They both giggled and nodded their heads. “We’re really proud of Grandma for standing up to WorldWideSouls,” Rose said.
Marie pointed behind her. “This morning they came and put these nasty billboards on both sides of Grandma’s business.” The camera zoomed out, and we saw the advertisements for WorldWideSouls, reading ‘Don’t trust your future to an itty bitty local. Go World Wide for the real Truth.’ The signs had an unflattering picture of Madame Flora with a big red ‘X’ marked through her face.
“Grandma fought back, and tomorrow the signs are out of here.” Marie grinned. “But the guys who put them up were really cute.”
“Hopefully they’ll be back to take them down,” chimed in Rose. They both waved at the camera as the image faded out on them and in on the news room.
Val shut off the remote. “These guys are terrible.”
“WorldWideSouls?” I asked. “Both Archie and Ann mentioned them to me today.”
She nodded. “They’re tough competitors. Flora may have stopped them this time, but they’ll be back. They’re ruthless.”
So I’d been hearing. “How do you know Madame Flora?” I asked.
“I use her equipment for secure video conferencing with my team here in Sterling.”
I shook my head. “No way. I saw that super duper communications device she has. It’s just a fax machine.”
She laughed. “She showed you her fax machine?”
I thought about that. “Did she pull a fast one on me?”
She laughed even harder. “Flora has her own communications center.” She grabbed a rose, broke off the stem, and stuck it behind her ear. She put a mock serious expression on her face. “Believe it or not, this rose is a secret Soul Identity camera.” She smiled. “Did you believe that?”
“No, Soul Identity uses only yellow equipment, and that rose is red.” I grinned. “See? I’m not as gullible as I look.”
She pointed at me. “And what color was the fax machine?”
It was beige. I groaned. “How did I miss that?”
She sat on my lap and draped her arms around my neck. “I’m still pretty impressed.” She had a mischievous look on her face. “Was this how George and Sue were sitting when you walked in on them?”
“Almost. Hold on.” I shifted her just a little bit to the left and pulled her in closer.
“Like this?” She was rocking her hips ever so gently.
I closed my eyes. “Just like that. Wow.”
I felt her lips nibbling my ear. “Was there anything else?” she asked.
“There was. Can you take off—”
The doorbell interrupted us.
I sighed. “Talk about bad timing.”
She got up and arranged her clothes. “George and Sue must have thought the same thing,” she said.
I opened the door, and Elizabeth smiled at me. “Time to go, Mr. Waverly. We can’t keep Mom waiting, you know.”
“Okay, we’re ready.” I grabbed my laptop bag, and the three of us headed out to the limo.
Elizabeth got in front. Val and I climbed in back and found George and Sue sitting on the couch. “Thought we’d catch a ride with you,” George said.
Sue and Val looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
Sue held up her rose and pointed at the one still behind Val’s ear. “Now we know who shared that cold shower with you, Scott.”
Val laughed. “And we know how that twelfth rose was earned.”
Elizabeth turned around and smiled. “Look at the two happy couples in the back, Bob,” she said.
Bob beamed. “Yes, Elizabeth. And we’re another happy couple up front.” He leaned over and gave Elizabeth a kiss.
Elizabeth held up her left hand and flashed us a diamond ring. “Bob and I got engaged at lunch today.”
Val and Sue examined the ring. I clapped Bob on the shoulder. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir. I am very nervous, but very excited.” He paused. “We have a big battle coming up, and I don’t want to fight alone.”
“We’ll fight together, Bob darling,” Elizabeth said.
“That’s so sweet,” Sue said.
“When’s the big day?” I asked.
“Very soon,” Elizabeth said. “But first we have to tell Mom.”
“Will that be a problem?” I asked.
Bob shook his head. “I’ve been practicing telling her all afternoon. I can do this.”
Elizabeth patted his arm. “Show them, Bob honey.”
Bob cleared his throat a couple of times and took a deep breath. “Ms. Blake, that’s a fine outfit you’re wearing, ma’am.” He looked at Sue. “Can you pretend to be Elizabeth’s mother?”
Sue nodded and cleared her throat. “Why, thank you, Bob,” she said with an inflated Texas accent. “That’s a nice green uniform you’re wearing.”
Bob smiled. “Thank you, ma’am.” He looked at Elizabeth. “I forgot what comes next.”
“The weather.”
“Oh yeah.” Bob looked at Sue. “And isn’t the weather tonight just beautiful, ma’am?”
“Yes, Bob, it is.” Sue looked at Elizabeth. “It’s supposed to rain this evening, so be careful with that line.”
Bob cleared his throat. “Ms. Blake, I love your daughter, and she loves me, and we’re getting married. Can you give us your blessing?”
Sue smiled. “That was very good, Bob.”
Elizabeth giggled. “See, Bob darling, you can do it!”
“I guess I can.” Bob grinned at the four of us. “Now we have to hurry.” He backed out of the driveway and drove us to Ann Blake’s house.
The house was only fifteen minutes away. Elizabeth mentioned that they had lived there ever since her mother had become the depositary chief.
“When was that?” I asked.
“About ten years ago,” she said.
