The Warning (3 page)

The ridgeline was a strip of land Buddy had bought soon after his first son was born. The bank had offered their employees low-interest mortgages, which had been a relatively cheap way for the bank to ensure employee stability. Instead of using the money to buy a larger home, however, Buddy had purchased the ridgeline from an aging farmer. The land totaled almost forty acres and overlooked the town and the interstate. Every year or so, some developer approached him with another deal.

“It's time to sell, that's all. We'll still have the cash.” Buddy kept his eyes on his son. It was easier than meeting Molly's troubled gaze. “Wait two months. If you still want to go ahead, I'll lend you the money interest free.”

Molly asked quietly, “What's wrong, honey?”

He could not put her off any longer. And he owed Paul that much, dashing his son's hopes as he had. “Nothing I can put my finger on. Nothing I can give any name to. But I've had the feeling for more than two weeks now that something is going to happen. Something bad.”

There. It was finally out in the open. Words to clothe the rising dread. “Something awful,” he went on, “an economic downturn or cyclical correction. I know everything looks rosy right now. And I feel like a fool for being so worried. But I am.”

Buddy studied each of their faces in turn. “I have the strongest feeling that we're headed into the worst recession any of us has ever experienced.”

He sighed with sudden release. The act of speaking had eased the pressure as inexplicably as Paul's announcement had brought it on. He steeled himself for their criticism.

Yet the ensuing quiet held none of the condemnation Buddy had feared. In fact, his son's face seemed to clear up and relax. Even Molly's concern eased.

Paul said, “It makes sense, Pop.”

“It certainly does,” Molly agreed.

Both of the men looked at her in surprise. Molly dropped her gaze. “Oh, I don't know the first thing about economics, but you'd be surprised what people say to a quiet person. Maybe they think they're safe, that I don't understand or won't repeat what I hear. And they're right. But I do hear things, and what I hear I take in. There isn't a single woman in my Bible study who isn't worried about money. Not one.”

“It sure is strange,” Paul agreed. “People have good jobs; they're making good money. But everybody's afraid.”

“They buy things they don't want,” Molly continued in her quiet way. “They go into debt and hate themselves for it.”

“As if they can't control their own actions,” Paul added.

“Or they sense that something is happening and feel powerless to do anything,” Molly agreed. “Running faster and faster after something they'll never have.”

Buddy stared at his wife in absolute astonishment. “Of all the things I might have expected you to say, this would have been the last.”

“People are frightened of tomorrow,” Molly said.

“I am too,” Paul confessed. “I've put it down to nerves over starting another store. Like you said, Pop, everything
seems
to be fine. But what my mind says and what my heart tells me are two very different things.”

There was a moment's silence before Molly asked her husband, “Does this have anything to do with those nightmares of yours?”

“Yes,” Buddy replied, and he realized he was also admitting it to himself. “But it's not just the dreams. There have been other things. In the office, and during my quiet times.”

Molly's gaze was level, deep. “Has the Lord spoken to you?”

Hearing the words he had been afraid to think left Buddy floundering. He opened his mouth, closed it, and finally managed, “I'm not sure.”

–|
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FOUR
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Forty Days . . .

The nightmare came again just before dawn. The dream was as bad as usual, the awakening as wrenching. Molly watched him rise, go to the bathroom, and return wearing fresh pajamas. This time she said nothing; she only lay her hand upon his shoulder as once more he settled into bed. But as Buddy drifted off to sleep again, he thought he heard a hint of murmured prayer.

The half-heard whispers remained with him through his shower and breakfast and prayer time. He heard them again on the way to work. They were there with him in the car, vague murmurs that were more than lingering tendrils of a bad dream. Yet try as he might, pray as he would, he could not seem to work it all out.

Upon entering the bank Thursday morning, Buddy felt every vestige of the dream and the uncertainty disappear, which was strange, since the nightmare's first scene was always in the bank's main foyer. Even so, the night's distress was pushed aside by what he saw as soon as he walked through the big main doors.

