The Fitzgerald Ruse

by Mark de Castrique

  “And wouldn’t a crafty lawyer anticipate your reaction? Use it to eliminate himself from suspicion?”

  She had a point. I stood and put on my sport coat.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To pay a visit on our neighbor. I want Hewitt Donaldson to know we’re concerned about his welfare.”

  I walked down the hall and around the corner. His door held a window of frosted glass with a brass plate mounted on the wood beneath it that read “Hewitt Donaldson, Attorney-at-Law.” I turned the knob without knocking and walked into a reception room about the size of our central office.

  Behind a desk, a woman typed furiously at a computer and spoke without looking up. “Can I help you?”

  From the angle of her head, I couldn’t tell if she was young or middle-aged. Straight jet-black hair covered the profile of her face and draped over her shoulder.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Donaldson,” I said.

  “Impossible. He’s due in court in ten minutes, and if I don’t finish typing his notes, he might as well walk in there buck-naked.”

  “Then the jury would see he has nothing to hide.”

  Her fingers froze and she barked out a laugh so loud the glass pane in the door rattled. “Jesus, God, don’t ever say that. Hewitt’ll do it.”

  She swiveled in her chair and smiled at me. Her face was narrow and coated with white makeup, except for the dark eyeliner accenting her blue eyes. If she was going for a look to startle clients, she succeeded.

  “Hewitt’ll do it,” I repeated. “Catchy phrase.”

  She turned back to her computer. “Yeah. Too bad it won’t fit on his license plate.”

  “What’s he got now?”

  She said, “N, O, T, hyphen, G, I, L, hyphen, T.”

  I smiled. “How foolish of me to even ask.”

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said, and hunched over her keyboard.

  “Two-minute warning,” Hewitt Donaldson bellowed from somewhere down the hall behind her.

  The free-for-all atmosphere of the office was contagious.

  “Sorry,” I shouted. “My fault. I’m distracting her.”

  “You’re as crazy as he is,” witchy woman muttered.

  I heard a door open and footsteps pad down the hall. Hewitt Donaldson bounded into the room. He held a pair of black dress shoes in his left hand and a briefcase in his right. His long gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and his dark blue suit, white shirt, and perfectly knotted burgundy tie could have clothed a corporate lawyer for Exxon.

  “Sam, what’s up? Have the police arrested someone?” He plopped down in a chair along the wall and started putting on his shoes.

  “No, they haven’t. I thought I’d check in and make sure they didn’t hold you all night. How’s your paralegal?”

  “Cory’s not here. That’s why things are crazy this morning. We’ve got closing arguments, and I foolishly told her we’d be all right without her. The police finished with us about ten-thirty, but her fiancé’s plane still hadn’t landed. They couldn’t get off the ground in Charlotte because of thunderstorms. Hell, might have been two in the morning before he landed.”

  “Well, you look good.”

  He tapped his head with a finger. “Psychology. The whole case I’ve dressed like a model for Good Will, but today I want that jury to know Hewitt Donaldson is attired for a come-to-Jesus session. I’m walking my client down the aisle and turning him over to their wisdom and compassion. The D.A.’s gonna look like he’s always looked, but Hewitt Donaldson and his message will be something special.” He tied his shoe with a flourish.

  “Is that a trick you learned from your father?” I asked.

  The change in his expression came so swiftly I felt like I was suddenly looking at a different person. His jaw tensed and his dark eyes bored into me. “What do you know about my father?” The challenge in his voice rippled through the room, and I heard the clicks of the receptionist’s keyboard abruptly halt.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was talking to someone about last night and mentioned you’d been working in your office. The person said you were a lawyer just like your father.”

  Donaldson jumped to his feet, one shoe on and one shoe off. “I’m not like my father. Never have been and never will be.” He raised his hand, a trembling finger pointing at my chest. “My father’s death was the best thing that ever happened to me because if he hadn’t died, there’s a good chance I’d be in jail for killing him.”

