by Bud Crawford
David. Such a fake squishy little man, with that finger squeezing handshake thing. But, with his tailored clothes and bling, too fussy a body to be the one who dragged Geoff through the mud. Alistair was plenty big enough to do it, but why would he? Was there more than one person? Meanwhile, it took a pretty good push to get Dwight over the railing. And James, poor pretty James, didn't look to have any kind of special strength. But he was fairly young and seemed fit. He was either surprised or overpowered. That was Alistair again, or Toni, maybe. There was a solid-bodied lady. Ross was little, but he moved easily, she could imagine him faster and stronger than he looked. Marti was cute and cuddly, but maybe she was capable of fury, and some kind of crazed power. Or Stef, never underestimate the strength in those long dancer muscles. Maybe the Farleys are ninjas. Madison is a thorough-going creepy slut, but her games seem based on insinuation and seduction rather than violence.
A dark shape had moved into the lane alongside her. It stayed parallel without passing, then began to drift in closer. Ellen's foot slammed on the brake pedal, so did the black truck, swerving even closer. She cut the steering wheel right the least possible amount, at the last possible second, pushing with all her strength on the brake. She had been going sixty, but was below thirty as she skidded onto the shoulder, she eased off the brake as the black tailgate shot ahead, she had two wheels on the gravel, two sinking into the soft slope above the ditch. She pulled up towards the pavement as she skidded to a stop just off the road, on a slightly wider patch of shoulder. She looked at Geoff, who was looking at her. She put the transmission into park.
"Well," he said. "What did you see? And, thanks."
"You're welcome. But I should have been paying more attention, I was trying to play your game." Ellen noticed that her voice shook. She felt where the bruise would come across her chest from the seat belt lock-down. At least the bags hadn't deployed. They weren't supposed to, she hadn't hit anything after all. By a quarter-inch.
"Want to switch?" Geoff asked.
"Please, yes." Ellen checked her mirror, opened the door and climbed out of the van. As she crossed behind the van, she wrapped herself around Geoff.
"That's about five thousand miles of tire wear, in ten seconds," he said, looking at the black track that extended along the edge of the highway as far as he could see. There was an echoing line of crushed grass and spun-away gravel along the shoulder.
"Oh, Geoff, I almost killed us." Ellen shook and sobbed against his chest.
"Nope. You kept us living, darling friend." He squeezed her against him, hard. "Go, sit." He watched her walk along the van. He let two cars pass, then opened the driver-side door.
"I didn't see anything," she said, "not really." It was a pickup, a big Ford, I think, black, not new. But I didn't see the driver or the plate or anything else."
"I opened my eyes when you hit the brake," Geoff said, "I couldn't see the driver either, but I did see the plate as it passed in front, carefully smeared with mud, totally obscured. It was an F-150, no dealer decal, a couple scratches and dents I could identify, to my own satisfaction, anyway. As soon as it had us pushed over and took off, there was a blue Beetle, while you were still marking up the road, but I'd guess she'd been too far back to see the sideswipe. It's almost a shame there wasn't just the tiniest bit of contact, a little forensic scratch, but we might have rolled over four times and gone dead to gain it. God, you're quick."
"It was behind us for a while, too close. I was glad at first when it pulled out, thought it was just some idiot wanted to go eighty, finally going to pass. But the glass was tinted, and I wasn't really looking, just aware there was somebody back there, then along side."
Geoff shifted into drive. He went forward slowly as another car passed, then pulled onto the pavement and accelerated towards Asheville. He looked at his watch. He looked at Ellen, her eyes fixed straight ahead, her fingers clenched over the ends of the armrests.
~
Sprague dropped his notebook on the desk and sat. He leaned back and pressed his palms against his eyes. Long day. A girl had been shot in the leg, fifteen years old, probably an accident. Punks quarrelling about who had the coke concession for her block. The residents of the projects all wanted the gangs gone, but they feared retribution. They demanded that the police protect them, but withheld cooperation. The thugs were probably her schoolmates, waving guns to impress each other. No intent to harm, just a stupid dangerous situation. He could to talk to her tomorrow, her doctor said. Best get Apple. Two of the goons were girls, all the witnesses agreed. How grand that the barriers are falling. Sprague thought of Sara, just gone six, due in three weeks to spend the summer. He was so happy, and so terrified he'd screw it up. The pitfalls of parenting had pitfalls.
A damned inconclusive week. The Juniper House mess was the worst. Most serious, least resolved. But the knife fight at the bar was only a little better. They'd probably go to the grand jury with what they had, but there was nothing really to break the claim of self-defense. The survivor was a violent scary guy. Nobody wanted to be on the record against him. There'd been previous charges, but no convictions, so they couldn't reference them to the jury. He'd be back on the street until the next time his temper blew up. There'd been an assault downtown in a city parking deck. A tourist knocked out with a brick, wallet taken. Not exactly a chamber-of-commerce moment.
