by Lee Semsen
“Which mistake are you referring to?” said Inch.
Driscoll shot him a look and said, “Not taking him to the beach, of course, while he’s still a child.”
“It seems to me, Driscoll, that if you hadn’t been so mesmerized by your first look at the ocean, you might have ended up spending the night in jail with your friends.”
“I suppose so, sir.”
“And with an arrest record, you might not have been able to get this job.”
“That would have been tragic, sir,” Driscoll said gravely. “What would you do without me?”
Inch was saved from the need to respond to that question by the ringing of the telephone. Driscoll answered it, listened for a few seconds, and said that he would see if Sheriff Inch was available. Inch picked up the phone and said his name.
“This is Jody Graham, Mr. Inch. Do you have time to see me this morning?”
“At the bank?” said Inch.
“If you would.”
“Can you tell me what it’s about?”
“I could,” she said, “but I’d rather show you.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if you showed me here at the office?”
“Actually, no,” she said. “The bank would be better.”
Jody Graham was standing at her usual post, or what Inch assumed was her usual post since it was the same place he’d seen her six days ago. He said “good morning” and took the spot on her right, turning to face into the lobby, which was busy because it was Monday. She replied with a nod and a brief smile and then took something out of her shirt pocket and handed it to him. It was a dark blue booklet with a heavy, embossed cover, about four by five inches square and no more than an eighth of an inch thick. Inch turned it over a few times and flipped through the pages.
“It’s a bank book,” she said.
“I know what it is,” said Inch.
“Most people don’t use them anymore –”
“I do.”
“They keep track of their accounts online,” she finished. “Are you one of those ‘I’ll never touch a computer until they wrap my cold, dead hands around a mouse’ types?”
“I’ve used computers before,” Inch said, without mentioning that his usage had peaked about 15 years ago. “I just don’t like them.”
“Neither did Charlie,” she said. “Take a look inside.”
Inch opened the booklet and turned to the last page that showed an entry. It was a deposit of $3,420.17 and it was labeled “INT.” It brought the balance to $335,836.33. “Quite a sum of money,” said Inch. “Congratulations. What are you going to do with it, buy a new house?”
“I can’t,” she said. “I mean, I shouldn’t. Charlie doesn’t want me to.”
“How do you know?” said Inch. “Did he make it a condition of your inheritance?”
“No.” She shook her head. “He wrote me a letter. I’ll show it to you in a minute, but first, look at when the account was opened.”
Inch turned to the front of the booklet. The date was May 22nd, ten years ago. “Right about the time he resigned,” he said.
“The day he resigned,” she answered.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Do you see the initial balance?”
“More than I would have expected for severance pay,” said Inch. The amount was half a million dollars.
“I don’t think that’s what it was,” she said. “Although the letter doesn’t really say.” She took out a folded sheet of paper and gave it to Inch. “I went over to his house on Saturday and started going through his things. I found this and the bank book in a safe in the basement.”
Inch unfolded the sheet of paper. It was bond, heavily textured, slightly yellowed but not necessarily from age. The date at the top was about six months ago, and it was addressed to Jody Graham.
I’m sure you’re surprised [it said] to see such a large sum of money with my name on it. But it isn’t, and never was, rightfully mine. It didn’t belong to the people who gave it to me, either. I thought I knew whose money it was, and I could have tried to give it back to them, but at the time it didn’t seem possible. Now, thinking back, that’s what I should have done, given the money back. But I didn’t. Instead I left it where it was, and then I realized there were others who needed the money and could benefit from it. If you want to know who these people were, the entries in the book will tell you.
Now the money, what’s left of it, is yours. Legally you are free to do with it whatever you want. Good luck to you always.
Inch looked up from the letter to see that she was watching him. “What do you make of it?” she said.
“Probably the same thing you do,” said Inch. “Someone gave him this huge amount of money and set it up so it would appear that he obtained it illegally, and they made it impossible for him to prove otherwise.”
“Someone,” she said, “meaning the county commission. But how could they have stopped Charlie from proving he didn’t steal the money?”
“I don’t know,” said Inch, “but it’s clear that they were blackmailing him.”
“No question about that.” She spoke as if she were reading a proclamation: “It has come to our attention, Mr. Evans, that you are in possession of a large amount of money which you appear to have obtained through questionable means. While we have no proof of this, we doubt that you would welcome an investigation. Because of your many years of service to the county, we are offering you a choice. Resign from your position as sheriff, and nothing of what has been said here today will leave this room. Refuse, and we will ask the county attorney to begin inquiries.” She stopped and took a breath and let it out slowly. “They must have been pretty sure of themselves,” she added.
“Apparently they had reason to be,” said Inch.
“What bothers me –” she began. “I could make a list of a dozen things that bother me. One of them is that I can’t see Charlie giving in so easily. The Charlie I knew would have told them to go to hell, maybe not in those words, but to go ahead and do their worst. He wouldn’t have let them get away with it. Think how much they must have stolen if they were willing to give him half a million just to keep him quiet.”
