The Buck Stops Here

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Besides the audits that Harriet was working on, that left three final criteria to examine, including their future plans, their methods of fundraising, and their board of directors. I wasn’t hungry, so I worked straight through lunch, concentrating on the fundraising first.

  From what I could tell, the bulk of the donations that kept Family HEARTS afloat came from four annual events: a ball and auction in the spring, a boating festival in the summer, a golf day in the fall, and a Mardi Gras kickoff party in the winter. Each of these events was coordinated by a different committee, and when I compared the lists from year to year, it seemed like, for the most part, the same folks were handling them each time. That was a good sign, that not only was Veronica hanging onto her best volunteers, but the volunteers were learning and refining the process as they repeated it from year to year. A comparison of the total donation receipts per event showed a steady gain for all four events in the past four years, with the exception of one bad year for the boating festival. When I buzzed Veronica to ask her about it, she explained that a streak of inclement weather had forced them to reschedule three times, resulting in much lower attendance (and donations) than usual. Still, when all was said and done, the board had voted to keep the boating festival because it was a favorite of many, and when the weather cooperated, it was one of their top earners.

  Once I had studied all of the data, I was able to conclude that Family HEARTS did, indeed, follow standards of responsible and ethical fundraising. I had asked for a meeting with Veronica at two o’clock, so I closed out my database and went to her office, where we discussed the future plans for the agency. As she described where they hoped to be heading, I had to wonder if maybe Tom would be willing to increase the amount of the grant from the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation from $50,000 to much more. Among other things, she wanted to move the agency to a better area—and considering the bad parking, the threadbare building, and the fact that I had been mugged right outside, I didn’t blame her. I had a feeling that, with our help, Family HEARTS might be able to purchase a facility outright, something I thought would be prudent for them to do. When I asked Veronica about the successful volunteerism factor here, she launched into a passionate discussion of effective volunteer management.

  After we finished I returned to my desk and input the information she had given me, signing off on all but the final two criteria, the audit information and the board of directors. After taking a short break in the courtyard, I came back inside and began studying the last year’s board minutes. For a while, I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I forgot there was a larger purpose here, that my reason for coming to Louisiana was not primarily to investigate this charity but to meet the people involved. Fortunately, I was about to kill two birds with one stone, because I had a 4:00 P.M. appointment with Phillip to talk about Family HEARTS’ board of directors. In the whole of my investigation of Family HEARTS, that was the only area I was a bit concerned about. Put simply, the board was too big, and from what I could see of the board minutes I had read, they often couldn’t make a quorum for the meetings, which was necessary for them to conduct the business of the organization.

  I was just getting ready to call a cab for my appointment with Phillip when Veronica offered to drop me off. She was headed home and said it would be on the way.

  Traffic was bad, and even though she tried several back streets, we still got stuck simply sitting bumper to bumper. I took advantage of the situation and tried to take the conversation in a personal direction, asking how she and Phillip first met. As it turned out, she and Phillip first became friends when she was engaged to Tom—or “Tommy,” as she called him.

  “We were all friends,” she said. “The Cipher Five were working almost around the clock on their encryption program, so if I wanted to see Tommy, I had no choice but to hang out at his office. I didn’t mind. Those were fun days. We were all so idealistic.”

  “Idealistic?”

  “About our futures, about life. We used to sit around sometimes late at night and debate the whole encryption issue.”

  “Where did everyone stand?”

  “Well, I don’t claim to understand a lot of it,” she said modestly, “but I was around them enough to get the general idea. Beth and I both felt that the government ought to have the right, under certain circumstances, to obtain encryption codes for the protection of the country and its citizens. James and Armand were the exact opposite, adamant that the right to absolute privacy should come above all else. Poor Tommy didn’t know what he thought. He just knew there had to be a better way to make it all work.”

  “How about Phillip? Where did he stand?”

  She laughed.

  “Phillip cared about the bottom line. Whatever side was going to make more money, that’s the side he was on.”

  Veronica glanced at me, and when she saw the surprised expression on my face, she laughed again.

  “What can I say? He’s a businessman to the core. That’s why he’s so successful.”

  I asked how she went from being Tom’s fiancée to Phillip’s wife. Though that probably didn’t have much to do with my investigation, I really wanted to know.

  “Well,” she said thoughtfully, resting her hands on the steering wheel, “I already told you, when I thought my future was all sewn up in a nice, tidy little package, I freaked. I left Tommy a Dear John letter and went to Europe to become a model.”

  “Did you have any success at it?”

  “Nah, the competition was too tough. I was disillusioned fairly quickly. I had a…” she hesitated as the car in front of us pulled ahead by several lengths, and she made a turn on a small side street. “I had a very nasty breakup with a boyfriend, lots of baggage there. He wasn’t at all who I thought he was.”

