A Shadow of Death in The Woods (17 page)

Chapter 26

Lydia II

Things had gone from bad to worse. First, the stranger moved in temporarily and now he was here permanently. She had the feeling right from the start that it would turn out like this. Bob kept reassuring her that it was temporary but she knew Bob and she was sure he was up to something.

Bob was one of the most persuasive and aggressive people she knew. When Bob wanted something, he went after it with a single-mindedness that inspired awe. This attribute was second only to his ability to talk people into doing his will. She had seen him repeatedly talk to people who were dead set again his ideas and win them over. She had never figured out how he did it. It was like a magic trick; you saw the results but never how it was done.

There was some kind of strong connection between Bob and the stranger. Bob said that the stranger saved his and Jane’s lives but he didn’t give any details. He did say that the stranger was an Officer-of-the-Club. That was a very big deal. No one outside of Bob, Mike and Paul were Officers-of-the-Club. No one had ever explained the full meaning of being an Officer but Lydia was sure that only killers were Officers.

That meant she was living next door to a killer, a murderer. She couldn’t openly talk with Bob about her thoughts but she had employed every trick she could think of to find out as much as she could. Bob responded by only saying that she was safer with him in The Cabin than she was alone. How can you live next door to a man who is capable of killing people and be safer?

And then to put some icing on top of that cake, the stranger was huge. Lydia figured she could put on six-inch heels and he would still be taller than she. Lydia was sensitive to height because she was so tall for a woman. She almost never had a date in high school because she was so tall. Well, actually she just had the one date and look how it turned out. Anyway, she didn’t have any six-inch heels. What would a tall woman be doing with six-inch heels?

The first time she saw the stranger, she almost fainted. She had never seen a man so large. She was blessed with a brilliant mind so men did not intimidate her on an intellectual level. She could out think any man she had ever met. It was her only salvation. Without this she could not function at all. But his size was something she had never encountered before. The biggest problem though was that he was a man.

Ever since high school she had not been able to be around boys or men. College had been Hell. Everyone wanted her to date. That is what you did in college. Husband shopping. When she absolutely refused to date boys, then everyone assumed she was a lesbian, which she wasn’t. Finally, she was able to live off campus in a small apartment by herself. She shrank from all social contact and focused her total energy on her studies. With such focus and her brilliant mind, she got straight A’s all through college. That opened up scholarships to pay for graduate school and she earned her master’s and a Ph. D. in math.

With such a record she easily landed a job teaching in the university but it was tough for her because she had trouble socializing. Your ability to keep your job and obtain promotions was through socializing. Lydia was struggling.

She was seeing a psychiatrist once a week and sometimes twice a week. This had helped a lot. She would not be surviving at all without the help. There was a limit to the help though because she could not tell the psychiatrist the whole story. Lydia could tell her about the date incident but she couldn’t tell her about what she suspected Bob did afterwards. The psychiatrist obviously could tell Lydia was holding back. This not only deprived the psychiatrist of the full story but it also sent a signal that Lydia didn’t fully trust the psychiatrist. Not a good situation but Lydia did the best she could.

In her fight for emotional survival, The Cabin was a sacred place for her. She tried to get all of her work done through the week except lecture planning and some research. She reserved these two things to do at The Cabin where it generally was quiet and Lydia could relax and think. She loved to work on the creative parts of her work at The Cabin. Without her solitude in The Cabin to recharge her batteries, she could not face the world.

Now that space had been invaded. Somehow having business people and the occasional renter for a few days never bothered her. They were generally quiet and didn’t disturb her. They were like people in the street who you saw but didn’t interact with. But somehow this stranger was another matter altogether. He was living here. Full time. He had become part of The Cabin. She felt as if her personal space had been invaded. She knew this didn’t make sense and she couldn’t explain it to Bob. Bob had made it clear that she was not going to change the situation so she was going to have to deal with it.

