Hangman's root : a China Bayles mystery

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  I had hardly framed the question when I began to turn up possible answers. What if Castle and Harwick had jointly invested the money in some nefarious scheme and had a falling out? Thieves do. Or what if Harwick had repented of his thievery, decided to turn himself in, and pressured Castle to join him.^ Long hadn't known about the statute of limitations; Harwick and Castle probably didn't, either.

  Or what if the lab grant wasn't the only cooking of the books that Castle and Harwick had been involved in? What if they had continued to dip into other grants Harwick brought into the department? That might mean that they weren't protected by the statute. And in any event, the statute didn't protect them from the dark frown of academic censure. Tenure or no tenure, when CTSU found out what they had done, both of them would be out of a job before you could say "misappropriation of funds."

  But a gut feeling told me that the best answer was none of the above. It was the blackmail letter, which accused Harwick of an unspecified crime that had taken place ten years before. / knew that the writer or writers—Kevin or Amy or both—were referring to Harwick's criminal abuse of their brother But when he showed the letter to Castle, Harwick had assumed that it referred to the embezzlement. Castle, who didn't know about Tad Scott, shared that assumption—that's why he called Jim Long. And when he found out that Long hadn't gotten a letter. Castle figured that the blackmailer knew about only one embezzler: Miles Harwick. With that information. Castle's next step was clear: Do away with Harwick and leave the blackmailer holding an empty threat.

  Working on those assumptions, it wasn't hard to reconstruct the crime. Castle knew Harwick's work habits. He expected his victim to be in the office on Wednesday evening, so he came equipped with what he needed for the job. He knocked at Harwick's door, Harwick admitted him, and the two talked and drank coffee until Harwick was groggy—too groggy to protest when Castle strung him up and caught a plane for Boston the next morning. It was spring break, and Castle might have counted on the body not being discovered for several days at least. Suddenly I recalled the ashes in Harwick's ashtray. Castle might have burned the blackmail letter on the spot. And then I thought of something else. When Castle learned that Rose had discovered the backup copy on the computer, he could have gone immediately to the Boston airport and got a flight home in plenty of time to fake a break-in of the biology office.

  And the clues to Dottie's guilt—her hair, and the rope? I hadn't been able to come up with a reason for Kevin and Amy to frame Dottie, but I could certainly see why Castle would want to implicate hen She had been in his way since the beginning, first opposing his chairmanship, then his plan for an animal research unit, and finally his hope for a state-of-the-art lab. She had been

  I

  2i thorn in the royal side for ten years, a pain in the royal ass. If she were convicted of Harwick's murder, she'd be out of his face for good.

  But where had he gotten Dottie's hair? Well, even that wasn't too difficult. Dottie's house was isolated. He could have gone there when he knew she was in class, climbed in through a window, and found her hairbrush in the bathroom. That's when he could have planted the rope in the garage, too.

  It all fit, and I had to admit to a great sense of relief as the last piece slipped into place. The way things were shaping up, if Ruby's daughter was guilty of anything, it was threat, which was a Class B misdemeanor. Under the circumstances, she wasn't likely to be prosecuted. If Castle was the man we were looking for, I could face Ruby with a clear conscience.

  But what to do about Castle? I felt confident that I could uncover the facts that would confirm Long's story about the chairman's role in the embezzlement. But unfortunately, as far as the murder was concerned, all I had was a theory. The evidence to support it was only circumstantial. It certainly wasn't sufficiently compelling to force either Bubba or the D.A. to give up the perfectly good suspect they had already booked and were planning to bring before the grand jury. To make that happen, I would need something more substantial, more dramatic. A confession before witnesses, preferably. To get that, somebody had to confront Castle. Somebody who already knew enough about the situation to buy my version of it. Somebody credible. Somebody with an authority he would have to respect.

  I smiled. I knew just the woman for the job.

  Smart Cookie.