Aiden was a middling town abutting the steep hills lining Delaware's inner border. It was too far from the big cities of Washington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to have ever known the explosive growth that gripped much of the surrounding regions. Buddy had never minded. He had grown up here and had never wanted to live anywhere else. He liked the quiet attractive little town just the way it was.

The bank where Buddy worked was almost one hundred fifty years old. Seventeen years ago, however, the Aiden Merchant Bank had been taken over. The Valenti Banking Group had swallowed many such small banks, allowing it to dominate local markets. At the time, Buddy had been the bank's assistant manager and had wondered for weeks and months if he was going to keep his job. But Buddy had earned many friends within the local market, people who made it clear to the newly imported branch manager that their business would leave with Buddy.

In time, the incoming managers recognized that Buddy was the genuine article, a local man with local savvy. They sweetened his paycheck, for other banks were also seeking to make inroads into communities like Aiden.

A year later, Buddy was offered a major promotion and the chance to take over loan operations at another branch in another small town, one where they were having trouble making contacts within the local business community. Buddy turned them down flat. Eighteen months later came another offer. This time, Buddy told them the only way he was leaving Aiden was in a pine box. They got the message and left well enough alone.

But the Valenti group had a strict policy that each promotion required a move. Every man or woman on the rise thus came to know different divisions and different branches. And equally important was the fact that a person who was shifted around did not put down deep roots. Their first loyalty remained to the bank and not the community—which was exactly why Buddy refused to move.

This was also why he was so enraged upon entering the bank. These people were more than citizens of his hometown. They were part of his extended family. And Buddy's first glance was enough to tell him that one of his group was in dire trouble.

He had been concerned from the outset about hiring such an attractive and vivacious woman for the job of teller. But bank teller jobs were some of the lowest paid in town, and when the job market was tight, it was not always possible to hire people with families and thus greater stability. This was exactly what Buddy wanted in anyone who was going to be handling the bank's money day in, day out.

But Sally had seemed a proper kind of young lady, despite her bubbly personality and good looks, and the public liked her. Some of their older clients waited until she was free so they could stand and flirt a bit. Buddy did not mind in the slightest, so long as the bank was not too busy. After all, these clients' money kept their bank in business. If they enjoyed chatting with a cute young teller, that was fine and good.

But it was not a client who was making the teller's giggles ring like chimes through the bank's quiet air. Leaning across the partition that separated Sally's station from the next was the bank's new manager, Thaddeus Dorsett.

Since the takeover by the Valenti Banking Group, Buddy had endured eleven branch managers. Eleven in seventeen years. But Thad Dorsett was the first one since Valenti had itself been acquired by the famous New York tycoon Nathan Jones Turner. Thad Dorsett was also the first manager Buddy had ever genuinely disliked.

Thad Dorsett was a trader, imported from the financial markets of Chicago, the first one Buddy had ever met face-to-face. Buddy knew the bank now had a policy of promoting managers up from the ranks of their traders. And on paper this made sense. After all, traders were now responsible for more than half the bank's total profit. Buddy tried not to let Thad's background affect his thinking, but it was very hard. Buddy held a strong aversion to traders and all they stood for.

In their first conversation that previous winter, Thad's gaze had lingered on the silver cross in Buddy's lapel. He had smirked a little with the corners of his mouth, as though seeing the cross had confirmed something Thad had either heard about or expected to find. Then he had said, “You know, I actually attended seminary.”

Of all the things Buddy had expected to hear from the new branch manager, this was the last. “You did?”

“One semester. Never even took my finals. I did it for dear old Dad, who was a preacher. And my grandfather. And the one before that, for all I know. It was all I heard about when I was growing up. This family tradition.” His smile was larger this time. “But after I got there, I decided I'd rather serve mammon than heaven.”

Buddy had felt like he had just swallowed a mouthful of quinine.

