She hung up and said a silent prayer of gratitude for the news that Joe Michael was going to fully recover. She hadn’t really discussed his arrest much with him, except that Sal had mentioned, and Joe had nodded his head in agreement on the day that Doug had bailed him out of jail, that he knew nothing of any account in his name at Smith Bank.
When Alex returned, she was still sitting on her deck, trying to piece it all together in a way that made some kind of sense. Together, they waited silently for Emily and Kent—well, Annie and Paul, that is—to arrive, neither of them comfortable now that the truth about Alex’s identity had been revealed. About fifteen minutes later, Annie and Paul walked out onto her deck.
“Sorry we’re late,” Annie said.
“As I already said, and getting back to where we were when we took our break,” Alex began, “money in six other accounts began to disappear with customers complaining of coming up short—all within the same time frame of about six months.
“At first the discrepancies were just minor, twenty or thirty dollars here or there, but over time, the discrepancies became larger with the dollar amounts corresponding to deposits made into Joe Michael’s account, and then later, withdrawn and deposited into the fictitious account.
“When the activity continued well past the initial complaint period, it was then suspected that Joe Michael was involved in some kind of banking scheme, and the FBI was asked to investigate him. It was during that investigation that they found the deposit receipts in Joe Michael’s glove box.”
“I’m no cop,” Mara said, “but I think it’s pretty obvious that someone framed Joe, and it looks more and more like that someone was Stu.”
She had pretty much had enough of all this blah, blah, blah. Joe was innocent. She was innocent, Alex was a fake, and Stu was a scammer. Even she could figure that out, so why couldn’t they just wrap this up?
“As far as we can tell, Stu’s involvement was only that he stole his brother’s ID and supplied it to an accomplice, who we now believe was Lessis—well, that, and accepting the stolen money that was diverted into his account.”
“Oh, yeah, Lessis,” she murmured.
“Did you say something, Mara?” Alex asked.
“No. I apologize for interrupting. I do want to point out, though, that when I talked to Joe, after they arrested him, he said he had no idea there was an account in his name at Smith Bank.”
“That’s because Stu put his own address down as Joe’s, so all the statements from the bank would go directly to him. You’re right in thinking that Joe never even knew that the account existed and we have been able to independently substantiate that he had no history at all with Smith Bank.”
“Like I said,” Mara sighed. “Too bad nobody figured this out before they put Joe through the trauma of being arrested.”
“Well, no one knew then what we know right now,” Alex said. “You can thank Lessis for that. He arranged it all. As you already know, once we obtained a search warrant to investigate Joe’s properties, we found the receipts.”
“We also found the same statements in Stu’s cabin, making it evident that someone was creating duplicates,” Paul Sinclair interjected. “That someone was Lessis. It was Lessis who framed Joe, not Stu. Stu’s only role was in setting up the account in Joe’s name—something he figured Joe would never even find out about. As far as Stu was concerned, all the receipts were coming to him instead of Joe just as planned.”
“But Lessis wasn’t even there yet?” Mara said, “So why didn’t the previous bank manager catch all this?”
“The answer, again, is Lessis,” Alex replied. “During the investigation, we learned that Lessis, through his work as a police officer, had something on the bank manager and threatened to expose him if he didn’t cooperate with setting up the blind account and then divert that money into Stu’s account. It was brilliant, really, since none of the tellers would ever have any reason to become suspicious.”
“And how then did Stu get enough money to pay for Della’s surgery?” Mara asked.
“I think I’ll let Paul explain this,” Alex said. “Paul.”
“Lessis had already planned to leave the police department, so he further blackmailed the then manager, again threatening to expose him if he didn’t hire him as his assistant.
“By the time you moved in, at least according to what Alex gave us as that time frame,” Paul said, removing his glasses, “the man you know as Lessis had begun talking about how he would be leaving the police department and managing the local Smith Bank branch for his brother-in-law.”
“Yes, that’s what I heard,” Mara said. “Interesting isn’t it, looking back now, that I heard it from Stu?”
“The trouble was … is …” Paul said, “that Smith Bank is owned by six brothers from Dubai, and that all senior executives are relatives of those six brothers—all Arabs.”
Mara could see where this was going as she pictured Lessis’s red goatee, but there could be a way …
“Maybe his wife was married to one of the Arabs …” she said.
“Ever wonder why you never saw Lessis around town with a family?” Alex asked. “Why you never saw the wife whose brother he said ran the bank?”
“I never thought about it, Alex. I guess I was just as happy to see as little of him as possible—starting from that first day when he gave me a ticket for only going five miles over the speed limit on a downhill grade.”
Alex and Paul looked at each other and sent a sympathetic look Mara’s way.
“First of all, Mara, the man you know as Lessis is divorced from a woman of Scandinavian descent named Inga,” Paul continued, “and we have been unable to locate any brother-in-law who worked for Smith Bank or any other bank.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mara said, sitting down. “So how did Lessis get the job at the bank without being thoroughly investigated? I mean, he was a cop, you figure he would have checked out as A-okay and all that.”
