by Don Travis
I placed a call to Richard Quintana and found the answer. “Never met the lady. Sent her lots of stuff and received some. She worked from her home. I was their CPA, not their bookkeeper, but I was on-site more than for most of my clients. VPMR wasn’t very well organized.”
“So I gathered. Let me guess, Burke lived at 2551 Georgia Street.”
“Fits with what I remember, all right. But she didn’t stay long. Moved somewhere, I believe.”
I took a shot in the dark. “I understand Thelma Rider lived at the Georgia Street address too.”
“Don’t really know the answer but seems like I recall someone saying they bunked together.”
“Would the date Burke left be about the same time Thelma Rider resigned from the company?”
“I believe Thelma stayed on a month or so longer than Sadie. Is this significant?” A wisp of hope tinged his voice.
“Possibly. Just trying to run down the facts.”
After hanging up, I sat for a moment wondering how soon Gloria at K-Y Labs would get back to me. There was little question in my mind the two women were one, but she could ice the cake by verifying the two signatures were made by the same hand.
In response to a phone call, Zachary Greystone invited me over to his law office at Greystone and Hastings LLC. As it wasn’t a long walk to the law firm, I exited my building by the Fifth Street door, crossed the street, and walked east on Tijeras to the First Plaza Galleria on Third. Greystone had cued his receptionist, so she ushered me into his office without delay. He rose from his black leather, high-back executive chair to shake my hand.
“Been expecting you, BJ.” He indicated an overstuffed chair in the corner of his spacious office and joined me on a small settee positioned at right angles to my chair. A svelte blonde entered with a tray holding a coffee carafe and a teapot. I chose tea, which she poured before fixing her boss a well-creamed coffee.
“I heard you’re stirring up all the old Voxlightner mess,” Zach said after he nodded his thanks and the secretary withdrew.
“Mrs. Voxlightner asked me to take a look.”
“Heard Belhaven thought he turned up a vital clue that would reveal all.”
“So I understand,” I said.
“Have you found it?”
“His notes were stolen, and his computers destroyed the night he was killed. So we have little to go on.”
“The fact he was murdered in his own home must mean he was onto something. Hope you can find it. What can I do for you?”
For the next thirty minutes, Zach reviewed what he knew about the scam, spending too much time—as did most of them—on his personal loss and humiliation. After his lawyer’s mind was convinced Barron and Walther were onto something valuable, he actively promoted the public offering.
Zach confirmed the accuracy of most of what I knew but contributed little else. He knew Barron hired Thelma Rider after someone—he thought Wick or Hightower—recommended her. He recalled she left the company in January 2004 to return home to care for a terminally ill parent. Of Sadie Burke, he knew nothing at all.
Upon exiting the building, I got through to Newton Williamson at the Northeast Heights National Bank, which, contrary to its name, sat on the downtown corner of Second and Central NE, a short distance from where I was. He told me to come on over.
After we were seated in his office, Newt groused a little more than most about recalling unpleasant history. He was entitled. He had been the bank vice president in charge of the VPMR account. An account from which a large amount of money scooted out the back door, so to speak. I had no doubt there were plenty of red flags along the way, but somehow they’d not been called to his attention quickly enough. His contribution to my store of knowledge was three large wire transfers to foreign bank accounts. There had been a fourth, but by then, Newt was aware something was going on and managed to stop it, preventing the loss of an additional $5,000,000. I suspected his obvious reluctance to relive the situation grew from his belief he should have been on the ball and blown the whistle on the company’s shenanigans. As was true of everyone else I’d spoken to, he still found it hard to believe Barron Voxlightner was a part of the scheme. Nonetheless he accepted the general verdict that his friend was guilty.
On my return to the office I was tempted to cross Tijeras and stroll the civic plaza with its lattice-covered walkways and gushing fountain. I resisted and arrived back at my desk in time to take Gloria McInnes’s call. The signatures of Sadie Burke and Thelma Rider were made by the same hand.
“She was good, BJ. Almost a professional, you could say. But everyone here agrees the signatures were executed by the same person.”
I thanked Gloria and hung up. A little more progress. But where was it leading? Too soon to say.
Chapter 10
THAT EVENING—after Paul let Pedro roam and play to the point of exhaustion—we lay side by side in bed as our breathing slowed. Everything seemed so normal I was loath to explore our feelings at the moment.
Paul spoke into the darkness. “I checked the intruder lights this afternoon. They’re in good order.”
“Good to know. What prompted you to check them?”
“Just seemed like a good idea. When Pierce started poking into things, somebody offed him, so….”
“True. But there are two of us, and we’re in better physical shape than Belhaven. Not so old.”
“If you’re saying there’s no danger, that’s a whole ’nother thing.”
I thought before I responded. In the faint glow of the bathroom nightlight, I contemplated Paul’s pleasing profile as he lay on his back and almost choked at the thought something might go wrong between us. “You’re right to be cautious. And it’s careless of me not to feel threatened.” I paused again. “But you know, I don’t. Not once have I felt in danger.”
“They say that’s when you’re most vulnerable.”
