Grave Doubt (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 5)

by Michael Allegretto

  “Where’d he get the money?”

  “From his partner.”

  “Partner?”

  “I don’t remember his name. Some guy he used to play chess with.”

  “Martin Blyleven.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Martin. Yeah, I think it was Martin. I don’t know about the last name.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “No. He never came around here. Stan met with him every week for about two months before he ran out on me.”

  “On Tuesdays.”

  “Yeah, I think it was.” She frowned with her eyes and smiled with her mouth. “Say, how’d you know that?”

  “Lucky guess. Where did they meet?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What were the meetings about?”

  “Stan wouldn’t say. He was real secretive about it, only that they were planning something big. When I asked him how big, he told me that his share—and this is why I figured the whole thing was bullshit—that his share was a million bucks. I mean, seriously.”

  “You said Martin gave Stan money. How much?”

  “A couple thousand. But it wasn’t all for Stan to keep. He had to buy some stuff for Martin.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  “I don’t know what it was. Stan bought it from someone he used to know in the Army, and he kept it in the bedroom closet. He told me not to fuck with it, which was typical. My house, and he tells me what to do.”

  “But you saw it.”

  “Not exactly. It was in two black nylon backpacks. One was small, and the other was big with a lot of straps.”

  “Did Stan ever hint at what was in them?” I had a pretty good idea.

  “Uh, uh. He said Martin swore him to secrecy. Oh, yeah, and something else. Stan gave him his car.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “Just that. About a week before he ran out on me, he said he was taking a long trip with Martin. They were driving down to some small town in Arizona.”

  “Tucson?”

  “No. Small. Someplace I never heard of before. Hole-something. Holman. Holton. Whatever. Anyway, Stan was gone for two days and when he came back, he didn’t have his car. He said they’d left it down there. Can you believe that?”

  I could. “How did he get home?”

  “He said Martin dropped him off. I was at work at the time. He said I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about this. Like I’m going to go around bragging that my boyfriend just gave some guy his car, for Christ sake.”

  “What happened after Stan came back?”

  “He hung around the house for the next few days. He was excited as hell. I knew he wanted to tell me what was going on, and I figured he would soon enough, so I didn’t push him. He kept saying, ‘Pretty soon we’ll be home free.’” Her face darkened. “That lying son of a bitch. What he meant was pretty soon he’d be free. A few nights later I came home from work and found a note. It said: ‘Don’t wait up.’ Very fucking funny, don’t you think? That was his way of saying good-bye. He made his big score, all right. But he didn’t need me to help him spend it.”

  “Did you ever hear from him after that?”

  “Are you kidding? I never even heard his name until you showed up today.”

  “I see.” There was nothing more for me here. I stood and said, “Thanks for your help.”

  She smiled. “Anytime.” Then her mouth hardened into a grimace. “If you find Stan, be sure to tell him he’s got a daughter now.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I walked out, and I had no sooner shut the screen door when Cliff shouted, “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “It doesn’t concern you.”

  “The hell it doesn’t! I live here!”

  “This is my house, you dumb shit!”

  “Don’t you call me a—”

  I slammed the car door and started the engine.

  Debbie was wrong about Stan. He never made his big score. Sure, he thought he was going to. A million bucks, Blyleven had told him. I wondered if that part were true. Of course, as far as Stan was concerned, the amount wouldn’t matter. He was going to be an unwilling stand-in for Blyleven, a body to be used, blown to bits and burned beyond recognition.

  And when Blyleven murdered Stan, he’d left another child fatherless. Mute, sucking her thumb, cowering, while Debbie and Cliff raged above her.

  24

  I FOUND A CONVENIENCE store on Mississippi Avenue and pulled into the lot. It was just starting to rain—hard, fat drops plunging from an angry sky.

  There were a pair of pay phones outside, barely shielded by the overhanging roof. Teenagers were not far off, for the outside of the building was thick with their spoor—cake-and-creme smeared cellophane wrappers, big-drink cups, and cigarette butts. I shoved in a quarter and phoned Bill McPhee.

  After I told him who I was and what I was doing, he said he’d help if he could. He gave me directions to his home.

  I drove through a hammering rain mixed with hail. It didn’t let up until I had exited I-225 in Aurora and found my way to the retirement community of Heather Gardens.

  The narrow lawn fronting the condo was white with hail. Marble-size, no big deal. When they get as big as golf balls you can worry. They’ll pound dents in cars, smash windshields, and rip holes in roofing shingles. Larger than that and you’d better stay indoors. I know a woman who ran outside during a storm to rescue her tomato plants, and she got bashed in the head by a fist-size stone that knocked her down and opened a cut that took eight stitches to close.

  I called McPhee from the vestibule, and he buzzed me inside.

  The elevator, a retirement-home model, took ten minutes to lift me up to the third floor. A smooth, cautious, quiet ride, guaranteed not to cause heart palpitations or dizziness.

  “I remember when Martin Blyleven died,” McPhee said. “Saw it in the obituaries. When you get to be my age, that’s the first thing you read in the morning paper.”

