Time, during the next few weeks, sometimes went quickly and sometimes slowly. Twice Steve was sent off to deal with issues. One was a routine real estate transfer, but the other was an evaluation of whether to hold onto stock in a company in Denver. It didn’t take Steve much study to realize that the industry was heading downhill, and the company was cooking the books badly. “Get out while we still can,” was his recommendation, along with a suggestion that the Internal Revenue Service get tipped off.

In that six weeks, the price for Shawtex stock tripled, mostly through Ann’s machinations. There was some artistry going on there, and no little psychology, but in time they wound up owning a little less than fifty percent of the stock. “That, sirs, is about all we’re going to get, and at that there are some short sellers out there who are going to wind up with egg on their faces. I’m not sure how we’re going to get control at this rate. The several accounts in which we hold the shares have been receiving notices for the annual shareholder’s meeting, which will likely be a very short one just confirming the existing conditions.”

“Right,” Steve agreed. “I’ve been over their charter, and there are a couple of interesting points that probably no one considered when they set the company up in the first place.”

“The heck of it,” Uncle Homer pointed out, “is that virtually every one of the company shareholders who holds a major block of stock is likely to be at the meeting.”

“But what if one of them isn’t there?” Steve asked.

“That would put a little different spin on things, that’s for sure,” Uncle Homer agreed. “Are you suggesting something like arranging an accident for one of them?”

“It would do the job,” Steve agreed, “but it would have to be at the last moment or they could have a proxy to vote their shares. It would be chancy, and worse, most of the accidents I can think of would be illegal. I don’t think we want to step over that line, since too much could go wrong. I think we need to play by the rules, even though we bend them a little bit.”

“I’ll have to agree with you on that, Steve,” Uncle Homer said. “There are times I’ve had to step over the line, but when I have I’ve always done it carefully, and not without plenty of good reason. Unless you’ve got some idea I haven’t heard, neither of those apply in this case. There’s no reason we can’t just fold our tents and sneak off into the night. If we do, we haven’t lost anything.”

“I suppose you’re right, but I hate to do it without taking a swing at this. Besides, it might be possible to apply a little psychological warfare that might alter the situation a little.”

“What do you plan on doing if you can take the company over?”

“Pull a Shawtex on Shawtex,” Steve said. “Sell off their delivery contracts for peanuts to one of your shadow companies. Once that’s happened, we can take our time and bring the production back from overseas. I’ll bet they have forty or fifty production contracts, and there are people who would be glad to have the work. Phil would love to have some of those contracts, and I’ll bet that we can fill most of them.”

“But why not just do it as Shawtex, sir?” Ann asked.

“Because we’d only have a little over half the stock, so for every dollar we made forty-nine cents of it would go to those jokers. If the contracts are held by, oh, Taylor-Rutledge-Taylor Industries just to pull a name out of the hat, they don’t get squat. When we’ve wrung the place dry, we dump the stock. The old jokers take back over, but have no assets and a hatful of debt.”

“That would work,” Uncle Homer agreed, “but it’s still going to be tricky to get hold of the company in the first place.”

“I have nothing against tricky, and I doubt you do, either.”

“It sounds like you have a plan.”

“I have the outline of one, but it’s going to take some effort to come up with a viable plan. If we can pull this off, we’re going to have to be quick on our feet to make everything work.”

“Sir,” receptionist Sylvia Upton said to her boss, Ronald Woolridge, the president of Shawtex Industries. “We’re starting to run out of space in the conference room.”

Woolridge was a little confused as to why so many stockholders were showing up at the shareholder’s meeting. Other than the handful of people who mattered, there had never been another stockholder show up at the meeting before. It was too goddamn bad that Ellis had been playing around with his company stock on the stock exchange the last few weeks. The damn stock had tripled in value, sure, but it still didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Now, all these people were coming out of the woodwork!

It was mostly going to be for nothing, anyway. He and Powell still held the majority of the stock, along with a couple of others in the company, and with their majority they didn’t have to answer any awkward questions. The meeting would be over in minutes, and they could get back to business without any minority shareholders in their hair.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Just crowd them in there. This won’t take long.”

Woolridge went back into his office. The way the stock had been jumping around was only one of a number of strange things going on lately, and none of them made sense. And on the subject of not making sense, Darrin Powell was waiting for him in his office, and Powell hadn’t been making sense for weeks, not that he’d done so very much in the past. “What is it this time?” he asked.

“I got another one of those goddamn nickels,” he replied. “This is getting past ridiculous.”

Woolridge didn’t dispute that, but then Powell was beyond ridiculous himself, him and his phobia about vampires. “Another one?” he asked casually.

“Another one. This one was glued to the windshield of my car. I took a screwdriver to pop it off, but I scratched the hell out of the glass. And I got another photo of one in my e-mail.”

“Who sent it?”

“That’s the hell of it. It came from my own e-mail address.”

“Someone is spoofing you, there’s no doubt about that,” Woolridge shook his head. “It’s not that difficult to do.”

“Yeah, but who is sending them, and why?”

