by Bud Crawford
chapter fifty-second
Geoff looked at Ellen, sitting slumped against the pillows. Her right hand held a glass of brandy on the white sheets that covered her belly. Her tee-shirt was a bright pumpkin. Her eyes were closed. He said softly, "You look like a Creamsicle about to spill her drink."
Her eyelids slowly lifted, millimeter by millimeter, gaze already turned on him. Ellen said, "If I were asleep, this thing would already have rolled over." She lifted the stemless crystal globe, swirled the brandy, and sipped, then sipped again. "These things are cute, but not very stable, and not easy to hold. But the contents are very, very welcome. The vodka was all used up."
"This is a better end-of-day than we faced a few hours ago, when I walked us into David's trap, Thumper leading Bambi. I thought he had made his move on the highway, never thought he'd anticipate our so-clever so-unpredictable visit to Madison. To have underestimated him at that point, having pretty much figured out just how smart and ruthless he was…"
"Let me just interject, "Ellen said, "that during our years of recurring bliss, sharing your thoughts to engage my sometimes superior instincts has often been a life-extending choice."
"You're always right when you're right," Geoff said. He caught the pillow Ellen flipped at him and tossed it back on the bed. "There were just so many things I wasn't sure of, I didn't want you to think everything was clear when it wasn't. I didn't want your instincts lulled by buying into an unproved mess of guesswork."
"Forgive my disinclination, oh considerate one, to buy the premise that exposure to your theories cripples my capacity for independent judgment. Let's jump to your real fear. Here's my hypothesis: that if the theory crashed, you'd lose your aura of imperturbable perfection, and then my respect."
Geoff let out the breath he had been holding. "Yeah, probably, something like that. I thought I had the overall shape right, but there were gaps and questions. I suppose I was afraid you'd knock it down if I exposed it. Also I figured you had come to pretty much the same conclusions."
"Well, I had. But if we'd combined our versions, and confirmed each other, we might have swung by here and picked up pistols. Or told Sprague everything we thought we knew and where we were going."
"Which opens the possibility of you having proffered your version to me, if we're really going evens here, which I don't recall happening, either."
"Touchy," Ellen said.
"Touché?" Geoff asked
"No, touchy." Ellen smiled and opened her arms. "Come over here, let's touchy."
chapter fifty-third — tuesday
There were two Farley sisters, not dressed alike, already in the dining room. Ellen poured herself coffee and juice and sat at the table next to them. Geoff joined her a minute later. Ellen said, "Good morning." It was a beautiful bright morning, cloudless, dry cool air. The windows to the garden were open behind them admitting a slightly chilly breeze.
Geoffrey said, "How is your sister?"
Beth-Ann turned left to look at Mary-Ann, then turned back to Geoff. "Mary-Beth is well, she will be joining us in a minute."
"Is this the first time?" Geoff asked.
"Since we were children, yes. We are rethinking what we've always called 'the game.'" She brushed invisible crumbs from the white table cloth.
Her sister said, "It has been such a long journey, and been such a demanding discipline. In many ways it has served us well in business and personally. But it is time, we have decided, to end it."
Ellen looked from twin to twin to Geoff. "Excuse me, but what are you all talking about?"
"For thirty-four years," Mary-Ann said, "my sisters and I have pretended that there were just two of us, twins, Actually we are triplets. Here's Mary-Beth, now, all three together for the first time in public, since we were fifteen."
"Why," Ellen asked, "why have you done this? I see now, you two," she pointed to Beth-Ann and Mary-Ann, "are identical. I knew there was something I was not quite seeing, every tea-time, every breakfast, you were switching off. And clothes, just like today: non-identical pairs with nearly identical clothes, identical pairs, wearing slightly different outfits. Why didn't I notice?"
"Well, good morning Ellen," Mary-Beth said, as she sat at the table with her sisters, stirring sugar into her coffee. "You did notice, obviously, but you had no reason to think through to such an improbable conclusion. Why ever would we take on such a strange masquerade?"
"My twin, Cindy," Ellen said, "died when I was fifteen. We were identical, and we played 'the game' a little, too. But why keep it up so relentlessly, so many years?"
Mary-Ann said, "We've been talking about that all week. For so many years nobody knew, hardly anybody suspected. Suddenly in the last few days it's as if the covers were ripped off. We thought your husband had put it together, but we weren't sure until just now. We assumed he told you."
"No," Ellen turned to Geoff, "it doesn't work that way, we're just married. We're not close, like sisters."
"Good morning, Honoria," Mary-Ann said. Honoria poured herself a cup of tea and sat with Ellen and Geoff. "She was first, of course," Mary-Ann pointed to Honoria.
Ellen stuck out her tongue at Honoria and said, "Of course."
"Then came that sneaky Mr. Ross. I guess he turns out to be some kind of detective. He ran into us coming and going a couple times, while he was coming and going," Beth-Ann said. "The police lady was next, she didn't say anything but we could tell."
