Fatal Trust

by Todd M Johnson

  Persons attending the Christina Doyle funeral who have been positively identified and were previously persons of interest include . . . Rory Doyle . . . Edward McMartin . . . Sean Callahan . . .

  She felt her pulse picking up. These were the three names Ian had asked her to check. Names that likely represented the beneficiaries of the trust Ian was working on.

  Brook looked up at the open door of her office. She rose and closed it, then returned to sit again. Reluctantly she lifted the phone, her other hand hovering over its keypad.

  This was relevant information to the art-theft case. No, critical information. Eldon had to be told immediately.

  She paused. Dropped her hand. Raised it again.

  Punched in a number. No answer.

  She tried a different one. This time a familiar voice answered.

  “Wells and Hoy Law office.”

  “Katie,” she said softly. “This is Brook. I have to talk to Ian. Right away.”

  23

  FRIDAY, JUNE 8

  2:03 P.M.

  WELLS & HOY LAW OFFICE

  DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS

  “Katie. This is Brook. I have to talk to Ian. Right away.”

  The legal assistant stiffened at the soft but urgent tone. “He’s not here now,” Katie said. “It’s just me and Dennis. Is everything okay?”

  Several deep breaths filled the line.

  “What’s wrong, Brook?” Katie asked, her alarm rising.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  She wished she did. He was like a ghost these days. “No. I can try to reach him on his cell.”

  “I already tried,” Brook said impatiently. “And I can’t try again. It’s . . . complicated. Katie, you’ve got to tell me about the trust case you got on Monday.”

  This time Katie remained silent.

  “I’ve got to see that document,” Brook went on. “I need to know where Ian got the case. And I need to know whatever you can tell me about the beneficiaries of the trust. Anything.”

  Katie’s worry deepened. “Listen, Brook, let me try to find Ian for you.”

  “I can’t wait. I’m coming over to your office now. And I have to see the trust when I get there.” The line went silent.

  Katie set down the phone and stared at her computer screen. After a few minutes it went blank. Katie continued staring, her fingers intertwined atop her desk.

  She stood and glanced down the hall. Dennis was still in his office. She locked the front door to the suite and headed into Ian’s office, closing his door behind her.

  It took only a few minutes to page through the piles of papers on his desk, bookshelf, and couch. Next, a search of the drawers of his credenza and desk. Nothing. Which meant the trust had to be in the safe. Or he was keeping it with him, probably in his briefcase.

  Katie crossed the room and knelt in front of Connor’s ancient safe. Quickly she spun the lock to the right combination until she heard an audible click. Gripping the safe’s handle, she pulled open its heavy steel door.

  Early afternoon sunshine through the window lit the interior of the safe, filled with stacks of files and papers. The files on the bottom looked familiar: wills, trusts, and accounting records. Katie reached in and grabbed only the papers stacked on top. She stood with a grunt and took Ian’s chair.

  On top of what she’d removed was a sheaf of papers, folded in half. Beneath that lay a manila envelope. She glanced first at the envelope. Hennepin County Attorney’s Office was printed on a label. Setting that aside, she unfolded the papers and saw the caption JAMES DOYLE TRUST.

  Smoothing the document on the desktop, she settled back and began reading.

  Ten minutes later, Katie had finished. She then took out the contents of the manila envelope. It took another ten minutes before she was through the reports contained within.

  She returned the envelope and folded papers to the safe just as she’d found them, closed the door, and spun the combination lock. Then she returned to her workstation as though wading through a fog.

  The James Doyle Trust. Ian hadn’t told her the half of it. It was dated 1998, years after Katie had started working for Connor. Yet she’d never seen it before today. Connor had definitely prepared it; it was his style and was certified at the end. She even picked up a couple of whited-out type-overs, which meant he’d probably done it on the Selectric typewriter he used to keep in the office.

  Except, unlike any trust Katie had typed for Connor, this one set him up for a fee of two hundred thousand dollars. He’d never earned more than five to ten thousand for the most complex trusts in all the years she’d worked for him. It made no sense at all.

