Show Me the Money

by Connie Shelton

  What had Allison told her? Money was transferred to a bank in Santa Fe. But she hadn’t said when this happened. Amber set up a spreadsheet and began searching for bank routing numbers. Nothing stood out, most likely because in the course of her regular job she never entered banking information. Those numbers either hadn’t come from her computer, or someone had disguised them.

  Someone. Cody? He was the one person brilliant enough to know exactly how to pull this off. She still couldn’t get over how well he’d fooled her.

  How could she narrow down the search and come up with meaningful data, something that didn’t involve going through every single day of her working career at Blackwell-Gorse. Ten and a half months, average twenty to twenty-five working days a month, logging on multiple times a day? Her head began to hurt again.

  She picked up the plastic container of rice and began eating it, thinking. How to approach this? Her fatigue began to fade and the answer came, quick and clear. She had a friend in banking. She picked up her phone and said, “Call Sandy.”

  “Hey, kid,” Sandy’s cheerful voice said. “You must have read my mind. I was just about to call you.”

  “I need some banking information,” Amber said. “Can you find out the routing numbers for all the various banks in Santa Fe?”

  A tiny pause. “I can, but I could do this faster from work, if it can wait until morning.”

  “I really could use the information now. It’s pretty urgent.”

  “Okay, there’s a way. Let me think.” There was a pause and Amber could hear computer keys tapping in the background. “I don’t have my ABA login info on this computer and it’s not recognizing me. Let me see. Can you hold on for a couple minutes?”

  It was closer to eight minutes, and Amber chafed a little as she finished her makeshift dinner and poured one of the Cokes over ice.

  “I found an old copy of the printed version of the book. What’s the name of the bank you need to know about?”

  “I don’t know, only that it’s a bank located in Santa Fe.”

  “Um, okay. They aren’t listed that way, but we can find some names to get started with.” More computer keys, then Sandy spoke again. “I see some of the big ones. Bank of America, Wells Fargo …”

  “Let’s start with those.” Who knew whether the fraudster would use a big bank, thinking of the benefit of anonymity, or a small hometown bank, on the chance their controls weren’t as strict.

  Sandy went back to the book, read out some numbers, and Amber wrote them down. Midsize banks came next: Century Bank, Bank of New Mexico, Nusenda. She wrote those routing numbers down as well.

  “There are several credit unions, too,” Sandy told her.

  “I doubt it’ll be one of those, but we can always try them later.”

  “Glad to help. And, Amber? I really hope these give us a solid lead.”

  “Speaking of which … you said you were about to call me?”

  “Ah. Right. I called his employer, Omni Tech, pretending like my bank is considering making a mortgage loan to Cody Brennan.”

  “Oh, that was smart thinking. Hopefully he hadn’t spread the word around the company that he already owns a home or something?”

  “He didn’t. In fact, he doesn’t even work there.”

  For a moment, Amber couldn’t think what to say. “Why am I surprised? Based on everything else, I should have seen that coming a mile away.”

  “We all should have,” Sandy assured her. “But he’s a con man. Fooling people is what he does. You can’t beat yourself up over it.”

  “I wonder if he ever worked there. He really did talk the talk.”

  “As most good con men do, he used tidbits of fact. He actually did work there once. I got through to his direct supervisor, who said he’d been hired last spring as a summer intern but he didn’t last long. A couple of weeks into his employment they got around to checking with the university that had supposedly sent him for the job. The institution had no record of him. Supervisor told me she sent for him, hoping to straighten out the mix-up, and he had disappeared. Hiked his backpack up on his shoulder and told the guy at the next desk he was going to walk down to the corner for a coffee. He never returned.”

  “So he got a hint they were on to him and he bailed.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “And it explains why Pen wasn’t having any luck verifying his university degrees.”

  Sandy mused, “He must have gotten into Omni just long enough to plant his photo on their website and post all those fake credentials.”

  “And yet his credentials didn’t need to be faked. He knows his stuff.”

  “If he had already targeted you for this money scam, he may have also hacked into Blackwell-Gorse while he was at Omni. Is that possible? That he might have found out enough about you to get into their system and steal your credentials?”

  Amber couldn’t immediately see how he would manage it from another company’s offices in New York or Paris. For that matter, did Cody actually live in either of those cities? He could operate from anywhere. Uncanny things could be done with computers and the right skills. She couldn’t underestimate this man, and she couldn’t rule it out.

  Chapter 23

  It was after midnight when Amber found the answers. Too late to call Sandy. She stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of her condo, looking down into the neighboring residences around the courtyard. She’d been so engrossed in her search that she hadn’t remembered to take Mom’s advice and close her drapes after dark. She did so now, a little creeped out that she’d never thought of the openness of this place.

  I suppose a person never feels like they’re being watched, until they are. Damn you, Cody.

  Closed inside her little cocoon now, she turned back to the numbers she’d tracked down, the places her own computer tied to her, the numbers that implicated her.

  The money went to one of the bigger banks in Santa Fe, a nationwide one, and Amber could see that it made sense. Such a large amount would cause a stir at a smaller bank or credit union. She followed the lines of code and got the routing number, the individual account number, and a wire transfer code. That should be enough to get some information.

