“Other people could have been hurt, too.” I agreed with him. We’d thought we were handling the strange series of incidents at our factory, but we couldn’t ignore the way it was escalating.
A young woman wheeled a computer towards Raymond’s room.
“Miss? Are you going to ask him about insurance?” I asked her.
“Um, yes?” She looked at Greg and I. “Are you family?”
We get these quizzical looks a lot. We were stepbrothers, and Greg’s dad had adopted me when I was in high school, saying the Grockton name would open doors for me. I’d wanted to have the same name as Greg and my mom.
“She means are we Raymond’s family.” Greg looked at me. “Look, we are his employer. We are covering all expenses related to this incident.”
“I thought it took place at some sort of festival.”
“Yes, we are the sponsors. Plus we are in charge of his health insurance.” I pulled out my phone and called up the company personnel directory. “Let me get you his information to get this started. Then you can send us the bill for anything left over.”
After we’d taken care of that, Raymond was wheeled out.
“I’m feeling no pain,” he said, giving us a small wave. “Off to surgery.”’
“They say he’s going to be fine. He might need some physical therapy, but he will be ok. You wouldn’t have that young woman’s information, would you?” Anna, Raymond’s wife asked us as she followed the gurney out of the cubicle.
“I’ll get it for you, Anna,” I said. “And I’ll send it to you.”
“She was gorgeous,” Greg said, after Anna hurried down the hallway with Raymond and the staff.
“Who, Anna?” I knew who he meant.
“Well, Anna is lovely of course, but you know who I meant.”
“I would have to see her not covered in blood, but yes, I do know who you mean.” Greg and I had been talking about sharing someone between us, as neither of us had luck dating anyone. One of our college friends was in an arrangement like that with his stepbrother and never stopped discussing how happy they were. The last time we’d gone fishing with college friends, we’dbeen complaining about not being able to find people to date, and Jacob had suggested we try sharing.
“We owe her a dinner at least for her help tonight,” Greg said, throwing an arm around my shoulders as we left the hospital.
I elbowed him, but I didn’t disagree with his idea.
***
“Let me get this straight. You two have had a series of these episodes, and they’ve been escalating, and you thought you could handle it?” Detective Rhonda Wells had gone to high school with Greg and I, and was not impressed by our wealth and standing like many in this town were. It’s one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to her.
“It took us a while to realize there was a pattern.” The truth was, Stephen, my step-father had always instilled in us a sense of protecting the company. We were taught that we should be able to handle anything that came up. So even when we started to see a pattern, we thought it was our job to fix it.
She was tapping on an ipad. “Let’s try to pin down details like dates and locations, and any people who may have been nearby.
I pulled up my notes on my computer.
She looked up. “Who has access to your computer files?”
“It’s on my personal drive, password protected.”
“That’s not good enough, if you access it here. You said most incidents took place here? When did this all start?”
I knew she was right. I looked at Greg.
“Last year some of our expensive cherry wood for the carving competition disappeared days before the event.” He folded his arms in front of his chest. He was leaning against a display table in my office.
“A year ago?” She sighed. “Tell you what. How about you email me that file, but keep talking me through it.”
So we did, continuing with some of the smaller incidents.