  When I got back to the shop. Laurel was waiting on two customers at once—Rosemary Robbins, who does taxes for Ruby

  and me, and Fannie Couch, who at the advanced age of seventy-eight has become a local celebrity. Fannie does a talk show on KPST Radio every weekday. She knows even more about what goes on in Pecan Springs than Constance Letterman, the gossip columnist at the newspaper.

  "You got to listen to the show next Monday," Fannie told me as Laurel rang up the herbal soap she'd bought. "I've got a special guest."

  "Who?" Laurel asked.

  "The Guv," Rosemary said. "Fannie's going big time."

  "No kidding?" Laurel sounded impressed. I was, too.

  "No kidding," Fannie said. She turned to Rosemary. "Claude said to tell you he'll have our tax stuff ready in a few days. If he can get up off the couch, that is." Fannie's always making jokes about her husband being a couch potato.

  "That's fine," Rosemary said. Rosemary is short and petite, with a look of permanent anxiety that no doubt comes of sharing the tax secrets of dozens of people. She glanced at me. "How about you, China?"

  "I don't want to think about taxes," I said. To Laurel, I said, "I've got a couple of phone calls to make and some errands to run. Don't count on me for the rest of the afternoon. Okay?"

  "Okay," Laurel said. "Make one of your phone calls to Beulah Bracewell. She's called twice."

  "Beulah?" Fannie dropped her change into her coin purse. "Tell her that Florence Tuttle phoned in that recipe for black bean soup she was looking for. The one with peppers."

  Laurel closed the cash register. "My mother's got a great recipe for bean soup with peppers. You take a couple of good-size dried chiles, roast them—"

  "Will somebody tell me," Rosemary said, "exactly how to roast a pepper?"

  I left them to their discussion of the fine art of roasting chiles and went around to the kitchen, where I put on the kettle for tea

  and dialed Beulah's number. This time I got through. Beulah jumped right in without any preamble.

  "I told you the truth when I said that Sheila Dawson took Dr. Harwick's personnel file," she said. "But after you left, just out of curiosity, I brought up the computer log we keep of personnel transactions and made a hard copy of it."

  "I saw the log in Harwick's file," I said. "Sheila Dawson made a copy before she gave it to Chief Harris."

  "Did you notice the changes in Dr. Harwick's insurance beneficiary and in the amount of his policy?" Beulah asked.

  "He removed his mother as beneficiary, didn't he, and left the money to the university? It was quite a sum, as I recall—a million dollars."

  "That's right," Beulah said. "The changes were made about a year ago, shortly after Dr. Harwick's mother died. After I thought about it, I got curious. So I went to the insurance section and pulled the paperwork." Her voice grew tense. "Between the two of us, China, I don't think Dr. Harwick signed either the Change of Beneficiary or the Change of Coverage forms. Graphology is a hobby of mine, you see. I took a course last year from the American Association of Handwriting Analysts. Dr. Harwick's signature doesn't look right to me."

  My skin prickled. "Are you saying that somebody/or^^^ Harwick's insurance application?"

  "I'd certainly hate to think so," she said, "but I don't see any other explanation. Both documents are dated last July, the fifteenth, to be exact. I distinctly recall that last July Dr. Harwick was in Hamburg, Germany, attending an international biology symposium. I know, because I processed his Request for Foreign Travel. That's the form you have to submit to get permission for travel abroad. He left in June and didn't return until early August."

  "Beulah," I said, "is there anything a faculty
member can do without asking your permission?"

  "Somebody killed Dr. Harwick without my permission, didn't they?" Beulah's voice was acerbic.

  I atoned for my facetious question with a serious one. "There must have been a pretty steep increase in the monthly insurance premium. If Harwick didn't sign off on the increase, why didn't he complain when his premiums went up?"

  "Because he might not have noticed," Beulah said. "Dr. Har-wick's Change of Beneficiary and Change of Coverage forms came through with the RBAs that are processed at the beginning of each fiscal year."

  "The RBAs?" I was rapidly losing track, but Beulah was patient.

  "Request for Budget Adjustment. The paperwork that authorizes any kind of payment, including changes in salary. A salary RBA originates in the department, is signed by the dean and the vice president, then comes here, where it gets plugged into the payroll system."