  “That can hurt.”

  “Well, everything worked out in the end,” she said, steering deftly down a narrow lane. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to relive that time, but in hindsight it was a real period of growth for me. In the end I came back here, went to Tulane, and got my MBA. I’ve never looked back.”

  As she zigzagged our way out of the French Quarter, she went on to describe how it felt when she returned to Louisiana to find that everything had changed.

  “I mean, I knew what had been going on here with the FBI and everything,” she said, “from talking to Beth and to my mom. But it just hadn’t seemed real from so far away.”

  She said that by the time she moved back in with her parents and started graduate school, the Cipher Five had been dissolved and then investigated by the FBI, James was in prison, Beth was a divorced mom of three-year-old twins, Tom had moved to California, and Armand was back in the swamps. That left Phillip, who was living in New Orleans and working in his family business. He ended up being a friend to Veronica when she didn’t have anyone else. Within six months, they were inseparable. Another six months after that, they were engaged.

  “I know a lot of people think I married Phillip for his money,” she said softly, coming to a stop at a light. “But I didn’t. I married him for his sweet spirit, for his good heart. When life starts kicking you around, you learn who your real friends are. Phillip was always someone I could count on.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Despite the heavy traffic, I made it to my meeting on time. The company was located on the twelfth floor, so I took the elevator, which opened directly into the reception area.

  The woman at the desk buzzed Phillip, and he came out to the lobby and greeted me himself. He then led me to his office, an impressive corner room with a massive oak desk placed squarely in front of big windows. A secretary took our requests for coffee and tea, and then I approached the windows to admire the view. Phillip explained what I was seeing in the different landmarks between us and the wide curve of the Mississippi River.

  “It’s a city of water,” he told me, adding that there were more canals here than in Venice, Italy.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Many of ours are covered, but we
’ve got over 200 miles of canals. Thanks to them, we’re sinking. In fact, in some places at a rate of two to four inches per year.”

  Through the window, he pointed out a building near the river, a structure so large it covered an entire city block. According to him, since that building was first erected back in the 1800s, it had sunk almost three feet.

  The secretary showed up with our drinks, so I took the cup of tea from her and sat in the chair across from Phillip’s desk as he settled down behind it.

  “Armand took me on a tour of the swamp yesterday,” I said. “He told me about Katrina and the damage it did and how it could happen again if things don’t change.”

  “He’s right. We’re on borrowed time. Then again, we always were.”

  He gave me a brief history of the city, a story of how this location was first chosen by early explorers because it offered an easy portage between the Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain. Unfortunately, that also made it an area prone to flooding and disease. Still, for some reason, the city had thrived, and over the years it had been profoundly influenced by all of the different cultural groups that had passed through and settled here. As Phillip talked about the French, the Spanish, the Creoles, the Africans, the Indians, and more, I couldn’t help but wish that it were Tom telling me all of this. It was his city. I had always thought he would bring me here and introduce me to it himself.

  Finally, the chitchat ended and we were ready to get down to business. I expressed my concerns about the board of directors to Phillip, who was a board member himself and had been its first chairman.

  “It’s a society thing,” he admitted. “Some people tend to rack up board positions like they rack up designer suits.”

  “But your board is bloated now. Once it gets too big, it becomes ineffective. As a businessman, you should know that.”

  “A horse designed by committee is a donkey,” he said, nodding. “You’re right, Callie. I hadn’t really thought about it before.”

  I pulled out the paperwork on the board that Veronica had given me, including the list of members and the attendance sheets for the past two years. I had made notes of the ones that ought to go based purely on attendance, which would reduce the board from fifteen members down to seven.

  “That’s more than half!” he said.

  “Seven is about right for an agency this size, though,” I said. “A board of between five and seven is all you really need.”

  We talked about what made a good board for a nonprofit and how it should represent a cross-section of the community that it served.

  “Ideally, you should try to have an accountant, a lawyer, a social worker, a therapist, a doctor or a nurse, people like that,” I said. “They don’t all need to be on the board at all times, but it is good to have them in the rotation. You also need at least one or two people on the receiving end of the equation, people who have children with rare diseases.”

  “We’ve got a few,” he said. “Plus Irene Bennett, of course, who is a grandmother to one.”

  Other than the Sunday lunch, I hadn’t had any time with Irene this week, and I told Phillip that it might be a good idea for me to meet with her, to get her perspective on the board. Of course, I also had my own personal reasons for wanting to get to know her better, though I didn’t tell him that.

  He made a few phone calls, arranging for me to meet with several of the board members, including Irene. She was free to see me tomorrow night, though the others preferred tonight. I told him I was flexible, so he set the appointments for me and wrote down the information. The appointment with Irene, he said, included an invitation to dinner at Beth’s house.

