Purely by Accident

by Jim Beegle

  The family plot to the left of the Cameron graves was occupied by John and Joann Cecil, who had died ten years apart in the late 1800s. Without really understanding why, he looked to the plot on the right of Vera and Little David’s to discover that Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence had buried their only son, Staff Sargent Michael W. Lawrence, thereafter he was killed in World War II. Even on the run, Cecil had tried to find a way to be close to his wife and son. Like so many other places he had been that week, Cecil it seemed had been there before him already. Mark smiled a sad smile as he made his way over to the newer section to check on Cecil.

  He stopped and stood in just about the same spot he had several weeks earlier. He looked at the still new headstone for a long time, pondering all the things that he had learned in the last week. He wished he could ask Cecil why he did what he did, even though he thought for the most part he understood from his explanation in the letter he had read in Nassau. He wished Cecil had been more specific about what he wanted him to do with the money. As he stood there a deep sadness overtook him. The feeling was beginning to be familiar to him. It cut deep into him as if driven by the returning cold wind. He finally realized that, for the most part, he was simply lonely. He really did miss his friend. Today his emotions were mixed with sadness, now knowing the truth about who this man really was, and finding him so eternally far from the wife and son he loved so much. The sadness followed him out of the cemetery, into his car, and north toward Runaway Bay.

  More practical matters began to occupy Mark’s thinking as he got closer to Runaway Bay. The old truck he kept at the ranch needed a new starter. He stopped at the Runaway Bay NAPA store to see if the starter he had ordered four weeks ago had come in. The owner of the store was the only employee in the place, which worked out well since Mark was the only customer. To his pleasant surprise, the starter had arrived just that morning. Mark asked about the owner’s family, he had a son in med school at Baylor in Waco, and the general state of the economy in Runaway Bay that week. They talked for fifteen minutes about small things in an unhurried manner.

  “The boy is doing great.” The man said. “He’ll be home for the holiday and big dinner his mom’s fixin’”

  “You must be very proud of him”, Mark told the man. “Not every man can brag about a son is medical school.”

  When a farmer from nearby Bridgeport entered the shop the old man broke off the conversation and finished the transaction. He charged Mark for the new starter but did not charge him the core charge. A core charge was a deposit to ensure the old starter would be brought back and turned in so it could be shipped off and rebuilt. He told Mark to bring it by when he got the new one on, he was in no hurry. Mark assured him he would be back before the weekend was over.

  It was getting close to five o’clock when he pulled his car up in front of the house. He had not stopped at the Willies’ to get his mail. He would walk over later. Instead, he had decided on the way from the NAPA store to get right to work on the old truck. It would be dark soon and he wanted to work in what little light the gray afternoon would give him. He also figured that it would only get colder as the weekend progressed and he had better go ahead and get it done now. Adding to his decision was a desire to make sure that once he settled into working on the software he could continue to do so without being interrupted.

  The living area of the old house was in the front of the building; large windows looked out south over the pastures. The room had a high ceiling. There was a set of stairs rising along the east wall of the room, leading to an open landing with a railing that went across the width of the house. The landing served as a hallway, allowing access to the three bedrooms located upstairs. The kitchen and eating areas were divided from the living area by a wall and was tucked under the bedrooms. You could open the door any of the bedrooms and see the living room of the house. The kitchen, and all the bedrooms upstairs were heated with gas space heaters in each room. They had to be lit with matches, which were on a shelf above the device in each room. The living room area was heated by a large fireplace that occupied almost the entire west wall. The fireplace was a massive thing built from stone collected, Mark guessed, from the local area. Once a fire was burning and a good draw was working through the chimney, the heat coming out of the fireplace could drive you from the room if you didn’t keep an eye on it. Mark stuffed newspaper and small sticks into the fireplace grate, then lit them in order to start the fire while he went upstairs to change. Satisfied the fire was on its way to burning on its own, he went upstairs and into the bedroom he used.

  He dressed in an old pair of jeans he could afford to get messy. He first pulled on an old and well-worn long john shirt. Not the wool variety, but the thermal version that would keep him warm. Over this, he buttoned on a long-sleeved blue-and-red checked flannel shirt that also would stand up to the cold and abuse that it would get from working on the old truck. To complete the outfit he put on a pair of gray wool sox and laced up an old very broken-in pair of Vibram-soled hiking boots over them. This completed, he headed back downstairs. He stopped at the fireplace to find that, just as he had hoped, a nice small blaze was burning away. He loaded larger logs into the hearth area and arranged them so they would easily catch and not put out the fire already burning there. He walked through the kitchen and toward the back door because that was the shortest way to the barn where the old truck was parked. Just before stepping outside though he took a green John Deere hat off a peg by the door and fitted it on his head. It had been a present from Mr. Willies just after he bought the place and began working on it. It was one of Mark’s prized possessions.