  The vehemence of his words and the passion with which he spit them out left me speechless. I just stared at him. He breathed heavily, like a sprinter at the end of a hundred-yard dash. He looked from my face to his pointing finger and blinked, as if surprised by the sight. His hand fell to his side.

  “Sorry. I owe you a beer and civil conversation. I’m upset. About last night. About not being ready this morning.” He sat and pulled on the second shoe. “Shirley, hit print and give me whatever you’ve culled from my notes. I’ll make it work.”

  The woman, who looked no more like a Shirley than I did, punched a couple keystrokes and the printer behind her whirred to life.

  I felt my cell phone vibrate on my belt. “Good luck with your closing argument,” I said. “Maybe we can grab that beer sometime.”

  “Yeah,” he said, without looking up from his shoes. “We’ll do that.”

  Outside in the hall, I recognized Harry Young’s number.

  “Hi, Harry,” I said.

  “Sam, this is Harry.” The old fellow had a little trouble understanding caller ID.

  “Yes. How are you?” I kept walking to my office.

  “Good. Say, I remembered something after you left about Hugh Donaldson’s car wreck.”

  “What was it?”

  “Hugh and Ethel’s husband had been over in Hendersonville at a Christmas party.”

  “So they’d been drinking,” I guessed.

  “No. The newspaper had been clear about that. Like I told you, it was organized by the Red Cross.”

  “Okay. What was so special about it?”

  “Maybe nothing. But it was a party at the work camp over there.” Harry paused as if I was supposed to know what he meant.

  “A migrant work camp in December?”

  Harry cleared his raspy voice. “No. A German work camp. Hendersonville had a POW prison outside of town. Hugh and Terrence had been visiting the captured soldiers.”

  Instantly Ethel Barkley’s explanation of the swastika as a good luck charm lost all credibility.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  Chapter Ten

  “One, we have a mysterious lockbox with a swastika. Two, a son who despises his father and works next to the office where a guard was murdered and the lockbox stolen.” Nakayla raised the fingers of her right hand one at a time as she ticked off each point. “Three, the father who died in 1944 after attending a party for German POWs, and four, the father’s sister who now has nearly five million dollars and knows a secret about the missing lockbox she wants to keep hidden.” Nakayla unfolded her pinkie and held her open palm in front of my face. “And, last but not least, a gang of thieves in Iraq who think you’ve ripped off their fortune, who probably know you’ve set up an offshore account, and will torture you before killing you. Am I leaving anything out?”

  I forced a grin. “Don’t forget Ethel Barkley says I have a long lifeline.”

  “Right. This from a woman who worries about the ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “I guess that about sums it up. What have you learned in the last ten minutes while I was dancing with Donaldson?”

  Nakayla shook her head in disbelief. “Other than my partner might as well have a target on his back?” She glanced down at a notepad in her lap. “I searched the Internet for Laura Guthrie and Laura Hearne and found Laura Guthrie Hearne. She was described as having briefly been a part-time secretary to Fitzgerald.”

  “Good. So there’s some truth to Ethel’s statement
s.”

  “Yes. An article by her in the December 1964 issue of Esquire is mentioned as well as a book by some guy named Tony Buttitta entitled The Lost Summer: A Personal Memoir of F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “Can we get them?”

  “The Pack Library should have them.”

  “What about the authors?”

  “I’m sure they’re both deceased,” Nakayla said.

  “Harry’s not.”

  Her brown complexion darkened. “Right. I’ll see what I can dig up. Maybe the Grove Park Inn has a staff historian who can confirm Ethel’s story.”

  “Sounds like a good excuse for a drink on the Inn’s terrace,” I said. “What about Hugh Donaldson?”

  “I was just getting started when you came back with Harry’s German POW news. Hugh Donaldson and Asheville on Google got over twenty-five thousand hits. I added lawyer and it dropped to fifteen thousand, but lawyer’s a common word and not specific enough. I’ll need to get a more targeted database.”

  “Did you try Hugh Donaldson in combination with Nazi?”

