Can’t Never Tell

by Unknown

  Rudy was referring to a trial last week where an assistant solicitor ended with a hung jury in a drunk-driving case. Rudy was still steamed. The jury wasn’t allowed to know it was the defendant’s third offense, which would have taken him off the road and into jail for a while. The driver had, though, learned from his several arrests and two prior convictions. He’d stood frozen in front of the jail intake video and given monosyllabic answers to the questions so he appeared sullen, but in control. The jury had mistakenly believed their own eyes and the video.

  “You could ask him about his relationship with Eliot Easton.” Questions about Easton’s financial difficulties and the state attorney’s investigation might rattle Spence. “But it would be better to wait on that.”

  Rudy, his rump propped on the table edge, stared down at me. “Yeah,” he said after a long pause, mentally running through the options. “I’ll cut him loose for now.”

  He stood. “You heading on home?”

  I appreciated the head start. No point in letting Spence see my distinctive burgundy Mustang in the parking lot.

  As I traced my steps down the cement block–lined institutional hall, I wondered what I’d do if Spence should ask me to represent him. What attorney would I suggest he call? Could I maintain my poker face, not reveal too much, the way he’d done in his interrogation?

  I’d need some time to get into character, ready to play the role of innocent. I doubted I’d ever be able to play it as well as what I’d just witnessed. Despite the outward control, though, I couldn’t believe a word of his silence. Not a word.

  Thursday

  On Wednesday afternoon, I left the Law Enforcement Center and drove up the mountain to the lake cabin. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone, but I didn’t want to be alone with the scenes circling in my head.

  The noise of Jet Skis and squeals of kids playing on the water gave me the backdrop I needed in the shaded cabin, curled up on the sofa with one of my grandfather’s journals tucked in my arms. I didn’t read any of it, just held it.

  Only after the sun set did it get quiet outside. Only after dark came fully and I knew the sad hour had passed, those long moments as dark approaches that can leave me melancholy, did I stir from my cave.

  Sitting on the porch, I listened to soft voices float across the water, watched lights blink on, the blue screens of televisions materialize. The tree frog concert echoed in deafening crescendos, eventually drowning out everything else.

  I stayed in the porch rocker until the other human sounds disappeared and most of the lights in the houses around the lake flicked off, leaving only the protective circles from the outdoor security lights scattered among the cabins, the pulsing tree frog calls, and the moon path laid out on the glistening smooth water.

  The next morning, I got up early, before the noise started on the lake. I’d had enough of the noise and the solitude. Nothing to eat in the cupboards or small refrigerator except black beans and Spam and freeze-dried ice cubes.

  Force of habit took me straight to my office and apartment. The vase of flowers in the front hall greeted me with an overpowering funeral home smell. Without ceremony, I carried the whole thing out back to the giant rolling trash can, then thought better of it.

  I dumped the flowers in the trash and poured the water under the boxwoods next to the garage. The vase, I carried inside. I’d rinse it and take it to the rummage. Someone would enjoy it.

  I dialed my parents’ number. Dad answered.

  “You had breakfast yet?” I asked.

  “I’ll scramble you some eggs,” he said, which meant he’d already eaten. No matter how early I get up, I can’t beat him.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Your mom had some meeting at the church. Don’t know what world-beating endeavor this is.”

  Something worthwhile, I was sure.

  “You still got your office closed?”

  “Mm-hm,” I said. Even though he never said anything direct, Dad probably worried that his eldest child would starve to death or end in debtors’ prison. The fact that debtors’ prison went the way of Dickensian England didn’t mean it wasn’t a specter that could visit a concerned parent.

  “Dad, you ever met someone you totally misread? Somebody you thought you had figured out, but you were completely wrong?”

  My question wasn’t mere self-searching speculation. My dad has an uncanny ability to read people. When I was a child, I was convinced he had some sort of secret mind-reader power. Over the years, I’d watched him size up in a single meeting what, for me, was revealed only after someone’s character flaws had time to work both their charm and their damage.

  “We’ve all done that,” he said. He bent over the eggs in the skillet, stirring them slowly in a swirl of butter and cream. The grain bread in the toaster smelled like toasted nuts. My stomach gave a soft growl.

  “Sometimes it just takes time to know all we need to know,” he said.

  “You put it together pretty quick.”

  He snorted, but didn’t offer any examples of his failures to make me feel better.

  “When people want to hide themselves,” he said, “it’s hard to see past the mask. Let’s face it, they spend a lot of time trying to be like the rest of us. They get good at it.”

  “Yeah.” I rested my chin in my hands, propped on a stool at the breakfast bar like a drunk visiting his bartender therapist. “Granddad always said the best liars fool themselves first.”

  “Something to that.” He chuckled. “Trust me, your granddad knew some con artists and horse traders of the first order. He knew whereof he spoke.”

  Did heredity count for nothing? I had discernment genes on both sides of my family, so what had happened?

  “This about that guy at Lydia’s picnic?”

