A Little Holiday Temptation by Janice Sims Page A

approached the loading dock of the plant. It was early morning according to the time posted at the bottom of the screen. It was still dark out. He unlocked the loading-dock door and since it was the rolling kind, he pushed up on it and the mechanism did the rest. Then the viewing audience noticed a large van being backed up to the loading dock. Two other men got out and leaped onto the dock and followed the first man into the plant. Minutes later they returned with hand trucks loaded with boxes of the plant’s dairy products.
    “Do you recognize those men?” asked Erik of the five plant employees in the conference room. No one said a word, but Erik could tell they did. He sighed. It was time to clean house.
    After a couple minutes, Jim spoke up. “I’m sorry to say one of them is my son, Jim, Jr. I don’t know the names of the other two, although they look familiar.”
    “I do,” said Bob Holstein, supervisor of the shipping department. “I hired them about a year ago.” He looked regrettably at Jim. “Jim, Jr. recommended them.”
    Erik turned to Jim and placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.
    “Look, there is no easy way to do this, but I’ll give you two options. You can fire Jim, Jr. and the other two men and have security cameras installed in the loading area. That was an oversight. Or we can let the police handle it. I’m truly sorry it turned out this way.”
    “So am I,” Jim said with a hangdog expression. His fellow employees offered sympathy. Erik pulled the private detective aside. “Thank you for your assistance, Ms. Estes.”
    “Sometimes,” she said with a glance in Jim Olsen’s direction, “this job sucks.”
    Erik knew what she meant. He felt bad for Jim Olsen. However the situation had to be handled and the culprits punished.
    When the conference room had been cleared of everyone except him and Jim Olsen, he looked at Jim with regret. “I realize at this point you don’t think things can go back to how they were before this incident, but they can. My father tells me you’re a good man, Jim. You run this plant well and you’re fair with your employees. They obviously respect you. What’s more, you seem to enjoy your job. Don’t let this affect your satisfaction in it. I don’t hold you responsible for what happened here.” He held out his hand.
    Jim gratefully shook it and said, “It’s going to be hard. My wife will cry her heart out over the situation. Jim, Jr. has been in trouble before, and we thought he was trying to straighten his life out.”
    “I have every bit of confidence in you, Jim,” Erik said sincerely.
    Jim let go of his hand and walked over to the large window that looked down on the employee parking lot. “Twenty-five years in this job with a spotless record and it’s come to this. I should have been watching him more closely when he moved back into the house. Of course, we couldn’t let him be homeless. It really pisses me off that while I was sleeping he was stealing my keys to steal from the company.” His eyes were tormented when he faced Erik again. “This is going to kill my wife. But I’m going to have to put him out, and let him fend for himself.”
    Erik didn’t know what to say to that, not being a father himself. He had no sage advice to offer. Sometimes you had to make hard choices in life.
    “That’ll be tough,” was all he said.
    Jim nodded in agreement, then seemed to gather strength from someplace deep inside and said, “It has to be done.”
    Erik left the plant soon after that. The hired car drove him back to the airport in Minneapolis and the company plane was ready to take off within minutes. Erik had known the flight plan ahead of time and had made it back to the plane with minutes to spare.
    As they winged their way back to New York, he slept, which is what he resorted to when he didn’t want to think anymore. He honestly had not guessed that the culprit could have been someone so close to one of his