  Nakayla rolled her eyes. “Now why would I do that? You just got the information from Harry. I’m not a mind reader, especially of someone who has such a weak transmitter.”

  I’d learned not to get in a putdown match with her. She beat me every time.

  A knock on the door saved me from needing a clever comeback. Nathan Armitage entered.

  “Good morning.” A sheen of perspiration coated his pale face. He used both hands to carry an oversized brown leather satchel. As soon as he stepped inside, he set it on the floor.

  “What have you got in there?” I asked. “Barbells?”

  Nathan snapped his right index finger up to his lips and shook his head. I shut up and cut my eyes to Nakayla.

  “The poor guy just got out of the hospital, Sam. Give him a hand.”

  Nathan winked at her and closed the door behind him. “We bought some extra hard drives for the company, and I thought you could use a few. Heavy suckers. You can never have enough data storage.” He flipped the releases for the two latches and they sprang back with loud clicks.

  “Thanks,” I said, not sure what game we were playing.

  Nakayla went to her office and returned with a pen and legal pad. “You can bet I’ll be the one keeping everything organized.” She handed the pen and paper to Nathan as she spoke.

  She and I stood beside him as he wrote three words: BUGS —KEEP TALKING.

  “I spoke with Detective Newland this morning,” I said. “I don’t think he has any leads.”

  Nathan sighed. “I didn’t get home till three this morning. Amanda’s husband and mother are heartbroken.” The pain came through his voice. He wasn’t acting. He pulled a silver case out of the leather satchel and silently flipped open its latches. Then he extracted a black box from a foam rubber liner. Other pieces of electronic gear lay in form-fitting cavities.

  “I’ve hired a nurse to stay with them,” he continued. “At least until we figure what the next step will be.” The box was a couple inches thick and the height and width were slightly larger than his hand. He pressed a button on the bottom and a small light on the top began flashing red pulses. He moved forward and the frequency increased from about one every second to rapid fire. When he reached the phone on the end table, the light burned steadily.

  Nathan held up one finger and moved past us into my office. “The funeral probably won’t be before Saturday since the medical examiner still has the body.” The light started blinking again, and then glowed solid red over my phone. Nathan held up two fingers.

  “We’d like to go,” Nakayla said.

  “That’s kind of you.” Nathan returned across the reception area into Nakayla’s office. Again, the indicator light stayed red over her phone. Nathan clicked the device off. “The drives all work with firewire so they’re interchangeable between your laptops. And they’re password encrypted. You can each have one behind your dock.”

  Nathan took the antisurveillance device and knocked it into Nakayla’s phone, forcing the receiver off the cradle. “Oops. Sorry.” He picked up the instrument and popped off the front of the earpiece. He slipped his finger inside and pried out a black object the size of a nickel. Cupping it in his palm, he walked to the electronics case, lifted out a dull gray cylinder no bigger than a bicycle grip, unscrewed the top, and dropped in the object.

  Nathan no longer bothered with conversation, but performed the identical procedure with the other phones. Each one yielded the same eavesdropping bug. Then he took a larger piece of equipment, adjusted some dials on its face, and walked the perimeter of all the rooms, paying particular attention to the wall sockets and lighting instruments. When he was satisfied, he turned off the hardware and relaxed.

  “Okay. We’re clean, but there must be a relay transmitter somewhere.” He walked to the window overlooking Pack Square and scanned the streets. “I don’t see a van or car with an unusual antenna.”

  “What made you think we were bugged?” I asked.

  “You. You didn’t want to go into detail over the phone, and you said they were sophisticated.” He gestured toward the three capsules. “Judging from the electronics, you’re tangling with a formidable foe.”

  Nakayla sighed. “Not exactly the first case I’d been hoping for.”

  “We should turn these transmitters over to Newland,” I said. “Amanda could have interrupted someone planting the devices.”

  “Or the phone man could have done it,” Nakayla said. “He was in yesterday morning.”

  “Pull the work order he left us and get his name,” I said. “And we’d better check the connector room on this floor where he activated the lines.”