“Here is what we pieced together after talking to employees of the bank and the former bank manager, who is also now in custody on unrelated charges.” Paul continued. “Apparently Lessis was originally hired as assistant manager by the then manager under the same threat Lessis had used to expose him when forcing him to set up the blind account in Joe’s name.
“Later, after getting hired, Lessis used his contacts at the police department to turn the manager in, making himself look like a hero and a shoo-in to replace the outgoing manager—a scheme that worked perfectly for him in securing that job.”
“So you’re saying that he knew the ‘right’ people and then he slid into the position because he looked like he had been a hero to the bank.” Mara said. “Wow!”
“It was the classic double-cross,” Paul said. “Further investigation on Lessis—fingerprints, handwriting, and some other things—revealed his real identity to be Lester S. Moore. Les S. Moore—and not the famous architect either—who is wanted in three states for parole violation from a 1986 felony conviction for embezzling funds from an investment firm in California.”
“Wow!” Mara gasped. “Lessis stuck it to everyone.”
“It’s complicated,” Alex said. “The fact that Stu and Lessis seemed to be on pretty friendly terms was suspicious, because the two appeared to have nothing in common and were never seen together around town—at least from what we have been able to determine through the many interviews we did with people who knew one or the other of them, or knew them both. The only connection here seems to be that both Stu and Lessis were opportunists, and this time their goals worked well together.”
“You know, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m just exhausted,” Annie said.
“I think we all are,” Paul added. “How about if we all get some sleep and meet up for coffee in the morning. You can finish filling us in then, Alex.”
“Sounds good,” Alex replied.
By the time Mara went to bed, she had already had two glasses of wine and read al
l of the news on three different online websites. Nothing she saw there even compared to the story that was unfolding right here in her own small world.
Chapter Forty-Four
What Really Happened Here?
As she sat in the drizzle of a Juneau morning the next day, Mara thought about everything she had been told the day before. By now it was easy to see that this was about a lot more than just Stu and his violation of his brother’s good name. Again, her thoughts shifted to Joe’s prophetic words. He had tried to warn her in the best way he could that somehow, on some level, their lives were linked together in a bond that affected them both. The story she was hearing could easily be viewed as unbelievable, but she knew that it wasn’t.
When Alex called suggesting she meet them all at his place around noon, she almost felt relieved—like maybe hearing this away from her own home would make it all less traumatic. When she got to Alex’s place, she joined him, Annie, and Paul in the living room, since the drizzle outside had now turned to a heavy downpour.
As each of them talked in turn, she listened, giving her full attention to Alex, Paul, and the woman she now knew as Annie.
“So, none of this was really about me,” she stated.
“No, you were just pulled into it through your association with me,” Alex said, “and the details of that association are a whole other story—some of which you understand even more than my colleagues do, Mara.”
She smiled at the obvious reference to both their friendship and business partnership. Maybe she hadn’t misjudged Alex as much as she thought she had.
“The fact that you just happened to know Joe Michael and his brother, Stu, as well as Della, is something that I will always find to be among the most incredible coincidences in my work in law enforcement,” he continued, appearing a bit more emotional than previously. “It’s almost as if there is some plan of destiny and some connecting life force running as a common thread through the whole situation—but we don’t normally think that way at the FBI, so let’s just leave it that this is my own personal, unscientific feeling and move on. Can you take this, Paul?”
“Specifically, what we think happened is that Stu then stepped things up by assisting Lessis in getting information on Alex Winron’s account for the Driftfeather so that money could be siphoned out of that account—information Stu obtained about Alex by breaking into your cabin—well, not breaking in, but using the key in your lockbox to get in after somehow stealing your code.”
So that explained why her lockbox had been left unlocked that one day she had gone out in her raft, and also why Stu was standing by her front door looking sheepish when she got home that same night. Perhaps it also explained his actions in taking the logbook on the Driftfeather the first time they had all sailed out together, thus validating that he had no clue that Alex Winron was any other than a young fisherman buying his first seiner.
Mara’s head was spinning. How in the world did she get into these situations? Was this some kind of a joke, or something? Hadn’t she been through enough weird scenarios since arriving in Alaska for any ten lifetimes?
“So, how does this involve me?” she asked Alex, again. “You know, other than the fact that my cabin was apparently entered to steal information about you?”
“Well, it goes without saying that it involves you because it involves me as your business partner,” Alex spoke up. “The rest of it—the links with Joe, Stu, and Della—coincidence, unless you choose to subscribe to the destiny theory I alluded to earlier …”
“It seemed like the perfect setup,” Paul continued. “The previous bank manager, under threat from Lessis, had set things up so there would be no way to trace the discrepancies or the missing money directly to either Stu or Lessis except that Stu was ‘helping out’ his brother by depositing money for him.
“Transaction reports would look legitimate with all the money except for the payoff to Stu going into the blind account, and the amount diverted to Stu metered out in small, regular deposits so as to make them look legitimate—like a pension payment or something like that. As a matter of fact, our investigation shows that checks that resembled a fabricated pension fund were regularly deposited into Stu’s personal account. The one thing that Stu didn’t know was that Lessis was diverting the greatest share of the money to himself, giving Stu only enough to make him think he was getting over.”
