by Maris Soule
Chapter Seven
An hour later, Wade had showered and dressed and left for the station. Jason was in the living room, playing with his Xbox, and I was at the dining room table working on Lucy Applegate’s taxes. When my landline rang, I hoped it wasn’t the Yardleys calling about their taxes. I hadn’t even looked at them.
“P.J., this is Anna,” was the response when I answered. “Any chance you could come into Kalamazoo to meet with me today?”
Even though I knew Anna couldn’t see me, I looked over at Jason and shook my head. “Wade’s working, and I’m watching my stepson.”
“Your husband works on Saturdays? I thought he was a detective or something.”
“It’s because he is a detective,” I said. “When they’re investigating a murder, they don’t have regular hours.”
“Ooh, a murder. That doesn’t sound good. Well then, any chance I can come to your place?”
I glanced at the unfinished taxes spread out across my dining room table. “You can’t tell me what’s up over the phone?”
“I’d rather not, and I need to show you something.”
“I live way out in the country,” I warned her.
She didn’t seem to care.
I gave her the address, and after hanging up, I shoved the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, had Jason pick up his things, then collected the paperwork I had on the table and took it back to the small office area I’d had built at the end of the living room. I estimated it would take Anna roughly forty minutes to drive out, which gave me enough time to take a shower and get dressed. I’d just stepped out of my bedroom when Baraka began to bark.
“Who’s here?” Jason asked, putting down his game to look out the window.
“A lady who wants to talk to me about taxes.” I knew that wouldn’t interest him.
“Oh, okay.” He went back to the couch and picked up his game.
Baraka by my side, I opened my front door the moment Anna reached the porch. As cold as it was outside, I expected her to step right inside. Instead, she stopped at the threshold, her gaze focused on Baraka’s back. “I don’t think your dog likes me.”
“What?” I said, and then understood. People unfamiliar with the Rhodesian Ridgeback breed often think the raised hairs on Baraka’s back indicate he’s mean or aggressive. “The hairs grow that way,” I told her, and ran a hand over his ridge, tracing the whorl of hairs that formed crowns at his shoulder blades to the narrow point at his hips. “A good ridge looks like a sword.”
“So, he’s not aggressive? He won’t bite me?”
I was about to say, “Only if you try to attack me,” but she looked so worried, I simply said, “No.”
“I had a dog bite me once,” Anna said, finally coming inside. “A little dog. Took me totally by surprise.” She kept looking at Baraka. “He’s big.”
“Bigger than breed standards,” I admitted, which had ended my original plan of using him as a show dog.
“He likes to play growly,” Jason said, having left his video game to join us. “And sometimes he knocks me down.”
“And that doesn’t scare you?” Anna asked.
“Naw. Have you dropped?”
My stepson pointed at Anna’s belly, and I cringed. “Jason, you don’t say something like that to a complete stranger.”
He looked up at me, “Yesterday Nonna said you dropped, and this lady looks like you do.”
“And you’re right,” Anna said before I had a chance to respond. “My baby has dropped. Your mother and I will probably have our babies about the same time.”
“She’s not my mommy,” Jason said. “My mommy died. She’s in heaven now with Daddy Michael, so Daddy married P.J.”
I could tell Anna didn’t know what to say, so I spoke up. “Jason, if you’re finished with your game, could you take Baraka upstairs? My friend is a little bit afraid of dogs and having him down here while we work might bother her.”
“Oh, okay.” He grabbed Baraka’s collar and headed for the stairs.
“Tea or coffee?” I asked Anna as she shrugged out of her winter coat.
“Tea. Decaf, if you have it.” She pulled out a chair and sat at my dining table. “He seems very blasé about his mother’s death. How long ago did she die?”
“Just last August,” I said and went into the kitchen to heat some water. “She and her new husband were on Wade’s boat when it blew up. So was Jason.” Kettle on, I stepped back into the dining room. “Jason and Wade were lucky. They had just gone to the bow of the boat to lower the anchor. The explosion threw them into the water.”
