Another Three Dogs in a Row

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “You know Big Diehl?”

  “Of course. Though nowadays he’s like a different dude. All sappy and taking care of his mom. It’s like they cut his balls off in the joint.”

  He swung his leg over the bike and revved the engine, a clear sign that our conversation was over. Rochester backed away from the sound, and I turned and let him lead us to our bike.

  I wasn’t happy with the result of that conversation. If this biker dude said that Frank Diehl had changed his attitude in prison, that gave him less motivation to kill Carl. Which put me back at ground zero. I wasn’t relishing passing that information on to Hunter or Peggy—I’d felt so good about discovering the beef between Carl and Frank, and I could tell both of them were happy, too.

  Rochester hopped right into the sidecar and let me hook up his harness without complaint. “Thought you got lost,” Bob said.

  “Nah, stopped to talk to somebody. Where do we go from here?”

  “Synagogue in Elkins Park.”

  “Oh, yeah. Beth Sholom. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I went there once for a college course on American Art and Architecture.” I remembered the soaring pyramid shape, the way the light filtered in through the glass. Yet another place to take Lili, I thought.

  By the time we made it to Beth Sholom I was worn out, but I still experienced a bit of an adrenaline surge when the volunteer behind the desk handed me my last card. Would it be a seven, giving me two pair? That wasn’t a great poker hand, but if the gods were with me it might be worth something.

  I was disappointed to get a two, which didn’t do anything for my hand. And I’d learned very little on the ride, beyond an introduction to motorcycle slang and some insight into Big Diehl. Unfortunately for Peggy, what I’d learned wasn’t going to help her case. If Diehl had turned over a new leaf in prison and was dedicated to taking care of his mom, then he wouldn’t have taken out any anger on Carl Landsea.

  I was tempted to write the whole day off as a waste, except my registration fee had gone to charity.

  Then we got back on the road, and with Rochester beside me I once again focused on the sights around me, and the sheer joy of being out in the world without the shield of a car around me.

  It was only another twenty minutes back to the starting point at the Willow Grove Mall, where I picked up my final card, a three. A lousy poker hand, but Bob’s was no better. “How was your first poker run?” Bob asked.

  “Honestly? My butt hurts,” I said. “But I can see why people love riding.”

  “Yeah, it gets under your skin,” he said. “You want to go for a shorter ride sometime, you let me know.”

  I thanked him, and we saddled up for the ride back to Stewart’s Crossing. At least I’d gotten out in the world for a while, with my dog by my side. I’d settle for that any day, even if meant I had to go back to everything I’d found and look for another suspect in Carl Landsea’s murder.

  14 – Financial Aid

  By the time I got home I was exhausted, and I was thrilled when Lili volunteered to feed and walk Rochester. I went upstairs and took a nap, and awoke about an hour later to the smell of Lili’s picadillo, a wonderful Cuban dish of ground beef and tomatoes, with raisins added for sweetness.

  “How was your bike ride?” she asked, when I came downstairs. “You looked pretty wiped out when you got home.”

  “It was long,” I said. “Probably too long for me to do, given how little time I’ve actually spent on the bike. But I saw a whole bunch of places I want to go back to with you.”

  I described everywhere we’d been, and she agreed she’d like to go to the Mercer Museum and Beth Sholom temple. She surprised me, though, with an interest in going to Easton as well. “I think it might be interesting if I can do some comparison between the color of the Crayola factory and what sounds like the grimness of the city,” she said. “Maybe after we get back from Wildwood Crest we can start scheduling these trips. Are you going to keep the bike?”

  “Today wiped me out. It was fun in parts, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure I belong on a motorcycle.”

  I was too tired to do any research after dinner, choosing to sit up with Lili in bed and watch YouTube videos of a couple of the different singing competitions we followed.

  At Friar Lake the next day, though, I had some time and I looked for more information on Frank Diehl. I was surprised to find that he had a Facebook page, where he kept family and friends up to date on his mother’s condition. He hadn’t restricted his information so I was able to see everything.

  He presented himself as a devoted son. He wrote about taking his mom to her doctor’s appointments, spending time with her going over old photographs, trying to spur her memory whenever he could.

  It was sad, but also sweet, and I had to admit the guy there didn’t appear to hold grudges against anyone. He even mentioned that he was grateful for what he’d learned in prison, and how it had enabled him to turn his life around.

  With Big Diehl off the suspect list, I was left with the question of LoveMySled28. A Google search led me to a Yahoo group for motorcycle enthusiasts, where someone using that email address posted occasionally, usually in response to a question. He seemed pretty knowledgeable about motorcycles, posting about customized bikes called bobbers, how to use the choke for a motorcycle’s carburetor, and so on.

  But who was he? Clicking the link for his profile only mentioned that he was a motorcycle enthusiast who rode a Suzuki GSX-R sport bike. I did a quick search on that and was amused to find it referred to as “A favorite of the too-much-testosterone set.”

  He was articulate, and wrote well, and had a knack for explaining complicated material in a way that even a newbie like me could understand.

