“Is that the way you would do it?”
Karen’s voice was a monotone. “Thank you very much.”
“You know what I mean. Is it the smartest way? They picked this time to have Timmy declared dead. They could have waited forever. There must be a reason why they did it now.”
“What I just told you is the dumb way. The smartest way is always to stay as close to legality as possible. If they were sole trustee and executor, they could have been draining the fund since it was started. They could set enormous fees, charge all sorts of costs to the trust, and cook the books a little here and there to show losing investments. They wouldn’t steal it all. They would leave a substantial sum in there. How much is there?”
“I don’t know. I get the impression it’s tens of millions, maybe hundreds.”
“Okay. Say it’s a hundred million. They could get away with four or five percent a year as trustee and executor. They could also do virtually anything with the principal. There are written guidelines in every state I know of, but they’re broad, and they’re open to interpretation. They could invest in their friend’s chinchilla ranch and have their friend go bankrupt, if nobody knew the connection. If they were smart enough to steal it slowly and vary the investments to make it look inconclusive, they could do a lot.”
“Inconclusive?”
“You know. The trust has lots of stock in fifteen hundred companies, twenty million in federal bonds and a five-million-dollar write-off on the chinchilla ranch, and it’s tough to prove they were anything but mistaken on the issue of chinchilla futures. Not dishonest.”
“So then what?”
“They do it a few more times over the years, always making sure that the proportions are right – nine winners, one loser. They’re stealing a lot, but some of it is hidden by the fact that most investments are making money. You have to remember that even the good investments go up and down too, so the bad ones are hard to spot. When they’ve got all they can, they call it quits.”
“How do they call it quits?”
“They fulfill the terms of the trust – that is, they disperse the money to charities. Only now it’s not a hundred million. It’s twenty million.”
“And nobody notices that eighty million is gone?”
“If the trust doesn’t change hands, nobody looks. If you have twenty million, you can create quite a splash in the world of charity. You don’t write a twenty-million-dollar check to the United Way and close the books.”
“What do you do?”
“You divide it into ten-thousand-dollar tidbits and dole it out. Now you have two thousand checks from the Agnes Phillips Trust, which nobody ever heard of. Each year, you send four hundred different charities all over the country ten thousand dollars each. That’s more than one a day. You do it for five years. The first year, when the Children’s Fund of Kankakee gets a check from the Agnes Phillips Trust, what does it do?”
“You’ve got me.”
“It sends a thank-you note. They’re not going to demand an audit of the trust that sent them ten grand. It would never occur to them, and if it did, they couldn’t make it stick. They’re not heirs named in a will. They’re a charity that got a big check at the discretion of the people who sent it. They’re grateful. They have no idea of the size of the trust, and they hope they’ll get another check next year so they can help more children.”
“So at the end of five years, the money is all gone, and the statute of limitations has run on the eighty million they stole?”
“If they get only five percent return on the money while they dole it out, they get a couple of extra years. What’s working most in their favor is that during all that time – figure eight years – nobody is asking any questions. That’s the main thing. If at the end of that time there’s a full-scale audit, the auditors won’t be able to find a single instance of mistaken judgment that isn’t at least eight years old, and no theft at all. As long as it’s more than four since the payout began, nothing much matters.”
“So what do I do now?”
“I’ll tell you one thing I’d do. I’d make sure Timothy Phillips isn’t alone much. None of this works if the heir is alive.”
10
Jane went to the pay telephone at a market a few miles from her house, dialed Los Angeles Information to get the number of the Superior Court in Van Nuys, then asked to be transferred to Judge Kramer’s office. It was still early in the morning in California and Judge Kramer’s secretary sounded irritable and sleepy. “Judge Kramer’s chambers.”
Jane said, “Could you please tell him it’s Colleen?” The last name he had given her had slipped her mind.
“One moment. I’ll see if he can be disturbed.”
The name came back to her. “Mahoney.”
“Pardon me?”
“Colleen Mahoney.”
Jane’s mind could see the secretary pushing the hold button, walking to the big oak door, giving a perfunctory knock, and walking into the dim room with the horizontal blinds. She allowed a few seconds for the secretary to tell him, but before she expected him to remember and pick up, he was on the line. “Judge Kramer.”
“Hello, Judge,” she said. “Remember me?”
“Yes. This is an unexpected pleasure,” he said. “At least I hope it is.”
“I found out something that you need to know.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I read that the D.A. has taken a look at Timmy’s trust and said Hoffen-Bayne couldn’t be anything but honest. He missed something.”
“What did he miss?”
Jane spoke with a quiet urgency. “If Timmy was dead, the trust was to go to charities, so the D.A. assumed everything had to be okay. But in the trust Grandma didn’t say, ‘If Timmy dies, dissolve the trust right away and divide its assets among the following charities,’ or ‘Let the trust continue forever and the income go to the following charities.’ She simply said, ‘Give it away.’ So there was no specific organization named in the trust who could demand the right to see the books.”
“You’re saying that someone at Hoffen-Bayne planned to plunder the trust fund, give the residue to charities, and nobody would be the wiser?” he asked. “I don’t see how they could imagine they would get away with it.”