  Amber drummed her fingers on the tabletop, impatient to be done with this thing. But although banking, in many ways, was a 24/7 operation these days, there were some things that should be handled during normal business hours. She would just have to wait. She shut down her computer and stifled a yawn as she turned out lights and headed toward her bedroom. It was hard to imagine she would get any sleep at all, but the next thing she knew daylight was showing at the edges of the bedroom curtains.

  * * *

  Sandy answered her phone on the first ring. “I thought about you half the night,” she told Amber. “How can I help?”

  “Well …” Amber gave out the bits of information she’d learned.

  “I’m on it. As soon as I get to my desk at the bank, I’ll make some calls. There’s banker-speak that will get me a lot further down the line than you could get. Let me see what I can learn about this Santa Fe account you found.”

  “Call me the minute you know anything. And, Sandy? Thank you.”

  It was 9:17 when Amber’s phone showed an incoming call from Sandy. She set a carton of yogurt in her market cart and answered it.

  “Well, it’s a mixed bag of news,” Sandy said. “First off, there’s a very small balance in the account now, less than a thousand dollars. But, some fairly big dollars have moved through it. The first deposit was a hundred thousand.”

  The round number set off Amber’s alarm bells. Was it coincidental that it was the same amount found in her suitcase?

  “Then there was …” Sandy paused. “Maybe this is too much to go into over the phone. Can you stop by my office sometime this morning?”

  “Give me thirty minutes.” Amber tossed a couple more breakfast items into her cart, along with the frozen dinners she’d already picked up.

  Nine
minutes later she was out of the store and had stashed her food in the insulated carrier bag she always kept in the car. The branch of Desert Trust Bank where Sandy worked was only ten minutes away.

  “Hey, glad you got here so quickly. I was just informed I have another appointment at 10:15.” She reached for a manila folder, and Amber sat in the chair across from her.

  “Okay, so this is a printout of the account information my contact sent me.”

  Sandy pushed a form across the desk. Pointing with her pen, she showed Amber the data.

  “The account was opened with an initial deposit of five hundred dollars, basically just enough to get it established.”

  “Wait, who’s this Blandishment Inc.?”

  “The account was set up as a business. We’ll need to check further to see who is behind it.”

  “But it’s not me, and it’s not Cody.”

  “Not personally. It’s a Delaware corporation and there are—well, we’ll just see, once we check it out.” She pointed the pen at another line on the form. “A few days after the account was opened was when the hundred thousand was deposited. A wire transfer that matches the transfer number you gave me.”

  Amber’s throat suddenly felt dry. She swallowed hard.

  “Okay, that amount was almost immediately moved to a bank in Scotland.”

  “Scotland? Why there?”

  Sandy shrugged. “Who knows?” She pointed again at the printout. “Two weeks later, came the big one. $423,890. Why such an odd sum? I don’t know.”

  Amber was staring at the page. “And it looks like most of that also got transferred out?”

  “Exactly. But not all at once. Three transfers to three different overseas banks, each for close to a hundred thousand, leaving the small balance that’s in the account today.”

  “And no further transactions after that? It looks like all this happened more than six weeks ago.”

  “We need to find out who’s behind this Blandishment Inc. and I’m also curious why no one questioned their moving such large amounts of money around.”

  “The plan to move lots of cash was probably a factor behind setting this up as a corporation. Businesses get a lot less attention when they move money. My guess is that when we investigate the company, find out where and why it was formed, it will be a fairly new entity with a stated mission of something involving high-dollar transactions—real estate would be a common one, but they could be claiming anything from a diamond wholesaler to an importer of some basic commodity.”

  Amber nibbled at her lower lip. “And what if my name is on that corporate paperwork?”

  Sandy just shook her head. “That would be bad. Really bad.”

  Chapter 24

  Cody could hear recorded announcements in the background when he picked up his phone. “Pop, where are you?”

  “The airport. Come pick me up.”

  “Which airport? Pop, what have you done?”

  “I’m here, in Phoenix.”

  “Okay, I’m not far away. I’ll have to get an Uber. Wait at the north curb—there are signs.”

  He ordered the car, then picked up his backpack and walked out of the office. Nobody said a word. A few minutes later he was kicking back in the car, looking over Amber’s social media accounts and wondering what he was going to do with his father. What had possessed the old man to hop on a plane? And how long did he plan to stay?

  Amber’s Instagram and Twitter accounts had seen no action in days, so he switched over to looking for a nearby restaurant where he could take Pop. Over an early lunch maybe he could figure out how the rest of the visit would unfold.

  “That’s him,” he told the driver when he spotted Woody’s skinny frame standing near the curb. “Once he’s in, we’ll want to go to Café Miche.”

  “It’s extra,” the blonde girl said.

  “Fine. Bill me.” What do I care—it’s all going on a stolen credit card.

  Woody tossed a small duffle bag on the seat between them and climbed in. “Where’s the fall weather? How the hell can it be ninety degrees in October? And palm trees—where’s the beach? God, I never saw so much open sky.”

