Uncharted Waters

by Rosemary McCracken

  ***

  Ben arrived on the stroke of 11.

  “We’ll go over the basics today, as I do with every new client,” I said when Sam had brought him a coffee, and we’d finished the social chitchat.

  He gave a small sigh. “Do what you must.”

  I asked about his dependents. No dependents. His wife was dead. His daughter, Marianne, was paid a handsome salary to run the family’s philanthropic foundation. She had also received a sizable inheritance from her mother, and she was married to a corporate lawyer.

  I moved on to Ben’s liabilities. Nothing there, either. He paid his bills, his household staff, and his taxes on time.

  Then I asked about his non-investment assets. He listed his Toronto home, his bungalow in Barbados, his condo in New York, his vacation home in Muskoka, and his cars and boats. He gave short replies to all my questions. One or two words whenever possible.

  “Should I scratch your Toronto home from this list?” I asked.

  He looked surprised. “Whatever for?”

  “You’re selling it, aren’t you?” I paused. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He gave me an aw-shucks smile. “I didn’t think it was important.”

  I pasted a smile on my face. “In any event, you’ll need a place to live in Toronto when it’s sold. Will you be looking at a home of approximately the same value, or do you plan to downsize? Or go upmarket?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Ben, the sale of your home will put a lot of cash in your pocket. You may want to invest some of it. But if you buy a more expensive home, you’ll need to sell one of your other homes, or some of your securities.”

  “So there’s no point in a portfolio review right now?” He sounded hopeful.

  “Not until your house sells, and you decide what you’ll do with the money you get from it. The Toronto housing market is still hot, so it could sell any day. How long has it been listed?”

  He shrugged. “About two weeks.”

  He’d put his home up for sale around the time I’d bought Dean’s business. Since then, we’d had dinner, gone to the opera, and driven to Blairhampton. But technically, Ben hadn’t been my client before this meeting, so he didn’t have to tell me. I returned to gathering information.

  “I know this sounds like motherhood and apple pie,” I said, “but deciding what you want to do with your money during your lifetime and where you want it to go after your death is important.”

  Ben closed his eyes for a few moments. “My daughter should be more than okay, but, just to be sure, I’m leaving her a tidy sum to see her through any setbacks. But the bulk of my estate will go to something dear to my heart.”

  “Cordova Philanthropies?”

  He shook his head. “Goes without saying that’s a worthy enterprise, but I’m creating a trust to fund another good cause.”

  “Which is?” I asked.

  “I’m keeping it under wraps for now. I’m doing some research, and I don’t want to jinx anything.”

  My smile nailed in place, I moved on. Dean had structured Ben’s investment portfolio with a nice mix of blue-chip, dividend-paying stocks, and fairly large exposure to the bond market. I asked him about this, because bond returns had been low for the past few years.

  “I don’t mind being in bonds at two percent,” he said. “It diversifies my risk if the stock market tanks.”

  With that, I seemed to have his take on investment risk. He appeared to be more interested in preserving the money he had than chasing high returns. Nevertheless, I had him fill out a questionnaire to gauge his tolerance for investment risk.

  “These questionnaires are pretty useless,” he said when he’d finished. “Risk tolerance can be quite different when there’s actual money involved.”

  I tried to look sympathetic. “That may be, but I need some idea of how you might react to market swings.”

  “Pat, I’m not your typical client. I’ve achieved my financial goals. If my portfolio drops by 20 percent, I’m not going to start crying.”

  He was wealthy, and a market drop wouldn’t wipe him out, but I had to play by the book. That’s how I operate.

  When he had signed the know-your-client document, I felt as if I’d only scratched the surface. What else was my top client keeping from me?

  “Last week, I asked if you knew Gabe Quincy, the disgraced financial planner who was corresponding with Dean. You said you didn’t know him.” I kept my eyes fixed on Ben’s face. “Yet Rebecca Quincy, your real-estate agent, is his wife.”

  He looked puzzled. “Is that right? I never connected the names.”