  Then there were the reports from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. Half a dozen of them, all with highlighting over Connor’s name and the names of the beneficiaries of the trust. The highlighting was probably done by Ian, yet it was no big leap to assume the contents of the folder, all police-surveillance reports, had come to Ian through Brook.

  What did it all mean? What had Brook so shaken?

  There was pounding on the front door. Startled, Katie recalled that she’d locked it. She rose, smoothed her dress, took a deep breath, and went to open it.

  The door swung back to reveal Brook Daniels, a briefcase in her hand. Her face was stern and colorless.

  “Sorry about that,” Katie said. “I must have locked the door by mistake.”

  Brook’s eyes didn’t waver. “Where’s Ian?” she demanded.

  Katie took a half step back. “Like I told you, he’s not here.”

  “Where is he? I’ve got to talk to him now.”

  “I told you: I really don’t know.”

  Brook’s stare was measuring her for a lie. “Then you and I have got to talk,” she said, her tone only feeding Katie’s alarm. “I know you’re protective of Ian, but I have to see the trust document he told me about. I have to know where you got the cash you deposited on Tuesday into your client account. And I’ve got to see your bank records.”

  Katie looked anxiously away as she cataloged the contents of Tuesday’s deposit in her head. She looked back at the young prosecutor, thinking as she remained planted in the doorway. This was obviously about the trust deposit. Something about it was touching on something illegal.

  The first time she’d met Brook Daniels was near the end of Ian’s first year at law school. Ian brought her to his father’s office, introducing her as a classmate. She was cute with abundant personality. Full of life. Brook had joked and kidded Ian. Touched his elbow. A shoulder. Ian hadn’t touched back that first day—it was clear he was too shy for that. But he’d noticed. He’d liked it.

  Why hadn’t it gone anywhere? Even with Brook still stopping by the office every few weeks all these years? Still joking. Still playful.

  Ian never talked about it, so she didn’t know and she didn’t pry. But she did know that even if Brook kept flirting, the prosecutor in her had grown more serious underneath. It didn’t take a mind reader to see that Brook took her role at the U.S. Attorney’s Office very, very seriously.

  So which was more important to Brook, Ian or her job?

  Katie’s mind flashed away again—to Connor’s safe and its combination, which she’d known since her first year working here. Nobody could have kept that secret long from the eyes of a young woman both curious and insecure. Hardly trying, she’d worked the combo out a number at a time, stepping into his office and glancing past Connor’s shoulder while he knelt in front of the safe.

  But she’d used the secret only twice before today. The first time was her first summer working for Connor. She was eighteen then, and too foolish to trust the man or believe in herself. A word of praise from Connor for some other lawyer’s assistant sent her snooping into the safe late that night, sure she’d find her imaginary rival’s résumé.

  There was no résumé. But she’d found the letter. It was addressed to the firm’s accountant and dated the week after Katie had been hired. Signed by both partners, Denni
s Hoy and Connor Wells, it said Connor would pay an extra fifty percent over Dennis’s share of Katie’s salary, under a deal that was to remain secret. It added up to young Katie earning half again more than most every legal assistant of her experience in the Twin Cities.

  Connor must have typed that single-page letter on his own IBM Selectric too. But however he did it, with raises over the years Katie and her family had enough money to send Nicole to Carleton College, cover Richard’s bouts of unemployment, even pay for a decent retirement home for Katie’s mother last year. All for a girl from a single-parent home, hired right out of high school, by a lawyer willing to train her himself.

  She’d gone into the safe a second time a month after Connor died. Ian was her new boss on the heels of his father’s sudden death. The boy was mostly still a stranger. Worried that Ian and Dennis would replace her and her high salary, Katie had convinced herself she had a right to know what they were planning.

  Again, the safe was empty of anything about giving her a pink slip. But on top of Connor’s undisturbed files lay a new letter, signed by Ian, typed on the computer this time. In this one, Ian confirmed he was going to keep secretly paying the extra fifty percent toward Katie’s salary—just like his father had.

