“And someone,” I said, “with a lot of curiosity about how it happened to happen.”
“You’re not alone,” he said tiredly. “I’d handled Norma’s legal affairs and advised her on financial matters for probably four years. The longer I knew her, the better I liked her. I must confess to a certain bias in this whole affair. I did not realize what a complete damn fool I had been until all of a sudden I discovered that she was in love with Evan Lawrence, he had moved into her place with her, and they were going to be married. She was one hell of a woman. I didn’t know how far I’d fallen for her until … it was too damn late. I wasn’t planning to tell you this, Dr. Meyer—”
“Please, I am just Meyer. McGee is Travis. You are Roger. We’re talking personal things, so it will be easier without formalities.”
“Okay. Let me give you the financial picture the way it was before she went to Mexico. She was very bright. I guess you knew that already, Meyer. She got her degrees at a tender age. Am Dexter, who is wise in the ways of geologists, snapped her up six years ago. He hired her away from Conoco and talked her into a long-term contract, with a smaller royalty override than she was maybe worth then, and certainly smaller than she was worth at the time … at the time she died.”
It was hard for him to say. His throat worked. It was something he didn’t like to swallow.
“Anyway, even being paid less than her market value, she was able to accumulate a substantial amount after living expenses and taxes. I had her tax returns done here in the firm. I tried to talk her into investing in private drilling programs with people in the industry, people she knew and respected. I told her it would be a good tax shelter for a single person with her income. But she was not interested in manipulating money and making it grow. She wanted to tuck it away and forget it. So three years ago I had her open a discretionary trust account at Houston Bank and Trust and empty her savings accounts into it. The trust officer, Phyllis DeMar, consulted with me about what we should recommend to Norma. We put her into growth stocks, because it was not appropriate for her to invest for income. And we put her into tax-frees. It made a suitable portfolio.”
“Very sound,” Meyer said.
Windham turned the folder to where both Meyer and I could see a page of columns of figures, and then he came around the table to lean between us and point to the appropriate places.
“This is a summary printout made by the Trust Department. It shows the contributions in this column, withdrawals in this, and the total value of the trust based on market value of the holdings, at the end of each month since the account was established.
“As you can see, the total value of the account reached a peak of three hundred and fifteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight dollars and forty cents on the last day of February this year. There were no more contributions made after that date. In the period from March first to June fifteenth, three and a half months, the account balance was drawn down to this figure here, which is approximately what is in the account today, nine thousand three hundred and something.
“Though it was a substantial amount for her to have saved, it is but a tiny driblet of the money that surges through the banks in this city. In each case she authorized the sale of the securities, signed the authorization, and deposited the checks in the account she maintained at First National. Then she cashed a large number of checks over that time span. As she made me and the Houston Bank and Trust co-executors, I was able to get access to the checking account records. The summary is on this next sheet. This column here is normal account activity: charge accounts, bills, etc. These are the checks she cashed. One hundred and fifty-two, all in the fifteen-hundred- to twenty-five-hundred-dollar range. About ten a week. Two every working day. But because she was on field trips from time to time, the incidence had to be higher than that when she was in town. She went around to branch offices of the bank. She evidently wanted to accumulate cash without attracting any kind of attention. And it worked.”
“What do you think was going on?” Meyer asked. “Take a guess.”
Windham went back to his chair and slouched into it, leaning his chin on a steeple of long fingers. “My bias comes into the answer. Where did this Evan Lawrence come from? Maybe she married some kind of con man, or somebody given to harebrained schemes to make a million. Even though Norma wasn’t interested in money for its own sake, she was a very smart woman. She had a good mind. Could she have been cheated?”
“Probably,” Meyer said. “She was deeply in love. Trust becomes very important then. You suppress doubts for fear of offending the loved one. Her man and her work, they were the important things in her life. If he asked for a loan, made a plausible sales pitch, she would have given it to him.”
“But why such stealth?” Windham said. “If she had doubts, she knew she could come to me for advice.”
“Tell him, Travis,” Meyer said.
I didn’t want to, because I knew it was going to have a very ugly effect on Roger Windham.
“It was a very violent explosion,” I said to him.
“I read the reports. I know. Explosions are the big thing lately. How many school kids can you kill with a car bomb?”
“There were no identifiable remains. In fact, there were no remains at all. None recovered. Not of anybody aboard.”
“I read that—at least a hint of it—and I couldn’t believe it. Or understand it.”
“Nobody aboard ever knew what happened to them. Existence suddenly stopped,” I said.
“Her friends,” he said, “decided we’d have a memorial service for them in a week or so. For there to be a funeral, there has to be something to bury.”
“We had a little ceremony in the Atlantic off Lauderdale, out off the sea buoy,” Meyer said. “The other boats were there because of Captain Jenkins. But we brought our own wreath and floated it out on the tide at the same time. Our wreath was for Hack Jenkins and Norma and Evan Lawrence.”
“I’m glad that happened,” he said.
“But now,” I said, maybe too loudly, “Meyer and I are ninety-nine percent certain only three people were blown up out there—Norma and Hack and a harmless little guy who worked mate part-time.”