Mary-Beth said, "We got a little paranoid, did Alistair know or Toni? We had stayed here a couple years ago. Maybe we'd been pushing our luck."
"Then we asked ourselves the question you asked, Ellen, why were we doing this?" Beth-Ann looked at her sisters. "It was habit as much as anything, by this time, and it had got to be more tedious than fun."
Mary-Beth went on, "We were making people uncomfortable and suspicious, and weren't getting much back, anymore, not really."
Marti pulled in the first course. She looked up as she reached the tables and saw the three sisters. Her eyes widened, a strange trumpety sound pushed through her lips. She covered her mouth, turned and ran back into the kitchen. All eyes were on the doorway as Alistair filled it. He bent and slapped his palms against his lifted knee and turned sputtering with teacup rattling laughter back into the kitchen. Half a minute later he came back and walked over to the Farley sisters. He pulled his hands down the front of his body, extending them wide as he bowed.
"Absolutely priceless," he said. "what a lovely deception, sweet sisters. Thank you for this gift." He pointed his right toe behind his left heel and spun back into the kitchen. A brief minute later he pushed a grumpy disheveled Toni through the door.
Toni smiled, just barely, at the sisters, and at Geoff and Ellen. "You really didn't know?" she asked Alistair. She turned and left.
Andy Ross walked into the dining room. He stopped when he saw the three sisters. "Good morning, Fletchers, ladies. Detective Sprague suggested I come by, he said he'd cleared it with management."
"It's fine, I'm sure," Geoff said, "have a seat. Sprague said he'd be here about nine o'clock, it's five to. There's the door now, I think.".
chapter fifty-fourth
Detective Sprague and Patrolman Apple came into the dining room and walked to an open table. Sprague looked at the Farleys and the Fletchers and Ross. He turned to Apple who was smiling at him. "Yeah, okay, Apple, one more for you. Good morning, folks. Mr. Vingood invited us to join you-all for breakfast and for a chance to chat through a few remaining questions. Does anybody mind if we follow this unusual course? Our situation in the investigation now is we have truckloads of evidence, but large gaps of understanding."
Alistair and Marti served chilled stacks of grilled apple and mozzarella cheese, in flat slices, alternating, on pastry shells. Between layers a thin smear of blackberry butter was sprinkled with fresh-ground allspice. Each stack was drizzled with hot maple syrup and crushed blueberries, and topped with sprigs of mint.
Talk slowed, then ceased enti
rely, until all the plates were empty. Alistair stood in the doorway, beaming at the silence. He turned back into the kitchen as Marti began to clear the plates. The egg course was served in lidded dishes. Under a light dusting of paprika, two eggs poached in white wine sat on a braised salmon fillet on a slice of rye bread. For five minutes, exclamations of appreciation and the clatter and scrape of silverware, occasional words, but no complete sentences.
Marti cleared the dishes while Alistair set platters of fresh-baked cinnamon buns on each table. The buns were not glazed, giving them a slightly bitter finish, a cleansing course, warm and fragrant and moist. Alistair brought Marti and Toni to join him at the empty table.
"Okay, then," Sprague said, "to start the conversation, I want to know what was so important about what you guys called the 'puzzle.' Apparently knowing the answer was enough to get Alden and Richter killed, plus bring on the assaults on Vance and Geoffrey Fletcher. What was the puzzle? What was the answer? Why did it matter?"
"David believed," Geoff said, "that anyone who got that close to his swindle was a serious risk to get even closer. That's why it mattered so much to him, I think. The puzzle was basically simple, except if you had to solve it without any data. Harold and James had good analytical skills, and got to the answer pretty quickly, working from the data. Dwight and I had to approach it differently. Working along the lines of, what sort of relationship could account for what had happened, folding in the hints we got from Harold and James, and eventually from David."
"But what was it and how did it work?" Alistair asked.
Geoff leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Fees were going up and down, on a managed-fund brokerage account, following some rule. David actually gave away the key idea, when he was defending these accounts. He said, 'people don't generally get exercised about fees when things are going up, but they worry when things go down.' So, what better way to conceal excess fees than to have them be heavy in an up market, and light or nothing in a down market. Everybody with me, so far?" There were dubious faces in the room, but everybody nodded yes.
"Let me finish it, then," Geoff said, "the end is easier than the beginning. There are lots of indexes and averages that track the market. The most familiar is Dow-Jones, that's the one on the news everyday. But he could have used Standard-and-Poors, or an international index, or some internal Metrocor average. It doesn't matter which. Point is, that was the first stage of the swindle, and David thought anyone who figured out that much might go on to figure out more."
Ellen asked, "So how does the 'centurion' thing figure in? If it does."
"It definitely does," Geoff said, "that's the second stage. Some of the fees that were being squeezed out were presented to the top performers in each office, the bonuses that bought the fancy watches and the cars. The structure legitimized the skimming and also co-opted the people most likely to stumble over the scam."
