A Penny for Your Thoughts

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “She does seem a little brusque,” I said.

  Gwen laughed.

  “To put it mildly,” she replied. “It’s funny, but Judith was always very headstrong, very no-nonsense, even as a child. Her parents were both so sweet, so mild mannered. They never could quite figure out how to handle Judith.”

  “She told me yesterday that she doesn’t even believe in God,” I said. “That must’ve been hard for such a devout man as Wendell.”

  “Terribly,” Gwen said, nodding. “He carried a special burden for Judith’s salvation. They talked about it from time to time, of course, but her heart was just never ready to hear the truth.”

  “How sad.”

  “He never gave up hope,” she said. “Maybe now, with his death, she’ll begin to see the light.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Gwen stood and walked some more, pacing as she spoke.

  “You know,” she said, “with Wendell gone now, I hate to admit it, but I’m not very worried for the company itself. I believe it will do fine under Judith’s direction—and Derek’s. We may stumble along the way a bit, but I think we’ll get our feet back under us soon enough.”

  “That’s good.”

  “My greater concern is with the big picture. I mean, with Wendell gone, who will steer this giant ship? Who will lead our way in the years ahead?”

  Gwen was so emphatic that I felt a brief flash of pity for her. Had she been born in a different generation, one where women had the same opportunities as men, she might have risen to the helm of such a mighty ship herself.

  “Surely there was a plan in place for the succession of leadership here,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” Gwen replied sadly. “Wendell knew the end was in sight for him. He made provisions. But, truly, there’s no one that could ever be big enough to fill his shoes.”

  She blinked back tears, and I realized that she held Wendell in the same high esteem Tom did.

  “So his death didn’t come as much of a surprise?” I asked gently.

  She thought about that.

  “A surprise? No. Difficult? Yes.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then I heard on the radio this morning that they’re calling it a murder. You have no idea what that does to me, Callie. It tears my heart out.”

  “Any suspicions of your own, Gwen? You were, after all, right on the other side of that door when it happened.” Or in here, doing it yourself, I thought, but did not say.

  “No,” she whispered after a long pause. “Everyone loved Wendell. I can’t imagine who would want him dead.”

  She looked as though she was about to burst into tears, so I quickly changed the subject.

  “Tell me about the money I came here to deliver, Gwen. Apparently, there was a building Wendell wanted to buy? What’s happening with that?”

  Gwen seemed to hesitate, her face clouding over with something I didn’t recognize.

  “I’m not sure,” she said evasively, looking away. “Wendell had a lot of projects going on at once. I don’t know much about that one.”

  I wondered why the sudden change in Gwen’s demeanor. I decided to press it a little further.

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” I said. “And you don’t know anything about it?”

  Gwen shrugged.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “I thought your office was sort of the pulse of the company. I thought you’d know everything that was going on around here.”

  “I do!” she said. “It’s, ah, I—”

  Her voice sputtered to a stop.

  “I’m sorry, Callie,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve got a terrible headache. You’ll have to excuse me.”

  With that she walked to the door and held it open, waiting expectantly. I counted to five, slowly, then finally unfolded myself from the couch, stood, and headed for the door.

  “You should take something for that headache,” I said dryly as I walked past her. “It seems to be affecting your memory.”

  She closed the door behind me without replying, leaving me with one burning question: What does Gwen know about that money that she isn’t telling me?

  Eighteen

  I headed toward my little cubicle, thinking about Gwen’s words and her suddenly befuddled manner when the subject came up about the money I had been sent there to deliver. Obviously, there was something fishy about that $250,000 loan. Was there really a building they wanted to buy? And, if not, had Wendell lied to Tom—or had Tom misled me?

  I knew the place to start answering those questions was with a phone call to Tom, but I hesitated. Our relationship depended on an enormous amount of trust on both sides: him, trusting me to analyze our grant recipients carefully; and me, trusting him enough to take all that he presented to me at face value. Perhaps my questioning of him would cause bigger problems later than the ones it would solve now.

  No, I needed to approach this from some other direction first, analyzing the less disturbing possibility that Wendell Smythe had lied to Tom. Perhaps there was no building. Certainly, Gwen knew more than she was telling.

  I changed direction, strolling toward the desk of Tina, one of my lunchroom companions. I had seen her earlier closer to the front, and I went there now, nonchalantly pausing at the entrance to her cubicle. Scattered along the fringes of her desk was a collection of lady bugs—figurines, stickers, little toys. Though a few might’ve been cute, the collection as a whole was a little distracting.

  “Hey, Tina, you got a minute?” I asked.

  “More like a second,” she answered, opening a drawer and pulling out a blank pad and a pen. “Staff meeting at two o’clock.”

  I glanced around, noticing the abundance of empty desks and the clusters of people heading toward the conference room.

  “I’ll make it quick,” I said. “I just need some help.”

  “What’s up?”