  “Yeah, it does have that. Welcome to Arizona, Pop.”

  They rode in silence for the ten minutes it took to get off the airport property and the next ten to the restaurant. Nothing they could discuss should be shared with a driver.

  “I figured they didn’t feed you on the plane. This place serves either breakfast or lunch.” According to their Trip Advisor listing, anyway. Cody had never been there.

  Catching the restaurant between normal meal times meant they were able to get a table in an isolated corner. They studied the menu; Woody ordered ham and eggs over-easy, while Cody opted for something called the Big Burrito. Despite the French-sounding name of the place, it seemed the food was all-cultures-included.

  “So, Pop, this visit is a surprise.”

  “Don’t know why. I’ve asked you more than once when we’re getting the money, and I mean cash in my little hot hands.”

  Cody lowered his own voice. “Pop … don’t you think we should slow this down a little?”

  “Okay, so the last mark blew it and got caught. And why are you hanging out in this city to keep an eye on her? Move on, kid.”

  “That’s not the only reason I’m sticking around a while. I got a job, a short-term gig to do some web design for a company, and I’ve rented a room. Which, by the way, there’s no space for a visitor so we’ll need to get you a hotel room.”

  Woody waved it off. “Whatever. You’re not still chasing after the chick from Paris, are you?”

  Well, I’m not admitting it to you. “Nah. I just haven’t found the right person for the next trip.”

  “That’s what you said on the phone. You shoulda had a new one lined up way before now.”

  Cody sighed and sat back while the waitress set their plates down and offered refills on the coffee. Once she was out of sight again, he spoke softly. “Pop, you know that’s easier said than done. Takes time to get them trusting me. Girls don’t just agree to meet up with a guy in a foreign country until they feel like they know you.”

  Woody was nodding as he cut into the generously sized slice of ham. “I get that. But time’s wasting. Where all do you need to go, to round up this money?”

  “There’s still more in Paris, but I’ve also sent some to Scotland and some to England. We’ll need to use somebody different for each country, unless I can find someone who’s experienced at this and doesn’t mind the risk.”

  “For a fee.”

  “For a fee,” Cody agreed.

  “How’d this get so complicated? In my day we just—”

  “Get over this ‘in my day’ bit, Pop. Things are totally different now. Stuff gets tracked. I had the expense of setting up a dummy corporation so I could even do what I’ve done so far.”

  Woody stuffed a wedge of ham, topped with gooey egg, into his mouth, while he waved off Cody’s explanation.

  “All’s I’m saying is, I don’t want our cash sitting around the world in other places too long. I like to be able to look right at my winnings.”

  “And that’s the other thing, Pop. With wire transfers I could have it back here within a day. But that’s traceable, and you’re wanting cash money. It just takes time.”

  An elderly couple walked in and, as luck would have it, chose the table nearest theirs.

  Cody leaned toward his father. “You win, I’ll fly back to Paris. More on this later.”

  He cut into his burrito and kept his mouth full so he couldn’t talk.

  Chapter 25

  Pen had her cover story clear in her mind before she placed the call. Best to stick fairly close to the truth. All successful liars know this.

  “The Oakwood Group,” said the voice at the other end.

  “Hello,” Pen said, giving the word the thickest of her British accent. “Is it the company that advertises setting up corporations? I believe the name in yo
ur advertisement was Biz Yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the young woman on the line. “Biz Yourself is one of our entities. Are you interested in incorporating your business?”

  “Actually, I have some questions about how it’s done. I’m a writer of romantic suspense novels, you see, and I’ve got a situation with one of my characters who needs to form a business very quickly.”

  “Suspense stories? Wow. What name do you write under?”

  Pen always got this question when someone found out she was a writer, as if she’d never use her real name. “Penelope Fitzpatrick. And what’s your name?”

  “Ohmygosh, you’re actually—” The voice went a little squeaky. “Wow, I’ve read all your books. I’m Lily Visionis, and I’m your biggest fan!”

  She got this a lot too. “What was your favorite?”

  “I just finished Uncertain Destiny. That’s the newest one, right? But I mean, if you’ve got a newer one, please tell me. I cannot wait!”

  “Um, actually, not yet. You’re correct, that’s the newest.”

  “You know, if you are ever in Dover, I will come to the bookstore and have you sign all my books.”

  “If you can answer a few small questions about the incorporation process, Lily, I will be happy to send you signed copies.”

  “Oh, wow! Okay, so what a person does is fill out a form. It’s really a simple one—basically who owns the business, their address, and that kind of stuff. If they want a Delaware address, they can use ours. We actually have over two hundred businesses who list our street address as theirs.”

  “Really? They can do that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why would they not just list their real address?”

  “You want some guesses, or do you want the official response? Cause I’m supposed to say that it’s none of our concern what address they fill in on the form.”

  “But … what’s your guess?”

  “Oh, all kinds of reasons. It’s way cheaper and quicker to become incorporated here than most other states, maybe they don’t want somebody back home to be able to check up on them, maybe they’re doing something a little shady …”