of assuming that
she’d still be there when he returned. He hadn’t seen a woman like her in ages,
so fresh and natural.

Then he laughed at his own choice
of words. Natural? With that hair color? It looked so unusual, it had to have
come out of a bottle. He remembered the way her long slim fingers had raked
through its silken strands, smoothing out the tangles. He’d felt tempted to do
the same. The red highlights had glittered under the pool lights. His sister,
Jill, dyed her dark hair blonde, and it always had a harsh look to it. Lili’s
hairstylist must be a magician to keep it so soft and shiny.

She was too young for a man in
his mid-thirties, he told himself, thinking of her clear skin, fresh and free
of make-up after her swim in the pool. Her eyes had been the same bright shade
of sky blue as her suit and cap.

He remembered that lovely figure,
perfectly molded under her one-piece suit. He wondered what it would feel like
to span that narrow waist with his fingers, just to see if it was really as
small as it looked. Most girls insisted on showing off every inch of bare skin
possible in the skimpiest bikini.

When he’d first seen her doing
laps across the pool, he’d thought she was about seventeen, until she’d looked
at him. Then he’d seen the enormous depth of pain and frustration in those
eyes, and decided she was closer to twenty.

He shrugged and shook his head as
he went to the dressing rooms to shower and put on his clothes. The bartender
would surely have carded her if she had agreed to have a drink with him. When
was the last time he’d dated someone young enough to have
that
happen?

He would have liked to find out
the reason for so much pain in such a young, pretty girl. Perhaps he could take
away some of that pain in her eyes with a pleasant evening. Who was he kidding?
His reasons for wanting to spend time with her weren’t that noble. She turned
him on, that’s all.”

Sighing in frustration at the
direction his own wayward thoughts were taking, he went down to the bar alone.

“Lili! Thank goodness you’re
here!” Anna nearly shrieked her frustration when Lili walked into the break
room of the grocery store late the next morning.

“Are things that bad?” Lili
responded with a wry smile. Wrinkling her nose at the delicious aroma of black
coffee, she hung up her coat, then poured herself a cup. This was her first day
back on the job since her father’s death, and the problems were waiting. She
shuddered and straightened her shoulders. Father was gone. His shoes might be
big ones, but she would fill them as best she could.

“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.”