Dance for the Dead

by Thomas Perry

  “Would you like an appointment for a consultation or—”

  “No, thanks,” she said. “She can call me.” Jane hung up and walked up Main Street to the little stationery store that Dick Herman had run for the last few years since his father retired. The growing collection of signs in the window announced there were post office boxes, copiers, and a fax service now.

  When she had sent the clippings Jane drove home, walked inside, and heard the telephone ringing. She closed the door and hurried to the phone. Maybe Carey wasn’t with the great diagnostician. She snatched up the receiver just as her answering machine started. “You have reached—” said the recording, and clicked off. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jane.” It was Karen’s voice. The last time Jane had heard it Karen had wondered aloud—in a purely speculative way—whether there was any way to protect a witness who had just saved a client of hers. “I got your message. But what is it?”

  “Did you read the articles?” said Jane.

  “The second woman—I take it that was you?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “It’s okay. Attorney-client privilege.”

  “I’m not a client.”

  “If you’re in trouble you are.”

  “I’m not,” said Jane. “I just need advice. How are they stealing the money?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” said Karen. “If it were obvious, I certainly wouldn’t be the only one who could figure it out. Without reading the documents that established the trust I’d only be guessing anyway.”

  “All right,” said Jane. “Let me fish, then. What’s the statute of limitations on stealing money from a trust fund?”

  “That’s breach of trust as a fiduciary. Here it’s four years. I’d have to look up California.”

  “Suppose they robbed Timmy the day the old lady died. They have Timmy declared dead and it’s over? Nobody can do anything?”

  “No,” said Karen. “He’s a minor, right? The statute time doesn’t start running until he’s eighteen, when the money goes to him. If he doesn’t spot it after four years, they’re in the clear, as long as they didn’t do anything worse.”

  “What if he were dead?”

  “Then the next heir gets the money—presumably some adult—and the clock starts again. Who is it?”

  Jane was silent for a minute. “The charities,” she said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what?”

  “That’s the answer. That’s why they wanted Timmy dead—legally or really. So that the heir isn’t a person.”

  “I’m not sure I follow that.”

  “Timmy’s grandmother set up this trust fund. It was supposed to go to her son. The son died. The next beneficiary was her infant grandson. That’s Timmy. There weren’t any other relatives, or if there were, Grandma wasn’t interested. The D.A. mentioned it in that article. The money goes to charities.”

  “It can’t be that. Charities aren’t generally run by stupid people. They receive bequests all the time, and their counsel are very sophisticated about making sure they get what the benefactor wanted them to. The charity is a corporation, and that’s like a person in law. The charity would have four years before the statute time ran. The lawyers would go over the will and the trust papers the day they heard about it.”

  “No,” said Jane. “The trust doesn’t go to the charities. Only the money does.”

  Karen was silent for the space of an indrawn breath. “Oh, no,” she said. “You’re telling me the old lady didn’t specify the charities?”

  “Nobody has ever mentioned any,” said Jane. “And Dennis—another lawyer who did read the papers—said it was just ‘charities.’ He was sure they were going to steal the money, but he didn’t say how.”

  Karen’s voice sounded tired, but she spoke quickly, as though she were reading something that was printed inside her eyelids. “Then I can think of a lot of ways to do it. Here’s the simplest. Timmy becomes deceased—either in fact or in law—and they get a death certificate. They then disperse the money to a charity of their choice, or even of their own making, which kicks most of the money back in some way: ghost salaries and services, paid directorships, whatever.”

  “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.”

  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 handtinted. 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.

  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.