  “How did you come to have Rebecca as your agent?”

  “A referral, probably.” He rubbed his chin. “Maybe it was Dean. I must have mentioned that I was thinking of selling, and Dean gave me her card.”

  Before I could say anything, Ben held up his hand. “No more shop talk for now, okay?” He stretched in the chair. “Hey, it’s 12:10. Let’s get some lunch.”

  I closed the folder with the printouts I’d made of his holdings. “Thanks, but I have work to do. When your house sells, let me know. We’ll need to meet then.”

  ***

  I handed Sam a few bills. “Buy us lunch at Giorgio’s.”

  She beamed at me. “What would you like?”

  “Surprise me.”

  My meeting with Ben had left me rattled. I went out on the fire escape and took several deep breaths of fresh air. Looking down, I saw that the yellow police tape was still in place.

  Sam came into my office with a large brown bag. She opened it on my desk, and lifted out two plastic containers.

  I took a peek inside the container she handed me. Greek dips, grilled pita wedges and Greek salad. “Looks yummy,” I said.

  She nodded. “The dips are awesome. Maria, Giorgio’s wife, makes them.”

  “I need an hour to myself,” I told her. “Take my calls. Tell them I’ll get back to them by the end of the day.”

  I poured myself another coffee and took it back to my office.

  I thought about Ben as I ate my lunch at my desk. He’d said we would work well together, but now I was having serious reservations. He hadn’t spoken about listing his home until I brought it up. And I didn’t believe for a moment that he hadn’t connected Becca and Gabe’s surnames.

  Over coffee, I read the printouts I’d made of the e-mails. Once again, the words home-equity loans caught my eyes.

  Were Riza, Dean, and Gabe setting up lines of credit in homeowners’ names, and draining the equity in their property? It takes a special kind of evil to rob people of the homes they’ve worked hard for. Home ownership is an important milestone in our society. I’d recently taken out a business loan against my home, which made me feel vulnerable. My home was no longer completely mine.

  Riza must have caught wind of the scam. She’d had her ear to the ground, and she’d sent Mindy to get more information from Dean.

  And it would be true to form for Gabe, who’d been convicted of a scam targeting vulnerable women, to be part of another scheme that preyed on innocent people.

  The problem was I had no proof that any crimes had been committed or were being planned. Just a few words in an e-mail, Gabe’s unsavory background, and a strong feeling in my gut.

  I sighed in frustration, then typed Gabe Quincy into my search engine. The newspaper articles came up about the theft of maternity records at Oak Ridges Health Center. I clicked on the Toronto World article that I’d read with Ilona.

  Under its headline was a photo of Gabe trying to hide his face from photographers as he left the courthouse. He had his hands up and his face turned to shield himself from cameras on his right, but a photographer directly in front of him had captured his scowling profile. I recognized the man who had opened the door at Michelle’s home the previous evening.

  I sprinted to my office door and flung it open. “Sam, I’ve got something to show you.”

  I sat her down at my desk and
pointed to the image on my screen. “This guy answered Michelle’s door last night.”

  “That’s Gabe. What’s his connection to Michelle Blake?”

  “He knows her well enough to answer her door in his bare feet.” Gabe’s photo made me curious to see what Becca looked like. “Do you have a photo of your sister?”

  She thought for a moment or two. “On my Facebook page. Are you on Facebook?”

  “No.” I didn’t have time for Facebook or Twitter or Instagram.

  “Come over to my desk.”

  I stood behind her as she clicked on her screen at the reception desk. She scrolled down to a post she’d put up six months earlier. “Happy birthday to my beautiful sister, Rebecca Quincy,” it read. “Wherever you are.”

  The photo under the birthday greeting had been taken a few years earlier. The woman’s wavy blond hair was shorter, but I recognized her face. “That’s Michelle Blake,” I said. Some of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

  “No, that’s Becca,” Sam said. “She isn’t on Facebook, but I was hoping she’d somehow see my post, or maybe a friend would tell her about it. But I never heard from her.”

