“Good,” Rick said. “Now, you say there’s an account at Quaker State Bank that Edith didn’t know about?”
I nodded.
“Then I think she ought to go over to the branch where the account was set up and talk to the manager. You want him to put a fraud alert out and monitor any activity in that account. Maybe even some of the money that was stolen from Edith is still in the account, and he can freeze it. It’ll take you a long time to get the money back, but at least it’s a start.”
“When do you teach at Eastern, Edith?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“I teach until 1:45. The bank branch is in Easton, so why don’t we meet up at the music department and I’ll drive you up there?”
Edith smiled. “You all are being so good to me.”
Rick promised to file a police report for Edith the next day, and he said he’d get her the information on filing a fraud report with the FDIC. Irene had already helped her call for copies of her credit reports the day before.
“We’re making a lot of progress, Edith,” I said. “You’ll see, we’ll get this all sorted out.”
I wished I felt as confident as I tried to sound.
“Now it’s up to Rick to get poor Caroline’s murder sorted,” Irene said. “Did you all see the Boat-Gazette?”
The Boat-Gazette was Stewart’s Crossing’s weekly newspaper—a few pages of grocery ads, church service listings, and the occasional article on a local retailer. Irene pulled the paper out of her big canvas pocketbook and flourished it. “Is Stewart’s Crossing safe?” the front-page headline blared.
“It’s all taken out of context,” Rick said.
“Can I see?” I asked, and Irene gave me the paper. Rick was busy explaining while I scanned through the article, which mentioned the “crime wave” that had hit our little town—the burglaries, the acts of vandalism, Caroline’s murder.
“I think it was a mistake for the chief to decline to comment,” Rick said. “It gives them a chance to blow everything out of proportion.”
“I’m worried about the vandalism,” Gail said. “It says there’s a gang called the SC Boyz who have been damaging local businesses.”
“I saw something down by the river that read ‘Black Power,’ Irene said. “It made me very nervous.”
“Who here went to Pennsbury High?” Rick asked, raising his hand, though he already knew the answer. Gail and I raised our hands too. “And what are our school colors?”
“Orange and black,” Gail and I said together.
“Kids have been writing ‘black power’ slogans as long as I can remember,” Rick said. “Along with ‘orange rules’ and a bunch of other variations.”
“There’s still the murder,” Edith said. “People are saying it just isn’t safe to walk around Stewart’s Crossing after dark any more. They’re bringing up the shooting at The Drunken Hessian again.”
“Now, you know that’s silly, Edith,” Rick said. “Two murders in ten years is not a crime wave.”
“But people are talking,” Gail said. “I hear it at the Chocolate Ear every day since this article came out. Are you any closer to finding out who killed Caroline?”
“I wish I could say we were. But the trail is cold and until we get a break, I don’t know what else I can do.”
After everyone left, I graded research papers for a couple of hours, then sat with Rochester on the living room sofa, stroking his silky golden head. “There has to be something I can do to help,” I said to him. “The question is what.”
Chapter 20 – Easton
The next day, Thursday, the mystery fiction class handed in their final papers. I was carrying the stack out of Blair Hall when I heard two girls talking.
“What’s with the whole list thing?” the first girl asked. Frizzy-haired and chunky, she looked like the stereotypical best friend on some eighties sitcom.
“It’s like a hobby,” her friend said. She was the pretty one, wearing a form-fitting tank top in black with silver spangles, and white slacks. She looked like she was ready for a night on the town, not a lecture in economics or history. “I keep lists of the guys I’ve slept with, looking for patterns. I’ve got a Matthew, a Mark, a Luke and a John, and when I was on vacation in Florida I even slept with a Jesus, though he pronounced it Hay, Zeus.”
“You are nuts, girl,” the best friend said.
“Now I’m working on the rest of the apostles.” The pretty girl, whose brown hair was cut and styled like some MTV goddess, started counting on her fingers. “Peter, Andrew, two James, John, Philip, Thomas, and Matthew were pretty easy. I even lucked out and met a British guy at a club in New York whose name was Simon. But I’m lost when it comes to Thaddeus, Matthias and Judas. You know how hard it is to find a guy named Judas? It’s not exactly the most popular name in the Bible.”
“You could always stretch the point and find a lesbian named Judy,” the best friend said. “Or maybe a drag queen with a Judy Garland fixation.”
I had to turn left for the music department, so I missed what the first girl had to say in response. I was heading toward Granger Hall, one of the newer buildings on campus. Harley Granger had made a fortune in the pharmaceutical business, and had donated a couple of million bucks for a building for visual and performing arts, provided the building would be shaped like a pill bottle.
It was round, six stories, with tall glass windows that wrapped around three-quarters of the building. The roof was white, with a white cornice and an extra tab so that a giant could flip it off if he chose. The soaring lobby provided a gallery space, and the current exhibit focused on the landscape of the Delaware Valley. Pretty river scenes alternated with stark lithographs of trees in winter. The art studios were on the second and third floor, and the music department was on the floors above.