Now he walked across the lobby's parquet floor, under the huge brass-and-smoked-glass chandelier, and through the little gate separating the bank's office area from the main chamber. His secretary, Lorraine, was already at her desk. Her face was clamped into a harsh line, which was very strange, as Lorraine had one of the sweetest natures Buddy had ever come across. But she was staring at Thad Dorsett as he hummed his conversation across the partition to where Sally was smiling and setting up for the day. And Buddy remembered four months earlier, when he had come in and found Lorraine weeping bitterly at her desk, while Thad Dorsett whistled and chatted with one employee after another, pretending that nothing was wrong and that he had not just broken the heart of Buddy's secretary and very good friend.

Buddy walked straight over to where Thad was standing and said, “Can I have a word with you?”

Thad was slow in turning. The movement was a silent warning that he was not in a mood to be disturbed. He had a lot of moves like this, tight looks and silent signals. The branch employees were frightened by this outsider and normally kept their distance. But Thad also possessed a remarkable magnetism. Thad's gaze finally came around, and he said coolly, “It can wait, Korda.”

But Buddy did not let him turn back around. He put an emphasis to his words, one he had not used since his boys had reached manhood. “
Now,
Thad.”

Buddy walked back to his office. Passing Lorraine's desk, he exchanged a glance. Her eyes still bore the pain and sadness of a woman betrayed. Buddy stiffened his resolve. Which was helpful, because Buddy was no good at confrontation. He hated it, in fact. He would go around the block backward to avoid an argument. Yet there he was, picking a quarrel with his own boss. Buddy stood by his desk and watched through the glass wall as Thad approached.

Buddy's office was in the corner of the bank, with two walls of waist-high oiled wood and then tall panes of glass rising to the ceiling. Only the manager's office was completely enclosed. Yet Buddy loved the openness of his office, loved the way he could observe the entire operation. The glass, which had been put in when the bank was built, had beveled edges with hand-carved vines and flowers rising up each side. Over the past century and a half, the panes had gradually begun to warp. As Thad approached, his appearance waxed and waned, like a colorful apparition that was not entirely genuine.

Thaddeus Dorsett was the picture of a modern-day buccaneer, and he told anyone willing to listen that he was wasting his life away in Aiden. He was twenty years younger than Buddy and on the bank's fast track. His hair was dark and so thick it bunched and waved even when tightly slicked back. His face was angled and strong. His eyes were such a light green that in the morning sun they appeared flecked with gold. Thad had learned to use them well, and even now he opened them in a parody of innocence. “You had something that couldn't wait?”

Buddy had seen that innocent look before. It was Thad's way of covering a fast-moving mind. Sunlight streamed through the back window and turned Thad's eyes the color of a big cat's. “The Valenti Bank has a strict policy against fraternization between managers and staff.”

“Fraternization, what a quaint word.” He cast a wide-eyed gaze about the room. “It suits you, Korda.”

“I want you to stop flirting with Sally, Thad. It's a dangerous sport, and it disrupts the bank's smooth running.”

“My, my. Aren't we on our moral high horse today?” Thad-deus Dorsett stepped closer, trying to use his superior height to intimidate. “In case you haven't noticed, Korda, you're speaking to your boss.”

Buddy resisted the urge to step back. “If you don't stop this now, I'm going to report the matter to the head office.”

“Report what?” Thad sneered. “That I was taking time before the bank opened to be nice to our newest employee?”

“I wasn't planning to report Sally,” Buddy replied. “And I would substantiate my report with another one from Lorraine.”

Like a veil dropping silently to the floor, Thad's round-eyed innocence slipped away. In its place rose a silent rage. Thad took another step closer, until Buddy could smell the coffee on his breath. His gaze was feral, his tone furious. “That's just the kind of spiteful attitude I'd expect from a backwater imbecile like you, Korda.”

Buddy held to his course but could not keep the quaver from his voice. “Lorraine approached me last week about lodging a complaint, and I said—”