  "So Harwick got a raise at the same time his insurance premiums went up?"

  "Exactly. But since his payroll check was deposited directly into his bank account, it's possible that he didn't even notice the increase. His raise covered it, as well as the additional IRS withholding, with some left over." Beulah's tone was crisp. "Anyway, Dr. Harwick might not have kept very good track of the deposits into his account. I've had plenty of people tell me that they never look at the pay stubs the bank sends with their canceled checks. I wonder if they even look at the canceled checks themselves."

  I'm one of those who save my canceled checks for a rainy afternoon. Unfortunately, it doesn't rain all that often in Pecan Springs, and when it does, there are other interesting things to do. I pushed that embarrassing thought aside and went back over what Beulah had said. The RBA and the fraudulent insurance documents had all originated in the department. And the beneficiary, as I remembered, was—

  "Hold on a minute, Beulah," I said. "I want to check something." I put down the phone, fished my notebook out of my purse, and began to riffle pages. It took only a minute to find what I was looking for: "bio. exper. acct." Biology experiments account.

  The million-dollar payout from Miles Harwick's insurance company would end up in the hands of the biology chairman.

  I picked up the phone again. "Beulah," I said, "if you had to hazard a guess as to who was in a position to have dreamed up a scheme like this and pulled it off, what would you say?"

  "It's not something I would like to guess about," Beulah replied tersely. "Falsification of university records is a serious offense. And when there's this much money involved—"

  "I appreciate the seriousness of it. That's why it's important to understand what might have happened."

  There was a silence. "Well, then," she said cautiously, "I suppose it would have to be somebody in the biology department office."

  "The chairman?" I asked, remembering that Frank Castle was the one who had asked the dean to move Beulah to another job.

  Another silence. "Possibly." Was there a slight satisfaction in the word?

  "Would you be willing to show me those signatures? And can you dig up something that you're sure Harwick signed so we can compare them?"

  "How soon will you be here?"

  "As soon as I can. Oh, by the way, Fannie Couch says to tell you that Florence Tuttle phoned in the recipe you wanted. The one for bean soup with peppers."

  "Florence Tuttle?" There was a frown in Beulah's voice. "I worked with her once on a fund-raiser for the Garden Club. That woman never gets anything right. I wouldn't trust a recipe of hers even if she copied it straight out of Better Homes and Gardens, Which she probably did."

  I had to smile. "Then you might call the shop and ask Laurel about her mother's recipe. I heard her telling Fannie that you start out by roasting a couple of chiles."

  "Now, that's more like it," Beulah said.

  44 4

  Two phone calls, a trip to Personnel, and one hour later Mc-Quaid and I were standing in front of Smart Cookie's office. "You're a hundred percent sure about this?" McQuaid asked, frowning as I knocked.

  "Of course not," I said. "I'm never a hundred percent sure about anything. Do you have another conclusion to offer?"

  "Not offhand," McQuaid admitted. "But it sure is one hell of a complicated—"

  The office door opened. "What took you so long?" Sheila was very pretty and feminine in a pink suit with close-fitting jacket, white shell, and pearls. I haven't worn pink for years.

  "I couldn't find a parking place," I said. "This place is bloody hell in the afternoons. Why don't you build a parking garage or something?" That's a joke. The parking garage has been on CTSU's agenda ever since I moved to Pecan Springs. The idea is debated in the newspaper at least twice a year, but nothing ever gets done. In the meantime, people who live around the campus complain endlessly about cars blocking their driveways.

  Sheila went to her desk and motioned us to chairs. "Sit down," she said. "I'd like to hear this story top to bottom."

  "You'll have to take notes," McQuaid said. "This ain't easy."

  "I don't get paid to listen to the easy ones," she said. "What have you got, China?"