George jumped in. “You know, that was right before the millennium. We were in the middle of the dot com boom, and Soul Identity was flush with money.” He pointed at Elizabeth. “If I’m not mistaken, your mother got her position partly because of her success as head of investments.”
Elizabeth nodded. “She chose some great startups.”
“So what happened two years later when the dot com went dot bust?” I asked.
George shrugged. “We take the long view. After almost twenty-six hundred years in the game, we have some tricks up our sleeves.”
“Not to mention a large enough pile of money to weather any storm and significantly influence any market,” added Sue.
Archie and Ann must not have told them how dangerously close to the financial edge Soul Identity had slid.
“That was also the year we upgraded all our systems—new readers, new communications centers, new computers, and new programs,” George said. “Like every other company in the world, we didn’t want the millennium bug to bite us.”
We got out of the limo, and Elizabeth rang the doorbell.
Ann answered the door and stood there with her hands on her hips. “What a motley crew you drug in here, Bob.”
Bob cleared his throat and wiped his palms on his pants. “Ms. Blake, that’s a fine outfit you’re wearing, ma’am.”
“Why, thank you, Bob.” Some sprinkles of rain began to fall. “Let’s get inside before we all get wet.” She opened the door wide.
But Bob wasn’t done. “And Ms. Blake, isn’t the weather tonight just beautiful, ma’am?”
Elizabeth slumped against Sue.
Ann stared at Bob. “Ducks might call this weather beautiful.”
Bob gulped. “Me and your daughter are getting married, ma’am. We are in love with each other, and we’re hoping you’ll bless us.”
Ann stood with her hands on her hips and stared at Bob. Then she turned to Elizabeth and raised her eyebrows just a little bit. Elizabeth nodded. Ann gave a single nod back, and Elizabeth’s whole face lit up in a big grin.
We all applauded.
“Come inside.” Archie stood in the doorway behind Ann. “We have much work to do tonight.” He led us through the foyer and out the back door.
A covered terrace extended across the back of the house and overlooked a manicured lawn bordered with raised flower beds. The rain settled into a slow drizzle, and the water drops on the flowers glistened in the solar garden lights’ glow.
I walked over to Bob. “Good thing the terrace is covered,” I said. “We need protection from all this beautiful weather.”
Bob smiled. “I really messed that up, sir.”
“It was fine, and it worked.” I clapped him on the back.
Sue and Val passed out flutes of champagne, and Archie raised his high. “To you, Bob and Elizabeth,” he said. “We wish you many happy years together.”
Val came over and slipped her hand into mine.
“Hey, Bob was talking about a battle,” I said to her. “Is this a war you’re in?”
She squeezed my hand. “It’s a war we both are in.”
I squeezed back and smiled. In for a penny, in for a pound.
sixteen
Ann tapped a knife against the side of her champagne glass to get our attention. “Tonight’s an old fashioned Southern barbeque, so load up your plates and bring ‘em on into the dining room.”
After we ate, Archie aligned his notepad with the corner of the table. He ran his fingers along the edges, then looked up at us. “It is a sad occasion when we must meet in secrecy to defend our organization.” He cleared his throat. “I think everyone has met Scott Waverly.”
Everybody nodded.
“You should be aware that Scott is neither a member nor a believer,” Archie said. “He is a skeptic who hasn’t accepted the transmigration of soul identities through various lives.”
“He’s not a believer yet,” Bob said.
I smiled. “That’s fair, Bob. I’m not yet a believer.” I looked at him. “However, I have seen what Soul Identity means to you and others, and I’m ready and willing to help you defend your organization.”
Archie looked around the table. “So what have we learned?” he asked.
Val leaned toward me and whispered, “Mr. Morgan assigned each of us areas to investigate.”
“Let us start with our competitor,” Archie said. “Sue, I asked you to find out what WorldWideSouls is doing to our affiliates.”
Sue sighed. “It’s not good news from the churches, I’m afraid. The complaint rates are way up. Some churches have even stopped talking to us altogether.”
“Why would they do that?” Bob asked. He stroked the bump of the pendant under his shirt. I remembered him telling me yesterday that he attended a weekly service.
Sue leaned forward. “They’re going to WorldWideSouls. I just got confirmation this week on eighty of them. I’m still checking on the rest.”
I turned to Val. “We just saw WorldWideSouls on the news tonight.”
She nodded. “They tried to buy out Madame Flora.”
“So now they’ve started invading our recruiters,” Sue said. “What was reported?”
“They tried to intimidate her into selling her palm reading business to them,” Val said. “Flora called them a bunch of fakes, and so far she’s resisted.”
Archie looked at me. “Last week we decided that WorldWideSouls must be getting help from people inside Soul Identity. I asked our team to look into various trends to see if we could find the traitor.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
George motioned to Sue, and she passed us each two sheets of paper. George put on a pair of reading glasses. “Mr. Morgan asked me to track communication trends,” he said. “This first sheet contains last year’s average monthly volumes for various communications between our offices.”
The paper showed tables of data with columns labeled Type, Source, and Destination. The sheet was covered front to back with hundreds of rows of tiny print.