When I exited the elevator on four, I was surprised to see Melissa Macaretti sitting at the reception desk. “Hi, professor,” she said.
“Your work-study job?” I remembered we’d discussed music topics for her research paper.
“Uh-huh. How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Mrs. Passis,” I said, and she directed me down the hall to a wedge-shaped room where a violin quartet was practicing something baroque. Behind them, through the tall windows, I could see down to the Delaware, where a small power boat was creating a v-shaped wake behind it. Edith sat in the back of the room, a happy expression on her face. Her smile darkened a bit when she saw me and remembered what we were going to do.
When the concerto finished, we walked out to where Melissa sat. “Goodbye, dear,” Edith said to her. “You be sure to say hello to your young man for me.”
Melissa said she would. As we waited for the elevator, Edith said, “I hate the idea of going up to confront this bank manager, but I know it has to be done.”
“It won’t be so bad,” I said. “Remember, they’re the ones at fault, not you.”
Though there was still a chill in the air, the drive up the River Road to Easton was very pleasant, and we chatted about spring and the exhibit in Granger Hall.
Easton is an old stone city which grew up around the intersection of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers. The canal that passes through Stewart’s Crossing on its way to Bristol begins up at Easton, where it connects to a similar canal along the Lehigh. As in New Hope, you could take a mule-drawn boat down the canal, or you could walk along Lafayette Hill, around the Lafayette campus—or you could just pass through town on I-78 on your way to or from more important places.
The stately granite building had First Valley Bank and Trust etched in the stone lintel over the front door. Inside, the two-story lobby showed its age as well as the attempt to update to modern banking practices. The tellers stood behind a marble counter with decorative wrought-iron grilles that slid down when the station was closed, and four desks clustered in one corner of the cavernous space.
The cheery, bright-colored signs advertising credit cards, free checking accounts an
d other services looked small and out of scale with the rest of the room. A series of stanchions and a black rubberized rope slung through them kept the customers in line while they waited. There was a long line, even though there were three tellers working, and a half dozen people sat on orange vinyl chairs waiting for one of the loan officers.
“Is this the only bank in town?” Edith asked.
“Sure looks like it,” I said. We walked over to the reception desk, and a young African-American woman in a blue suit with a bright green scarf asked if she could help us. We asked for the manager, and I explained that we thought fraud was being committed on Edith’s account.
“Just a moment, please,” she said, and she got up and walked over to an young-looking guy in a white shirt and a tie the same shade of green as her scarf. After a whispered conversation, she brought him back to meet us.
His bright red hair didn’t help in the overall impression he made, which was of a junior high school debater. “I’m Alvin Jesper, the branch manager,” he said. “How can I help you?”
He reached out to shake our hands as we introduced ourselves, and then he stood there, holding his arms close to his chest, his wrists folded down like the paws of a kangaroo.
I explained again about the fraud. “Are you an attorney?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “Just a friend, trying to help Edith out.”
We followed him to his desk, where I laid out the details I had—that we believed an account had been established in Edith’s name, and that someone was using it to steal from her.
“How do you know this isn’t another customer with the same name?”
I explained that the social security number on the account was Edith’s, and that I had been able to establish online access to the account using that number. “I was able to answer all the questions using Edith’s personal information,” I said. “Date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and so on.”
“I’m not sure that was legitimate,” he said. “You created online access to someone else’s account.”
“To an account in Edith’s name, with her permission,” I said. The last thing I needed was to get in trouble with Santiago Santos over unauthorized internet use.
I showed him a printout I’d made of the transactions on the account. “Here’s the first of the fraudulent transactions. Someone changed the address on Edith’s brokerage account, so that her statements and dividend checks are being mailed to a post office box here in Easton. I can match the checks that were issued over the last four months to deposits into the account here.”
He scanned the paper. “It could all be coincidence.” He shrugged. “Let me see what we have on the account.” He turned to his computer and began typing.
He made humming noises as he scanned the screens, then stood. “Let me check some records.” He walked through a door to the vault.
“This isn’t going well,” Edith said. “I was sure the manager would be much more cooperative.”
“He looks like he’s on a high school internship,” I said. “I doubt he’s been working here more than five minutes.”
I said some more encouraging things to Edith while we waited. Alvin returned from the vault, carrying a couple of pieces of paper. He sat back down and pushed the first over to me. “This is a copy of the driver’s license and social security card that was used when the account was established.”
The picture was gray and fuzzy, of a much younger woman than Edith. She produced her own driver’s license and social security card, and the numbers on both matched what had been submitted. “We had no way of knowing that the person who presented us with this documentation was not the real Edith Passis,” Alvin said.
He seemed a lot more cooperative once he had come back from the vault—maybe because he realized how much trouble the bank could be in. “I shouldn’t show you this, but you seem like such nice people,” he said.
Yeah. He probably thought the fake Edith Passis was pretty nice, too.
He pushed another piece of paper across to me. This was a copy of the account application, using all of Edith’s information, though the preferred address was a post office box in Easton, and the secondary address was in Easton as well.