  Ah, Smart Cookie. I was beginning to like this woman. I started my story, making it as concise as I could, limiting my description of Amy's and Kevin's roles to the threatening letter and eliminating altogether Amy's relationship to Ruby, which didn't

  figure in the plot. The narrative took all of ten minutes. I hoped I'd gotten everything straight.

  When I was finished, Sheila pulled the computer printout from Harwick's personnel file and spread it out on her desk.

  "That's it," I said, pointing to the relevant insurance transactions. "Right there."

  "You're j-^r^ Harwick didn't sign off on these changes?" Sheila asked

  McQuaid spoke up. "China and I just came from Personnel. I looked at the original signatures and compared them to a midterm grade report that Harwick turned in the week before he died. Beulah Bracewell is right. He didn't sign those insurance documents."

  "So where does that leave us?" Sheila asked.

  "With insurance fraud, for starters," I said. "And Castle is the logical suspect. Those documents could only have been prepared in the biology department."

  "Embezzlement, too, of course," McQuaid added, "if this Jim Long character is telling the truth."

  "I think we can assume he is," I put in. "Long was in a position to do what he said he did. He knows that his story can be checked out. And it's hard to see what he'd gain by incriminating himself."

  "I'd suggest that Internal Audit take a good hard look at the Cosmetech gift—and at more recent biology grant accounts," McQuaid said. "It sounds like Castle and Harwick successfully pulled off one scam. They may have tried others."

  "I agree," Sheila said, making a note. There was a silence.

  I cleared my throat. "Hey," I said, "Aren't you guys ignoring the obvious? If all this is true. Castle had an excellent motive for murder."

  McQuaid and Sheila traded cop glances. I understood. The campus police had authority to initiate an investigation into allegations of insurance fraud and embezzlement. The murder inves-

  tigation was a different matter. It had already been turned over to Bubba Harris and the Pecan Springs PD.

  "Well?" I asked. "What about it?"

  "Is she always this subtle?" Sheila asked McQuaid.

  "She has a devious mind," McQuaid said. "She thinks like a defense attorney, and we know about them''

  I started to say something and thought better of it. Let them have their little cop joke, if it made them happy.

  "Harwick's death aside," Sheila said cautiously, "I think we've got enough to talk to Castle."

  "You could start off with the embezzlement," McQuaid said, thinking out loud, "then get into the insurance fraud."

  "I could," Sheila said, picking up the phone. She looked at McQuaid. "But Fd feel a lot more comfortable if you were in on this too." She grinned at me. "Fm chicken. I always like to have a big guy hanging out close by whe
n there's a possibility of trouble." She began to punch in a number. "Let me call my assistant and have him get the ball rolling with the auditor."

  "What about me?" I asked. "I want to be in on this thing with Castle."

  "You're already in," Sheila said. "You're doing a separate investigation, and you just happened to turn up these allegations, which you quite properly brought to my attention. I need you to identify any discrepencies in his response. The two of us will talk to him, while Mike hangs out in the hall." Somebody answered on the other end of the line. "Carl, I'd like you to arrange for the director of Internal Audit to be in my office first thing in the morning." She paused. "No, I think seven-thirty. Yes, that is early, isn't it? Tell you what, why don't you come at seven-fifteen, and bring doughnuts and coffee. We can at least give him breakfast. Oh, yes, ask him to bring a list of the current grant accounts managed by the biology department. He should also check back through the accounts for ten years ago. Ask him to look for a

  record of payouts to Blue Star Scientific Supply Company of Houston. We'll want the bank and the account number. He probably won't be able to get the names on that bank account by tomorrow morning, but tell him that will be his next step. He'll want to put a priority on this one." She put the phone down and stood up, looking from one of us to the other "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go see what Frank Castle has to say for himself."

  "Hang on a minute," McQuaid said. "What's our objective here.^ Are we trying to scare the guy.^ Wring a confession out of him.^ What?"

  "I've been thinking about that," Sheila said. It only took a minute for her to let us in on her game plan. When we were finished, we went across the quad toward the science building. On the way, McQuaid turned to me. "I've got that lease in my office," he said. "Before you leave this afternoon, would you sign it?"