  I glanced at him, then away.

  He focused on the eggs and didn’t try to probe my brain with his mind-reader gaze. “He’s been arrested, I heard,” he said.

  News was really traveling fast—especially considering that Dad is usually the last person plugged into the gossip network. Odd for a newspaper owner, but that had been a later-life job calling for him.

  “Arrested for what?” I asked, curious.

  “I’m not sure exactly. Something about some investment scheme. I don’t rightly know and don’t like to say.”

  Dad didn’t ask if I’d fallen for him or if I’d invested any money with him or anything else. Never one to pry. He just knew.

  “Seems he fooled a lot of folks, from what I hear.” He cut off the heat under the pan and gave the eggs a few more stirs.

  “Ought to be able to see through somebody like that,” I said.

  “Can’t say that. If you could think like him, that’d make you as shifty as he is. Best to know you’re protected by something bigger than yourself and not fret over what you can’t know. You get insight when you need it, not before.”

  Nice to hear, but I wasn’t quite believing it. Maybe it only made sense if you were a mind reader.

  He spooned the eggs on a plate for me as I buttered two pieces of toast.

  Had I been falling for Spencer Munn? Was that why I felt all sodden inside? I certainly hadn’t felt any of that giddy girlish rush I remember from crushes past. Had I simply lived past the giddy age? Were my emotions crusted over with cynicism, accreted over time from making foolish decisions and watching others become fools?

  Had I thought something might develop there? Or was I just flattered by the attention and now embarrassed by my lack of judgment?

  I took a bite of the creamy eggs and gave an appreciative murmur. Regardless of where I’d been headed, I was now left even more doubtful of my own judgment, at least in affairs of the heart.

  Dad carried the skillet to the sink to wash it. “We get older, but I’m not so sure we get wiser. Maybe we just make so many bad calls, we get cautious. The wise part is understanding that we can’t see and know everything. I’d rather be someone who can be fooled. Wouldn’t you?�
��

  I laughed and blinked to squelch the tears that threatened to gather.

  Over the next few days, the fraud case against Spencer Munn and Eliot Easton became front page news—and not just in the Dacus Clarion. As the details unfolded, it became clear that others would be caught in the net, including Todd David. As an attorney and the secretary of the board, he was named along with other board members in a civil suit brought by investors whose losses totaled millions. Todd should have spent less time worrying about candy-tossing injuries and more time studying up on the fiduciary duties of a corporate board. A snide part of me congratulated myself on having the good sense not to go out with him.

  Spencer Munn hired a criminal defense attorney from Greenville, who often represented high-profile defendants. The attorney promptly applied to the court for funds, claiming Munn was indigent, his assets frozen or nonexistent.

  Angry prosecutors and civil attorneys were coming at them from all sides. I knew how those stories would end. The civil settlements would pay out only pennies of what the investors had lost. Some of the jail time might be suspended, but the major players would serve enough time to scare guys who normally wear suits to work.

  Spence’s defense, according to his lawyer’s statements to the Greenville paper, was that the government had started a panic by announcing an investigation and had caused the collapse. “My client’s investors would have been protected had the government not started a stampede. Investments fluctuate. He just needed a little more time, and the government denied him that.”

  The interesting part of the story took a few weeks to unfold. When it did, it blew the financial fraud case off the headlines.

  Spencer Munn was indicted for the second-degree murder of Rinda Reimann. The solicitor claimed she’d been killed in a complicated attempt to get her insurance proceeds. Rinda’s husband had money invested with Spencer Munn, and Munn needed an influx of cash to pay off investors clamoring for their dividends. When investors whose funds he’d placed with Manna Advisers had gotten suspicious, he was desperate to stave off a panic. Getting control of Rinda’s insurance money was his last frantic hope.

  That day at the falls, had she been harassing him about why their dividend checks had stopped coming? Had he planned it? Or had he just not stopped it? No matter how many trials they held, I doubted those answers would ever be clear.

  Rog Reimann had known nothing about the scheme. The news reports listed him as one of Manna Advisers’ ten largest investors.

  I watched it unfold from a distance, as if watching a movie unfold, one in which I had no emotional stake. I felt detached, not viscerally involved, even though I’d known many of the players.

  I marveled at my lack of emotion, my lack of anxiety for Spence or Todd. I felt a twinge when I thought about Lissie Caper and Dr. Pratchett and Rog and the others who’d been sucked into Eliot Easton’s get-rich-quick scam. Should they have known it was too good to be true?

  Another part of me—buried deep because I didn’t want to study it too closely—knew it could have been me, but for grace.

  Ironically, a funeral proved the fun part of the week. I found a cheap airfare from Greenville and flew into Tampa to join the Plinys, Dana Strange, and others in paying our respects to Burt Furder.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that the carnival crowd would throw a heck of a party, though I admit it gave me a shock when I came face to face with Burt himself, dressed in a classy black suit with his top hat resting on a bar stool nearby.