Windham shook his head and knuckled his tired reddened eyes. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Evan Lawrence had some time to work it all out. The happy couple were living aboard Meyer’s boat. In the Miami area you can buy anything in the world. Anything. A bazooka and a case of antitank grenades. Russian land mines. Persian whores. Chinese poisons. All you need is enough cash. He had access to Meyer’s professional files aboard the Keynes. He could have picked up enough about Chile to be able to fake the terrorist claim on the phone. We have identified the third person on the boat as the hired mate. Evan was handy enough so that Jenkins would never have hired the mate if Evan had been along to help with Norma’s tackle and bait. When they gassed up, Norma paid the hundred and something in cash out of her purse to the man at the pumps. Had Evan been there, she would have given it to him to give to the man. Had Evan been aboard, he would have been up on deck when they went out past the buoy into the wind and the chop. And what is more conclusive, Roger, is the way the money fits into the whole pattern.”
He didn’t say anything. He did a strange and touching thing. He bent over slowly, all the way over, to rest his forehead against the shiny dark wood of the conference table. His red hair was thinning at the crown. It gave him a vulnerable look.
We said nothing. In time he straightened up. “I guess I knew it somehow,” he said in a flat voice. “Maybe I knew it when he shook my hand. After the wedding. He pumped my hand and beamed at me and told me how happy he was. All that great warm grinning. She was right there, his big left paw resting on her waist in ownership. He looked at me in … in a jolly way, as if we shared some kind of joke together. I guess he was laughing on the inside at the way he’d gotten Norma to spirit the money out of the trust without letting her faithful old adviser know about it. Or laug
hing about how it was all going according to plan.”
Meyer said, “Maybe at that time he already planned to kill her in such a way it would look as if he had died too. But he wouldn’t have had the details worked out. They didn’t know they were going to live aboard my boat while I gave talks in Toronto.”
“But they seemed to be so much in love. Both of them,” Roger said wonderingly. “Do the police believe any of this?”
“There’s nothing yet to tell them,” Meyer said. “We’ve got no basis on which to try to trace Evan Lawrence. No personal papers. No fingerprints. Nothing. Just some little stories he told about his past. We’re going to look into his past, provided those stories weren’t lies.”
“If only Mr. Dexter hadn’t loaned her to Pemex,” Roger said. “You know, when I found out about the money, about her taking it out of the trust account, that’s when I knew why she was avoiding me after she married Evan Lawrence. I’d told her that she ought to come in and chat about the changes that ought to be made in their wills. But she was elusive. It wasn’t a matter of any great urgency, I thought. I just wanted to see her and talk to her. She was an honest person. She was doing something without telling me, taking that money out. She really didn’t have to tell me. It was her money, after all. But she didn’t want to come in and not tell me. Sorry about nattering around like this, thinking with my mouth open. I just have the crazy feeling I lost her three times, when she got married, when she died, and—now—finding out maybe she was killed. I really think she liked me. We always found a lot to laugh about together. I just didn’t make a move when I should have. And she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there was Evan Lawrence, grinning away, putting those big hands on her.”
Meyer said gently, “I never really got to know her. I should have made the effort. But she had a very busy life. We all think of the inconvenience of making an effort. We’re all going to do the right things a little later on. Soon. But soon slides by so easily. Then we vow we’ll try to do better. We all carry that little oppressive weight around in the back of our mind—that we should be living better, trying harder, but we’re not. We’re all living just about as well as we can at any given moment. But that doesn’t stop the wishing.”
We went down into the tunnel system and found the underground garage and paid the ticket on the way out. He was silent on the way back to Piney Village, apparently concentrating on his driving, but I sensed that things were moving about in the back of his head, where his little personal computer works on equations.
As soon as we were inside, he announced his return and the voice of the security office made its metallic acknowledgment. I stretched out on the couch near the fireplace. Meyer stood by the glass wall and looked out into the little garden.
Finally he came over and sat near me. “Once Windham arranged for me to stay here, he asked me to go through all the papers and documents I could find to see if I could learn anything about Evan Lawrence. The only traces of him were some old clothes, a pair of work shoes, and some love letters from Norma to him.”
“With addresses?”
“Without envelopes. From the contents I think they were sent back here from some field trips she went on. All the rest of her papers were professional documents, in those files there in the office alcove. Reports, surveys, daily drilling reports. Field maps. Computer printouts. All apparently in good order. How do we look for him?”
“We can start with a picture of him.”
“There isn’t one here. Not one. I thought there would be wedding pictures at least.”
“There probably are. She would have invited her friends from the company to the wedding. People who go to weddings take their little cameras and take shaky shots of the happy couple. And they would not have thrown them away.”
“Yes, you mentioned that before. I’d forgotten. I seem to be forgetting too many things this year.”