“Oh my gosh.” Anna glanced toward the stairs. “As I said, he seems very comfortable talking about it. Did you get him counseling or something?”
“We did.” I had told Connie about the therapist, but not the group. “Basically, the counselor said to talk about it with him and encourage him to talk to us about his feelings. I think he’s accepted that it wasn’t his fault, that it just happened.” I didn’t want to go into any more detail than that, so I asked her, “Why do you think someone is embezzling the charity?”
Anna’s attention came back to me. “I received a letter in the mail two weeks ago. Three of us on the Homes4Homeless board received the same letter. It said funds were missing, and we should double check the accounting. The letters weren’t signed. One of the other board members asked Mrs. Welkum for a copy of the most recent audit. She gave him all sorts of excuses why one hadn’t been done this year. That’s when he decided one of us should look at the accounts.” Anna grinned. “And guess who has a major in business and a minor in accounting?”
“So, you’ve been volunteered.”
She nodded. “You know, when I agreed to being on the board, I was told it would be a simple task, a cushy job. Just attend a few meetings during the year and agree to whatever the director wants. Well, trust me, this director does not want me doing an audit. When I showed up at the office Monday, Mrs. Welkum just about exploded.”
“But you’re doing it?”
Again, Anna nodded. “And, I’m finding some things that simply don’t make sense. Or, rather, it does look like someone has been stealing money from the charity.”
“Someone?” Friday, Anna had indicated the thief was Madeline Welkum, which didn’t make sense. Madeline Welkum was a wealthy widow, a society maven. Articles I’d read made her sound saintly. She volunteered at the food bank, had created several college scholarships for single mothers, and had started Homes4Homeless. Now she was thinking of running for the state senate. Being arrested on embezzlement charges would certainly hurt her political career. “Are you saying the thief is Madeline Welkum?”
“Maybe. Or maybe her daughter. I’m not sure.”
The teakettle whistled, and I went back into the kitchen. Quickly I gathered an array of tea bags, two mugs, spoons, sugar, and the teakettle. “There’s milk in the fridge if you want some,” I said when I set the tray of fixings on the table in front of Anna. “I don’t have any lemon, but I do have honey.”
“Plain is fine,” Anna said and fixed herself a mug of peppermint tea. After taking a cautious sip, she set her mug down and pulled a folder from her over-sized purse. “Look at these,” she said and laid two sheets of paper on the table.
In front of me were two bank statements. Each was from the same bank, but one was addressed to Anna Carr and had her mailing address, the other was addressed to Homes4Homeless and was addressed to the charity’s Kalamazoo office. “Do you see any differences?” she asked.
“They’re two different accounts.” That was obvious.
“Anything else that’s different?”
Since she’d asked twice I assumed there must be something different, so I looked closer. The bank’s logo seemed the same on each statement. Except for the specific account numbers, the accounting period and contact information, including hours of business, phone numbers, and customer service address looked identical. That section of the statement was separated from the bala
nce summary by a line, under which the important data appeared: beginning balance, deposits, checks, deductions, charges, fees, and ending balance.
I looked from one statement to the other. Again, the glaring difference was they were statements for two different entities, had different account numbers, and different balances. That, I was sure wasn’t what she wanted me to see. There had to be something else. I began to feel like I was doing one of those tests where the viewer is supposed to pick out the differences between two pictures. I was failing the test.
“I don’t see it,” I finally admitted.
“Look at how the numbers are lined up under the category headings,” Anna said.
I did, and I finally did see a difference. “The numbers on your bank statement are aligned slightly different from the alignment on the charity’s statement. But, it’s not a very big difference. A slight difference. That’s all.” I looked up at her. “And you think that’s proof that funds are being embezzled?” I didn’t buy it.
