by G. M. Ford
"Finally," she huffed.
She seemed to be waiting for either an apology or an explanation. "Are you there?" she asked finally. "I'm here."
"I've been trying to get a hold of you since yesterday evening." "Here I am."
Her dissatisfaction was palpable.
"We're still on for this afternoon?" she said finally.
"One o'clock," I confirmed.
"Howard McColl will be there."
"The great man himself?"
"In the flesh."
"I figured for sure he'd send a junior partner."
"Don't think that worm didn't try," she said with obvious satisfaction. "First he wanted to do lunch. Just the two of us of course. Then, as soon as he realized that wasn't going to happen, he offered to send everyone in the firm except the cleaning lady— and himself of course—until we finally had a little chat regarding retainers. Speaking of which, I've decided that I'd feel better about our relationship if I gave you a retainer. How much would—"
"No thanks," I interrupted quickly.
"If we're going to have a business relationship—"
I nipped this one in the bud.
"Because then, sooner or later, you and I would be having our own little chat about retainers, and I don't work well that way."
The phone company was right; you could hear a pin drop.
"One o'clock, then," she said after another strained silence. "See you there."
I dropped the bundle of clothes at the cleaners and tooled down over the hill, arriving at the Sea Sundstrom offices on Western Avenue about five minutes early. McColl was already ensconced in the red leather chair closest to the desk, somehow managing to look like he'd been born to occupy that particular seat. Patrician presence, I supposed.
Marge handled the introductions without rising. McColl stood reluctantly, brushing my outstretched palm with a limp, dry hand. I dragged a flowered wing chair across the room, settling for a spot on the other end of the low polished table that served as a desk. This was the president's office; the sign on the door said so. It was a woman's room. Vaguely floral. Decorated with flair and care, functional but flat-
"Your rights are not in question, my dear," McColl said. "The problem lies in the next of kin named by your—"
Something in Marge's expression produced an instant edit.
"—in Ms. Stark's next of kin."
"She named some aunt in Wisconsin," Marge said.
"Who does not and, as nearly as we are able to ascertain, has never lived at the address of record. For that matter, we have thus far been unable to procure even a single document confirming the existence of this Miss Audrey Danielson, let alone secure a release."
"So what's the problem then?" I interjected. "No aunt. No money. No problem."
"Would that it were that simple, Mr. Waterman."
McColl pinned me with a pitying glance that suggested that although the problem was manifestly not simple, I most certainly was.
"I don't want to hear it, Howard," Marge said. "I don't care what it takes. Get it done. I want whatever paperwork is necessary to grant us access to that account ready by Friday."
"I don't know what this person"—he cast me a disgusted look—"has been telling you, but it can't possibly be—'"
"Do it, Howard. If your firm can't manage it, I'll find one who can."
"Marge," he started. The concerned parent again.
"Mrs. Sundstrom," she corrected quickly.
"Of course. Of course. I forget myself. Excuse me. Believe me, I'm every bit as upset about our lack of progress as are you."
"Somehow I don't think so," Marge snapped.
"Listen to me, please. This is a bureaucratic nightmare. Death certificates haven't even been issued yet in this county. We'll need a certificate of qualification, letters testamentary. These things take time."
"Pull strings, Howard. It's what you do best. Do it. Call in whatever favors you're owed. Press some flesh. Grease some palms. I don't care how, just do it, just do it. If it costs money, send me a bill. The firm seems to be quite efficient at billing."
"I shall assuredly do my—"
"By Friday."
"Mar—Mrs. Sundstrom, believe me, I and the rest of the members of the firm sympathize with your most grievous loss, but this is no time to—"
He reached out to pat her hand, which sat motionless on the desk. Before he could make contact, she eased the hand back into her lap.
"I got your card. Very thoughtful. By Friday, Howard."
He uncrossed his leg and sat back hard against the chair like a spoiled child denied a second helping of dessert. After a short interval of staring into space, he pulled a hand though his close-cropped hair, leaning forward toward Marge again as he absent mindedly ran his cupped hands down both sides of his nose.
"You do realize of course, don't you, that if—and I acknowledge this possibility only with the greatest skepticism—but if your suspicions are indeed correct and there has been some willful misappropriation of these assets, access to these accounts will almost surely lead only to a dead end."
Marge looked to me for confirmation.
"You're talking numbered Swiss accounts. That kind of thing?" I said.
"Most certainly," he breathed. "As you so astutely put, Marge, that is precisely what we do. It's never been easier to obscure funds. Never. The emergence of the third world has created a massive underground banking system that makes the fabled Swiss seem positively effusive. If—"
He held up a bony finger.
"If that is indeed where the funds have gone.
That will most surely be the end of the matter right there. Neither mine, nor any other firm"—he sent a paternal, forgiving glance toward Marge—"can be of any help from there."
"I understand," I said. "From you, all we need to know is where the money went after it left the Seafirst Bank. You get us into the records. We'll have to see where, if anywhere, that leads and then take it from there."
He levered himself from the chair and spoke directly to Marge.
