backfire

Devon looked into Sam's rheumy old eyes. Did he know how she had cheated him?

No. How could he? She could always outwit him. On his best day, Sam Stewart was no match for her, and his best days were all long behind him. Besides, who cared? She deserved everything she'd taken from him. Devon believed very strongly in everyone getting what was coming to them - it was just that you usually had to take it. Her days on the street had taught her that.

Ironically, it was Sam Steward who had gotten her off the streets. He found her taking up temporary residence in the alley behind the building where he ran his wholesale appliance company, after some scam of hers went awry. He'd taken her in and fed her.

“We can't have a sweet young girl like you living on the street,” Sam had said.

Devon played fair. She told him right out what she thought of his sentimental tripe. But her remarks didn't faze him.

“Oh, a little kindness will soften you,” Sam had insisted.

Well, she'd warned him about what he was dealing with. If he didn't choose to heed it, he deserved whatever he got. And Devon vowed to take him for everything he had.
He gave her a job in his business, even let her stay in the room off the employee kitchen. Gradually, she let him think she was softening, just the way he'd predicted. She cleaned-up her language, stopped smoking - at least when Sam was around, and generally became the daughter he'd always wanted. She discovered she was actually good at this honest work, even if it was a little tame for her. She rose through the ranks until she became Sam's personal assistant.

When he said, “Someday, Devon, this will all be yours,” she knew she had him hooked.

She also knew she didn't intend to wait for “someday.”

Once Sam decided to leave her the business, he shared all his secrets: the alarm code, the password on the computer accounting system - he even made her a signer at the bank. That's when Devon really went to work. Oh, sure, she'd been skimming a little off the top right from the start, and Sam never suspected. Hey, she deserved that. But now, she was ready to put herself on Easy Street for the rest of her life.

The first thing she did was to set up a few dummy companies that she could use to generate a little working capital. Whenever Sam left for the day, Devon would start to work. She'd stroll to the employee kitchen and light a cigarette right from the flame on Sam's prize top-of-the-line gas stove. Then she'd boot up the computer and get down to business. She'd make up invoices from fake companies she'd created, and she always saw that they were first in line for payment, before any of Sam's real suppliers.
But that was just the beginning. Devon rented a warehouse on the south side of town, and slowly began rerouting a small percentage of Sam's deliveries to her warehouse. It didn't happen overnight, but neither did it take long until she had the stock she needed to start up business on her own.

Sam began to feel the financial drain, though naturally he didn't trace it to its source - she was too smart for him.

“Someday, this will all be yours, Devon,” Sam said, as he so often did. “I just hope there will be something left for you.”

Not if Devon could help it. She was glad when Sam cut his own income to help the financial strain, and doubly gratified when he wouldn't hear of cutting hers. Hey, with all the hours she was putting in running Sam's business and building her own, she deserved that. She encouraged him to fire the few employees who might be smart enough to identify the source of the financial hemorrhage. That relieved the strain for a while, but eventually, Devon just increased what she siphoned from the till.

She found herself a little house to rent, well away from the warehouse. She was sick of living where she worked. Naturally, she paid the rent from Sam's account. Once she was settled, she would take some appliances from Sam's stock and make herself a first-rate kitchen. In the meantime, she just leaned into Sam's terrific stove and lit a cigarette and dreamed of the day when she would walk out of that old man's life taking everything he had with her.

That day was fast approaching. Devon had the capital, the building, the goods - all she needed were the customers. The problem was Sam's customers were awfully loyal to him and that town wasn't big enough to support two such facilities.

The solution finally occurred to her the day the buyer for the big chain store came to shop. She wished he'd leave so she could get to work on her own business, but Sam's customers always lingered with him, sharing little events from their lives, often making him their confessor if anything happened to be troubling their consciences.
It happened like that that day. “I tell you, Sam, I don't know where I went wrong. I'm cheating on my wife, cheating on my taxes.”

“Now, Jack, you know you want to put things right.”

Devon almost laughed out loud. “Putting things right” seemed to matter as much to Sam, as getting what was coming to her mattered to Devon.

But then it occurred to her how often she'd heard buyers and suppliers confess to one peccadillo or other. Things they wouldn't want their spouses or their communities or their employers to know. With just a little blackmail, Devon had all the customers she needed to set up shop.

Telling Sam she was leaving to set up shop on her own, flabbergasted him. “But Devon, this would all be yours someday.”

“Be honest, Sam,” she told him, actually with a straight face. “By the time you're ready to retire, there won't be anything left.”

She assured herself she didn't feel a tremor of conscience. If the silly old coot wasn't smart enough to hold on to his business, he deserved to lose it. Still, she turned away before she could see the devastation on his weary old face.

That was why she was surprised when he turned up at her house the next day, and especially since he'd brought a copy of his favorite top-of-the-line stove for her kitchen. She'd taken appliances from his stock for herself, but she hadn't intended to steal anything quite that expensive.

That was too much even for Devon. “Oh, Sam, I don't deserve it,” she told him.

Sam insisted she did. He had a couple of workmen carry the stove into the house, but he installed it himself, even attaching the gas line.

Devon just stared at the stove after Sam left, wrestling with unaccustomed emotions. But it didn't take long before her greed overcame the pang of conscience. She'd taken everything else from the stupid old man, why not this?

To break in her new stove, Devon stuck a cigarette between her lips, turned the knob on the stove and leaned in to the burner for a light. Strange, the burner didn't ignite. Devon stood for a moment, lit the cigarette with a match, and leaned back toward to stove to see what was wrong.

Funny, the burners still wouldn't light. That stupid old man couldn't have screwed up the installation, could he?

Two things happened at once: Devon heard the heard the hissing of the gas, just as she remembered Sam's exact words when he delivered the stove. She had just a moment to reflect on them before the explosion.

“Oh, you deserve this and more, Devon,” Sam had said. “And today's the day when you're going to get it.”

The End