  He stopped at the car to grab his pipe, tobacco, and the new starter, still in the box, off the front seat and carried it all with him to the barn. He went in and closed the two big doors in hopes of keeping some of the cold out of the building. He knew that once he started moving around he would create his own heat. He collected the tools he thought he would need from the workbench, filled and started his pipe, and raised the hood on the old truck. The first order of business was to disconnect the battery. The heavy red positive cable from the battery ran directly to the starter. Messing with the starter without disconnecting the flow of current running to it was a good way to get shocked. With the battery unhooked, he began removing the old starter. Mark guessed by looking at the old starter that it had never been off the vehicle. When he began to attempt to turn the bolts that held it in place, his assumption was confirmed. He removed three of the four bolts that held the starter to its assigned place on the engine. The fourth proved to be a problem.

  He re-gripped the wrench and pushed down harder. Whether from the cold or the grease on his hands, the wrench slipped. Mark scraped his knuckles on the engine block as the wrench bounced off the exhaust manifold and came to rest directly under the center of the engine. The location of the wrench, the pain in his hand, and the general annoyance of things not working the way he wanted them to cause Mark to cuss with all the West Texas style he had ever known.

  He dropped down on his stomach and wiggled up underneath the truck in an effort to retrieve the wayward wrench. He was just about to scoop it into his hands when he heard the door to the barn open. The cold wind from outside swept in and under the truck blowing dirt into his face.

  “Close that damn door,” he yelled from under the truck. Whoever had entered the building was already in the process of doing just that even before he yelled. He wiggled a little further under the frame and grabbed the wrench. He saw a shadow pass and could hear someone walking by the side of the truck he was facing. He looked around the front tire expecting to see the boots of Mr. Willies or those of his son. Instead, he found he was looking at a pair of black one-inch high heels and ankles wrapped in tan nylons. He knew that he had never seen the Willies daughter in anything other than jeans, especially on a cold day like this. He also knew that Mrs. Willies would never be caught in shoes that you could not walk through the pasture in. Amy was still in Europe, and for
some funny reason, a thought passed through his mind that told him he would have recognized her ankles if it were his wife. That meant that these shoes and these ankles being offered for his inspection, unawares to the owner, were new to this part of his world. He wiggled out from under the truck, going out the same way he had come in, and stood to find Marin Yates by the fender of the truck looking down at the black motor.

  Chapter Five

  “Still the only thing that works around here?” she asked with a smile. He did not answer right away. When he finally found his tongue he asked a question of his own.

  “What are you doing here?” he finally managed to spit out. Marin blushed and looked down.

  “I’m sorry. I should have called.” She held up a large manila envelope, “I kind of figured you were in a hurry for this stuff. I called your office and your secretary told me you had already left for the day and that you were on your way to ‘the ranch’. I decided to bring it to you. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be a bother.” She was holding the envelope out toward Mark. Now it was Mark’s turn to blush.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just mad because I busted my knuckles on the damned engine.” As a defense for his cross disposition, he held up his wounded hand that was scraped and bleeding slightly.

  “Looks pretty nasty,” she said.

  “Well, I think I’ll live.” He walked over to the workbench, tossed the offending wrench on to the wooden tabletop as if punishing the tool for his pain. He began cleaning his hands with a cream hand soap designed for such a nasty task.

  “I can see you are busy. I’ll just leave this here and go,” she said, indicating that she was going to put the folder on an empty corner of the workbench. She started to move away when Mark spoke and stopped her.

  “Hey, hey you don’t have to go. It’s a long way out here. The least you could let me do is offer you something to drink and a place to warm up for a minute. I’m sorry to seem so put out. I hate working on mechanical things, and I especially hate working on them in the cold. I am surprised to see you here, but not sorry.” He looked at her and smiled a little boy’s smile. “I’m sorry for sounding cross. Here,” he said nodding to the envelope in Marin’s hand. “You hang on to that and follow me.” With that he began walking to the house, still wiping his hands with a shop rag.

  She followed him out of the barn and into the kitchen. “I would offer to take your coat but if I touch it you may never get it clean again. Why don’t you lay it on the couch in the living room.” He nodded to indicate the direction she should go in. She did as directed. When she returned Mark had discarded the rag and was leaning against the sink. “What would you like to drink? I can brew some coffee, I think there is some hot chocolate somewhere in the cabinet, or there’s beer in the refrigerator.” She hesitated, still not comfortable with his assurance that she was not interrupting something.

  “What are you going to have?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s easy. It’s Friday, I have had a long and busy week, it’s after five o’clock, I’m into the beer,” he said with a smile. Her face brightened up with this announcement.

  “Then that’s what I would like as well.” Mark looked at his hands and came to a quick decision.

  “Well, tell you what we are going to do then. You dive into the refrigerator and get one for you and one for me. I’m going upstairs and take a quick shower to try to get the grease off me and change into something clean. Is that alright with you?” Marin nodded to indicate she understood and was willing to go along with the plan. Having settled the refreshment needs of his unexpected, but welcome, guest he headed off upstairs. He started the shower and undressed.

