The Marlboro Man: A Moira McElvaney Mystery

by Derek Fee

  Brendan was lost in thought. In fact, he had spent the day in a haze, unable to operate properly on a couple of hours’ sleep. He regularly ranked in the top five per cent of lecturers on the basis of student surveys, principally because his lectures were well prepared and well presented. He was in the education business, but he also had to be an entertainer if he wanted to keep his audience’s attention. He liked to agree with the term ‘edutainment’ to describe his profession. Today he hadn’t been much of an edutainer. His thoughts were interrupted by someone hailing him from across the street. He looked up and saw it was Frank Shea. What the hell is Shea doing in Cambridge? During his days in the rarefied air of the corporate boardroom, Shea had seldom visited the stomping ground of his student days. Brendan and Shea had been close friends at school and college, but their paths had diverged after college. Brendan had watched Frank’s stellar financial career with a certain amount of envy. Meanwhile he had settled for the safer route of academia. He took no joy in seeing a front-page photo of Frank being led in handcuffs from his office building. He had felt the pain of Frank’s fall from grace as though he had been a brother. They had never been in competition, until now. Or maybe that was just his imagination. He waved at Shea and received a come here sign in response.

  The hug they gave each other at the door of the coffee shop was more perfunctory than usual. ‘You remember this place?’ Shea asked as he led the way inside. ‘This used to be our favourite rendezvous.’ He retook his seat at the window and motioned for Brendan to join him.

  Brendan ordered a coffee and sat across from Shea.

  ‘You look as tired as I feel.’ Shea smiled. He’d never seen Brendan with bags under his eyes before. ‘Tough day?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Brendan remembered the many days they had spent as students sipping coffee and putting the world to rights. ‘Lecturing is like being on stage. You can’t have an off day.’

  The waitress deposited a cup of coffee in front of Brendan. ‘How’s the investigation going?’

  ‘So so.’ Shea opened his briefcase and removed the mass of papers. He held them out to Brendan. ‘I spent most of last night trying to make sense of these.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Contracts, documents setting up escrow accounts, quotes on containers, papers of great financial complexity.’ He pulled out his legal pad and showed Brendan the intricate web of connections he had already deciphered. ‘There’s something very wrong here. This is as far out of Greg Gardiner’s comfort zone as you could get. On the one hand, he’s an accountant for a group of mom-and-pop businesses and, on the other, he’s opening up accounts in banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. I know the guy and this stuff is way beyond his capacity.’

  ‘What’s your conclusion?’

  ‘Damned if I know. I don’t think Greg has been hiding his light under a bushel all these years. So someone else must be involved, or I’m a lousy judge of character.’

  ‘Do you think that he is dead?’

  Shea reflected for a moment. ‘It certainly looks that way.’

  Brendan looked at the pages of the legal pad. It was like looking into a maze.; Figures were not his forte; Frank was the financial genius. ‘I guess he might have been working as a go-between for someone, someone who didn’t want to be seen as the principal.’

  Shea stuffed the papers back into his briefcase. ‘Carmichael saw someone who could have been a principal visiting the office in Concord once. It’s a possibility, but it could just as easily have been some guy who owned a pizzeria and was looking to have his accounts done. If there is someone behind Greg, I haven’t seen any sign of him and I’ve been through all Greg’s files.’

  Brendan sipped his coffee. ‘So, the answer lies in all those papers.’

  ‘As far as I can see Greg looks to be the principal, but it’s so damn convoluted.’

  Brendan was back in his student days and his fears about Frank and Moira were put to the back of his mind. ‘This investigation of yours is all over the place. You need to get all the information that you’ve collected together. It’s all very well behaving like a group of amateurs, but you shouldn’t throw out a couple of hundred years of procedures that have been developed by the professionals.’

  ‘Like what?’ Shea asked.

  ‘You need to set up a filing system and to have all the important information collated and summarised where you can see it. You obviously don’t watch much television. The cops use those large whiteboards to help them see the wood from the trees. Separate all the threads of the investigation, and establish the solid line of enquiry while cutting out the rubbish.‘

  Shea made a note to have a large whiteboard delivered to the condo the following morning. ‘What else?’

  ‘What’s the motivation here?’ Brendan asked. ‘Why should this mysterious Mr X want to make Gregory Gardiner disappear? How did he pick on Gardiner in the first place? If Gardiner was the quintessential accountant for mom-and-pop enterprises, how did Mr X select him to manage complex financial operations?’

  Shea was lost in thought. ‘Greg was a pretty good accountant, but you’re right – he wouldn’t have been my first choice to run the type of financial operation described in these papers. But, he would be easy to get rid of. Perhaps he knew too much. He was a loose end who could identify Mr X.’

  Brendan pointed at the papers on the table. ‘And there’s no mention of Mr X in those papers?’

  Shea shook his head.

  ‘That’s pretty smart,’ Brendan said. ‘A crime has been committed and the only person in the frame is your pal Greg. Anything goes wrong, he’s the one that goes to jail. What about the money?’