The other information that didn’t match was the phone number on the account. Looking over my shoulder, Edith spotted the discrepancy and pointed it out.
“We don’t verify phone numbers,” Alvin said.
“I’m going to verify it,” Edith said, pulling out her cell phone.
“Wait, Edith,” I said. “Let Rick do that.”
I turned back to Alvin. “Detective Rick Stemper, from the Stewart’s Crossing Police. He’s investigating the fraud on Edith’s behalf.” I held the two pieces of paper in my hand. “Can we get a copy of these for him?”
“You can keep those,” Alvin said. “I’m going to have to open an internal security investigation.” He looked like he might cry.
Kids. They wear their emotions so close to the surface.
“Do you have this detective’s phone number?” he asked.
I pulled out my cell phone and retrieved Rick’s work and cell numbers. Alvin turned back to his computer and typed for a while. “I’m putting a freeze on the account, so that any transactions will have to be approved by a manager,” he said, when he turned back to us. “We see this kind of abuse too often. A lot of older people just don’t keep track of their finances very well.”
Considering how young he was, I’ll bet he counted anyone over thirty in that category.
“Thank you very much for your help,” I said. We all stood up and shook hands, like adults, and I’ll bet Alvin Jesper was very glad when we walked out the big glass doors.
“I can’t thank you enough for coming up here with me,” Edith said, as we walked back to the Beemer. “I never could have done this myself.”
It was late afternoon by then, and shadows stretched across Northampton Street. “I’m happy to help, Edith,” I said. I was a little disappointed; though we’d set some wheels in motion, it wasn’t like I’d done much to help. “I’m sure the post office won’t tell us who is registered to the P.O. box,” I said. “Rick can get it, though.”
I thought for a minute. “Why don’t we drive past that street address on our way home? We won’t stop or go inside, but we can tell Rick what we see.”
I didn’t know much about Easton, but I figured out that the numbered streets began at the Delaware and ran west. We were looking for an address on North 24th Street, which seemed like a pretty straightforward proposition, since Northampton Street was the dividing line between north and south. I pulled out of the parking space and headed west.
There was no North 24th Street. There was a South 24th, but it dead-ended into a park on the north side of Northampton Street. “They used a false address,” Edith said.
“I’m not surprised. If the bank manager had been old enough to have a driver’s license he might have recognized it was a fake.”
“Steve, that young man was very nice.” We argued, in a genial way, over the bank manager’s youth, and within about forty-five minutes we made it back down the river to Leighville. I dropped Edith at her car, and then made a quick stop at the English department to fax the paperwork Edith and I had picked up to Rick Stemper.
Thinking of Rick made me think of Caroline. What hadn’t we seen? Was there a clue in front of us that we weren’t noticing? Part of the thrill of hacking came from thinking outside the box, from looking at a problem and coming up with a creative approach. Why couldn’t I do that with this problem?
The question I kept coming back to was motive. Why would someone kill Caroline Kelly? All the usual avenues had led us nowhere—family, friends, coworkers. As I pulled into my driveway, I looked once again at Caroline’s house.
The break-in. We hadn’t thought about that. I had to assume that her death and the break-in were connected. From the damage done, it was clear that whoever broke in was looking for something. They’d torn through he
r office, dumping out the contents of her filing cabinet. Was it paperwork they were after?
Again, I wondered if her death had something to do with her job. Suppose she’d found evidence of corporate malfeasance—money laundering, stock fraud, something like that. That evidence would be on paper, and if she had the only copies then the crime might go undetected.
How could I look for what the burglar wanted, when I didn’t know what it was, or if the burglar had found it? While I was walking Rochester, I called Rick from my cell phone and asked if anything unusual had happened at Caroline’s office.
“What do you mean, unusual?” he asked.
“What do you think the burglar was looking for at Caroline’s house?” I asked. “Maybe they looked for it at her office, too.”
“Evelina Curcio got her office,” Rick said. “I asked her if she noticed anything missing or anything unusual, and she said no.”
I juggled the phone as I bent over to grab Rochester’s poop with a plastic bag, and almost dropped it right into the steaming pile. Rochester seemed to find that very funny.
“Did you pick up fingerprints at Caroline’s house?” I asked Rick.
“Didn’t match anything in the database. It’s possible that the burglary is unrelated to her murder. We’ve seen cases where somebody breaks into a dead person’s house, or breaks in during the funeral.”
“But an ordinary burglar wouldn’t tear the house up,” I said.
“You know about burglary?” Rick asked, and my heart skipped a couple of beats, wondering if he was making some oblique reference to my unfortunate incarceration. Before I could think of a response, he said, “Gotta go,” and disconnected.
Later that night, I tried Googling the phone number the fake Edith had used when she set up the account. No luck. I had a feeling it was a cell phone, but it might just have been unlisted. I sat staring at the computer when Rochester came into the office and rolled over on his back, waving his legs in the air like a dying beetle. “I guess you want me to rub your belly, don’t you?” I asked.
In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) Page 17