Nine
On Saturday we drove out to a commercial area where Amdex Petroleum Exploration was located. It was out Interstate 10, east of town, past Jacinto. Hurricane fencing and barbed wire enclosed a yard full of big trucks and incomprehensible hunks of machinery. There were two long prefab steel buildings. Even at nine thirty in the morning it was sickeningly hot. The guard on the big gate let us in and told us to park over near the first building. Meyer parked between a white Continental and a row of big rugged-looking trucks.
We walked through a shop area, the machines silent, work floor empty, air stale. The offices were at the far end of the first building, partitioned off and air conditioned. Beyond the reception area, two men and several women worked at the keyboards of data processing units, green figures glowing on the small screens. Fanfold paper came out of two high-speed printers that clattered and roared as the paper piled up in the waiting tray.
Mr. D. Amsbary Dexter came hurrying out of the larger office in the rear. He had met Meyer, of course, and seemed glad to see him. He looked me over with that quick appraisal of my financial condition which all hustlers learn before they leave grade school and decided I was worth only a small portion of his attention.
He shook hands, then trotted ahead of us into his office, waving us in, waving us toward the chairs. “Come in, come in.” He perched a haunch on the corner of his desk, a smallish wiry man, going bald, fishing in his shirt pocket with yellowed fingers for a cigarette. He had faded eyes, full of a nervous alertness, and a sore-throat voice.
“Meyer, I have to ask you for a favor. I talked to our lawyers. And I’ve cleared this with Roger Windham. He doesn’t see any estate tax consequences here, because even if the trust account were intact, there is enough coming in from the employee insurance, and enough pay and royalty interest due her, to more than take care of the tax. Apparently, all she has otherwise is that old van of hers, professional library, the furniture, and so on. There’s two four-drawer, gray-steel, fire-resistant, legal-size filing cabinets in that little office setup of hers in the apartment near the stairs. We bought them, and they are on our corporate inventory. They hold work papers which she created as a part of her employment contract with us, and thus belong to us. Most of the work papers are case histories, but there are quite a few which involve acreage we still have under lease.”
“I went through the files, Mr. Dexter. Her personal papers are in one drawer, half of one drawer. Once I remove those, you’re welcome to the files and the rest of the documents.”
“I appreciate your attitude. If it’s convenient, I’ll have some men over there tomorrow to pick up the filing cabinets.”
“Have them bring a letter from you, explaining ownership. Just in case anybody ever asks.”
“No problem. Now then, gentlemen, what was it that you wanted to see me about?”
Meyer signaled me with a glance, and I said, “We wonder what opinion you formed of Evan Lawrence.”
“Opinion? Well, he seemed very likable. Everybody around here took to him right away. I thought he was maybe a little bit old for her, ten or twelve years, I guess, but on the other hand she was beginning to get a little long in the tooth. Pushing thirty. Reaching the point where if she wanted kids she’d have to hurry. Maybe I resented him a little. He was marrying a successful woman. Someday she was going to be my best geologist. Maybe someday she would be a legend in the drilling industry. I mean she had that capacity. And I thought marriage might send it all down the drain. Children and a husband and all that. Of course, now all my worries seem ridiculous. What did I think of him? A very relaxed cat. A drifter, I think. And just by the way he listened to you, he could make you feel important and interesting.”
“She’s a big loss to your company?” I asked.
“I’m going to miss her. A lot. Unless you know modern oil and gas exploration, it’s hard to describe her talents. An old friend bird-dogged her for me when she was with Conoco. I hired her six years ago after talking to her for an hour. We worked out a contract.
“What the public doesn’t know is that there is
just too damned much information available when you try to make an exploration decision. Old wells, core samples, old geophysical surveys, producing wells, geological surveys. It’s a big fat confusion because of so much raw data. Norma helped move this company into computerized data processing and into electromagnetic mapping from the air. I’ve got the airplane now, loaded with electronics. We do some contract mapping with it to help pay the rent. Norma got into remote sensing analysis too. That’s where you get a computerized image analysis of satellite photographs. She worked with a good programmer until they finally developed the software to tie all the random information together, all the way from the history and the geophone records from the charges and the thumper trucks to core analysis.
“The thing is, she had a knack of sensing what was pertinent information and what was junk. With all the pertinent data in the computer, it could draw you a map of the subsurface structures that was clean and pretty, without anomalies that give you questionable areas. Norma put us out front of a whole mob of little exploration companies. She could take the series of computer maps and go into a trance, dreaming of what the earth was like at that place once upon a time, and she’d put down a little red circle with an N inside it. Her mark. Drill here. Or she would throw the whole thing out. There’s no big demand for dry holes, she’d say.
“Hell, we got a lot of other benefits from the data processing. We never lose track of a lease rental payment. We’re right now revamping the software to catch up with the changes in the WPT. We got all the payout status reports up to date. And we do our own econometric studies. But keeping track of all the nuts and bolts is housekeeping. Using computer technology to process information about what might be a couple of miles underground, and drawing maps of it, that was her contribution, and she came in for a percentage of every well after payout, a certain percent for the ones she worked on and smaller for the others, and for the development wells based on her original recommendation. Having that engineering under her belt gave her a practical base for all the rest of it.”
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