A Dime a Dozen

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Natalie exhaled slowly.

  “I don’t know, Callie,” she said. “When Karen first moved back last year, Dean and I made great overtures toward her, you know, bringing her food, helping her move in, inviting her to church. She would never talk about herself, her past, or her father at all, except to say that she had become a Christian a few years ago and that ever since she had felt the Lord leading her to return home and help the migrants here. I don’t know much beyond that. If her intention was to reconcile with Lowell, that certainly hasn’t taken place yet, as far as I know. Now with him so ill, I have to wonder if they’ll ever make their peace.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked, anticipating the answer before she gave it.

  “He has a lung disorder,” she said. “COPD. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I doubt he’ll live to see next year.”

  “He looked pretty awful when I met him yesterday.”

  “You met him?” Natalie asked. “At the orchard?”

  “Yes, he came out when the police were there.”

  I described his hollow face, his stooped posture. Natalie told me a bit more about his condition and said that, as sick as he was, she was surprised he had come out of the house at all.

  “What’s with the house anyway?” I asked. “For such a thriving business, the mansion looks like it’s falling apart.”

  “That’s Lowell,” Natalie said, nodding. “Since he got sick, he doesn’t want people around, doesn’t want the noise or the activity of maintenance or repairs. He putters around in that big old home with no one but his nurses and attendants to keep him company. Everyone else is off limits.”

  “Even his children?”

  She thought about that.

  “I don’t know about Pete,” she said finally. “I’m sure he has access. As for Karen, what can I say? Between her and her father, the two of them are like a pair of stubborn mules. But what neither one of them will admit is that the one commodity they don’t have a lot of is time.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Natalie stayed home to get some things done around the house, but I needed to get into the MORE office, see how things were going with Harriet, and get a good look at my own investigation. On the way, I called June Sweetwater at the police station. I got her voice mail, so I left a message describing my visit from Pepe last night and his revelations about the conversation he had with his father just before Enrique disappeared. I wasn’t sure what Detective Sweetwater would do with that knowledge, but I knew it was relevant to the case—particularly if Enrique’s death was ruled a homicide.

  When I came into the office, Harriet didn’t seem embarrassed or uncomfortable, and I decided she wasn’t even aware that Natalie had overheard her conversation with Margaret about me and Tom. It was just as well, since my resulting talk with Natalie had been actually quite liberating. I was glad to know I had my mother-in-law’s blessing to live my life fully, especially if that life ended up including a new husband and some children.

  Trying not to picture a bunch of little Toms and Callies running around, I settled down with my computer in the conference room at the opposite end of the big table from Harriet. She was buried deep in her work, eyes glued to the screen, her fingers making a steady clack-clack-clack on her keyboard.

  Despite my distracted mind-set, I soon found myself absorbed with my own work as well. I spent about an hour updating my database, typing in all of the information I had gathered thus far, particularly the rave reviews and comments I had received yesterday as I made the rounds of the charities that were supported by MORE. When I finished updating my records, I stood and stretched, glad that I had taken the time to go canoeing earlier in the morning.

  “You getting hungry for lunch?” Harriet asked, looking up at me.

  “Not quite yet,” I said. “How about you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Maybe in a while,” she answered. “I have some things I need to go over with you first.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

  I pulled a chair down to her end of the table and then sat, listening as she reviewed her findings with me. As she talked, she pulled up figures on the screen and referred to printouts on the table, giving me an in-depth analysis of what she had found thus far.

  Fortunately, she had nothing but good things to say about the MORE finances. She was also ready to sign off on the dental clinic and the Head Start program.

  “What about Go the Distance?”

  “It checks out fine, with one exception.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m just a little concerned about an expense item. They purchased a single vehicle last summer from Green Valley Motors for forty-nine-thousand-and-something dollars. If that’s a company car, that seems like a bit much for a nonprofit.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it does.”

  I tried to think of the vehicle I had seen Karen driving the day before. I couldn’t remember the make or model, but it hadn’t struck me as being particularly luxurious. In any event, I would check it out. Expensive company cars were an area of potential abuse in unethical nonprofits. On paper, nonprofit executives could list low salaries and then hide their chief income through expensive side benefits—things like fancy cars, travel for their family, and houses. I thought of one company in Maine that I had exposed just last summer, a camp for kids with disabilities. Turns out, one of the $60,000 camp buses was actually the camp director’s brand-new Porsche. Suffice it to say, after that, I took a close look at every vehicle purchase.

  “How about Su Casa?” I asked, thinking of the charity that built the migrant dorms.

  “Su Casa is a problem,” she replied. “I’m definitely seeing some red flags there.”

  She had my attention.

  “There seems to be something odd going on between Su Casa and Hooper Construction,” she added.

  “The same people are involved in both places,” I said. “Zeb Hooper and his son, Butch.”

  “Well, I’m afraid that Zeb and Butch just might be up to a little funny business. Either that, or somebody is keeping some awfully sloppy records.”