“It’s more than that, but first, let me show you something else. Note how the statements show the check numbers but not the payees’ names. Since, in cases of embezzlement, checks are sometimes written to dummy or shell businesses, I looked at the account ledger. Everything balanced and, as far as I could tell, the checks were written to legitimate businesses for legitimate purchases. Rents paid, furniture purchased, food and clothing bought. As a double check, I looked at the actual checkbook. That’s when I discovered both Mrs. Welkum and her daughter are authorized to sign the checks, and—” She paused dramatically. “—only one signature is required.”
“Oh, not good.” One thing we’d been taught in our business classes was to require two signatures on checks. It eliminates the possibility of one employee cashing checks without the other knowing. “The treasurer is her daughter, right?”
“Yes. Jewel Wiscoff. I’ve met her at a couple of the charity’s money raising events. She’s ah—” Anna hesitated. “A little weird. Laughs at things that aren’t really funny. Makes faces behind her mother’s back. She’s on vacation right now, skiing in Idaho.”
A trip paid for by the charity? I wondered. “Do you think some of those bills aren’t legit, that the money has gone into a personal account?”
“Possibly, but even more puzzling is certain checks don’t show up on the bank statement at all. The word ‘Void’ is written on the checkbook register for those check numbers.”
“Which would explain why they aren’t on the bank statement.”
“Exactly,” Anna said. “And I’m sure that’s what our embezzler hopes people believe, that she makes mistakes, maybe messes up a payee’s name or the amount, and voids the check. If I hadn’t received that anonymous letter, I might have let it go at that. After all, you had trouble seeing the difference with that bank statement.”
“You’re smiling,” I said. “Do you know who wrote those letters? Who your whistleblower is?”
“She hasn’t admitted it,” Anna said, then paused to take a sip of her tea before going on. “But Thursday mid-morning. I stopped by the charity’s office. Not because of this, but because just two weeks ago Mrs. Welkum asked me to design a new plan for the guest bathroom in her house. She gave me pictures of how the bathroom looks now and asked for suggestions and a bid on how to modernize it. I stopped by the office with some designs to show her, but Laura—that’s Laura Parks, the charity’s receptionist and event planner—said Mrs. Welkum wasn’t in, however, my timing was perfect. She said the current bank statement had arrived in the morning’s mail and I might want to look at it. I thanked her, told her I was in a rush to see a client, but I would look at it later. I started to take the statement back to Jewel’s office, but Laura stopped me and said I might want a copy of it, for my audit records. The way she said it, I decided to do just that. And here’s why.”
Anna pulled a third bank statement out of the folder. “Look at the beginning balance.”
I did. I also looked at the period the statement covered. It followed the previous statement, the one I’d just been looking at. “Wow,” was all I could say at first. I looked at the numbers twice to make sure I was reading them correctly. “This beginning balance is almost twenty thousand dollars less than last month’s ending balance.”
“And,” Anna said, pointing at a check number near the bottom of the page, “remember those voided checks? That number matches one of those. I remember because the check number is my birthdate.”
The check had cleared early February and was for five thousand dollars. I looked at Anna. “You need a copy of the check.”
“I know.” She looked worried. “but I don’t think getting permission to go into the account is going to be easy. Mrs. Welkum called me Friday morning. At first she made it sound as if the call was about the designs I’d left for her. She went on and on about how much she liked my ideas and if everything went well, she’d have me redo her bathroom and then she would tell her friends, and I would have more business than I could handle. I was thrilled. With this baby coming, I need more clients, and her friends would be ones who commissioned big projects.”
I could see where this was going and wasn’t surprised when Anna said, “And then Mrs. Welkum asked if I’d seen the February bank statement.”
“And you said?”
“I lied. I should have confronted her right then, asked what was up, but I said no, I hadn’t seen it and asked if it was missing. She said, ‘No’ but that it had come in the mail Thursday and she thought I would want to see it. I told her I’d be in Monday afternoon and to leave it on Jewel’s desk, that I’d look at it then.”