  ‘Could be anywhere. Money these days is just a series of bits of information. It moves around at the speed of light almost. We might have some possibility of finding out what happened to Greg, but there’s no way we’re ever going to find a dollar.’

  ‘Gardiner looks like the perfect patsy. Is his name on all the documents?’

  Shea nodded.

  ‘Then why disappear him? Why not let him take the rap? There’s got to be a reason and you need to find it.’

  Shea finished his coffee. ‘I’ve done my best with the papers I showed you, but contract law is not my speciality. When I was in Devens, we had a kind of group. The composition changed depending on when inmates arrived and departed, but there was a very diverse range of skills within the group. We had guys who had committed almost every kind of crime. I was in Devens today to pick one of the best financial brains in the country, but unfortunately he’s ill.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m due to meet his son in fifteen minutes.’

  Brendan finished his coffee. ‘Why haven’t you taken up my offer to help out?’

  Shea didn’t answer immediately. ‘You were against Moira joining forces with me. I thought that maybe you might not have your heart in it.’

  ‘Well I want to help. I know next to nothing about finance and I can’t run around the country at your beck and call like Moira, but I do know the criminal mind. Every crime has a motivation. Undoubtedly the motive of the original crime is money, but for me the jury is still out on why Gardiner had to die.’

  Shea looked at his watch again and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go.’ He held out his arms and hugged Brendan. ‘Welcome aboard, I’ll give you a call tomorrow.’

  The elephant in the room was scarcely mentioned, Brendan thought as he watched Shea hurry off with his briefcase under his arm. Frank would be a hell of an adversary in a love triangle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  M oira was already in the living room of the apartment when Brendan returned. There was a moment of reticence when he entered. She recognised this as a potential make-or-break moment in their relationship.

  Brendan stood in front of her. ‘I’m really sorry about last night. It was totally my fault. I was just being a jealous idiot.’

  She stood up and hugged him. ‘You may be a bloody genius as a criminal psychologist, but you have a
long way to go in understanding me.’ She pulled him onto the couch beside her. ‘You asking me to marry you is one of my greatest fears. Not because I don’t love you, because I do. But because I’ve been down that road already and I’m not going there again soon. Also, I’m never going to be a stay-at-home mom. I left a job I love to follow you to Boston. You’ve got to understand the sacrifice that entailed. Every day I wake up I miss being a police officer. I’m trying hard not to live in the past and I don’t want to live in the future, so I live in the now. And right now you and I are together. If that’s cool with you, then we can continue. If you’re looking for something else, then you have to tell me and I’ll have to make a decision.’

  Brendan recognised the point they had reached. If he asked her to make a decision right now, he knew what the answer would be. His only chance of being with her was to postpone that decision as far into the future as possible. And if that meant letting her run off on a wild goose chase with Frank Shea, then so be it. He took her hand in his. ‘I’ve been a damn fool and I don’t want to lose you. I know my behaviour has been irrational, particularly the way I responded to your involvement in the Gardiner investigation. I spent most of last night castigating myself for my stupidity. We don’t own one another, I know that. And it was stupid of me to think that you would easily discard something that was a central part of your life. I know what would happen if I had to give up lecturing.’

  ‘So there’ll be no movement towards institutionalising our relationship?’

  Brendan thought of the ring in the box sitting in the drawer of his office desk. He wondered whether he should keep it or return it to the shop. He decided that he would return it. ‘No.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘And there’ll be no reaction to my working with Shea on finding out what happened to Gregory Gardiner.’

  ‘I still have some reservations.’ He told her about meeting Shea at the coffee shop in Concord Avenue and the preliminary result of the examination of the documents that were on the USB. ‘There’s a lot of money involved in whatever Gardiner got himself tangled up in. Normally where you find lots of money you also find very dangerous people. I give lectures on people who killed their entire family for just a few thousand dollars. Frank thinks Gardiner is dead, so that’s one possible murder already. You’re right that I’m the reason you’re in Boston, and I don’t want to be the reason that you’re killed.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t blame you if I get myself killed. Mind you, my father and mother might not be so forgiving.’ She smiled. ‘There is something about this Gardiner business that bothers me though, but I just can’t put my finger on what it is.’

  ‘Frank has agreed to let me come on board. I won’t be running around the country with you, but I’ll try and help in any way I can.’

  She leaned forward and kissed him. ‘Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will see something we can’t. Now, I’m ravenous and I didn’t sleep much myself last night, so let’s get some food in and have an early night.’

  Brendan smiled.

  ‘And you can take that smile off your face. I said eat and sleep, in that order.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  S hea arrived at the building on Granville Road just as a young Indian man was putting a key into the lock on the front door. ‘Are you Sami?’ he asked as he made his way up the short path leading to the house.

  The young man turned and smiled, revealing two rows of perfectly white teeth. Whereas his face was a carbon copy of his father’s, he was at least a foot taller than him. He had a full head of jet-black hair, which fell to his collar at the back. ‘And you are Frank Shea. My dad talks about you all the time.’ Ram still had an Indian lilt to his speech, but Sami was one hundred per cent American.

  ‘How do you know me?’ Shea asked.

