The Donaldson Case by Diana Xarissa Page A

all been very cooperative.”
    “What about
Matthew?   Has he been cooperative?”
Joan demanded.
    “Very,” Robert
replied.
    Joan
frowned.   “Well, I do think if you
dig a little bit beneath the surface, you’ll find all sorts of nastiness
there,” she said.
    “Thank you for
sharing your thoughts,” Robert said again.   “I’ll definitely take a closer look at the man.”
    Janet showed
Robert out while Joan tidied in the kitchen.   When she rejoined her sister, Joan was
humming quietly.  
    “You seem to
be in a better mood,” Janet remarked.
    “That’s
because it won’t be long now before the whole unpleasant business is wrapped up
and Michael’s name is cleared,” Joan replied.   “In the meantime, we have guests to keep
us busy.”
    The guests
didn’t keep them all that busy, but Janet did tidy and vacuum their room every
day.   Joan kept trying to find
things they might enjoy for breakfast, but they never ate more than dry toast,
no matter what she offered.  
    The pair
usually went out each morning and were back at the
house by seven or eight.   They’d
watch a bit of telly and then head to bed just as
Janet and Joan were getting tired.   By the time they left, Janet had decided that if all guests were like Fred
and Molly, she and Joan should welcome guests more often.
    Joan was back
to her normal self, cooking and baking nearly perfect
meals and treats every day.   Michael
visited often and seemed to share Joan’s conviction that the police would have
the matter sorted very soon.   Janet
found herself eager to investigate further, but with no clear idea of what to
do.  
    A week after
their visit with Robert Parsons, the day after their guests had checked out,
Janet found him on their doorstep again.
    “Come in,” she
invited the man.
    She shouted
for Joan, who quickly invited the man to have a cuppa .
    “I can’t stay
long,” he told them.   “But maybe
just a quick one.”
    Janet fixed a
plate of biscuits while Joan arranged the tea things.   Within minutes, they were all sitting
together at the kitchen table.
    “What can we
do for you?” Joan asked the young man.
    “I just came
to tell you that you were right,” he told her.
    “About Matthew
Rogers, you mean?” Joan asked.  
    “Yes, he’s
been arrested, and the charges will be significant,” Robert replied.
    Joan
nodded.   “I knew he couldn’t be
trusted.”
    “But how did
he manage it, if he’d only just arrived?” Janet asked.
    “Ah, it was all
tricked up on the computer,” Robert said.   “From what we can tell, he had access to the store’s computer records
and he started making changes in them many months ago, about the same time that
Owen told the head office that he was going to need several months of sick
leave.”
    “He really
planned ahead, then,” Janet remarked.
    “He did,”
Robert agreed.   “He changed orders,
created phantom returns and did a lot of other things to make it look as if
there were problems in the store.   Then he persuaded his manager that he should come up here and sort
everything out.”
    “Clever,” Joan
murmured.
    “He was a bit
too clever,” Robert said.   “He made
so many changes to the drugs records that even he didn’t know what the store
had.   He was stealing from their
inventory before it was shipped and then altering the records so that the store
here didn’t notice, but as I understand it, he started getting overconfident
and ended up making a few mistakes.   When he arrived here, the first thing he did was an inventory which
showed what a mess he’d made of it.”
    “But why ring
the police?” Janet asked.   “Why not
just fix the records?”
    “I gather his
boss ordered him to do the inventory before he did anything else and there were
so many mistakes in it that he knew he didn’t have time to fix it.   I’m not totally clear on how it all
works, but he said something about not having access to the company’s main
computers here, so