CDI, past and future.

Dillard's Inc. has announced, you know, that it is buying the 50 percent of CDI Contractors of Little Rock that it didn't already own.

That half, of course, is owned by the survivors of Bill Clark, who founded CDI with Dillard's Inc. in 1987 and died in 200Z

According to a statement issued by CDI and Dillard's in February, the original agreement forming the partnership gave Dillard's the right to purchase Clark's interest following his death.

That statement was issued in response to questions from Arkansas Business about the state of the partnership after CDI's longtime chief financial officer, John Glasgow, vanished on Jan. 29.

Glasgow's family says there have been no new developments or leads in the mysterious disappearance. An article about the case that was expected to appear in Portfolio magazine over the summer has been postponed.

We do know, however, where another former CFO of CDI Contractors is: Kevin M. Wheeler is working for a car dealership in Memphis and occasionally looking for a better job.

Wheeler, 45, served less than six months of a 10-year sentence in an Arkansas prison for a $1.3 million embezzlement from CDI that Glasgow helped uncover back in 1995. In 2000, while Wheeler was still on parole, he somehow got a job with a construction company in Memphis, MCDR Contractors & Construction Managers, and ended up in federal prison for embezzling again, this time a mere $300,000. Wheeler was released in March 2007.

A resume that was forwarded to your Whispers staff details his many years of experience with construction companies but somehow fails to mention either CDI or MCDR. Wheeler, to our surprise, returned a call made to the phone number on the resume. He says both companies asked that he leave them out of his job history.

So his resume instead says he was an accountant, controller and then CFO of "Construction Management, Inc." between 1985 and 1995, and he was controller of "Construction, Inc." from 1999-2003. No location is listed for either of those companies with their plainvanilla names, and Wheeler acknowledged that neither company exists.

Wheeler said he only reveals his criminal history to prospective employers who actually offer him a job. So far, that revelation has always resulted in the job offer being withdrawn.