“You think she believed you?”
“I don’t know. If Laura is the whistleblower, I don’t think she’ll tell Mrs. Welkum I have a copy of the statement. But—” Anna shrugged. “I just don’t know.”
I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say or do. “So, what’s next?”
“I could go to the board with what I have, but I’d like to see an image of the cancelled check, see who signed it and what it was for. I’d like to have a little more evidence, would like to know if it’s Mrs. Welkum who’s embezzling the charity or if it’s her daughter. Maybe she doesn’t know her daughter has been doctoring those bank statements. Maybe—” She stopped herself. “Damn, I wish they hadn’t asked me to do this.”
I understood Anna’s concern. Like me, Anna was self-employed. We walked a fine line. Do a good job for your clients, they told others, and your business grew. Get on the wrong side of an influential client and it could really hurt your business. Madeline Welkum helped a lot of people and knew a lot of influential people. Even if she was proven a thief, the person who took her down might suffer. Nevertheless— “If she’s taking money from the charity, she should be exposed. I mean, she’s talking about running for the state senate. I don’t want an embezzler elected.”
“You’re right.” Anna gathered up the bank statements she’d shown me and slipped them back in the folder. “I think—” She paused, and I could tell she was pondering what to do. “I think,” she finally said, “I’ll go back to the charity office Monday afternoon after my last appointment and will gather as much evidence as I can. Once I have that, I’ll take it to the board, and they can take action.”
“Want help Monday?” I asked. “Moral support? I have some tax papers I need to deliver just outside of Kalamazoo. If you’d like, I could stop by the charity office while you’re there.” To be honest, I wanted to see inside the house. Back when I worked at Quick Sums, I used to drive by the place going to and from work. The house was old and had been getting pretty rundown. Then one day there was a “For Sale” sign out front and a month later it sold. Contractor trucks appeared. Workers were still there the day I quit my job at Quick Sums. I hadn’t been by since.
“I won’t be free until after four.”
That worked for me.
Before leaving, Anna paused at the door. “By the way,” she said, “did you see on TV
why all those cops were out front of the church while we were meeting? Seems some woman was killed crossing the street.”
“A woman was killed?”
“Yeah. A hit and run.”
Chapter Eight
As soon as Anna left, I sat down at my computer. Every nerve on edge, I scanned for information about the hit and run. What I found was scanty. The websites of the two local TV channels identified the victim as an African-American, middle-aged woman, but that was all. The name was being withheld until notification of kin. As for the car that hit her, it was described as a black sedan. No make or license plate number. Channel 3 did have a video interview of a homeless man who had been sleeping on the bench in front of the church.
“Scared the (bleep) out of me,” the man said. “I hear a thump, open my eyes, and see a car comin’ at me. Almost hit me, too.”
When asked, however, the man said. “Couldn’t really see who was driving. Car’s windows were too dark.”
The local paper found another witness, a woman who said she’d just turned onto the street when a car pulled out of a parking spot in front of her, nearly hit another car, then swerved onto the sidewalk and hit the woman. “The car didn’t stop,” the witness reported. “Hit her, almost hit a guy sleeping on a bench, and took off.”
The newspaper’s headline was “Hit and Run Accident Near Brewery,” and the reporter had gone on to list the number of DUIs in the area, adding Friday’s as one more accident caused by drunk driving. Which was possible, I told myself.
As for the victim being Black, since the area was primarily populated by people of color, she could have been anyone from the neighborhood, maybe a parishioner of the church. But, if Brenda was the victim, this was no accident. In the church bathroom, she’d known her life was in danger. “These people don’t play around,” she’d said. “He threatened me.”
I’d been going to tell Wade what I’d overheard, but between Ken’s phone call and Jason’s problem, I’d totally forgotten. I should have made Brenda stay and talk to me. Should have asked her what was going on. If only I hadn’t been in such a hurry to go to the bathroom.