  She’d stayed too insecure over the years to break the secret and ask why, or even to properly thank Connor or Ian. But she’d tried to show her appreciation with long hours, often without recording them for the pay. Volunteering to help on family matters. Being available. And she’d loved them for it. Father and son. All the more because they’d never even expected gratitude.

  Those events replayed in seconds as Katie stood her ground in the office doorway, looking Brook in the eye. Prosecutor or friend? she wondered. Which one was standing there? How could Katie possibly know for sure?

  She couldn’t.

  “I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about,” Kate said at last with a shrug. “But I’ll tell you this. Nobody is looking at Ian’s client files without his permission. And for sure nobody’s looking at his bank accounts. Nobody. Not even you.”

  24

  FRIDAY, JUNE 8

  4:19 P.M.

  FEDERAL COURTHOUSE

  DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS

  Brook lifted her briefcase from the metal-detector belt and moved rapidly toward the elevators at a pace that matched her frustration. A pounding frustration. She felt like screaming.

  She’d driven everywhere after facing off with Katie at the law office. Ian’s apartment. His mother’s house. That place she knew he used to go to think during law school, by the Stone Arch Bridge. Even, by some bizarre logic, the last place she’d seen him, Kieran’s Pub.

  Nobody had answered the door at the apartment or house. He wasn’t at the bridge. And of course he wasn’t still hanging out at Kieran’s waiting for her to return.

  He was nowhere she could find him.

  She couldn’t even telephone him or his office again or consider a text or voicemail. If he became a target or witness in the stolen money and art investigation, they’d almost certainly subpoena his phone records. If Eldon ever learned the depths of their friendship, or saw phone calls the day she discovered a possible link between his law office and the art heist, he would think she’d tried to warn him. And he’d be right.

  Then there was the quandary about confiding in Ian’s legal assistant, Katie. She just didn’t know Katie well enough to take the risk—any more than Katie was willing to trust her. Brook would have admired the lady for her Alamo stance at the door, if she wasn’t so worried about Ian.

  “Brook!”

  Only a few steps from the open doors of an empty elevator, Brook sped up. In three strides she was in the elevator, the doors closing.

  It wasn’t fast enough. Chloe threw a hand into the gap the instant before the doors closed.

  “Brook!” the law clerk repeated excitedly as she took a place at her side. “I’ve been trying to catch you!”

  Brook tried to smile apologetically. Actually, by the tally on her cellphone, she’d ignored two voicemails and three emails from the law clerk in the last few hours while searching for Ian. “Sorry, Chloe. Lots of errands.”

  Chloe pushed the button for their floor. “Oh, that’s alright. But I was looking over that list of depositors Mr. Carroll gave you yesterday in the art-theft case. The deposit list from Wells Fargo?”

  Brook’s head snapped in her direction. “How’d you get that list?”

  “After you mentioned how long the list was,” Chloe said, smiling, “I went and asked Mr. Carroll if I could help out. That’s one of the reasons I was trying to find you earlier. So we could coordinate our efforts.”

  “I thought I mentioned it wasn’t a good idea for me to ask for help on this,” Brook said tightly.

  “Oh, sure. That’s why I asked Mr. Carroll myself.”

  Brook paused as a vein pulsed in her temple, wondering if the clerk could be that vacant—or really that ambitious.

  “Okay,” Brook said reluctantly. “Find anything?”

  Chloe nodded. “That’s the other reason I’ve been trying to reach you. You must not have gotten far with the deposit list yet, but I noticed the Wells and Hoy Law Office was there. Did you know that Connor Wells was a founder at that law firm? And did you also know he was on some of those ICR police-surveillance reports you have?”

  “You looked over the surveillance reports?”

  “Why, yes,” Chloe said sweetly. “I mentioned to your legal assistant I was going to be helping you and asked if she’d kept a copy of the reports, and she had. Anyway, you especially should take a look at all the connections in that FBI memo I gave you. You must have read that by now, right?”