  Did that mean that he was smart enough to have engineered a financial aid scam like the one Carl had taken part in? I wondered if someone from Carl’s email contact list worked at Liberty Bell University, but at least half the entries were first names only, and another quarter were nicknames, like LoveMySled28. I wasted a good hour popping the remaining names into the LBU home page search function, with no result.

  I was discouraged when I finished. I had jumped to a conclusion with little evidence behind it, and I needed to go back to the last messages that Carl had deleted and see if I could find anything there.

  The only interesting thing I found was a bunch of messages from a woman named Rita about business dealings—invoices and account deposits. I flagged the messages from Rita for further review. What kind of business was he doing with her?

  I sat back in my chair, trying to figure out what to do next, and Rochester came over to me with Carl Landsea’s address book in his mouth. It was wet with saliva and the dog had chewed a bit of the upper right corner.

  I couldn’t yell at him, though. It was leather-bound, and something about the hide had probably triggered an atavistic response in him. At least he’d brought it to me before he had destroyed it. I thanked him, ruffled his air, and then wiped the saliva on my pants.

  Then I flipped through to the R’s, hoping to find Rita there.

  No luck. But then again, I didn’t know her last name, so I went back to the A’s and started there. I had only to get to the C’s, though, to find Rita Corcoran, and a cell phone number. The area code was 267, an overlay code for Philadelphia and most of Bucks County. Probably a cell phone, but that didn’t matter because I had an account with one of those number trackers that could find out who it belonged to.

  Sure enough, Rita D. Corcoran came up, with an address in Newtown, a suburb a few miles inland from Stewart’s Crossing. I plugged that into Google Maps and found a street view of a neighborhood of large chateau-style homes, with stone fronts, peaked roofs and multi-car garages. Rita was sure doing well for herself if that was where she lived.

  I jumped into the property appraiser’s database and discovered that sure enough, Rita D. Corcoran owned the home at that address, which she had purchased two years before for $600,000. I logged into
a database I subscribed to which provided financial details for individuals – without their consent, of course.

  Rita had put down $120,000 on the property, enough that she wouldn’t have to pay private mortgage insurance, which was a wise decision on her part. Then she’d begun making regular payments on the mortgage, usually paying nine thousand dollars a month in addition to what was required. Since transactions over ten grand got extra attention, I wasn’t surprised she was sticking below the radar level.

  I tried to trace back the source of the founds, but all I got was a message that the funds had come from a non-US financial institution that could not be accessed.

  Rita got more and more interesting by the minute. What was a wealthy woman like her doing with a low-life like Carl Landsea? And where did she get that extra cash to pay down her mortgage so quickly? At nearly a hundred grand a year, she’d have the house paid off in another couple of years.

  I started trolling social media for information on her. She didn’t have a listing on LinkedIn, and none of the many Rita Corcorans on Facebook matched her details. A woman of mystery, indeed.

  Fortunately Rochester reminded me that he was more important than this woman I’d never even met, and I played with him on the living room floor for a while, then took him out for his bedtime walk.

  Tuesday morning I left Rochester with Joey at Friar Lake and drove into Leighville, the riverfront town where Eastern’s main campus was located. I had been an undergraduate there, and the sight of those old stone buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style, all arches and turrets, incited a powerful feeling of nostalgia.

  I parked in a faculty lot beside a spreading oak tree. Across from me, a couple of boys kicked a soccer ball back and forth, and a young woman with a sketch pad leaned against another oak beyond them. I remembered similar days during my own college years, when I’d hung out with friends, sat beneath a tree to read, or engaged in long-forgotten academic debates.

  Too bad Peggy Doyle hadn’t had the opportunity I had, to attend a very good small college like Eastern, where I reveled in four years of devotion to academic life and began to grow into the person I was meant to be.

  Eastern was always hiring—everything from maintenance personnel up to the highest levels of administration, and for faculty and senior administrative jobs a search committee had to be convened, to review applications, conduct phone and in-person interviews, and make final recommendations to the hiring manager.

  Because I was both an alumnus and an administrator, I was in much demand for such committees. Faculty hated to serve on them because of the time commitment, but I had to work nine-to-five anyway and I was happy to give back to the institution that had given so much to me. Not only had I gotten a great education, Eastern had welcomed me back after my prison term and my mentors there had opened doors that had led ultimately to my job at Friar Lake.

  I walked along a tree-lined cobblestone path, beside Blair Hall, home of the English department, to the glossy new science building. The stone foundation matched that of the older buildings, but the rest of it was as new as the latest tweet or online post. Tall glass windows that revealed state-of-the-art laboratory classrooms and deeply raked lecture halls.

  I met the committee in a seminar room, with a long oval cherrywood table surrounded by plush armchairs. We had been convened to search for a new director of student life. That person was responsible for all the social aspects of a student’s time at Eastern, everything from providing the popcorn machine for movie nights to supervising student clubs.

  I didn’t know any of the other members, so we went around the table in a conference room in the science building and introduced ourselves. Two junior faculty members, one in English and one in chemistry, who were probably untenured and so needed to demonstrate their commitment to Eastern by serving on endless committees, along with the pressure to research and publish in their disciplines.