“A lawyer friend of mine thinks it would have worked fine if Timmy hadn’t turned up. If there are no heirs, there’s nobody with the right to demand an audit.”
“Except the state of California.”
“Let me ask you this. When the grandmother died, wouldn’t the trust have either gone through probate or been declared exempt?”
“Well, yes.”
“And doesn’t it have to file tax returns each year?”
“Certainly.”
“My friend seems to think that there’s no other occasion when the state automatically takes a look, unless the trust changes hands. Somebody with a legitimate reason has to ask. And the statute of limitations for embezzling the money is something like four years.”
The judge blew some air out through his teeth. “Your friend seems to have worked this through more carefully than I have. If they filed the standard annual forms, declared Timmy legally dead, and took their time about the disbursement to charities, then yes, they could probably avoid scrutiny until it was too late to prosecute the theft. Your friend must practice in another state. The statute of limitations here isn’t four years. It’s two.”
“Great,” she muttered.
“But they can’t do what they planned. They never got the death certificate.”
Jane spoke slowly and quietly. “If they’ve already robbed him, then they still need to get one. I think they’re committed.”
“It’s all right. Timmy is under police protection.”
“I know,” said Jane. “I went into his bedroom, talked to him, took him for a ride, and brought him back.”
“I’ll order him moved,” said the judge.
“Moving him increases the danger. Just tell them
you’re not keeping him incommunicado, you want him protected, and they’ll do their best. I’m sure you know they can’t keep somebody from killing him if the person tries hard enough.”
“Then what the hell do you want me to do?”
“Remove the motive.”
“How?”
“The reason to kill him is to hide a theft, so uncover it. He’s a ward of the court. Order an audit of his assets. Open everything up.”
“All right.”
“And, Judge,” Jane said, “can you make it a surprise? You know – like a raid?”
“Yes. I’ll have to do some preliminary probing first, and I’ll have to find probable cause for a search, but I’ll do it. Now what else are you waiting for me to stumble onto?”
“Nothing.” Then she added, “But, Judge…”
“What?”
“I don’t know if it’s occurred to you yet, but if they realize you’re going to do this, then Timmy isn’t the big threat to them anymore. You are.”
“I’m aware of that,” he snapped. “Now I’ve got sixty-three litigants and petitioners and all their damned attorneys penned up in a courtroom waiting for me, so if you’ll excuse me…”
“Keep safe. You’re a good man.”
“Of course I am,” he said. “Goodbye.”
Jane hung up the telephone and drove home. She climbed the stairs, opened her closet, and then remembered that she had given the suitcase she was looking for to the Salvation Army in Los Angeles. She went downstairs into the little office she had made out of her mother’s sewing room, looked in the closet, and found the old brown one. It was a little smaller, but she wasn’t going to bring much with her. She stared at the telephone for a moment, then dialed his number. His answering machine clicked on. “Carey, this is Jane. I’m afraid I was right about the trip. I’ll call when I’m home. Meanwhile you’ll have to make your own fun. Bye.” She walked upstairs to her bedroom and began to pack.
As Jane set down her suitcase and walked through the kitchen to be sure that all the windows were locked and the food stored in the freezer, she saw the pile of letters that Jake had brought her. She had not even bothered to look at them. She leaned against the counter and glanced at each envelope, looking for bills. There were several envelopes from companies, but they were all pitches to get her to buy something new.
Finally she opened the one at the bottom. It was thin and square and stiff, from Maxwell-Lammett Investment Services in New York. Inside was a greeting card. It was old, the picture from a photograph that had been hand-tinted. There was a stream with a deer just emerging from a thicket, so that it was easy to miss at first. All the leaves of the trees were bright red and orange and yellow. The caption said “Indian Summer.” When she looked inside, a check fluttered to the floor. The female handwriting in the card said, “You told me that one morning after a year or two I would wake up and look around me and feel good because it was over, and then I would send you a present. I found the card months ago and saved it, but you’re a hard person to shop for. Thanks. MaRried and PrEgnant.” R was Rhonda and E was Eckerly, or used to be.
Jane picked up the check and looked at it. The cashier’s machine printing on it said “Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand and 00/100 Dollars.” The purchaser was the investment company, and the notation said “Sale of Securities.” She put the check into her purse and took one last look at the card. Rhonda had probably felt clever putting her name in code. If the people her ex-husband had paid to hunt her had known about Jane they could have identified Rhonda’s prints from the paper and probably traced her through the check.
She switched on the ventilator on the hood over the stove, set out a foil pan, lit the card at a gas burner, and set it in the pan to burn. There would come a time when an uninvited guest would go through this house. Maybe it would be some bounty hunter, or maybe it would be the policemen investigating her death. Whoever it was would not find traces of a hundred fugitives and then turn them into a bonanza for his retirement. When the card was burned, she turned off the fan, then rinsed the ashes into her garbage disposal and let it grind them into the sewer. She dropped the rest of the mail into the trash can, picked up her suitcase, set the alarm, and stepped out onto the porch.