  “She sometimes goes by the name Michelle Blake.”

  Sam looked incredulous. “Becca—my sister—was Dean’s client?”

  “No, she wasn’t his client. Michelle Blake was Dean’s code name for Becca. He used it because he didn’t want you to know he was working on something with Becca and Gabe. That’s why he met Michelle at home.”

  I thought of all the lies Michelle had told me, including her wacky take on investing. “Does your sister have a physical disability that keeps her at home?”

  “No. She was talking about joining a tennis club when I saw her on Sunday.”

  Sam looked as if she was about to cry. She craved a close relationship with her sister, but she was discovering things about her she didn’t like.

  “We can’t force the people we love to do what’s right,” I said gently. “You’ve been a good sister to Becca.”

  Sam turned her head away.

  Back at my desk, I thought about what Dean might have been up to with the Quincys. It hadn’t been aboveboard, and I had a strong suspicion it involved home-equity fraud.

  I smiled at the irony of Dean’s talk about working in his clients’ best interests. But my smile faded with the realization that whatever he’d been up to had probably got him killed.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Sam stopped by my office before she left for the day. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

  She usually fixed herself up before going off to meet her students, but not today. Her red hair stood up in tufts. She hadn’t bothered with lip gloss or blusher. I knew Becca was on her mind.

  “Things often have a way of working out,” I told her. Pretty lame, but it was the best I could offer.

  “Yeah, and sometimes they don’t.” She appeared to be on the verge of tears. “I’m tired of being kept in the dark. I want answers.”

  She lifted a hand in a halfhearted wave, and left.

  I had no appointments that afternoon, so I picked up the phone and called Ilona. She told me she was between clients until 4 p.m. I said I’d be with her in 20 minutes.

  ***

  Ilona poured two glasses of ice water from the large pitcher on her desk. “It may sound preposterous, but it’s entirely possible for someone to steal your home.”

  I reached for a glass and sipped some water.

  “It starts with identity theft. Fraudsters get hold of your personal information by stealing your mail, getting you to answer questions over the phone, and searching public records. When someone steals your identity, they become you. They can take out a mortgage on your home. And in a sellers’ market—”

  “Which we’re in right now.”

  “—they can sell your home sight unseen. There are buyers who are willing to rely on Internet photos and virtual tours. They may be relocating from another a city for work, and don’t have time to check out properties in person. The scamster who put your home on the market will be long gone when the buyer pulls into your driveway in a moving truck.”

  “Is nothing sacred?” I asked.

  “Clearly not,” she said. “They can also set up home-equity loans against your home, and have a large lump sum advanced to them in cash. And they can arrange for HELOCs—home equity lines of credit—that let them borrow money against your home on an ongoing basis.”

  “Diabolical.”

  “That they are, dahlink. And they seem to prefer setting up home-equity loans and HELOCs to actually selling their victims’ homes, because it’s so much easier: no buyers to find, no titles to transfer.”

  Ilona had once told me she’d worked with victims of these rackets.

  “They pose as homeowners eager to borrow money for home improvements or to pay for their kids’ educations,” she went on. “They can often borrow up to 85 percent of a home’s appraised value.”

  I was surprised that scamsters could set up HELOCs that easily. “Don’t banks have checks in place before they approve lines of credit?” I said.

  “These guys open online HELOC accounts. They manipulate the customer-verification process by forging signatures, figuring out passwords, rerouting phone calls, and using stolen account history. And they make sure that bank statements are sent to a post-office box.”

  She waved her hands, setting her bracelets jangling. “I call it 21st-century bank robbery. These scumbags can actually rob banks sitting at their laptops in their pajamas.”

  “There’s a whole generation of homeowners out there who have paid off their mortgages.” I was thinking of the baby boomers, who had entered the housing market decades earlier, when real estate was vastly cheaper.

  “And they’re the prime targets of these scamsters. The more equity in a home, the more likely it is to be targeted.”

  This type of fraud seemed fairly easy to carry out, and its potential for ruining victims’ lives was enormous. I hoped there was a special place in hell for the scamsters behind it.