  Once in the hot water, he soaked his hands and then washed them with Lava soap that he kept in the shower for just such times as this. Being the one and only ranch hand on this “spread” caused him to go through a lot of soap designed to wash away grease. He did not linger long in the shower, but dried and dressed in clean jeans, a pullover shirt that looked very much like the long john shirt he had worn earlier, the exception being three buttons and matching holes on the front. He then put on clean socks and sneakers. Cleaned and dressed he went back downstairs to join Marin and to get the beer that he now figured he had earned after spending a couple of hours fighting with the starter on the truck.

  Marin was sitting at the large table that took up the center of the kitchen area. The envelope she had shown Mark in the barn was now open and she was reading through what he assumed were its contents. A Lone Star beer bottle was sitting beside her on the table. The glass was dark and kept Mark from seeing just how much of it she had already drunk.

  “I can get you a glass for that,” he said entering the kitchen.

  “Oh no,” she told him looking up from the papers, “this is the way I like it.”

  “Still in its natural state?” He asked with a smile. She smiled back at him.

  “Something like that.” Mark took his beer and sat down in one of the six old wooden chairs that surrounded the table. He was careful to note which one he decided on. Several of them were in need of repair and would just as easily fall apart and deposit him on the floor. This one seemed to be one of the sturdier ones.

  “What have you got for me?” Marin looked through the papers, selected two of them and handed them across the table to him.

  “I was able to find a lot more information than I thought I could when we talked yesterday. Most of it is public record stuff, some of it is from internal files, but none of it was confidential or off limits. After I started looking I became pretty interested in what I found. This guy really was pretty good you know?” Mark looked at the papers while Marin continued to talk.

  “It seems that the guy that ran the MIS department, David Cameron, had been planning this for a very long time. He managed to set aside the profits from international trades he made for Southwest over weekends and holidays, processing the money into a sort of holding account he set up for himself. He used money in commercial accounts from the principal to trade with, especially at first. He moved the money from his holding account. Movements of internal bank funds over the weekends are not posted until Monday. He went back in and erased all those transactions before they could be posted,” she said, pausing to take a drink.

  “He also seemed to be an honest thief, if that makes sense? If he lost money over a weekend playing the foreign markets, he made it up from his holding account. So I guess technically he never stole a client’s money; he just used it without anyone’s knowledge.” She paused to make sure Mark was following her. “It also doesn’t appear that he took any of it out before he finally grabbed it all either. At least so I assume.”

  “Why just assume? I would think that even back then they kept pretty good records of money coming in and going out of the bank.” He had to wait until Marin put her bottle back down before she took up the story again.

  “They did. The only problem was one of the things Mr. Cameron did when he took the system down was erase all the transaction files associated with that account. That’s one of the reasons it took the examiners so long to track down the theft. There were no records to examine. Like I said, this guy was pretty smart. He crashed the system on a Friday afternoon just before Labor Day. He must have figured that between the rush of end-of-the-month payroll checks and the long holiday weekend he would have a pretty good head start on anyone trying to catch him. In fact, in the beginning, when it turned out he was missing as well, a lot of people who knew him thought he had been kidnapped by whoever took the money. No one thought he was the kind of a guy to do something like this, or at least that’s what the files show.”

  “What files?” Mark asked.

  “Mostly bank records,” she said pointing to the envelope. “Most of it was done after the fact either by the bank or by the insurance investigators. None of these are any of the official FBI or police files, but some of the same people were interviewed by all the investigators.”

/>   “Anyway,” she said, “once the computers were back up and running it didn’t take too long for them to figure it out how much money was gone and that Mr. Cameron had taken it, but it took long enough for him to make a clean getaway.”

  “So let me see if I follow this?” Mark asked. “The money that he used, while not his, he never failed to replace when he ‘borrowed’ it.” Marin nodded. “The money he took was profits earned from outside the country, still not technically stealing but earning it?” Marin nodded again. “So what did he do that was illegal?” Mark finally asked. Marin had been waiting for him to get there.

  “Well the ‘borrowing.’ as you call it, is illegal. The money was earned illegally with illegal funds and technically belonged to the bank.” Once more she looked to see that Mark was following her explanation. “Then there is wire fraud from using money in a transaction that did not belong to him.” She smiled in a dry humorless way, “and then finally, believe it or not, he did not report the income and the IRS wants its share.”

  Mark thought for a minute. “That’s how they got Al Capone so I’m guessing it worked for this David guy.” He shifted slightly in his chair. “How did he get the money out of the bank?”

  “Just before he crashed the system he processed two priority wire transfers totaling fifteen million dollars from his account in Southwest Bank of Houston’s main branch into a company holding account at Al-Ahi Commercial Bank in the country of Bahrain.

  “I never heard of it. Bahrain, I mean. Where is it?” Mark asked, checking to see if Marin needed another beer yet.

  “Well, Bahrain is an island off of Iran in the Persian Gulf. It had oil on it once but most of it was pumped out a long time ago. What the people who lived there discovered along the way was that there is just as much money in taking care of other people’s oil money as there is in the oil itself. Bahrain became the country of choice for all the OPEC financial producers in the Middle East in the early eighties. Southwest, which was also heavily involved in oil money at the time, made lots of transactions with Al-Ahi on a pretty routine basis. So a transfer of that size did not really catch anyone’s attention right away.”