  We faced each other across a low, glass-topped table with chrome legs. McPhee was cheerful and balding, and he sported a paunch beneath his powder blue sweat suit. He wore running shoes to give him better traction between the couch and the refrigerator.

  His wife brought us coffee in yellow mugs. She was white-haired and bifocaled, and she, too, wore a sweat suit. Hers was pastel green.

  “I can’t say I knew him.” McPhee said. “Only worked with him during my last few days there. But if he was anything like his brother-in-law Matthew Styles, he was probably a real son of a bitch.”

  “William,” Mrs. McPhee said from the kitchen.

  “Sorry, mama.” He said to me in a lowered voice, “Styles was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. It always amazed me that Franklin Reed couldn’t see through him.”

  “Reverend Reed, dear,” Mrs. McPhee said, coming back into the room. She kissed her husband on his bald head. “I’m meeting Millie down in the gym for our aerobics class. There’s more coffee if you want it. And cookies, too.”

  “What kind?”

  “Macaroons.”

  “Macaroons give me gas.”

  “William.”

  “Well, they do.”

  She tsk-tsked at him, then smiled at me. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Lomax. No, no, don’t get up.” She breezed out.

  McPhee looked fondly after her. “A wonderful woman,” he said. “Better than I deserve.” He sipped his coffee. “But we were talking about Reed and the rest of them.”

  “How long did you work for Reed?”

  “Twenty-six years. I was thirty-seven when I started. The company I’d been working for was breaking up, and I needed a job. I papered most of Denver with copies of my resume. The Church of the Nazarene was the last place I expected to end up.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I’m not a religious man. Never have been. My wife’s got enough religion for the both of us. But Reed wasn’t looking for another convert. What he needed was
someone to straighten out his books. And I can tell you, they were in a royal mess. This was right after he’d been indicted for fraud, which you probably know about.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the first thing he told me to do was ‘attenuate his culpability.’ He actually used those words. In other words, cook the books and try to fool the auditors. I told him no way. He almost fired me on the spot. I explained to him that messing with the books would only get him in deeper trouble, and that considering his circumstances, honesty was the best policy. Those were my words. Honesty the best policy. Me telling him, the man of God.” He shook his head in disgust. “I could see from his ledgers that his church was a real money-maker. I told him that if he just hung in there, he’d be back on his feet in no time. Financially. Of course, his assistants had been saying the same thing, but I guess it took hearing it from an outsider, so to speak.”

  “Was Matthew Styles there at the time?”

  “No. He slithered in twelve or fourteen years later. And he’s been running things ever since.”

  “He runs things?”

  McPhee gave me a wry grin. “Everyone thinks that Reed is in charge. Probably even Reed. Well, he may be in the pulpit and on camera, but when it comes time to make an important decision, he asks Styles what to do. And then he does it. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen.”

  “How did Styles gain control?”

  “Reed let him. Styles may be a son of a bitch, but he’s a sharp businessman. Even Reed is smart enough to know that. And to be honest, Styles is responsible for putting Reed on television and bringing in money from outside the community.”

  “I see. And what about World Flock?”

  McPhee snorted and stood up. “That phony outfit is what got me fired.”

  “Styles told me you retired.”

  “He and Reed forced me to retire. I call that being fired. You want some more coffee?”

  He ambled into the kitchen and returned with filled cups and a plate of cookies.

  “I don’t know why she buys these things,” he said, biting a macaroon in half and talking while he chewed. “She knows my stomach can’t take them.”

  It looked like his stomach could take anything that didn’t move. He stuffed the other half into his mouth. I pictured Mrs. McPhee downstairs in the gym huffing and sweating and waving her arms, while her husband sat on his butt and ate sweets. I sipped my coffee. What the hell. I had a cookie.

  “You said you got fired because of World Flock.”

  “Because I asked too many questions about it,” he said.

  “What sort of questions?”

  “Things I had to know to do my job. Like where all the money was coming from. I wanted receipts, check stubs, something. All I ever saw was stacks of cash and slips of paper with amounts written down by Styles.”

  “Stacks of cash?”

  “Okay, let me back up. Normally the church gets its donations in personal checks, cash, and credit card accounts over the phone. They have employees who do nothing but count the money as it comes in and write down who gave how much. All very open and accurate. They have people watching the employees and people watching the watchers. ‘To remove the chance for temptation,’ as Reed used to say.”

  “But World Flock was different.”

  “You know it. Of course, I was there only at the beginning and then, boom, out the door.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Well, the whole thing was screwy to begin with. Reed and Styles had just come back from one of their trips to Tucson and—”

  “Excuse me. How often did they go?”