“True. Thanks for reminding me.”
The room got quiet again, although I knew he wasn’t asleep. Then he confirmed it. “Do you think I should get a carry permit?”
“If you’ll feel safer with a weapon, why not?” I asked.
“Guess I could.”
I didn’t know the decision Paul reached because he dropped off. Comfortable in the warmth of his presence, I should have followed him quickly, but he’d made me consider I was putting him in jeopardy again by involving him in my case. Not so. This was his case as much as mine. He’d determined to investigate his friend’s death as a journalist; taking me along with him was coincidental. He was in it, danger or no.
And then there was that unknown thing hovering between us. I’ve said many times a good investigator needs at least a small dose of paranoia, and that might be all it was. But I didn’t think so. Paul wasn’t a touchy, feely sort of guy, but at home he found occasion to touch me. A hand on mine, an arm draped over my shoulder, that sort of thing. But this was absent now. I wasn’t sure when some gulf, imaginary or real, opened, but it was slowly penetrating my consciousness.
I WAS more interested in pursuing the new lead than I was in rummaging around in more of the old stuff, so I prevailed upon Ted Donaldson to drag out the real estate investment trust’s old records and discovered “Willie Stark,” “Adam Stanton,” and “Sadie Burke” paid rent with money orders. Stores selling the orders—and certainly the post office—required proper ID from purchasers of such instruments, so that argued they went to the trouble and expense of creating fake identification papers. Not too hard a chore in this day of electronic machines. And the payoff was certainly worth the expense.
Surveillance photos? Undoubtedly there had been some, but who would keep them for eight years? Worth a try, but probably a dead end like everything else so far.
One thing puzzled me. Why had “Adam Stanton” sublet the property after the so-called Sadie Burke left? If the conspirators finished creating the substitute prills for the tests, why did they need another sublessee? Time to sit back and sort out a few things.
>
Thelma Rider was obviously Sadie Burke. Her role in everything was rapidly becoming clear. She was needed to introduce and approve phony invoices when the gang—and I now considered it a gang—was nibbling around the edges of the Voxlightner company. She also provided the place where the substitute prills were created. Why not lease the place in her own name? Two reasons. She needed an address for the nonexistent employee, Burke, and she didn’t want her name on anything to do with an address where exorbitant electrical usage might someday be of significance in a criminal case. But nothing in her background argued she possessed the technical know-how to fire assay ore.
Dr. Walther Stabler was either William Stark or Adam Stanton. The temptation was to say he was Stark, the original lessee of the house. But I sensed a subliminal presence. A bigger, more organized phantom brain moving all the players like a chessmaster. Stabler was key, but the shadowy image I perceived was local. He knew who to touch, who to avoid, and how to approach people. This description fit Barron Voxlightner to a T, but it also neatly matched the mover and shaker Hardwick Pillsner. Barron fled—or at least disappeared—while Wick stayed to face the music. Did that mean anything?
But why the two subleases. Burke’s made sense. Why the one in the name of Stanton? Thelma Rider’s sudden departure caught the others by surprise, that’s why. The mastermind behind the plot wanted distance between himself and the activities at Georgia Street. And he wasn’t finished at the stucco house on Georgia. Why? More assays to make certain they had enough? Time to dismantle and get rid of the equipment necessary to conduct the fire assays? Had the intense heat damaged the garage, requiring repair and cover-up work? All of this rang true to me.
Then something hit me… right between the eyes, so to speak. If Barron was the mastermind behind the scam, he intended to disappear and live out his life in some foreign paradise. Why put the extra layer between himself and the other schemers? I began to think like almost everyone else I’d talked to about the scandal. Barron Voxlightner was not that kind of man.
I made a few photocopies, thanked Ted for his help, and headed back to the office where I dictated a memo of my findings before picking up the telephone and dialing the Chillicothe, Texas, Police Department.
I ended up speaking to Philip Anderson, the same sergeant I’d spoken to a few days earlier. He heard me out and asked a dozen questions that told me he owned a brain, despite his whiskey voice. He then summed up the situation.
“You’ve found evidence Thelma was mixed up in the brouhaha over there in Albuquerque even though the feds told me she was clear of it. And now you want me to reopen her accident case because you believe her coconspirators out there killed her to shut her up?”
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
“Why would they wait this long? She didn’t plow into the oak until last December. That’s what? Five or six years after your case blew up. Why kill her then? She kept her mouth shut.”
“What’s the most likely reason, Sergeant?”
“Money,” he said after a pause. “She was trying to tap someone for a bigger piece.”
“That’s the most likely motive. Will you take a deeper look into the woman? Bank accounts, phone records, anything that might help us?”
“Yeah. Seems like it’s worth a shot. She doesn’t have any relatives still living, so getting her exhumed shouldn’t be much of a problem.”
After the call I felt I owed my client an update. Dorothy Voxlightner listened to my careful explanation to the end without comment. “I’ll send this to you in writing, Dorothy, but I felt it was time to touch base with you.”
“Thank you. Although you didn’t say it aloud, I sense you question Barron’s position in all this mess.”