  “So do you think Family HEARTS will be getting a grant from your foundation?” he asked as he handed me the necessary information.

  “Well, I don’t like to speak prematurely,” I replied, tucking my paperwork away in my briefcase, “but everything is looking very good thus far. Veronica’s work is especially impressive.”

  “She’s something, isn’t she?” he replied proudly, and I realized I might be able to seize this opening to take the conversation where I needed it to go.

  “Veronica was telling me a bit about your past together,” I said, making myself comfortable. “That’s really neat, that you were friends first and then fell in love.”

  “Oh, that’s how it happened for her. I was always in love with Veronica. From the day I met her.”

  “You mean before she went to Europe? Back when she was engaged to Tom?”

  “Yep,” he smiled, intertwining his fingers and resting them on his desk. “She used to come down to the office almost every night. We would eat pizza and debate encryption ethics.” He laughed. “Doesn’t sound very romantic, does it?”

  “Not really.”

  “I thought she was smart and beautiful and capable of so much more in her life than she had planned. I felt bad for Tom when she left, but I couldn’t have been happier for her. I never thought the two of them were right for each other anyway, and at least she had broken free from her family’s well-laid plans.”

  I sat back and studied him.

  “How about you?” I asked. “You’re working in the family business. Didn’t you follow your family’s well-laid plans?”

  “I did it backward,” he said. “I thought I wanted to break away and do my own thing. In the end I realized this was my true calling.”

  “From what I understand, you’re very good at what you do.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I enjoy it.”

  “So what was your function when you worked for Tom?” I asked.

  “I was the network guy. TCP/IP. Hardware.”

  “Sorry, I’m not very computer literate.”

  “I took care of the machines themselves,” he said. “The computers. I kept them functioning and made sure they could talk to each other.”

  “Sounds interesting. Do you use those skills nowadays?”

  “To an extent. We’ve got plenty of technicians, of course, but I stick my hand in now and then. When you have an international network, it’s a good knowledge base to have.”

  I thought about that, about him having access to an international network. Did that also give him ties to terrorists?

  “Don’t you find it interesting that of the Cipher Five, only one of you still works with computers full-time?”

  “Who, Tom?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged.

  “We were kids then, fresh out of school, still finding our way. I don’t think it’s unusual that we ended up in different fields. Except for James, I think we’re all quite happy.”

  “What about James?” I pressed. “Do any of you ever have any contact with him?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not since the day he confessed to selling our encryption program to terrorists,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, the sentence he got for that act was far, far too light.”

  Forty

  My talk with Phillip had been thorough, but I left his office feeling more confused than ever. One question kept pounding through my head: Did James have a secret accomplice down here?

  I had now talked extensively with every member of the Cipher Five, and I had to admit that I was stumped. They all seemed like lovely people. I had a hard time believing any of them could be involved with someone like Sparks. Then again, if he were blackmailing them, maybe they didn’t have any choice.

  I checked my voice mail as I left the building, surprised to hear that two calls had come in during my meeting, both from Paul Tyson, the computer hacker in Seattle who had connected me with the kid in Hammond who was analyzing the asthma inhaler. I called Paul back immediately.

  “Are you on that scrambled phone of yours?” he asked me.

  “No. It’s at the hotel—”

  “Get it. Then call me back.”

  He hung up, leaving me standing there on the curb, my heart pounding furiously in my chest. What did he have to tell me?

  Ther
e were no cabs in the area, so I used my cell phone to call for one. I was back in my hotel room within 15 minutes, my hands shaking as I dialed Paul’s number.

  “It’s me,” I said when he answered.

  “Girl, are you ever in deep.”

  “What is it?”

  “That inhaler. My boy in Hammond is beside himself. He’s ready to call the CIA, the FBI, and anybody else he can think of!”

  “Why?” I whispered. “What is it?”

  “It’s a poison known to be used by terrorists. It’s called ricin, and apparently it’s an extremely deadly substance. If anyone had taken even a single puff on that inhaler, they would be a goner by now.”

  “Ricin,” I echoed. I had heard of that before. “Is that like anthrax?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that you’ve got to get to Hammond now and take that inhaler off that boy’s hands. He sounds like he’s flipping out.”

  “Paul, you promised me he was safe.”

  “What can I tell you, Callie? He thought you were testing for heroin or something. This is a whole different ball game.”

  “Is he going to set me up? How do I know I won’t be arrested the minute I show up there to claim the inhaler?”

  “I’ve got him calmed down for now. But you need to hurry. He wants his money and he wants to be done with this.”

  “Paul, I—”

  “Look, Callie, I don’t know what to tell you. Call the kid and set up a time and place now. He’s not going to do anything fishy as long as you hurry.”

  I flipped through my notebook, looking for his telephone number.