  “What’s the problem?” I asked. “Please don’t tell me they’re taking money from one and putting it in the other.”

  I thought back to a case I had worked last September. Tom sent me to deliver a grant to a friend of his who headed up a hunger relief organization based in Philadelphia. In the end, it turned out that money was being siphoned from the nonprofit side of the business and poured into the for-profit side, raising some serious issues of legalities and ethics. After that, we were more wary than ever of companies that tried to run both types of enterprises simultaneously. Now whenever we had a for-profit and a nonprofit headed by the same management, we required an independent audit of both places before we would even begin the grant approval process.

  “Let me show you,” Harriet said. “It’s hard to explain, but the problem stems from some donations that Hooper Construction made to Su Casa.”

  “Donations?”

  “Look at this,” Harriet said, pulling Hooper Construction’s records up on the screen. “Last July second, Hooper Construction wrote a check to Su Casa for five thousand dollars, marking it in the books as a ‘Donation.’”

  “Okay.”

  “Now here’s the entry in Su Casa’s books, recording that donation from Hooper Construction, but instead of five thousand dollars, they’ve got it listed as twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “What?”

  She showed me the line entry, and though the date and the check number were the same, the amount was not.

  “They did it again, over here, the January before. Again, Hooper Construction donated five thousand dollars to Su Casa, but in that instance Su Casa recorded it as a donation of sixty-five thousand dollars!”

  “What do you think is going on?” I asked. “Is Hooper Construction trying to get a tax deduction on a bigger gift than they actually gave?”

  “No,” Harrie
t said. “That’s what’s so weird. If they were faking the amounts of their donations, then the figures would be reversed. Hooper Construction would be showing the larger amount and Su Casa would be showing the smaller amount.”

  “I’m so confused,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “Why would Su Casa want to record a bigger donation than they are actually getting?”

  Harriet put the books down, pulled her reading glasses from her nose, and looked at me.

  “I’ve only got one guess, and you’re not gonna like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, usually when you see something like this, it’s a sign of potential money laundering.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Harriet and I worked straight through lunch, finally asking one of the secretaries to order something in for us so we wouldn’t have to take the time to go out and eat.

  Our process of elimination was simple. Since Su Casa had only been in business for two years, we went back and looked at every single donation of more than a few thousand dollars that they had received. Then we called each donor to verify the amount that had actually been given. In two years’ worth of records, we found six bogus donations, with the overstated amounts totaling nearly three hundred thousand dollars. I began to agree with Harriet’s theory that there was some money laundering going on.

  “I wonder where the extra cash is coming from,” I said. “What on earth could they be collecting money for in the boonies of North Carolina?”

  To my mind, money laundering was usually associated with drugs or prostitution or—as in a case I had worked last fall—human smuggling. But I doubted anything like that could be going on here, and I wondered aloud how we could find out more about the principals involved.

  I then buzzed Dean and asked him to come to the conference room. When he got there, I said that we were a little concerned about some things we had found in the records from Hooper Construction and Su Casa, and we wondered if he could tell us a bit about Zeb and Butch Hooper.

  “What would you like to know?” he asked, pulling out a chair to sit at the table. “They’re both friends of mine. Good men. Butch in particular. He’s a deacon in our church and a real stand-up kind of guy.”

  “What about Zeb?”

  “Well…” Dean said, his voice trailing off. “Let’s see. I don’t know Zeb as well. He kind of keeps to himself. I do know he was born and raised here in Greenbriar. His family was poor—very poor, from what I’ve heard. I think he grew up in an old shack on top of the mountain, sort of back behind Tinsdale Orchards.”

  “Above the high block?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. From what I understand, it’s not much more than a crude cabin. I think it’s still there, though it’s probably abandoned now.”

  I tried to imagine Zeb as a young man, living above the orchard, always looking down the mountain at the Tinsdale spread in front of him. That had to have been difficult.

  “Zeb Hooper and Lowell Tinsdale are about the same age, aren’t they?” I asked. “I would imagine there’s some animosity there.”

  “Oh, on the contrary. They were always the best of friends. Still are, far as I know.”

  “If Zeb was so poor,” I said now, “how’d he get the money to start Hooper Construction? He’s certainly not poor anymore.”

  “Gosh, no. He’s done very well for himself. He’s got a successful business, and between him and Butch, I think they own more property than anyone in this town.”

  “So where did the money come from to start the business?”

  Dean was silent for a moment, and I sensed an undercurrent in his hesitation.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to gossip, Callie.”

  “I’m doing an investigation, Dean. It’s not called gossip. It’s called digging out the truth.”

  “I only know what I’ve heard. And it’s just rumors.”

  “Every little bit helps,” I said. “I promise you, it won’t leave my lips unless it turns out to be true.”

  He exhaled slowly.