"So," Sprague said, "the two guys that disappeared in Charlotte, plus Alden, here in Asheville, they saw through the scam and threatened to expose it. Is that right?"
"They saw into phase three, I think. The rest of the centurions were happy to get extra bonuses, everyone is willing to believe himself deserving. But these three, Harold for sure, and the others probably, saw where the big money was going. Because the bonuses were just the froth on the beer. The beer itself was going to straight to David's cup, probably a cup somewhere overseas."
"And that's how," Sprague asked, "our friend Ross and his department, got involved?"
Ross said, "This is tricky for me. I can't comment on the details of an open investigation, I can't compromise sources or methods on a case we might prosecute. Let me just say Geoffrey has it about right. We saw the money moving and worked our way back to Ickes."
"And for you," Honoria said, "the question was solely who was involved at the upper levels and what was the purpose? Not so much worrying about collateral damage to a few low-level civilians."
"No comment," Ross said.
"Which I'll take, basically, for a yes," Geoff said. "But thank you for breaking cover when you did. Ellen and I might well have missed this conversation otherwise."
Ross said, "A felony was in process, not a hard call. On Alden and Richter we had no prior knowledge, and afterwards, no better evidence than Detective Sprague and his department. It seemed highly improbable, from a criminal investigations perspective, that they could both be accidents, but we had nothing concrete. The Vance assault seemed gratuitous, and the first assault on Mr. Fletcher the same. Were these failed efforts to be repeated later? Or attempts to deflect and intimidate that Ickes thought had been successful? We had no idea."
Sprague said, "But you followed the Aldens to Asheville, pulling up an elaborate cover, new house, movers, new job at the Climate Center."
"That takes me back into no-comment territory," Ross said.
Ellen said, "I bet the assumption was that Harold brought something to Asheville, specifically to Madison. That he was a collaborator, and the operation was broadening out."
"I can't confirm specifically, but that's a well-structured guess," Ross said.
Alistair said, "A few minutes ago we got to stage three, then left it."
"That's the central core of 'no comment' for Agent Ross, I'm sure," Geoff said, "but let me toss out my guess. The bulk of the fees, the beer part, probably paid phony invoices from phony vendors for non-existent services. That's where I'd aim a forensic accountant. Harold's trip to Metrocor Asheville was for company data, month summaries, year-end totals, transaction details. James had already convinced him about the fees, he was digging into where the money went, besides the bonuses. The phony vendors of course would be David's overseas accounts."
"Why," Ellen asked, "did Harold believe he hadn't solved the puzzle?"
"He was stuck on one ultimately trivial detail, I think," Geoff said. "He had worked out pretty much everything we've just been over, the whole forest, but he couldn't quite see one specific tree. I've said it doesn't matter, that any market tracking index would do to explain the game. For everyone else, including David, the puzzle was solved just knowing that those fees were tied to a market index. Harold had to know which index and the exact formula from which the fees were calculated."
Marti said, "I know you-all think this financial stuff is important, but isn't the big deal here that David killed two people? If he really did."
"Marti is right," Honoria said, "what about the murders?"
"Three things to know about David," Geoff said. "He trained as an actor and as a wrestler and as a computer programmer. None of these things was obvious on meeting him, but his office was lined with trophies and plaques, and Google tells the rest. He grew up poor in Tennessee, fatherless, got into college on a wrestling scholarship. He got to number two in the state in his weight class, graduated magna cum laude in computer science. He was president of the drama club. He went on to an MBA and worked his way up at Metrocor."
Beth-Ann said, "But he was so squishy looking, not like any kind of an athlete."
"Good eating," Geoff said, "and weight training working in opposite directions. He is extremely powerful, and doesn't look it. These two things were my very first experience of him. His handshake was sort of soft, but he'd set his suitcase down in a place where I had to move it a couple feet to get past. It weighed easily a hundred pounds, I can't imagine what was in it, but he had carried it with no apparent effort."
"The weight," Sprague said, "was weights, dumbbells. Two twenty-fives, two tens. We noticed them when we searched the rooms."
"He was in Charlotte when Harold died, and when James died, was he not?" Mary-Ann asked.
"Said he was," Sprague said, "but it's just a two hour drive, if you speed a little and the traffic's light."
"There was a back door out of his office," Geoff said. "He went to work, normally, the day Harold died. He logged on to his system and asked not to be disturbed. Then he jumped into his truck, sent a couple emails from the road, took a coup
le forwarded phone calls. After a while he parked the truck behind Juniper House, slipped in to see Harold, killed him, slipped out. He drove back, snuck into his office, maybe pretending he was returning from lunch. His staff would testify he was in Charlotte for the whole day, despite a four or five hour hole. Sometimes when you count on luck, you get lucky. "
"Same trick," Alistair said, "the next day. He just had to leave early, say three o'clock, get to James by five. He drives back to Charlotte, checks in by eight to deliver the sad news about Harold. Then he hops into his Porsche for trip number three. But why didn't Ross, here, see all this?"