“Who knows?” Woolridge shook his head. There was going to have to be something done about Powell, and preferably soon, but there wasn’t much that could be done till the stockholder’s meeting was out of the way.

In the last few weeks Powell had been getting progressively jumpier. About a month ago he’d gotten a strange nickel in the mail, in a small envelope. One side of the nickel was a relatively normal nickel, although older than somewhat – the date said 1915, so it was a hundred years old. The other side wasn’t a normal nickel, though: instead of the Indian Head that would be normal on a coin that old, the head had somehow been changed into the head of a woman vampire, with long canine teeth and an evil expression. Woolridge had simply thought it was a little weird, but Powell had just about gone nuts. There was no note with the nickel, no explanation, and Woolridge hadn’t thought much about it – although Powell obviously did.

But there had been more of the vampire nickels show up, one or two a week, and not all of them in the mail. Sometimes it wasn’t clear where they came from, but every time one showed up Powell got flakier. But then photos of the nickel began showing up in his e-mail, sometimes in attachments from people he was dealing with. They’d even started showing up on that stupid website Powell spent too damn much company time on. It was clear that Powell was near the edge, and it was actually a little surprising that he hadn’t gone over the edge already.

“Damn it, Ron, they’re out to get me! There’s got to be a vampire after me!”

“Goddamn it Darrin, for the umpteenth goddamn time there are no such things as vampires! What do I have to tell you to make it more clear to you? Now pull yourself together, and let’s get this meeting over with.”

In only a few minutes Woolridge and Powell walked into the conference room and took their seats. The room was crowded, with people standing around the walls. All of them were strangers, of course. “In view of the number of people here today with whom I’m not familiar,” Woolridge said, “Is there anyone here who is not a stockholder?”

“Sir,” Sylvia spoke up, “I’ve asked everyone here to register their interest, and show proof of how much stock in Shawtex they own.”

“Very good, Sylvia, you’re on the ball as usual,” he replied. “Can you give me a summary of the stock positions?”

“Yes, sir, it’s in front of you.”

Woolridge glanced down at the sheet of paper Sylvia had left for him. The summary was easily figured out – the new people represented nearly half the stock in the company, but not quite half. There would have been a little more margin if Ellis hadn’t gotten cute and rolled off some stock a few weeks before to pay off some debts. Woolridge had advised him against it, but Ellis had shaken off his advice – it seemed that Ellis owed some money to people who weren’t very nice and insisted that they get their money back or he’d have his legs broken – or worse.

But still there was plenty of control, so this shouldn’t take long, Woolridge thought.

“Very well then, let’s get this meeting under way. First off, are there any comments from stockholders we need to consider?”

The door opened, and a woman walked in. One glance at her was enough to send chills right straight up Woolridge’s spine. She was tall, with long white hair, but she was dressed completely in black, including a black cloak, which seemed very unreasonable on this hot day. But a look at her face was enough to make it worse. She had very white skin, almost purplish white, and her eyes . . . they glowed bright red! What in the hell?

“Yes, I have a statement,” she said in a cold voice, about as serious as a heart attack. “You have been very unfair to a lot of people. The dividends you’ve been paying are only worth a nickel. Here’s a nickel, so you can double your dividends.” She reached out and slid a nickel down the polished surface of the table – it came to a stop in front of Powell, who let out an audible gasp.

The strange woman bared her teeth – especially the two long canine teeth, clearly an inch or more long, and dazzling white. “Yes, Mr. Powell,” she went on. “You are to blame and you will pay the blood price.”

That was all it took to drive Powell from the room screaming. Woolridge was about to run after him, but the woman stood impassively in front of him. This couldn’t be real! “Mr. Woolridge,” the woman snarled. “I suggest you get on with things.”

“Uh . . . very well,” he replied. He barely remembered what he was supposed to be doing, but finally said. “The first order of business is the election of board members.”

Ellis spoke up. “I move that we continue the board members for another term.”

“Second the motion,” another one of the existing board members replied.

“Very well, all in favor, say aye.”

“Mr. Woolridge,” the strange woman said. “In view of the likely closeness of the vote, I ask for a poll of stockholders by shares they represent.”

“But that . . .”

“She’s got you there, Ron,” Ellis spoke up. “We could be open for a lawsuit if we don’t.”

“Very well,” Woolridge submitted. “Miss Upton, please poll the stockholders present.”

The polling didn’t take long, but it took Sylvia a minute or two with a calculator to sum everything up – and the resolution fell about five percent short of passing. Woolridge wondered what the hell had happened, but realized all of a sudden that Powell had taken about ten percent of the votes with him when he fled from the room.

“All right,” he said, realizing now that he’d been set up, and there was nothing left to do but to play out the hand. “I guess that means nominations are in order for chairman of the board.

“Thank you,” the strange woman said. “I nominate Steven Taylor to be chairman.”

“Second the motion,” said a man Woolridge recognized: Phil Crocker, standing back in the corner of the room nearly out of sight – he’d been the loser in the RELI takeover a few months before. Was it him, getting revenge like this?