  “Rumor has it that Zeb Hooper had one great love of his life. No one around here ever met her, but her name was Tatiana, or something fancy like that.”

  “Tatiana?”

  “More importantly, she was a princess or something.”

  “A princess?”

  “Yep. When he was a young man, he supposedly ran away to be with this Princess Tatiana. He came back a few months later with a hundred thousand dollars in his pocket and no mention of her ever again.”

  “Dean, that’s the strangest story I ever heard.”

  “Yeah, I know. The rumor was that the princess’ father must’ve paid Zeb off. Gave him money to go away and leave his daughter alone.”

  I sat back, wondering how on earth I could ever get more information about this. That just sounded too strange to be true.

  “Was Zeb sad about it?” I asked. “Did he seem to grieve?”

  “No, he came back to town a happy man. This was years ago, before we moved here, but a lot of people know the story about Zeb Hooper leaving town poor and returning rich. He never gave any explanation, just came home, bought the little construction company he’d been working for since high school, and changed the name to Hooper Construction. He obviously had a good head for business, because the place has done nothing but thrive ever since.”

  “When did Butch come along?”

  “Zeb married a local girl a few years later, and they started having kids. The wife has since passed and both daughters got married and moved away. Butch was the only son and the middle child, I believe. Now he seems as successful at running the business as his daddy was. Maybe even more so.”

  I stood and began pacing while Harriet remained silent, taking everything in.

  “Dean,” I said finally, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but there’s something funny going on with Su Casa’s books. Financially, I’m afraid they’re not going to pass our screening process.”

  “Well, if Zeb Hooper is operating his nonprofit in a way that’s less than ethical, then we don’t want to be affiliated with them anyway.”

  “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

  Though I didn’t want to allege money laundering out loud to Dean, I needed to know that MORE would be willing to remove Su Casa from their list of supported charities if we indicated there was a violation. Beyond that, there wasn’t much for me to do except turn the information over to the necessary authorities.

  I thanked Dean for his help and asked him not to say anything to anyone until we had more facts. Once he left the room, I made a phone call that would initiate asset inquiries for Zeb Hooper, Butch Hooper, Trinksie Atkins, and—since there was an irregularity with one of her expenditures—Karen Weatherby. If any of them had any excessive income or bank accounts or properties or stocks or whatever, I wanted to know about it. I thought about adding Danny Stanford to the list, but then I remembered that he had only been living here for a few months.

  “This may be another case,” I said to Harriet as I hung up the phone, “where someone has forgotten the ‘non’ in ‘nonprofit.’”

  Thirty

  Harriet and I decided to table the problems we had uncovered for now. The asset reports would come back within 24 hours, and they would probably shed much more light on the subject. In the meantime, she still had work to do, and so did I.

  There were a few criteria on my list that I thought I might be able to clear off fairly easily, so I set about doing that, starting with the principle that MORE should “pay salaries and benefits on a par with nonprofit industry standards.” Harriet had already calculated the true salary breakdowns, including pay and benefits, for everyone who worked at MORE. All I had to do, then, was compare them with the amounts that people earned at similar agencies in the region. Fortunately, as expected, MORE was right in line for every single category, which meant that they had passed the criterion.

  Next, I looked at the edict that MORE should �
�have an independent board that accepts responsibility for activities.” I wouldn’t be able to get to a board meeting while I was in town, but at least I could review previous meetings’ minutes to see if the board handled matters in a tough, decisive manner or if they were simply “rubber stamps” for management. That I did, though I nearly fell asleep twice while reviewing the tedious notes. Once I had given the board my seal of approval for their procedures, I turned the information over to Harriet, who would make sure that no one on the board was financially profiting from their affiliation with MORE in any way.

  Finally, to get a look at MORE’s fund-raising practices, I called in their director of development and talked with him extensively about every fund-raiser they had done in the last two years. Though he would still need to go over some of the financials with Harriet, I felt that MORE would pass this criterion, “follows standards of responsible and ethical fund-raising,” as well.

  By 4:00 I was going stir crazy. I really wanted nothing more than to run down to the police station and find out everything that was happening with the Enrique Morales investigation—not to mention the related case of the stranger I had watched die a few nights before. Though I hoped the police had been able to trace out the man’s expensive shoes and his watch, I felt that we would’ve heard something by now if, indeed, the John Doe had been given a real identity.

  Thinking that there was one thing I could do, I shut down my computer and told Harriet I had some errands to run and would meet her back at the cabin later. She gave me a dirty look, but before she could speak, I said that if she waited until dark to drive up the hill, she wouldn’t have to worry about the heights since she wouldn’t be able to see the view anyway.

  Once I left, and against my better judgment, I drove straight to Su Casa. My intention was to have a friendly little chat with Zeb Hooper. I wanted to see if I could get a bead on who he really was and what he could possibly be laundering money from. I stopped and bought a crumb cake on the way and decided to say I was just stopping by on my way home and thought I would drop off a friendly snack.