  They had propped his coffin up so that he could join the party. Judging from his half-open eyes and slight smile, I’d have to say he enjoyed his funeral more than any corpse I’d ever seen.

  As the social column in the Dacus Clarion would have reported it, had the funeral been covered, a good time was had by all. Dana Strange wasn’t lying a word when she boasted about her Co’Cola Cake, though I’m still partial to the cake at Jestine’s Kitchen, which fortunately isn’t as far as Gibtown is from my own strange hometown.

  A Few Final Words

  on Fraud

  Real Losses.

  The actual incidence of financial fraud is difficult to calculate. However, I spent most of a year researching “small town” financial fraud cases and found the amount of money stolen and the number of people harmed staggering.

  Interestingly enough, the type of scams I’ve explored in this novel are not the most prevalent, though South Carolina alone has had four high-profile fraud cases like this in the last six years, with investors losing almost half a billion dollars! Note, that’s just in South Carolina, and that’s thousands of investors who’ve lost their life savings.

  Most Common Frauds.

  According to one government agency, the most common frauds include:

  Identity theft.

  Check fraud (stolen or altered checks, often cashed with the aid of an accomplice at a store or with false identification matching the check).

  Advance-fee scams (the plea to “send me some money to cover fees and I’ll share my fortune with you,” seen in the now-common Nigerian scam offers).

  Theft of credit, debit, or ATM numbers (often stolen with high-tech aids like hidden cameras and card skimmers at ATMs or skimmed by wait-staff or retail clerks).

  Automatic bank transfer payments to a false account.

  Internet fraud (someone posing as a legitimate business e-mails [or phones] to “update our records” and asks for private information).

  Predatory home loans (loan consolidation or foreclosure “rescues” that either steal information or acquire mortgaged property through fraudulent promises).

  For a detailed discussion on “Common Cons . . . and How to Avoid Them,” see an excellent article at www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnspr03/cons.html.

  The best scams work on our own innate greed. In the right circumstances, anyone can be convinced that they can get something for nothing.

  Another common ploy is to play on our desire to help someone in need. We want to be helpful, likable people. You don’t want to be anything else. But you also want to be safe. Ask questions, check up on claims—legitimate businesses and charities won’t mind. And report suspicious activity to the proper state, federal, or private agencies.

  Protect Yourself.

  What can you do to protect yourself?

  1. Once a year, get copies of your credit reports (in the name of everyone in your household) from www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free 877-322-8228. These reports are free, once a year.

  Read this Web site carefully; don’t click to buy anything (such as your FICO score or credit monitoring) unless you want that.

  Lots of “sound alike” Web sites exist that want to sell you credit-monitoring services, but you are entitled to one free report from each of the three credit bureaus each year at this Web site.

  2. Check up on those with whom you do business. Links to just a few of the organizations and government agencies who can give advice or to whom you can complain include:

  www.bbb.org/alerts/tips.asp Better Business Bureau links and tips.

  www.ftc.gov/idtheft FTC’s Identity Theft site. Or call toll-free 877-FTC-HELP (877-382-4357) to report fraudulent, deceptive, or unfair business practices or to get information.

  www.aarp.org/money/wise_consumer/AARP links and reports.

  www.pueblo.gsa.gov/scamsdesc Descriptions of scams and frauds. Browse the Web site or call toll free 888-878-3256 for free information from the government’s Federal Citizen Information Center.

  Con artists and scammers are very good at what they do. Plenty of smart people become victims. Don’t be embarrassed or shy about refusing to send money or refusing to give information to people who call you or come by your house or approach you on the street.

  3. Remember:

  If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

  High returns are always linked to high risk, in legitimate investments as well as illegitimate ones.

  Do business with
well-established firms—and keep your eye on them. Bricks-and-mortar buildings and fancy monthly reports are no guarantee of stability.

  Ignore the “hot tip” from a friend, even people at church or civic clubs. Several successful scams have targeted trusting church members or clubs. Check everything with independent ratings sources.

  Some “con artists” start out legitimate but panic during a downturn and take crooked shortcuts. Get out while the getting is good.

  Diversify. Learn what that really means. Don’t invest all your money in a single stock (ask the former employees of Enron about that). Be aware that investing in several of the same types of mutual funds (such as all small companies or all foreign funds) also means you’ve got your eggs in too few baskets. One starting point is to buy a mutual fund that “buys the market” and has low management fees.

  However, don’t let this scare you away from saving and investing.

  First, save. Even a few dollars a month in a savings account will add up. Shop around at your area banks, savings-and-loans, and credit unions for the best interest rate. Choose an account insured by the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) for banks and savings and loans. For credit unions, choose an account insured by the NCUA (National Credit Union Administration).

  When you’ve saved a nest egg large enough to cover three to six months of your living expenses, then you can start to invest. When you’re starting, no need to get fancy. For more information, try Personal Finance for Dummies or Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties (don’t worry if you’re no longer in your thirties; it’s full of good advice).