  “When your company buys a building or a piece of land or something,” I asked, “who handles that for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is there a lawyer on staff here, or are legal matters like that handled outside? I need a quick opinion about some of the foundation’s real estate. I thought maybe if you had a lawyer working here…?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, we use a firm downtown. On Walnut. Coach, Croatz, something like that—a small group. I don’t know. Let me look.”

  She flipped through her Rolodex and pulled out a card.

  “Here you go,” she said, scribbling on a Post-it note. “Coates, Dillon, and McGruff. Good firm—even if I can’t ever remember their names.” I took the paper from her casually and gave her a big thanks.

  “No prob,” she said. “You’re just lucky you caught me before I headed off to the meeting. We’ll probably be in there for hours.”

  She lowered her voice and leaned toward me conspiratorially.

  “I think they want to talk about Mr. Smythe’s dying and how we’ll have to carry on without him and all of that stuff. They’re saying now that he was murdered. Did you hear?”

  I nodded, startled by the tinge of excitement in her voice. The human desire for the titillation of tragedy never ceased to amaze me.

  “Yes, I heard,” I replied evenly.

  She nodded before turning toward the conference room and bringing up the rear of the last small group. The door closed behind her, and I was alone in the outer office.

  I took the long way around back to my cubicle, making certain that I was, indeed, the only person here who wasn’t in the staff meeting. Then I returned to my desk, ready to make some calls.

  It wasn’t until I sat down and went to pull out my papers that my heart gave a little start: Someone had been rustling through my briefcase while I was talking with Gwen.

  To anyone else it might not have been noticeable. But to me there was no question: The order of papers in my briefcase was always, always the same—calendar, then organizer, then certain files, all in a row. The
order was still the same. But now the files, the calendar, everything was flipped. Someone had emptied my briefcase, then put it back together again—upside down.

  I stood, glancing around, but the office was completely empty. I sat back down, heart pounding, angry at myself for not locking the case while I was gone. I dug through each pocket of the lid, but everything seemed to be in place—including the undelivered $250,000 check to Feed the Need. The file from Duane Perskie was there, too, right on top. When I was confident that nothing had been stolen, I snapped the case shut and placed it on the ground next to my chair. I would have to be more careful from now on. Though there wasn’t really any information in there that would compromise my case should it get out, it still bothered me greatly that someone had been audacious enough to take such a chance. Somebody was getting way too curious about me and what I was doing here.

  Putting the briefcase matter out of my mind for the time being, I picked up the phone and dialed the law offices of Coates, Dillon, and McGruff. The receptionist answered promptly, then put me through to Coates’ secretary, a woman with a deep Southern accent despite the fact that their office was in downtown Philadelphia. I introduced myself as “Callie over at Feed the Need.” She didn’t question it.

  “I need a favor,” I said warmly. “I’m trying to pull together some information about our current and future development plans. I was wondering if there’s any way you could fax me over copies of our current file.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” she said. “Y’all have three current files, each one of them at least an inch thick.”

  “Oh, gosh,” I said, reaching for my pen to doodle along the edge of the page. “Let me narrow it down for you. How about just the documentation regarding any real estate closings that are pending.”

  “Pending?” she said, and I could hear the shuffle of papers in the background. “You’ve already closed on Taipei…Manila…and Tegucigalpa. I think that about covers it for active real estate matters. Nothing else pending.”

  “We’ve already paid in full?” I asked. “For all of these properties?”

  “Paid?” the woman drawled. “Heck, no, y’all sold. The people that bought the places paid.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Which department did you say you’re with again?” she asked, her voice suddenly turning suspicious.

  “I’m sort of a consultant, really, just heading up this one project. I was told that we were about to buy a building, and that the information would be relevant to my work.”

  “Well, ma’am,” she said, “I don’t know what that would be. There isn’t anything being done through us anyway.”

  “No title searches or surveys or anything?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am,” she answered. “Far as I know, the last piece of property you people bought was over a year ago. The three properties you sold were in the last few months, but other than that I haven’t heard of anything new.”

  “Well, thanks anyway,” I said, ready to hang up the phone. “Guess I’ll have to go back to Alan and see what he was talking about.”

  “Alan Bennet?” the woman said. “Is he your supervisor?”

  I hesitated, berating myself for tossing off his name just to make myself sound legit. Ah, what a tangled web we weave…

  “Well, no, not really,” I said finally. “I just thought I overheard him say something about a new building.”

  “If anyone knows about it, he probably would,” she answered. “At least, he was fairly involved with the last three sales. I’d talk to him if I were you.”

  “I sure will,” I said, eager to hang up before she asked any more questions.

  “I don’t know about you,” she continued, lowering her voice, “but if I worked over there at your company, I’d look for any and every excuse I could find to talk to that man.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s so gorgeous. Around here, we call him ‘The Hunk.’”

  “Yes, well, he is good looking,” I said lamely. I was usually lost when it came to silly girl talk, even now when I was just trying to fake it. “Thanks for your help.”