  Ice was forming in her stomach. “I looked it over,” Brook said.

  “Really? Well, then you agree it can’t be a coincidence, can it? I mean, first an FBI surveillance of a 1998 funeral of people possibly linked to the St. Louis Park art theft shows Sean Callahan, Rory Doyle, and Ed McMartin all at the funeral. Second, those same guys are associated with Connor Wells in old ICR surveillance reports done right here in Minnesota. Third, Connor Wells’s former law office deposits money at Wells Fargo on Tuesday, the same day that money linked to the art theft is deposited there.”

  Chloe stopped to take a breath. “Come on, Brook. That’s way too coincidental. And you must have suspected those connections between Connor Wells and the theft or you wouldn’t have asked for the ICR reports in the first place, right?”

  Brook forced a smile and a nod as the elevator door opened on their floor and they stepped through together. “Just following a hunch,” she said.

  “Wow. Too modest,” Chloe went on. “Well, did you look over any of the other people the FBI listed as attending the funeral? See if they could be linked in any way?”

  “Not yet,” Brook replied as they reached her office.

  “Have you told Eldon about this?”

  “No,” Brook said quickly, noticing how fast Mr. Carroll had turned into Eldon. “Eldon doesn’t like theories unless there’s something to back them up. I’m . . . going deeper now.”

  Chloe looked her over. “Makes sense, I guess. So what can I do to help?”

  “You’ve done enough—finding me that FBI report, I mean,” Brook said as warmly as she could manage. “I’ll tell you what, though. Since you already got started, why don’t you take the last hundred people on the deposit list and dive into those?”

  The petite law clerk’s eyes flickered with dismay. “Really? I mean, shouldn’t we be focusing on the Wells and Hoy Law Office and Connor Wells—after what we just talked about?”

  “No. It’s still too thin,” Brook responded firmly. “We shouldn’t narrow the search too early. A defense attorney would have a field day if we ignored other possible suspects so early on.”

  Chloe stared at Brook for a moment as though deciding whether to protest. “Okay,” she said with a final smile. She turned and disappeared down the hallway.

/>   Brook sat down behind her desk, her skin crawling with sudden worry. She pulled her copy of the FBI surveillance report out of a drawer and stared at it once again.

  There had to be an explanation for it all, some simple reason she and Ian would later laugh about. One that explained how Ian’s quiet father got linked on paper to a bunch of guys once suspected in the St. Louis Park theft. Crazy stuff, they’d say. Then they’d run through how it was all because his dad grew up in the same neighborhood as those guys, or played on the same baseball team. That kind of thing.

  Except what if the stolen cash really did come from Ian’s office? And why, as this was hitting the fan, was Ian suddenly nowhere to be found? And why was Katie building a wall around the office?

  Brook reached back into the drawer and pulled out another thick folder of her own.

  She was very glad she’d gotten this folder herself before heading to Ian’s office this afternoon, not even using her legal assistant. It was a copy of the final summary report on the 1983 art-theft investigation, prepared by the FBI before the matter was transferred to low priority “cold case” status in ’97. Eldon, she suspected, must have the original of this report somewhere in his office.

  Brook read the report carefully. It chronicled the years of investigation after the theft. Thousands of leads and hundreds of suspects trailed or interrogated were detailed, eventually touching on almost everyone involved in organized crime in the Twin Cities. She read the summary file through twice. Afterward she took a breath and did what she did with any new case assignment. She closed her eyes and tried to picture exactly how the crime unfolded.

  On that cold January night in 1983, the proprietor of the small St. Louis Park gallery on Excelsior Boulevard was staying late. He was excited and understandably so: they were on the first weekend of a Norman Rockwell exhibition, with nearly a third of the paintings and sketches on display available for purchase. Getting this gig had been a coup. The proprietor’s commissions on sales for the two-week showing could reach deep into six figures.