The Step Between by Penny Mickelbury

Author:Penny Mickelbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

What they had to tell Paolo instantly mitigated his annoyance at having sat in the truck waiting for them for ninety minutes. They had, they told him while profusely apologizing, forgotten that he was waiting for them. So shocked had they been at Beth Childress’s willingness to open up and share information with them, they’d forgotten practically everything else.

J. D. MacDonald was a Canadian, Beth Childress told them, and his real name was Jimmy Sanderson—he’d confessed that soon after finalizing the partnership. He had an arrest record in Canada, he said—he’d embezzled funds from the trucking company where he’d been a vice president—and hadn’t wanted to risk losing the chance to partner OnShore. Harry had met him on a fishing trip just after his partner of twenty years had been killed.

“Hold it a second.” Jake had raised his hand. “This guy admits he lied about something as serious as his identity and your husband didn’t kick him out the door then?”

She smile ruefully. “To Harry, that was a sign of true honesty, of integrity. The man ’fessed up, owned his mistakes, and was just hoping for a new chance. Harry believed everybody deserves a second chance.” Besides, she’d added, J.D. was a lot younger than Harry, who thought that was a key benefit.

But Harry hadn’t liked J.D. initially, Beth said, because he was a braggart and Harry was anything but. However, beneath the braggadocio was an astute businessman, despite his youth, with a knowledge of trucking and a willingness to make a cash infusion into a going concern. “That was one of J.D.’s favorite phrases: ‘going concern.’ And he seemed to know quite a lot about the packaging industry, which I thought odd but which didn’t bother Harry.”

“Why did you think it odd, Mrs. Childress?” Carole Ann had asked, and had been rendered speechless by the answer.

“What do you know about the packaging industry, Miss Gibson?” And when no reply was forthcoming, the woman had nodded her head in a confirming manner. “My point exactly: nobody outside the industry knows anything about it and J.D.’s expertise was trucking. And I guess I’d better tell you the other half of why I was a little put out with Harry: right after he loses Gordy, who’d been his partner for all those years, he’s ready to take up with this J.D. character. ‘That’s what you’ll do if something happens to me,’ I told him. ‘Take up with some other woman before I’m cold in the ground.’ ”

“So you think,” Carole Ann had asked, “that the meeting between your husband and J. D. MacDonald—or Sanderson—was no accident?”

“Harry went out on the bay every chance he got. He’d play hooky from work if he heard the blues were biting. J.D. not only would refuse to go with him, he never went fishing again as far as I could tell.”

Additionally, said Beth Childress, the sudden interest of Seaboard in the affairs of OnShore rang hollow. Seaboard was a big company and had been in business

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