"This isn't going to be easy, and it isn't going to be cheap," he intoned gravely.
"Well then," Marge said sweetly, "that's something we'll all have in common, then, won't we?"
The rebuff had no discernible effect. He bid Marge a courtly good-bye, sent a dismissive nod in my general direction, and was gone.
"A charmer," I commented when the sound of his heels had faded.
"He's always thought so. Howard always wants to have business meetings when he knows Heck's out of town."
"Probably because he has a genuine interest in your assets."
"A woman's greatest asset is a man's imagination," she said without a trace of humor.
Her tone made me doubly glad I hadn't taken her retainer.
I filled her in on what I'd been doing, complete with all the details. About Richmond's conviction that his yacht was sound. About Allison's refusal to take on a crew. About confirming that a wharf rat named Norma had, as Heck insisted, disappeared about the same time the Risky Business had gone down. About sending the Boys out to see if they could find where she'd lived. About leaving the pictures with Carl and the probability of getting a workable likeness of Allison Stark.
She listened in silence, no questions, clasping and unclasping her hands on the desktop as I spoke as if the fingers were a pair f bellows pushing air in and out of her lungs.
"Doesn't amount to much, does it?" she said when I'd finished.
"On the contrary. Nothing I've found discredits Heck's idea either. That, in itself, is pretty interesting considering how far-fetched this whole conspiracy thing is."
She considered my assessment.
"Do you think your friend can really make a picture out of those snapshots?"
"Let's find out," I said, pointing to the slim black phone on her desk.
She passed it over. I dialed Carl's home number.
"What?"
"Can we come over and take a look at the picture
?"
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why come over? I already seen enough of you and them silly clothes for one day. Where's the nearest fax machine to you?"
I held the phone to my chest and spoke to Marge.
"Is there a fax machine here?" I asked.
"Right over there," she said, pointing to a gunmetal-gray unit about the size of a portable typewriter sitting on the bottom shelf of the wall unit at the far end of the office.
It occurred to me that I was going to have to do something about my abhorrence of technology. I was rapidly becoming a dinosaur.
"Got one right here," I said into the mouthpiece.
"Say hello to Warheads for me," he said.
"Yeah, sure, you can count on it, Carl."'
"Well?" "Well what?"
"What's the fucking number?"
Marge anticipated my question. I repeated the number into the mouthpiece as Marge gave it to me.
"Use something dark. Magic Marker, something like that. The fax ain't real good with light lines. Just give me a shape. I'll take care of the rest. Send it back corrected when you're done."
I started to hang up, but heard him shout into the receiver.
"You screeched?"
"How in the hell are you gonna send it back without my fax number, you fucking moron?"
"You may have a point," I admitted. "Okay, what is it?"
He told me and then hung up in my ear.
By the time I'd stood and returned the receiver to its cradle, the fax machine emitted its first trilling ring. Then another, followed by a short series of electronic squeaks and beeps, silenced by a single soft click.
Allison Stark came out of the machine neck first. Right in front of my sneakers, she emerged into a red plastic basket. The machine clicked off. I tore the image off, carried it back across the room, and set it on the desktop in front of Marge. Her breath caught in her throat. She looked away.
She smoothed the sheet and looked again. The picture was of a narrow-faced young woman with a Prince Valiant hairdo. Just above shoulder length. Long bangs. Her slim lines were accentuated by large almond-shaped eyes that didn't seem to be focusing anywhere in particular. The nose might have been too narrow on a bigger face, but it worked just fine here. As Carl had predicted, there was a certain blankness to the expression, as if she had just risen from a long sleep.
"Well?" I said.
"More than I dared hope. Amazing, almost— remarkable really." "A good likeness?"
"Close . . . close . .. not quite right, but close," she said, more to herself than to me.
"What needs to be changed?"
Marge Sundstrom spent a long minute studying the image, running the tip of one scarlet nail over and around the outlines of the face.
"First the lips, I think," she said. "She had thicker lips. Particularly the lower lip. She had that pouty look. You know those collagen-injected lips. I know she had them done."
I picked a red felt-tip pen from a cup on her desk and handed it to her.
"Fix 'em," I said.
She began to trace an outline.
"No, no," she said disgustedly. "I was never any good at art."
"Try again."
I pulled a pink Kleenex from the ceramic dispenser on the desk and handed it to her. She wet the Kleenex with the tip of her pink tongue and rubbed out the red ink. The image came off with the ink.
"Shit," we said in unison.
I called Carl.
"Send another one."
He didn't require an explanation.
"Make copies, you idiot. Faxes aren't fast." Click.
They seemed pretty quick to me, but I took his word for it. This time, I used the Xerox machine to make five copies. On the third try, Marge was satisfied with the lips.
"That's as good as I can get them."
"What else?" I prompted.
"Too fat in the face. She needs to be more. . . gaunt. The little bitch never ate anything. I don't think I ever saw her take more than six bites of anything. It got so if I ordered anything more than cottage cheese, I felt like such a sow. I couldn't even enjoy my meals."