She wondered if the stranger were a smaller man whether it would be better. She wasn’t sure but since it wasn’t likely that he would get smaller, it didn’t make sense to think about it. Not only wasn’t he going to get smaller, he spent a lot of time lifting weights and he might be getting bigger. She had sneaked a look at him lifting weights. It was a scary sight.

She had a license to carry a concealed weapon. She even had it loaded with personal protection shells. If she ever used the weapon, it was to protect herself and she wanted the maximum stopping power. She had spent hours in training and in target shooting so she was expert with the gun. She was sure that she could shoot a man because she was never again going through what happened to her in high school.

She often carried a weapon although it wasn’t allowed on campus but people didn’t know what you had in your purse. She didn’t carry a purse around The Cabin. Actually she never carried her gun in The Cabin until the stranger showed up. Now she carried it under her shirt. She kept her shirt outside of her pants so the gun didn’t show.

It surprised her how mad she got over The Cat. She had rescued The Cat from the streets. He was dirty and underfed and looking for food when she found him on the street near her apartment. She felt sorry for him and started feeding him. You can’t get rid of a cat after you feed it. He obviously wasn’t being cared for by anyone else so she was his sole benefactor. Little by little, step by step, The Cat moved into her apartment and into her life. The Cat was her only companion.

The Cat wasn’t particularly friendly. He put up with her of course because she fed him but he kept his distance and showed his displeasure if she tried to pick him up. She understood what it was like to want to be left alone so they got along okay by leaving each other alone.

Then the stranger came to The Cabin and The Cat took to him like a bee to a flower. It was infuriating. She didn’t understand it and it made her mad. At first she couldn’t believe her eyes when The Cat got on the stranger’s lap. She thought that the stranger was going to get bitten and scratched but no, The Cat settled in, purred, took a bath and went to sleep. Lydia felt invaded. First, the stranger invades her place of refuge and then he takes her cat. Now, he was going to install a cat door. She felt like screaming.

If she could calm herself down enough to think logically, she had to admit that he was a great cook. This was a department that had been completely neglected by Lydia. She could feed The Cat okay because you can buy cat food in a can or bag and, voilà, you just fed The Cat. But feeding herself was always a problem. She ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches.

He fixed simple looking foods like the ones she grew up with but they were outstanding. As much as she hated being around a man, she stayed in his apartment the other day and had lunch, mainly because she was hungry. That had been very unusual for her but it was an delicious lunch. And she had also eaten dinner with him.

She also had to admit that the stranger had offered nothing but kindness even when she hadn’t been so kind. If only she could trust men but she couldn’t. Not after what had happened to her. She was, though, going to have to figure out how to deal with this stranger called Jack. Jack Clayton.

Chapter 27

The Job

Getting a job was a good deal but now I had to deliver. The first order of business was to install a computer-based accounting system before Uncle Jake died. I was comfortable with the computer part of it because just before leaving my last company I did a study on commercial systems. I knew of one that would be perfect for Bob’s company. The big problem was not the new accounting system. It was the people.

No matter what people say, people hate change. It scares them. In the workplace it is even scarier for people because they fear losing their jobs, losing prestige, not being able to learn the new system, and on and on into the night. I had talked with Bob and he gave me assurances that no one would lose their job due to the new accounting system. That was going to make it easier but not easy for the employees. Secretly, I estimated that the new system would eliminate from one third to one half of the jobs in the finance department. We were going to have to find several new jobs. Bob said it wouldn’t be a problem.

I sat down with Sharon, the financial manager, and outlined what we needed to do. I wanted her on my side before going to the rest of the employees with the mixture of good and bad news. The good news was that they were not going to lose their jobs. The bad news was that there were going to be a lot of changes and a lot of training.

Sharon took it in stride and said, “Frankly, I am glad to see the changes. I have never understood our accounting system. It always seemed to me that it was set up so no one could understand the money flow.”

I philosophically said, “Our job is not to criticize what may have been done in the past. Our task is to install a new computer-based system that works well.”