“I have some doubts about his involvement, ma’am. They’re mostly cerebral without much to back them up.”
“I hear you have good instincts. But that’s depressing as well as reassuring, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. If we’re both right and Barron wasn’t involved in the rip-off, then….”
“Then he’s dead,” she finished for me. A deep sigh followed. “I would prefer to have my son alive and innocent. I fear this is not possible, so I will settle for the other conclusion.” With that she murmured her thanks and hung up the telephone.
Chapter 11
REFERRING TO notes I’d made about money orders used to pay rent at LMZ, I plodded through five useless calls to Walmart and Smith’s Food and Drug in search of more information, namely a video of the purchaser. Mostly, I got horselaughs. Who keeps videos for eight years? The last call—the one I almost didn’t make because I was losing what little hope I had—restored my faith in plodding.
“I got a whole bin full of tapes, mister,” a bored voice at a minimart inside a corner gas station said. “Some of them might go back that far. Welcome to come root around if you want.”
“Be right over,” I said. “Who do I ask for?”
“Bud. I’m the only guy here today.”
I reviewed my belief that every confidential investigator must have the patience of Job plus Job’s grandfather as I tore out of my office’s parking lot and headed for Bud’s Minimart and Gas. The only rain we’d been blessed with thus far during our monsoon season merely dampened the streets without the need for windshield wipers. A high established itself above the state and stayed there, which precluded the flow of moisture from either the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of California… until today. I drove through a downpour to the gas station on San Pedro NE.
Bud proved to be Bud Abbott—not the old comedian we watched on late-night reruns of reruns—but the owner of the mart. He was heavy, florid, and slow-moving. But his head was screwed on right. He asked who I was and why I wanted the tapes before conducting me back to the stockroom area, where he opened a bin and waved to a jumbled pile of tapes.
“Dunno if it’s got what you want. Whenever I need a new tape, I grab one and tape over what’s already on it.”
“How long do you keep those new tapes handy?”
“Keep three months’ worth behind the counter, then they get dumped into the bin. Or if I get lazy, I just tape over those. Word of warning. I used to date-label them in ink but haven’t for the last few years.”
“So if there’s something from back in ’03, it’s probably got a label?” I asked.
He wiggled a hand back and forth. “Chances are pretty good.”
“Whether or not you labeled the plastic cover, the tapes themselves are date and time stamped, right?”
“You got it. Anyway have at it.”
Have at it, I did. I emptied the bin hoping to get to the older tapes, but Bud had obviously rooted around in the container a couple of times himself, so there was no logical order. I ended up making two stacks: those with a label, and those without. After an hour of searching, I came up with a tape for July 2003. According to my notes, Adam Stanton paid his sublease to LMZ on the third of July with a money order from Bud’s Minimart and Gas. With Bud’s help I viewed the tape and found an image of Dr. Walther Stabler purchasing a money order on the first of July. Bingo! Stabler was Stanton. But who was Stark? My earlier search of LMZ’s files told me Stark never purchased a money order at Bud’s Minimart to pay his rent, so my task here was done.
I’d pinned down two of the three lessees of the Georgia address, but the third—the most important—still eluded me.
When I left the station, the rain clouds had cleared away, and a bright sun was hard at work drying out the wet concrete and asphalt.
PAUL HAD spent the day with Roy Guerra, and I gathered from the review of their activities, the two of them devoted more time to educating Paul in police procedures than in pursuing the case itself. Even so, this would prove to be invaluable to my companion in the future.
The next day, a Saturday, Paul and I drove to the Smith’s Food and Drug on North Fourth, which I’d managed to pin down as the place Stark purchased his money order for the first month’s rent on the Georgia Str
eet address. A polite inquiry at the customer service desk almost got us laughed out of the place, but I persisted and learned the former assistant manager, a man named Abner Brown, often worked the service desk back in 2003.
Unfortunately—for me at least—Brown had transferred to the store on Freedom Boulevard in Provo, Utah. The helpful clerk even looked up the telephone number for me. Alas, Mr. Brown left Smith’s Food and Drug last year to take employment with a competitor in Las Vegas. No. They didn’t know how or where to reach him. I confirmed the man’s name as Abner R. Brown and turned once again to the clerk.
“Sorry,” the kid facing us from behind the counter said. “We don’t keep tapes that long, but we’ll have a record of the purchase. They’re all on the computer, so I might be able to find the one you’re looking for.”
I took in the young man staring back at us and knew at once he’d like nothing better than to play with his company’s computer. “Be obliged if you’ll give it a shot. We’re looking for a money order purchased in late April or early May, sold to a William Stark.”
“How much was it for?”
“Seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Don’t happen to have the MO number do you?”
I took a look at my photocopy and cited a number for him.
He futzed and mumbled and uttered an expletive or two but eventually gave us a thumb’s up. “Got it. Everything matches, and….” He let that hang there for a moment as he poked a few more buttons. “Yup, Abner Brown was the guy who sold it to him.”
Paul and I thanked the young man and headed for the Impala. “We’ll let Hazel run down Abner Brown for us,” I said as we sped up North Fourth on the way home.