  ‘I followed your case in the papers. You were screwed.’ He looked at Shea. ‘Your hair was darker then. Come in.’ He pushed the front door open and they entered a sizeable hall. Passing a staircase on the left that led to the upper floor, Sami walked to the end of the corridor. He opened a door and stood back to allow Shea to enter. The room directly behind the door was the living room, which was almost two hundred square feet. A modern kitchen was visible through an open door to the right, and the two closed doors at the opposite end of the living room presumably led to the bedroom and bathroom. The living room was furnished in modern minimalist style and there was nothing Indian in view. Shea had visited Ram’s home and it had been like walking into a house in the Punjab. It showed that the generations moved on in their own directions.

  ‘Would you like a coffee or something else to drink?’ Sami asked as he dropped his satchel on the floor.

  ‘I just had a coffee,’ Shea said sitting in a designer metal chair that was as uncomfortable as it looked.

  ‘Scotch OK?’ Sami pulled a bottle out from a wall unit that incorporated a bar, a TV stand and a bookcase.

  ‘Scotch is fine.’

  Sami poured two glasses. ‘You were at Devens today?’

  ‘Yes.’ Shea took one of the glasses and sipped.

  ‘What did you think of my dad?’ Sami toasted with his glass and drank.

  ‘I think he should be in hospital.’

  ‘I’ve got someone working on that.’

  ‘If I can help, you got it.’

  ‘Thanks, but I think we’ve got it covered. I have someone with a judge as we speak. He’ll be moved tomorrow and we’re going to find out what the hell is up with him.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘He sent you to me, right.’

  Shea looked at Sami as he downed the remnants of his Scotch. He didn’t look old enough to drink. ‘You mind if I ask you what age you are?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘What age were you when you started university?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  Shea had been seventeen and he was considered a prodigy. He pulled out the sheaf of papers from his briefcase. ‘I need these analysed.’ He passed over the papers.

  ‘For when?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ He took out his legal pad. ‘These are the connections I’ve been able to make.’

  Sami shuffled the papers in his hands like a deck of cards. ‘You realise that it would take a team of forensic auditors two weeks to examine all these papers.’

  ‘Does that mean you can’t do it by tomorrow?’

  ‘No, it means you’re going to pay me ten thousand dollars to do it for tomorrow.’

  ‘Now I know how you can afford this place. You value your time.’

  ‘I know about you Mr Shea and you have enough money that I’m sure you don’t value ten thousand dollars. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, finish your drink and get out. I need to get started immediately. Where will I go to present the results?’

  Shea gave him the address of the condo.

  ‘I’ll be there between nine and ten.’ He ushered Shea towards the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  T he whiteboard arrived at Shea’s condo at eight o’clock and was set up ten minutes later in the living room. Shea surveyed its whiteness. It was the epitome of the blank canvas. Now all they needed was to fill it with what they knew.

  ‘I’ve seen this kind of thing on the cop shows.’ Carmichael stood beside him drinking her early morning coffee.

  Shea now had two reasons for finding out what happened to Gardiner. The first was to give his cousin and her family closure. The second was to get Carmichael back into her apartment. He had never had much interest in cop shows and working sixteen-hour days didn’t leave much time for TV anyway. ‘Well then maybe you can tell me how we start.’

  Carmichael was delighted that she knew more than the great Frank Shea on at least one subject. ‘At the top we put the name of the prime suspect.’

  Shea picked up a black marker and wrote ‘Mr X’ at the top of the whiteboard. He turned to Carmichael. ‘What ‘s next?’

  ‘Under the n
ame you write everything you know about him.’

  ‘And if we know nothing about him?’

  Carmichael shrugged her shoulders.

  Shea wrote a large question mark beside the name.

  At that moment the doorbell went and Justin let Moira in. She walked immediately into the living room and saw Shea and Carmichael staring at a whiteboard containing a name and a question mark. ‘Whose brilliant idea was this?’ she said, surveying the expanse of white.

  ‘Brendan’s.’ Shea put the black marker back on the ledge beneath the whiteboard. ‘He says we should use it to collate all the information we’ve collected so far so we can have a visual on what we’ve learned.’

  ‘I’m aware of the use of a whiteboard.’ Moira’s tone was sharper than usual. She was annoyed that she hadn’t thought of making a visual presentation of what they’d learned. ‘We need someone who will be responsible for updating the board.’ She looked at Carmichael, who did not look like she was about to volunteer. ‘That’ll be you, Jamie.’

  ‘No way Jose!’

  ‘You’re a secretary, aren’t you?’ Moira said. ‘Well this is secretarial work.’

  ‘And if you’re not interested in helping,’ Shea added. ‘I can call a cab and have you dropped back to your apartment.’ He was secretly hoping that she would refuse to comply.

  For the next half-hour Moira and Carmichael worked together to put everything they had learned on the board. They filled in all the details of Gregory Gardiner’s life under his photo, including the details of his disappearance. They were working on including the information from Gattuso and Halliday when the doorbell sounded and Sami Saha entered the condo. The young man was carrying a bag not unlike a doctor’s satchel, which he laid on the table.