“And so Stu just let the money keep rolling in,” Mara said, shaking her head in disgust.
“For Stu, it was all about Della,” Alex said simply. “Stu was simply desperate to make things right with the daughter he abandoned at birth.”
“And for some reason, he waited until he was an old retired man to do it, not to mention that in the whole time I knew him, he never once mentioned a daughter, or any other family for that matter,” she said.
“Stu knew he was dying,” Annie said. “What started out as a simple scam had gotten him in too deep. He had already accepted over a hundred thousand dollars of illegal money into his account. By the time he figured that out, he had become a hero to his long lost daughter and had nothing to lose and everything to gain by letting her believe he was the good person he wanted her to think he was.”
“It was all set up so that no one would know that Stu was part of the scheme,” Paul said. “Stu could look good to his daughter—help her with her surgery by using his brother, who in Stu’s mind would never find out.”
“Apparently they didn’t figure on Joe being arrested,” Mara said.
“Joe’s arrest, although more than any of them bargained for, gave Lessis, Stu, and the other manager the security of believing that they were above suspicion—that is until Lessis turned on the old manager, who then turned state’s evidence in a plea bargain and blew the whole case wide open, including the fact that Lessis was pocketing most of the money,” Paul continued.
“So, in the end, Lessis stuck it to Stu, too,” Mara said.
“Basically, he did,” Alex answered, “although by then Stu was out of state with Della and died a short time later. No one is sure if Stu ever realized the extent of the crime.”
“Couldn’t Stu see Lessis for what he was? Didn’t he consider that he might get caught?” she asked.
“Stu was blinded by his need to outshine Joe,” Alex said. “He was known by everyone in his circle for making comments that Joe ‘had it all’ inferring that his brother never had to face the hardships and struggles with which Stu viewed his own life. Joe was never affected financially. Only his identity was used to open the fake account. The money was taken from me, you, and the six others whose accounts were compromised.”
“Quite simply, Stu never thought he would get caught and he never thought that Joe would either,” Paul said.
“Stu and Joe had been estranged ever since the fire that took both their wives’ lives,” Annie said. “The fact that Joe Michael stepped up to the plate and cared for Stu’s daughter after the fire irked Stu. As you know, Della’s mother was Stu’s wife and Joe Michael’s wife’s twin sister, so Joe, being the good man that he is, took on the responsibility that Stu never would after the fire. In Stu’s eyes, that made him look bad.”
“What a troubled man Stu must have been inside,” Mara said.
“It’s just the way he thought. Stu knew he had cancer. We figure that because Lessis was so slick and so cunning in the way that he used people, Stu had no idea he had gotten in so deep and was banking on being dead before he was discovered if he ever was. Fortunately for him, he was—dead before being discovered, that is.”
“Just how deep are we talking, Alex?”
“Deep enough that some of the money siphoned off the fake account set up by Lessis, using information about Joe’s identity provided by Stu, was being used to support a growing terrorist organization within our own country—something we discovered by accident while investigating the phone number that Lessis dropped in your skiff.”
Suddenly Mara felt cold—tired and cold. She took several deep
breaths and pulled her sweater up tight under her chin.
“Joe tried to warn me,” she said limply. “Not in the way you think, Alex—or whatever your name is.”
“You mean about the terrorist organization?” Paul said.
“No, just that something bad was coming down.”
She went on to explain the feather and the note to him and the others, along with the history of the first feather and all that had gone on before, stopping when everyone but Alex seemed lost and uninterested in such unscientific hypotheses.
“The place you came in, Mara—the way this affects you,” Alex continued, “is that you just happened to move in next door to Stu right when the FBI was called in. We were getting close to closing in on Lessis when you told me you were ready to launch your own investigation. We had to step in and stop you. You had no idea we were about to move in on Lessis and we just couldn’t let you shake things up right at this critical moment in our case.”
“And the fact that Lessis was a police officer—he must have had a background check for that job,” Mara said.
“Stolen ID, pure and simple,” Annie said. “That’s why he didn’t stay on the force very long. Embezzlement had always been his game. He just took the police job to get comfortable in the community and legitimize himself.”
“What happens now?” Mara asked.
“What happens now is that you will be called on to testify about your relationship with Alex Winron and your own attempts to clear up the scenario that ultimately will be revealed to be Lessis’s and Stu’s embezzlement of Alex’s and your money,” Paul said.
“And what about Joe?”
“Joe’s name will be cleared during the course of the trial. I promise you that we have a strong enough case to put Lessis away for a very long time,” Alex said. “When all the evidence is presented, there will be no doubt that Joe Michael was simply a victim of identity theft, especially since I found these hidden in a niche in the wall in Stu’s cabin.”
Mara looked at the pile of disentangled papers that Alex handed her. Each had been placed in individual Baggies marked as evidence. In her hands were dozens of deposit receipts to Joe Michael’s account.
Driftfeather on the Alaska Seas Page 13