  “Samantha’s sister and brother-in-law may be running a home-equity fraud,” Ilona said. “Possibly other kinds of real-estate fraud, as well. What do you have on them?”

  It was a good question. “Not nearly enough,” I replied.

  Ilona looked at her watch. “My 4 p.m. will be here in five minutes. It should be a short meeting, so wait here if you have the time. Then we can toss around some ideas.”

  She showed me into her private sanctuary. The room at the back of the suite held a desk with a framed photo of a woman who looked a lot like Ilona, wearing an old-fashioned dress with a cameo pin; and a comfortable leather armchair with a reading lamp beside it. I took the armchair, checked my e-mail, then listened to my office voice mail. One of the messages was from Daycrest Community Center, where Sam tutored inner-city kids. The center’s program director wanted to know why she hadn’t turned up that afternoon.

  I had a good idea why Sam had skipped her session, but there was no point in sharing that with the staff at Daycrest. I tried Sam’s cell phone. When she didn’t answer, I began to worry.

  I opened my phone’s browser and found Monarch Realty’s website. Rebecca Quincy worked out of Monarch’s Lawrence Park branch. I figured that Sam would look for her there.

  Worry escalated into panic. Sam wanted answers, but she didn’t realize how dangerous Becca and Gabe might be.

  ***

  Ilona maneuvered her Audi through Toronto’s midtown streets with her foot heavy on the gas pedal. She slowed down when I pointed out Monarch’s branch on Yonge Street, took a sharp right at the next intersection, and parked on a side street. We lost no time making our way over to the branch.

  The brunette behind the reception desk glanced at a closed door down the hall. “Mrs. Quincy is with a client.”

  “We’ll wait.” I picked up a magazine from the coffee table and took a chair.

  Ilona sat in the chair beside
me. “We have no idea how long she’ll be in there,” she grumbled.

  The receptionist took a raincoat off the stand behind her desk. “Mrs. Quincy should be with you shortly.” She hurried out with the coat over her arm.

  I heard voices raised behind the door. One of the voices was Sam’s. I jumped to my feet.

  Sam screamed. Something thudded against a wall. I sprinted across the reception area. The door down the hall opened, and Sam stormed out with a hand held up to her face. Her eyes were blazing with anger. She skidded to a halt when she saw me, then picked up her pace and ran out of the building.

  “Michelle Blake” followed Sam out of the office. A black power suit and black stiletto heels had replaced the caftan and sandals. Her hair was swept up in a chignon. Becca Quincy was no flower child.

  “Pat Tierney,” she said as she came down the hall. “What brings you here?” It wasn’t a friendly greeting.

  “I was worried about Sam. I thought I’d find her here.” I gestured to Ilona, who was standing beside me. “How should I introduce you to Ilona Horvath? As Michelle Blake or Rebecca Quincy?”

  Becca glanced at her watch. “I have to run. I’m showing a house in 10 minutes.”

  She went behind the receptionist’s desk and took a few brochures out of a drawer.

  I blocked her exit. “Why was Sam screaming?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Reverting to baby tactics. She does that when she can’t get her own way.”

  “Why did you hit her?”

  “Keep out of this, Pat. It’s none of your business.”

  “When someone hurts my assistant, it’s very much my business. Did I mention that Ilona here is my lawyer?”

  “You’ll sue me for arguing with my sister?” Becca laughed. “Lady, get off your high horse.”

  Ilona had taken a chair again, but the glint in her eyes told me she was following the conversation closely.

  Becca had duped me into believing that Michelle was a client. My anger at the time I’d wasted on Michelle kicked in. “Sit down and explain Michelle Blake to me,” I said.

  “Do names matter? I was willing to pay for your investment advice.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for games. “Cut the bullshit, Becca. We both know names matter. Dean called you Michelle Blake in the office to hide your identity from Sam. Then I came along, and wanted to meet Michelle. Why didn’t you tell me you’d found another financial advisor? Why waste my time?”