As she locked her door and took a last look at her house, she thought about the old days, when Senecas went out regularly to raid the tribes to the south and west in parties as small as three or four warriors. After a fight they would run back along the trail through the great forest, sometimes not stopping for two days and nights.
When they made it back into Nundawaonoga, they would approach their village and give a special shout to tell the people what it was they would be celebrating. But sometimes a lone warrior would come up the trail, the only one of his party who had survived. He would rest and eat and mourn his friends for a time. Then he would quietly collect his weapons and extra moccasins and provisions and walk back down the trail alone. He would travel all the way back to the country of the enemy, even if it were a thousand miles west to the Mississippi or a thousand miles south beyond the Cumberland. He would stay alone in the forest and observe the enemy until he was certain he knew their habits and defenses and vulnerabilities. He would watch and wait until he had perceived that they no longer thought about an Iroquois attack, even if it took a year or two.
It occurred to Jane as she got into her car that Rhonda’s present had come at a good time. If she stopped to deposit it on her way to the airport, it would buy a lot of spare moccasins.
11
Jane took a flight to Dallas-Fort Worth under the name Wendy Simmons, and another to San Diego as Diane Newberry. Then she took a five-minute shuttle bus ride from the airport to the row of tall hotels on Harbor Island. She stepped off at the TraveLodge, but walked down Harbor Island Drive to the Sheraton East because it seemed to be the biggest.
She checked in with a credit card in the name of Katherine Webster. She had gotten the card in the same way she had obtained the five others she had brought with her: she had grown them. Now and then she would take a trip to a different part of the country just to grow new credit cards. She would start with a forged birth certificate, use it to admit her to the test for a genuine driver’s license, and then would go to a bank and start a checking account in a new name. If the amount she deposited was large enough, sometimes the bank would offer her a credit card that day. If it did not, she would use the checks to pay for mail orders. Within a few months, the new woman would begin receiving unsolicited mail. Among the catalogs and requests for contributions would inevitably be offers for credit cards. She used the credit cards carefully, a new one in each town, so that when Katherine Webster disappeared, she didn’t reappear in the next city. Instead, a woman named Denise Hollinger took her place.
The banks that issued their own credit cards were happy to pay themselves automatically each month from her checking account, so all she had to do was to keep the balance high. For the others, she simply filled in the change-of-address section on the third bill and had future ones sent to a fictitious business manager named Stewart Hoffstedder, C.P.A. One of Mr. Hoffstedder’s services was paying clients’ bills. He had a post office box in New York City to receive the bills, and he issued neatly typed checks from a large New York bank to pay them. The imaginary Mr. Hoffstedder was so reliable that each year most of his clients would have their credit limits increased.
Sometimes Jane would grow a different kind of credit card. It would begin with her opening a joint checking account for herself and her husband, who was so busy that she had to bring the signature card home and have him sign it and return it by mail. Months passed while the husband paid for his mail-order goods with the checks and got his credit card. Then Jane would close the joint checking account and make sure the imaginary Mr. Hoffstedder got her imaginary husband’s bills. She could use the man’s card to pay expenses if she made reservations over the telephone, and when traveling let people guess whether she was wife, lover, or colleague wi
thout having to give herself any name at all.
After Katherine Webster checked into the hotel, she bought the San Diego newspapers, went directly to her room, ordered dinner from room service, and made the preparations she had planned during her long trip across the country. First she ordered a rental car by telephone, the keys to be delivered to her room for Mr. William Dunlavey, and the car left in the hotel parking lot. She spent a few minutes reading the society page of the San Diego Union, then set her alarm for six a.m. and went to bed.
When the alarm woke her, she checked the name she had found on the society page again: Marcy Hungerford of Del Mar, co-chair of the Women of St. James Fund-raising Committee and honorary chair of this year’s ball, was headed for the family’s eastern digs in Palm Beach. That was the best name in the columns. Honorary chairs were either famous or had money, and Marcy Hunger-ford wasn’t famous. She was doing fund-raising and was active in that world, so she might have one telephone number that people could find. Jane checked the telephone book and found it listed, with the address beside it.
Jane took the stairs to the swimming pool, went out the garden gate, and skirted the building to the parking lot. She had no difficulty finding the rented car. She had told the woman on the telephone that Mr. Dunlavey liked big black cars, and this one had a small sticker on the left rear bumper that had the right rental company’s name on it. She walked farther along the line of cars until she found one with an Auto Club sticker, peeled it off with a nail file, and stuck it over the one on her car’s bumper.
She drove out to the Golden State Freeway, headed north to the first Del Mar exit, went over a high mesa and came down onto the road along the ocean. The houses on the west side of the street were big and far apart, and she could see vast stretches of flat beach on the other side of them. When she found Marcy Hungerford’s house she was satisfied. It was two stories with a long, sloped roof and stilts on the beach side, a four-car garage under it on the street side, and about eight thousand square feet in the middle. She drove past it at thirty miles an hour and studied the exterior. The establishment was too complicated for Marcy Hungerford to have given all of the servants the week off or taken them with her, but they would cause no trouble. By the time they realized something was wrong, it wouldn’t be wrong anymore.
Perry, Thomas - Jane Whitefield 02 - Dance for the Dead Page 13