It took only a few minutes, but at the end of them a new board chairman was seated, with Taylor taking the gavel; within a few more minutes, there was a totally new board. “Very well,” the young man who was now chairman of the board said. “I propose a new slate of company officers, which you have before you. All in favor, say ‘aye’.” The ayes were sounded within seconds, and only then did the strange woman in black leave the room.

“You’re firing us?” Woolridge said incredulously. “All of us?”

“Not only that, we’re going to give this company an audit like it’s never seen before,” Taylor told them. “If you manage to stay out of jail it would be a miracle.”

“You can’t do this!” Woolridge yelled, thinking of some data on his office computer that no one, especially an auditor, ought to see.

He charged out the door and headed for his office, only to be met there by a pair of large, uniformed security guards. Through the open door of his office he could see a pair of business-suited men starting to copy the files off of his computer.

“Sir,” one of the security guards said. “According to Mr. Taylor you are not to be allowed in there. I suggest you leave the building peacefully or you will have to be escorted out.”

Woolridge knew when he was licked. He was standing outside the building when several other members of the company – former members of the company – came out, a couple of them with armed guards accompanying them.

“They can’t do this to us,” Ellis complained.

“I hate to say this, but they did,” Woolridge shook his head. “Where the hell is that fucking Powell?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he ran off.”

“Goddamn it, if he’d been there to vote, we could’ve held the line. We’re just going to have to hunt him down and call an emergency stockholder’s meeting. Maybe we stand a chance to get this mess back under control before things get out of hand.”

“I’m afraid they are out of hand,” Ellis sighed. “Taylor gave me this on the way out.” He held out a package made up of several sheets of paper stapled together; it had been folded back to a particular page, where one paragraph had been highlighted. It stated, in legalese, that while minority stockholders could call a meeting, all stockholders had to be given a thirty-day notice of it taking place.

“My god,” Woolridge said as he read the passage. “Does that mean they have their hands on the controls for thirty days?”

“The way I read it, it does,” Ellis said, “and in thirty days they can wreck us completely.”

“Well, shit,” Woolridge said, knowing he’d just stared defeat in the eye. Hell, he’d done it to plenty of other companies, and now it had just been done to him. “Who the hell was that woman, anyway?”

“Damned if I know,” Ellis said, “but she sure scared the hell out of Powell, and I’m not so sure I’d care to meet up with her in a dark alley myself.”

“I must admit, sir, I didn’t think you would be able to bring it off that easily,” Ann said from her seat in the rental car on the way to the business jet that would be taking them back to Michigan. The long fake fangs she’d been wearing in her mouth were gone and she was back to her normal head-to-toe outside clothing.

“I admit that I thought it was a long shot myself,” Steve replied. “But like I said, it was psychological warfare, and fortunately we had a good target. We didn’t do anything illegal to Powell, other than just scare the living shit out of him.”

“The morality of it might be open to question, sir,” she smiled, “but as Mr. Taylor has often said, what goes around, comes around.”

“That was the general intent,” he replied. “I have to say, you did a great job of playing your part.”

“I’ve had to play Ann the Vampire before, sir,” she smiled, “but never quite like that. I’m not sure I like doing it, but it was in a good cause.”

“Yes, it was,” he agreed, “and we’re going to come out of it smelling like a rose. Granted, the stock will collapse since there’s no one who will want to buy it by the time Phil and Craig get through with gutting the company. They’re going to be two busy little beavers, but we’ll be backing them up when they need it.”

“I can’t believe how busy they’re going to be, sir. After all, they still have Crocker Quality Manufacturing to run.”

“A very quickly growing Crocker Quality Manufacturing, too,” Steve laughed. “After all, getting the old RELI plant back for one dollar helped considerably, and he’s going to have work to go in it. We’re going to be a while bringing all the contracts back onshore, but I think Craig will be able to manage it for us. After all, Thompson-Wright is the one who owns those contracts now, and that’s us. It’s going to make us a ton of money in the long run, although we’re going to have to massage it for a while.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand what you were doing with that, sir.”

“It’s fairly simple. We can’t just dump the supplier contracts, and they come due at different times. The customers still need the parts, and we can get them from the suppliers in China and Mexico as we need them. As the supplier contracts run out, we’ll transfer them to stateside companies with a reputation for quality control, even if we have to take it on the chin a little to do the deal. Of course, we can also provide financing for expansion if it’s needed, and it’ll be interesting to see how many of those contracts Crocker Quality Manufacturing bids on.”

“So you’re working both sides of the street again, sir. I think Mr. Taylor will be impressed, and sir, I know I’m impressed.”

“I’m glad you think so, Ann. When I compare myself to you and Uncle Homer, I keep thinking I’m trying to play catch-up.”

“Indeed you are, sir. There are things that you needed to learn, as Mr. Taylor pointed out to me even before I went to get you. But you’ve done an admirable job of learning them. I may be overstepping my bounds by saying it, but I think it safe to say that is what he was hoping to accomplish, sir.”

“I’m glad you think so, Ann. I have a lot of respect for your skills and your fortitude, and I’ve really come to like you. Perhaps you can play Ann the Vampire when you have to, but I’ve come to realize that’s not who you are.”

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.