I handed her the fourth copy. Still muttering, she shaded in the cheeks. "Like that," she said.
I faxed both pictures to Carl and then took out my notebook.
"While we're waiting, tell me about all these stories she used to tell about her background." "That rubbish?"
"Most likely not all of it," I said. "Liars usually mix up a little truth with the lies. It not only sounds better that way, but it's a hell of a lot safer. Gives them a few verifiable details to throw around. Lends an air of authenticity to the lies. You probably never thought about it, but liars have to be careful about what they lie about. If they go around long enough telling people they graduated from the University of Illinois, sooner or later they're going to run into somebody else who either went to school there or who lived in Champaign. At that point, they'd better have at least some basic geography down."
"I see," she said dubiously.
"Start at the beginning. Give me whatever personal history you can remember. Try to recall those things that she seemed most credible about."
Marge heaved a sigh and started.
"Wisconsin. Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. Only child. Her father was a doctor, of course. According to her, she had the perfect childhood. Big house, picket fence, tree swing. The whole ball of wax. Parents killed in an airplane crash when she was fourteen, but you know that already. Very convenient. Brought up by this aunt—the one she named as next of kin. Went to the University of Wisconsin on a small insurance settlement. Had all these summer jobs
there. River guide, aerobics instructor. During the school year she worked part time in a pizza parlor to make ends meet. When the insurance money ran out, she had to drop out and went to work selling time-shares. She—" Marge stopped.
"Timeshares," she repeated. "She knew all about timeshares." "You're sure?"
"I'm an expert, Leo. Heck was such a sucker for those things. We've owned three over the years. I had to stop letting him go out by himself when we were on vacation. He kept coming back with a new timeshare every time. Allison knew timeshares inside and out."
"You know where she sold them?"
"Supposedly at Chelan. Over east at the lake."
"Anything more specific than that? Last time I was over there, every third person was selling time-shares."
"Afraid not."
We were interrupted by the soft click of the fax machine. By the time I reached the far side of the room the picture had dropped into the red plastic basket. I took it directly to the copy machine and made five copies.
"The lips are right," Marge said after squinting at the new picture for a full minute, "but the face is too thin now. She looks emaciated. And ... I don't know . . . there's something wrong about the eyes."
She picked up the marker and began to doodle, defacing and destroying three of the copies to no end except to litter the floor around her desk.
She worked hard on the fourth copy, working the shape of the eyes, rounder, bigger, smaller, giving her an Asian visage, then wide-eyed with surprise. Finally, in a fit of pique, she crossed out the right eye, then quickly looked at the picture and back at me.
"It's the eyelids," she said. "She needs heavier eyelids. She had those eyes men like that always looked like she was half sleep."
"Fix them," I said, handing her the last copy.
It only took her about thirty seconds to make the changes.
"There," she breathed. "God, that's close now, even with the red marker." She held it at arm's length.
"If he could do something about the expression . . . I don't know . . . just, you know, put some life in it, we'd be pretty close."
I took the image and scrawled across the bottom. Lips fine. Face too thin now. Do eyelids like this. Can you fix blank expression?
I fed the paper into the machine, dialed Carl's number, and waited as our copy we
nt through the box. I was on my way back to Marge when the machine clicked again. About face.
Yours or hers?????? was printed thickly on the page.
"That was quick," Marge commented.
I crumpled the page into a ball and lofted it toward the basket. It rimmed off, joining its brethren on the floor.
"Just Carl being cute," I said apologetically. I picked up my notebook. "What else?" Marge waved me off.
"Oh, I don't know, Leo. After a while, I stopped listening to her. It was just so much garbage. It always sounded to me like some bad TV show. That's all I can remember right now."
"Was she working when she met Nick?"
"Selling real estate."
"Where? For who?"
"Leschi. Not Windermere, but something that sounds like it. It's'right-in that same little complex
with Daniel's Broiler. I dropped her at her car there once."
She ran me through a long list of vague deals, both residential and commercial, that Allison supposedly had in the works.
"It's a place to start. Real estate requires a license. A license requires documentation. Documentation requires a background."
Marge hadn't heard me. She was somewhere else.
"Maybe we should just stop all of this, Leo," she sighed.
"All of what?"
"This . . . this wild goose chase. All of it. I'm beginning to think, I don't know, maybe we're just grasping at straws here. This is all just so off the wall. You said it yourself. This is like some comic-book plot. Maybe we ... I don't know," she said finally. "I'd better get down to the hospital."
"I think we've just started. I think it's not going to take all that much to discredit Heck's conspiracy theory. We've got a line on a paper trail here. We've almost got a picture. I think we ought to keep at it."
Two images arrived. Across the first Carl had written: focused the eyes for expression. Eyelids okay? How's the face for width? The second was identical without the writing.
I placed both of them facedown on the desk in front of Marge.
"But listen, Marge. This is your party. If you want to quit, we quit. Any time you think this is too painful or too expensive or too whatever you just say the word, and—"