  Nathan sat in one of the armchairs. “Tell me everything and I’ll try to help with a game plan.”

  I went through all of the events: last night’s gunman, Calvin’s surprise appearance, the strange conversation with Ethel Barkley, Harry’s memories, and the reaction of Hewitt Donaldson. Nakayla filled in the details about Laura Guthrie Hearne and the initial verification of Ethel’s claim to have known F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  “When are you going to see Newland?” Nathan asked.

  “No set time,” I said. “He doesn’t know I’ve got new information, and I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Nathan touched the tips of his fingers together under his chin and thought for a moment. “My advice is to see him immediately. We don’t know if we’re dealing with one case or two. I understand your friend Calvin’s wish to work unfettered by the local authorities, but I don’t want Newland and his boys stumbling into something unprepared.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “So, what exactly is our case?” Nakayla posed the question in a manner that told me she wanted a serious answer.

  “I can tell you what’s not our case,” I said. “Amanda Whitfield’s murder.”

  Nathan nodded. “As much as the police like you, they can’t have you second-guessing them. That one’s theirs.”

  “But we can try to recover our client’s property.”

  Nakayla slid forward on the sofa and pointed her finger at my chest. “Our only case is keeping you alive.” Fire sparkled in her eyes. “Mrs. Barkley’s lockbox doesn’t even come close.”

  “No one wants me to stay alive more than I do. We’ve got to flush them out in the open if we have any hope of catching them. I know how these Ali Baba people think. They’re crafty, merciless, and greedy. Their greed might be their undoing.”

  “Which makes you little more than bait,” Nakayla argued.

  “If I hide, then we don’t know where they are. But if I’m openly pursuing something, then they’ll want it too.”

  “What if they have it?” she asked.

  “Depending upon what it is, they could be even more curious.” I thought about the three electronic surveillance devices sitting neutralized in Nathan’s special containers. “If someone was monitoring Nakayla and me this morning, he heard us tal
k about Ethel Barkley’s stolen lockbox and five million dollars. That’s enough to pique anyone’s interest. We know from the bank manager her funds are in rolling CDs but our enemies don’t.”

  “Doesn’t putting that much money in CDs strike you as unusual?” Nathan asked.

  “Not if access to them is more important than yield.”

  Nakayla had taken the legal pad and pen and started making notes. “I’d like to know if she owns them outright or if there’s a more complex structure.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Some sort of trust or tax shelter that keeps that amount of money off the radar screen.”

  Nathan scratched the side of his face and mulled over Nakayla’s point. “There might be a way to look into that. Ethel’s husband was an accountant and her brother was a lawyer. Put them together and you’ve got a license to steal.”

  “How would we find out?” I asked.

  “A probated will is a public document. Unless Hugh Donaldson was the proverbial cobbler without shoes, he should have had his affairs in order. The same for his brother-in-law.”

  Another family member leapt to my mind. “Would Hewitt have had access to those papers?”

  “Sure,” Nathan said. “His mother probably kept a copy. We should check on that as well.”

  I got to my feet. “Good. Then we agree. We’ll focus on keeping me alive—”

  “Amen,” Nakayla interjected.

  “By pursuing Ethel’s lockbox and the story behind it. Nakayla, you head up the research and Nathan can follow the legal trail and keep us bug free.”

  “I’ll see if I can find a relay transmitter and then leave the detectors,” he said. “You’d better sweep your homes as well.” He picked up one of the cylinders holding a surveillance mike. “Let me keep this. Give the others to Newland when you assure him you’re staying clear of his murder inquiry.”

  “And Calvin Stuart?” I asked.

  Nathan shrugged. “You know him. I don’t. Play it as you see best.” He paused and his eyes narrowed. “But if you keep him out of the information you give Newland, then be careful not to share anything with Calvin that you learn in confidence from the police. If all this wraps up in one neat package, you don’t want to be the guy in the middle who played favorites. And you sure don’t want to be the guy in the middle who winds up dead.”