  “Styles went once a month to monitor the progress of the retirement community. Reed, not so often. Maybe three or four times a year. Anyway, when they came back this time I could tell something was wrong. I asked Styles about it, and he said I was imagining things.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “Hell, no. Reed was depressed, sick-looking, and he hardly spoke to anyone for the next few days. Styles was different, too. Nervous, anxious, as if something big was in the air. It turns out there was. World Flock. A week later, Styles explained it to me. He said Reed had a plan to gather money from all over the world and focus it in certain needy areas. World Flock would feed the hungry, minister to the sick, and shelter orphans. It sounded like an ambitious, worthwhile project. And I could see that it would take a lot of planning and organization to implement. But Styles said no. He said it was ready to go. In fact, he told me that World Flock would begin operation within the week.”

  “How did he manage that?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. He told me not to worry about it, that all I had to do was keep the books.” McPhee picked up a macaroon, then put it back down. “And the money started pouring in. I mean a lot of money.”

  “How much?”

  “Half a million the first week alone. More after that.”

  “And this was all in cash?”

  McPhee nodded, his mouth full, having succumbed to the macaroon. “Bags of it,” he said. “Which in itself was not that unusual. The church was accustomed to receiving donations in cash. Although never in amounts so large. The oddest thing, though, at least to my mind, was how World Flock seemed to just appear out of thin air, a fully functioning entity.”

  “How did it operate?”

  “Actually, it was little more than a clearing house. The money would come to the church in Denver, earmarked for World Flock. Then it would be transferred to the Tucson office for distribution to underdeveloped countries.”

  “How was the money transferred?”

  He shrugged. “By wire, I assume.”

  “You assume? Didn’t you know?”

  He gave me a sour look. “When it came to World Flock, Styles showed me only what he wanted me to see. When I asked for more, he said it didn’t concern me. When I demanded more, he fired me. Simple as that. Then he brought in his brother-in-law Blyleven to take over my job. Keeping it in the family, I suppose.”

  “Someone who wouldn’t ask the wrong questions.”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  “Why did World Flock have its office in Tucson and not in Denver?”

  “Styles said that’s the way Reed wanted it. Which to me meant that’s how Styles wanted it.”

  “So the money came in from all over the world, in cash, then was transferred to Tucson.”

  “Right.”

  “Then what?”

  “It paid for the overseas construction of hospitals, orphanages, and churches.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I saw documentation that verified it.”

  “Was all the money accounted for?”

  “Yes. All the money that came into Denver was used for the construction of those buildings.”

  “On paper.”

  “Well… yes. I never actually visited any of the sites.”

  “Did anyone from the church?”

  “I’m sure someone did.”

  “But you don’t know who.”

  “No. But listen, I know these things were built. I’ve seen the church’s promotional messages on TV. Haven’t you?”

  I had. Still photographs of whitewashed buildings in the background and smiling, brown-faced kids in the foreground, kids with new shorts and shirts from Sears and dirty, calloused feet. A narrator promised that World Flock was helping thousands of children just like these.

  I wondered if that were true.

  25

  AFTER I LEFT MCPHEE, I headed back to the office. There was a message on my machine from Lifkin, PI. I phoned him at once.

  “My secretary told me you’d called with Stan Lessing’s full name,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “Unfortunately, you were too late. I’d already done background checks on three different men named Stan Lessing, all of whom were in the Army.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll have to charge you for all of it.”

  Big
surprise. “Tell me about my Stan.”

  “Special Forces,” he said. “Airborne Rangers. His outfit was apparently involved in a few clandestine missions in Afghanistan, back when there was an Afghanistan. The details are classified. It would take a lot more time to try to dig them out, and I can’t guarantee results.”

  “That’s not necessary. What else?”

  “He received a medical discharge.”

  “Because of his burns?”

  “Yes. He was on a training mission overseas. A fuel-storage tank exploded, killing three soldiers. Their bodies were so badly burned they had to be identified through dental records. A few other men were seriously injured, including Sergeant Stan Lessing. He was burned on his arms, chest, and face. He spent a few months in a hospital in Germany until he had stabilized enough to be shipped to a burn treatment center in the States.”

  “Where in Germany?”

  “Frankfurt. There are some odds and ends here, if you’d like me to read them.”

  I’d heard enough. “Just put it in the mail.”

  “With your bill?”

  “Right. With that.”

  After I hung up, I pawed through the bookcase until I found a US road atlas. Arizona filled one large page. Cities and towns were listed in alphabetical order along one side. I could find only one that fit Debbie Ogborn’s description of “Hole-something.” Holbrook. It was a small town on the edge of the Painted Desert, about a hundred miles north of the crash site. It was also on a more-or-less direct line between Denver and Tucson. By air. By road it would be a long day’s drive, maybe fifteen hours. One day down and one day back.

  I put away the atlas and phoned Roger Armis at his bank.

  “The three of us need to talk,” I said.

  “What is it?” He was understandably anxious. “Have you determined if the blackmailer could be Martin?”

  “We need to talk in person.”

  He was silent for a moment. “All right. Come to the house tonight at eight.”

  I got there at five after. It was a warm, soft night. The Armis house, like the others in the cul-de-sac, stared at the quiet street with yellow window-eyes. All the lawns were tinged blue-black by the arc light on the corner.