He listened to a message on his answering machine from Ellen Fletcher. They had gone to Charlotte, and on the way back somebody had tried to run them off the road. She hadn't quite lost control, they were now on the way back to Asheville. Could they see him tomorrow? Why hadn't she called his cell? He unsnapped it and saw the ringer had been turned off. The same message was there, from a couple hours ago, about four-thirty. He'd done this before, sliding the phone into its pouch, brushing the volume button all the way down.
He reset the ringer and called her back. Now her phone was off, so he left a message: tomorrow was good, he'd be in his office 'til noon. He looked over his desk, decided not to touch anything, just to go home. He'd started work at seven thirty that morning, eleven hours ago. Enough. But he couldn't stop thinking about the Fletchers. He called Geoff's cell. Also off, or busy, or out of range. He called Alistair at Juniper House. They'd been gone all day, Alistair said, but Ellen told him they'd be late.
Run them off the road. Did that mean some careless asshole, or an attack? He checked accident reports, found no matches, they probably hadn't reported it if there was no damage. On a long shot, he pulled the Juniper files and saw there was a cell number for Honoria Staedtler. She told him, yes, Geoff had called her around four. He said they'd just left Stephanie, suggested she meet them for dinner, but late because they had errands when they got back. No she didn't know anything about the errands, why didn't he ask them himself? He told her the phones were off, would she call him when she heard from them, at this number? Yes, certainly, she said. Sprague stood, locked his office, and drove home. He grabbed a foot-long at the Subway for dinner.
chapter forty-eighth
As they pulled into the Asheville Metrocor parking lot, about quarter to five, they saw Madison Markey opening the door of a tan Lexus, tan leather briefcase in her hand, a tan Prada purse on her shoulder. She stopped as they pulled in beside her.
"Well," she said, "the Fletchers."
Geoff opened the door of the van and stepped down. "Hello, Madison. We were hoping to talk with you a little. We're just back from Charlotte where we helped Stephanie pack up Harold's stuff at Metrocor. We talked a bit with David Ickes and realized on our drive back it might be helpful to talk to you." Geoff figured that if David had already told Madison, mentioning it would make them look uncalculating; and if he hadn't told her, that conversation might make a kind of precedent for Madison.
"My calendar cleared a bit early today," Madison said. "I was just sneaking away. But, sure, we can talk." She pressed the lock button on her car key. "Follow me, it's quicker from here going the back way. Hello, Ellen. That's
a pretty shirt." Madison turned a key in a heavy metal door stenciled 'emergency exit only.' Geoff took the edge of the door and held it open for Madison and Ellen. Madison led them up a set of cement steps in a cinder block stairwell.
At the top of the steps there were two metal doors, one with a wire glass window that opened into a hallway, the other opened directly into Madison's office, behind a coat rack that screened the door from view inside the office. Madison turned on the overhead lights, slid the dimmer to the middle of the range. She walked across to her desk and set down her purse and briefcase. She picked up the telephone on her desk and pressed a button. After a minute she said, "Hey, Elaine. I'm back, so I can close up. You go on home, just lock the outside door. Sure, no problem."
She turned to face Geoff and Ellen. "Is this going to be a formal talk, where we'll need a desk and firm chairs under us, or shall we settle ourselves on the sofa and easy chairs?" She smiled at Geoff and Ellen and unbuttoned her linen jacket, exposing the lavender silk of her blouse.
"Completely informal," Geoff said. "Let's go for comfort." Madison dropped into one of the leather arm chairs that faced the leather sofa. Ellen sat on the sofa, Geoff beside her.
"I rather enjoy interrogations," Madison said, "especially conducted by tall handsome gents, so I'm happy to chat. But I do wonder if there can possibly be any ground not already covered, then covered again, by that brusque but very cute detective and his clever assistants."
"Probably not," Geoff said, "but most of those interviews were private, so Detective Sprague knows all our secrets, by each of us only knows what he told him, or she."
"I hadn't thought of it that way. You're right." She kicked off her shoes, lifted one knee to cross her legs and stretched back into the chair, hands behind her head. "I'll spill my secrets, if you'll give me yours. What are you after?"
"It would help if I actually knew." Geoff said. "I guess it's something like this: some odd things happened last week, maybe they're coincidences, but I'd like to know more because Ellen and I seem to be in the middle of it. I'm sure the detectives will figure things out, eventually, but we're ready to go home, and it's hard to leave Asheville without understanding what's what."
"Well, that's fine, but I can't actually answer a question until you ask me one." She turned to Ellen. "Is he always this cryptic?"
"Almost always," Ellen said.
"Okay, here's a question," Geoff said, "does the Asheville Metrocor branch offer the same sort of managed-fund account that James Richter had in Charlotte?"
"I'll have to decline to divulge any of our business secrets, but that's easy and no secret. We offer exactly the same account, though the managing part happens in Charlotte."