  I hung up the phone and sat there for a moment, thinking about what she had said. Unless they were using another lawyer, which apparently was unlikely, then there was no pending building purchase. So what had the money really been needed for? Tom had sent me here urgently, I thought as I recalled our conversation from Sunday, on the airplane. If not to buy a building, then just what did Wendell Smythe have in mind when he called his old friend Tom and asked him for a quarter of a million dollars?

  I found the possibilities very disturbing. Wendell Smythe was by all accounts a forthright, honest, Christian businessman. What would make someone like that tell a lie to one of his dearest friends—a quarter-of-a-million-dollar lie, no less? I knew there weren’t going to be any easy answers to that question for the time being, but I would keep it at the forefront of my mind.

  For now, I got up from my desk and headed for the Human Resources department. In the main cubicle, I found that the file cabinets were low and under a counter, all locked. Turning to the desk, I rummaged around in some of the drawers, finally finding a key in one of the small compartments of a desk organizer. Sure enough, it unlocked the filing cabinets. So much for office security.

  I quietly slid out the drawers and easily located the personnel files on Alan Bennet, Gwen Harding, Derek Smythe, and Judith Smythe—four of the people on my list of suspects. I pulled the files, closed and locked the drawers, and returned the key to the desk. I strode to the Xerox machine, then began making copies of each of the files. They weren’t very long. Still, by the time I was finished, I wasn’t sure if I should risk returning the files to the Human Resources area or not. I hesitated, glancing at the closed conference room door.

  Quickly, I popped open my briefcase and slid the photocopies in. Then I headed back to Human Resources, slipped the key from the drawer, and opened the filing cabinet.

  I started with Bennet, then filed away Harding. I was just looking for Smythe when I heard voices and realized the meeting had adjourned and people were headed my way. Taking the chance, I quickly flipped through until I found Smythe. I slid the last two files into place and then closed and locked the drawer, but before I could put the key back in the desk, a woman came around the corner.

  “Oh!” she said, stepping back. “You scared me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my mind racing. “I was just wondering if you had any blank W9 forms.”

  She hesitated a beat, looking at me thoughtfully with two dark brown eyes. She was an attractive woman in her early 30s wearing a tan silk pantsuit.

  “Is that that new Burmese washable silk?” I asked, reaching out to finger her sleeve. “That’s beautiful.”

  “Washable?” she answered, “Um, no. The tag says ‘dry clean only.’”

  “Still,” I replied, “it’s lovely.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her suspicion seemed to have passed. She crossed in front of me, pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk, and rummaged around a bit.

  “Don’t think I have any W9s,” she said, flipping through some tax documents. “Maybe you can get one from accounting.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  She closed the drawer.

  “Or nowadays, you know, you can go to the IRS website and download almost any form you need.”

  “Good idea,” I said, the key feeling hot in the palm of my hand. “Thanks.”

  I walked out of her cubicle, praying she wouldn’t need that key any time soon. I headed for Tina, who was back at work at her desk, surrounded by her ladybug collection.

  “Sorry to bother you again,” I said in a low voice, “but can you tell me, what is that woman’s name, the one in personnel?”

  “Debra?”

  “Debra,” I said. “Yes. Sweet lady.”

  “Yeah, she is. Did you need her for something?”


  I shook my head, smiling.

  “No, I just couldn’t remember her name.”

  I walked on back to my cubicle, picked up the phone, and rang the front desk. The receptionist answered on the first ring.

  “Hey,” I said quickly. “Would you buzz Debra and ask her to come back to the conference room for a minute?”

  “Sure. Who is this?”

  I scratched my fingernails on the phone receiver, as if there was something wrong with my phone.

  “Thanks,” I said. I hung up and walked back toward personnel, timing it so that I was just coming around the corner as Debra was heading out of her cubicle, walking with her back to me.

  I slipped right into the cubicle behind her, opened the drawer, neatly dropped the key in its slot, then closed the drawer with a quiet thud. Mission accomplished, I left the cubicle and looped around toward the conference room, where Debra stood, puzzled, in the doorway. She stood there for a moment, then rolled her eyes and turned back toward her desk.

  “Oh, these people,” she said, shaking her head as she walked away. “I don’t have time for all their foolishness.”

  Smiling, I headed back to my desk to get a look at the files I had worked so hard to acquire, hoping that something in one of them might lead me to the murderer.

  Nineteen

  I flipped through Judith’s file first, not really looking for anything, just trying to get a better idea of who she was. Not surprisingly, her background was direct and impressive—a B.A. (summa cum laude) from Rutgers College, an M.B.A. from Wharton, and a stellar rise through the ranks at Smythe Incorporated.

  Derek’s file was equally impressive, though more colorful. He had a degree in Divinity from Eastern Theological Seminary, a Masters of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania, and apparently he had worked for a while as a missionary. He had spent time in Central America and had, in fact, only been working for Feed the Need for a few years.

  That surprised me. Most of the missionaries I knew were fairly adventurous, the hearty type. But Derek seemed so soft, so genteel—certainly not the kind of guy who would live in a Third World country without modern amenities.