“That’s pretty hard to read, so I plotted the connections onto a world map.” George held up the second piece of paper. “This makes it easier for everybody to spot the trends.”
The paper showed four world maps. With dots and lines between various cities, they looked like flight maps shown in the back of airline magazines. The maps were titled Calls, Intra-office Mail, Emails, and Deliveries. The hub and spoke patterns on each graph were the same: most communications were between Sterling and other offices. Almost no lines connected remote offices directly to each other.
“I see that headquarters is either the originator or recipient of most communications,” I said.
George nodded. “That was last year.” He frowned. “Now look at this year’s data. You’ll notice the trend has changed.”
Sue passed us two more pages. These maps showed the same traffic load passing through Sterling, but a new hub had appeared. Most of the remote offices were communicating directly with Venice.
“Have you changed your operations to send more work through Venice?” I asked.
“Not officially,” Archie said. “Elizabeth, please tell us about member visits.”
Elizabeth held up her hand and smiled. Her diamond sparkled as she waved it in front of us. “With all the excitement today, I didn’t have a chance to put together a presentation. But I have my notes here.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and unfolded it. “Member visits to our headquarters is down twenty percent for the year,” she said, “but visits to most of our other offices is stable.” She turned the paper over. “Except for Venice, that is. Last year they had three thousand member visits. This year they have that many per month.”
“I’ll go next, and I’ll get right to the point.” Ann passed us each a sheet of paper. “Our depositary withdrawals from our Venice branch have skyrocketed this year, with virtually no deposits.”
I looked at the paper. It showed the funds coming into and going out of the depositary, broken down by office. Almost a billion dollars had been transferred out of Venice.
“Do other depositaries always bring in more funds than they send out?” I asked.
She handed us another sheet of paper, which contained a table of new depositary funds, along with five, ten, and one hundred year running averages. “Yes, they do,” she said. “Historically our members deposit four to five times the amount they withdraw. Every office falls within this range. Every office except Venice.”
Val turned to Archie. “Mr. Morgan, last week I told you to stop picking on Andre Feret—that he was a good man trying to help bring Soul Identity into the twenty-first century.”
Archie nodded. “I recall you saying that.”
Val’s cheeks flushed. “Just yesterday I would have attributed the extra communications and extra visits to Andre trying picking up our slack,” she said.
“What do you mean slack?” Ann asked.
Val turned to her. “We don’t communicate enough. But that’s not my point.”
“Then let’s hurry and get to it,” Ann said.
Val nodded. “I’ve been a big defender of Andre’s methods,” she said. “But now I’m not so sure.” She pointed at me. “I think everybody needs to hear what Scott has to say.”
Ann turned to me. “She’s right. Show them your mystery man.”
I pulled Berry’s images and reader sheets out of my laptop bag and laid them on the table.
“Whose identities are these?” Sue asked.
“Somebody who wants to become a member, but he lost an eye and couldn’t have a reading done,” I said. “We used a photograph to do the reading and matching.” I held up the first two sheets. “Ann did these by hand.”
Archie took one of the sheets. “Good work, Ann,” he said. “It’s nice to see somebody remembers how to do things the old way.”
I held up the two reader sheets that the computer had generated. “When Val used her computer program to calculate the soul identity, it came up different.”
“We ran them again to be sure,” Val said, “but we had th
e same results again—different identities.”
“How could that happen?” Archie asked.
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Ann said.
I pulled the next reader sheet out of the bag. “We calculated the identity using my own program. You can see it matches Ann’s hand-run one.” I passed it around and everybody took a look at it. “This makes us pretty confident that Ann’s reading is accurate, and your computer program isn’t.”
I glanced around the room. Everybody looked stunned.
“How could something be wrong with our program?” Bob asked. “We’ve been using it for a long time.”
“We’re not sure,” Val said. “But there’s more—when we uploaded Ann’s hand-run identity of Scott’s friend, it matched on somebody who’s alive today,” Val said.
“That is impossible,” Archie said.
“So you’ve been telling me, Archie,” I said. “But it’s true.” I paused for a minute before continuing. “It matched Andre Feret.”
Everybody started talking at once.
Ann clapped her hands. “Come on y’all,” she said, “let Scott finish.”
I pulled out the last sheet. “Here’s a copy of Feret’s reader sheet, where you can see his identity matches what Ann and I calculated.” I held it up. “But we couldn’t prove that these are really Feret’s eyes.”
“We searched online, and we came up empty,” Val said. “In every picture we have, Andre is either standing in the shade, wearing sunglasses, or closing his eyes.”
Archie stood up and paced around the room with his hands clasped behind his back. “I remember it took a long time to verify Mr. Feret’s identity,” he said.
“Yes, it did, Mr. Morgan,” George said. “He stayed with us in the guesthouse while we waited for his eye infection to clear up. Ten years ago.”
I pulled Berry’s photograph out of my laptop bag and held it up. “And ten years ago, this person who matches Feret’s overseer identity lost his eye in a freak accident.”
Bob gasped. “Mr. Scott, that’s your neighbor!”
I was surprised that Bob recognized Berry. “You’re right, Bob. He was pretty upset when you couldn’t read his glass eye.”
Soul Identity Page 15