She immediately was on-board with me. This was important because if she decided to go against me, the new system installation would fail.

The next step was to gather all the financial employees and outline what was going to happen and what we were going to do to make it easier for them. As I looked around the room I could see people who would be okay with the changes, some who didn’t care one way or the other and some, with glum looks on their faces, would be dead set against it. I made notes on who was who so we could work with them because we needed everyone on-board.

All in all I thought that the first week went well. I contacted the vendor and signed a contract. They could start immediately.

Much of our current computer hardware could be used. We would need a few new computers and servers but the big deal was the software and the training to use the software. Within a week they had the hardware and software installed.

We started the training classes while the system was being installed. I got permission from Bob to pay overtime. I also discussed with him the strategy of when and how to switch to the new system. He decided that we would not run the systems in parallel. We would start with the new system as soon as we were ready and drop the old system. Both of us understood that things would be a mess for a month or two, perhaps even longer.

So that is what we did. When we started using the new system, it was like someone had thrown a rooster in the hen house. People were running around, yelling at each other. I spent the next few weeks trying to calm people down and then fixing the issues one by one as they came up. Soon things smoothed out but the financials didn’t always make sense and they almost never agreed with the old system or what people expected. I had my suspicions as to why but it wasn’t until Bob paid me a visit that I knew for sure.

Bob stopped by to discuss the new financial reports, which were driving people crazy. Bob said, “You should not believe anything from the old system. I need to tell you something that you need to keep confidential. I also don’t want to tell you more than absolutely necessary because I want to leave you in a position where you can deny all knowledge of what happened before you came here.

“The old system was set up by Uncle Jake deliberately so that no one could trace the cash flow. There was a reason for that and I don’t want to go into it. With this new system we are going to learn all kinds of things about this business. It will take a while to get people accustomed to the financial results. But once we have the new system debugged, we will be able to find ways of making this company more efficient and we will make more money.”

It made me feel better that Bob understood what was going on. I had faith in the new system but it was a challenge to get people to accept the results.

My next challenge was going to be to learn how to deal with the banks on getting business loans. That was a completely new area for me. I had no experience with investment bankers. Bob seemed to be okay with this even if I wasn’t. He had a plan, he said, for introducing me to that side of my job. The original plan was to have Uncle Jake help on this but he was too sick. He was failing fast. He could go any minute.

My job was going well for the moment. Things at The Cabin were still a challenge. I installed the cat door and it was working fine. I was pleased with how it turned out. You could not tell that there was a cat door there. I put on two coats of polyurethane on both sides of the panel so that The Cat wouldn’t damage the door. The Cat figured it out with a minimum amount of training. How he could see the cat door, I don’t know because it was hidden so well. The Cat spent a lot of time in my apartment, mostly sleeping on my bed. I bought a mat for him to sleep on because he was bringing in dirt and leaving cat hairs. Things were working well but I knew it was only a matter of time before Lydia would complain.

She came for meals on a fairly regular basis, encouraged by me. It is easier to cook for two than it is for one. With two people you can get into pot roasts, casseroles, meat loaves, etc. She wanted to pay me for the food but I told her it didn’t make any sense for her to do that since Bob was paying for the food as part of my compensation. I talked to Bob about sharing the food with Lydia and he thought it was a great idea if we ate together. That surprised me. I realized that Bob was up to something and time would reveal what it was.

Lydia carried a gun when she came over. She did a good job of hiding it but I have carried guns and I knew what to look for. It was sad for me to discover that she was so afraid of me that she felt it necessary to be armed. But then I thought at least she was willing to eat with me. Maybe she was desperate for the food. I suspected that she knew little about cooking and maybe cared even less.

I was careful not to get too close to Lydia when she was in my apartment and we often left the door open. I didn’t want to spook her, especially when she was carrying.

I was grateful for her company on the weekends. Otherwise it was very lonely in The Cabin.