"Managing means deciding what to buy, what to sell, and when?"
"Yes," Madison said. "Of course, our clients set the parameters for risk-taking and aggressiveness. But the basic idea is to let our experts keep the portfolio dynamically balanced, anticipating market changes. It's a good program."
"James had questions about his fees?'
"That's what Harold told me. I don't know anything about the details, and if I did, that might get us into privileged areas."
"Did other clients ever raise similar questions?"
"All the time. Especially if there's a downturn. People rarely ask when the market's up, but when they see their assets decline, the magnifying glasses come out and we spend all day sometimes answering questions that start with 'on page eleven of my March statement. line seventeen says …'"
"With the managed-fund accounts, specifically?" Geoff asked.
"Well, that's more complicated in two ways. Professional managers smooth out market shifts, so those accounts are less volatile. But if it's too big a correction for that kind of buffering, then the questions can be even more anxious."
"Because the fees are bigger?"
"Yeah, they're higher. You're paying for a professional analyst's judgment. But they also are harder to figure out. The surprising thing about Mr. Richter wasn't concern about his fees, but that he had figured out what they were."
"Do you mean they're purposefully opaque," Geoff asked, "or just complicated?"
"I don't know about purposeful. Maybe a little. They're complex. Tiny little fees for buying and selling securities multiplied by share price and the number of shares, plus some fixed per-transaction costs. On the monthly statements they're usually mingled with transaction details, not grouped together."
"So it's difficult, first, to see what you've paid; and, second, to tell if you were charged correctly?"
"Usually people aren't especially worried. If, beginning of the year you had a hundred thousand dollars, end of the year, a hundred-seven thousand, that's an okay year."
"So if those fees were inflated, by ten percent, say, nobody would notice?"
"If the market was going up, maybe not. Going down, people would be more likely to see something, or think they had."
"Of course, if the inflation of the fees was linked to the market — more inflation going up, less going down — that might cover it."
"Well, that's very clever. I don't know if there's any way it could be done. But, theoretically, I suppose so."
Ellen sat up and looked at Geoff. "Self-regulating, self-concealing," she said, "taking more when there was more, taking less when there was less. This is what James figured out, then Harold, then Dwight, then you. I'll be damned."
"You'd need to connect to a variable that tracked the market. Simplest would be an index like Dow-Jones. And simplest might be best, because clients would expect their accounts to track up and down with the Dow. You'd have to get the money out, somehow." Geoff looked from Ellen to Madison.
Madison smiled. "That's quite a little stack of blocks. I don't think any of it is real, but it's a good story. Is it my turn to ask questions."
"Can I have one more?" Geoff asked. "Are there centurions in Asheville?"
"Oh, yes," Madison said, "I set up the program soon as I got here. We have just four honorees, besides me. We're a smaller office in a smaller market so it's harder to get over the threshold. Makes a great morale booster for the winners, and a good stimulus for those that almost won."
"Big bonuses?" Geoff asked.
"And status. Two strong motivators. It encourages you to find business you might have overlooked. But it's my turn now, yes?" She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward towards Geoff and Ellen.
"About you two," Madison said, "why not just go home? If there is something bad happening, the cops will figure it out. And if they can't, you won't be able to either."
"Well, that's exactly what I think," Ellen said. She brushed her hands over her denim skirt, dusting off something not visible. "He's a snapping turtle on a stick. Anyway, we're heading back tomorrow morning. I told Sprague this afternoon about our trip to Charlotte, and about coming to see you. So he's knows everything we do, plus all his fingerprints and footprints and DNA, and all the interviews we didn't hear. He'll get it worked out."
"That's just one question from me, I deserve more." Madison folded her hands on her lap, knees held tight together. "Let's move on. It's after five, the money shop is shut. Lets talk about sex instead. Here's my question: do you ever share with other people? Either separately or together?" She lifted her hands and pressed them together between her breasts, her knees parted.
"No," Ellen said, "not physically. Why do you ask?"
"We're all adults. The sun's settling outside, the lights in here are low. There's drinks in the sideboard. That's a very comfortable sofa you're sitting on. Nothing would leave this room. A little free fun. No offence intended, just an offer, just an invitation." She smiled at them and unbuttoned the four buttons of her blouse. She was not wearing a brassiere.
"It's sweet of you to invite us," Geoff said, as Madison pulled her blouse free from her skirt. "But we've got to get back and pack." Madison stood and shrugged off the blouse. She placed her palms above her breasts and slid them down, paused to sque
eze and pull out on her nipples, then continued pressing her hands down over her belly.
"Good evening, Madison, thanks for inviting us to the party," Ellen stood. "Feel free to think of us, if you like, the next little while. But we're going now." Geoffrey got up beside her.
Madison cupped her hands and lifted her right breast to Geoff, her left to Ellen. She tilted her head and smiled.