  I didn’t want to be in their shoes. I was lucky to be able to teach the occasional course as an adjunct, enjoying the teaching and the contact with students without worrying about all those external pressures.

  The other three members of the committee were administrators – the chair of the communications department, the assistant director of financial aid, and me. The guy from financial aid, a thirty-something with a neatly trimmed goatee, had agreed to serve as the committee chair. His name was Dave Moretti, and he’d said that he’d been through five searches in the past year. We spent the next hour hashing through the criteria for the position, and then the fire alarm went off in the building and we had to evacuate.

  I walked out beside Dave, and while we stood in the shade of a giant maple, waiting for the all clear, I asked, “I took the online training on financial aid and I was surprised to learn about those Pell chaser scams. Is that a big problem for Eastern?”

  “Only for our part-time student population,” he said. “You know we’ve started offering a lot more fully online courses, right?”

  I nodded. “I’m an adjunct in the English department. I was thinking about taking the training to offer one of those.”

  “We get a very different population for those courses,” he said. “They’re open to anyone with a high school diploma and a high enough SAT score. Most of them are taught by adjuncts, so our cost to offer them is pretty low, and students pay by the credit instead of one blanket tuition charge.”

  “And they’re eligible for financial aid?” I asked.

  “Not directly from Eastern, but they can apply for Pell grants and other forms of federal aid. That’s where the fraud comes in.”

  “If their grant is higher than the cost of the tuition, Eastern sends them the difference in cash, right?”

  “Exactly. And since those online courses are relatively inexpensive—maybe a thousand dollars a course – somebody with a five thousand dollar Pell grant could get a lot of money back.”

  “According to the video, students were signing up for courses and not doing any work, and walking off with the cash.”

  “That’s why we had to crack down on F grades,” Dave said. “We had an audit last year, and had to pay the government back nearly a million dollars in tuition we collected from ghost students. Now, if you get an F because you never signed into the system and didn’t do any work, we report you to the government right away. We have to return the tuition revenue, and then the Feds go after the students for the remainder of the grant we dispensed.”

  A loudspeaker sounded the all clear, and we went back into the conference room and finished our work, and then I returned to Friar Lake. Rochester pretended to be sad that I had abandoned him, though I knew he’d probably had a great time walking around the property with Joey.

  “You can’t fool me, dog,” I said. He went down on his front paws and looked beseechingly at me, and I laughed. Then he rolled over and I scratched his belly, and all was right in his world. It was up to me to do the same for Peggy Doyle.

  15 – Push

  Lili went into Philadelphia that evening for a talk by a photographer at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. I sat at the dining room table, opened up my hacker laptop and went looking for information on LoveMySled28 and Rita Corcoran.

  I hadn’t bothered to put away the laptop, or hide it from Lili, because I was confident that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. That evening, though, my fingers tingled and I wondered how far I could go to search for information on Rita and LoveMySled.

  I didn’t know enough about either of them to attempt a hack on some protected website. Sure, it would be interesting to see if either of them had received money from Liberty Bell University, but it would be illegal to hack into the private college’s financial aid department.

  Not going there. But what else could I do?

  Duh. One of my programs was a reverse email lookup. All you had to do was enter the address and click a button. I put in LoveMySled28 and his address, and waited. I had bought the premium service – well, I hadn’t actually bought it, but foun
d a code online that tricked the site into believing I had.

  I saw the first and last initials of the person’s name, a teaser really, along with a location—Levittown, Pennsylvania.

  I still had to jump through a bunch of hoops, as it checked social media sites, looked for photos online, and so on. Finally I got the full report, though it wasn’t much. A couple of phone numbers associated with the account, a photograph of a motorcycle that served as his avatar somewhere, and a name.

  Wyatt Lisowski.

  I went back to all my emails and searched for that name. One of the things I’ve noticed about group emails is that some people will enter your name into their address book, and so whatever they enter there shows up in the TO field. For example, one of Lili’s friends had added me to her address book as Lili_Eastern_Boyfriend, so that’s the way my name showed up in mass emails. Others left the name field blank in the contact information so all that showed was my email address.

  That was the case with Wyatt Lisowski. On some lists, he was there by name, and on others by email, but both monikers resolved to the same email address.

  Then I began trolling social media. Eventually I found a photo of him. He had slicked-back black hair, unruly eyebrows and a weak chin. He had attended Bucks County Community College and Liberty Bell University. He liked vintage punk rock like the Clash, superhero movies and Chinese food.

  The Liberty Bell University connection jumped out at me. Had he pulled the same scam that Carl had? Or perhaps he had been a student at the private college, and figured out the financial aid scam, then shared the information with his biker buddies. He had supplied them with the list of social security numbers – where had he gotten them?

  It took more searching, looking into dozens of websites and databases, before I discovered that he had gotten a certificate in medical coding and billing from the community college, which we had always called BC3. He worked for a large medical group in Levittown with a range of different doctors on staff.