“If he hadn’t resigned,” said Inch, “he might have ended up in jail.”
“Charlie would have sacrificed himself if it would have kept others from being hurt.”
“He couldn’t have helped anyone if he was behind bars,” Inch said.
“No…,” she said slowly, as if that hadn’t occurred to her. “I don’t suppose he could have.”
“What do you intend to do?” said Inch.
“With the money? Carry on, I guess. Do what Charlie was doing. Put the money where it will do some good.”
Inch was looking through the bank book. “He made annual payments to the Children’s Home Society, the Community Center for Youth, and the Friends of Children.”
“Electronic deductions,” she said. “I haven’t figured out the rest, the checks to doctors and hospitals and so on. The book doesn’t say what they were for.”
“I think I know,” said Inch. He told her what he’d heard at the memorial service on Friday, that Charles Evans had set up funds to pay for other employees’ medical bills.
“That sounds like Charlie,” she said. “Maybe I could find some people who are equally deserving.”
“If you find the right charity,” said Inch, “you could give it away all at once.”
“I wonder why Charlie didn’t do that? I’m sure there are local charities that could make good use of it.”
“Maybe he thought it would be too conspicuous,” said Inch. “The I.R.S. would notice even if nobody else did.”
She nodded. After a moment Inch handed back the letter and the bank book and said, “Thank you. This explains a lot.”
“It doesn’t explain who the money belonged to.”
“Maybe Mr. Evans wasn’t sure about that,” said Inch.
“I wish he would have gi
ven us a hint.” She looked down at the letter and said, “It doesn’t explain what the commissioners were trying to hide, either; only how they managed to hide it. And there’s something else I’d like to know. Did you notice the date on the letter?”
“I did,” said Inch. “April 12th of this year.”
“That brings up two more questions, doesn’t it?” she said. “If he hadn’t made a will before then, why did he suddenly decide to make one? And if he’d already made a will, why did he decide to change it?”
Inch could recall many occasions on which he had answered one question only to be confronted by another. This time, however, the new mystery seemed less critical than the old, perhaps even irrelevant. Why Charles Evans had chosen to make or alter his will earlier this year probably had nothing to do with his death, unless the person who benefitted from the will had murdered him. And if Jody Graham had crushed her former boss’s skull with a fireplace poker, she was playing a double-bluff game so opaque and convincing that it was time Inch called Elizabeth Mason and told her that his 30-odd years of judging character and distinguishing between truth and falsehood was worth nothing at all. And that it was time he resigned and, if he could, get a job at the Umatilla Casino preventing hotheaded gamblers from attacking the slot machines with baseball bats.
But now he knew how the commission had induced Charles Evans to quit. He also knew that there had been a large sum of money involved, enough that someone might have been willing to kill for it. That was something he wished he’d known when he’d questioned Roderick Fowler on Saturday; it was such an obvious red flag that Fowler would have found it impossible to deny that he and the other commissioners had been engaged in some sort of criminal behavior. Of course Fowler could have decided to say nothing at all, knowing that he couldn’t be prosecuted. The crime, whatever it was, had taken place ten-and-a-half years ago, well beyond the statute of limitations.
As he headed back to the office, he considered phoning Fowler, telling him what he’d just found out, and challenging him to explain it. Fowler could simply hang up, of course; he’d stonewalled Inch while they were sitting in his living room, and he was certainly capable of giving him the same treatment over the phone. Maybe, Inch thought, he’d call Gene Alderson instead; he might be more persuadable. Even if he hadn’t shown signs of a conscience when the commission had fired Charles Evans, he might have developed one since then. Or realized that he was getting old and decided to repent.
But when he walked into the office, there was a man sitting in the chair by his desk, a man he’d never seen before. He looked at Driscoll, who said, “This is Mr. Marconi –” and then Marconi interrupted and said, “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”
“Mr. Driscoll has been looking for you,” said Inch, with a glance at his deputy.
“I didn’t find him, sir,” said Driscoll. “He found us.”
“Is that so?” said Inch. “Well, Mr. Marconi, I appreciate your coming in.” Inch went behind his desk and sat down. “I’m curious how you knew we wanted to see you.”
“Would you mind if I didn’t answer that question?” said Marconi.
That was unexpected, and Inch considered it for a moment. “It depends on why,” he said.
“I’m not engaged in anything illegal,” said Marconi. “I just prefer to stay off the grid.”
“He means he doesn’t want to leave an electronic footprint, sir,” said Driscoll.
“I’ve heard the phrase before, Driscoll,” said Inch. “Both of them. Mr. Marconi, why do you prefer to stay off the grid?”
“Because of what I do for a living.”
“And what is that?” said Inch.
It took Marconi a good half-minute to decide how, or whether, to answer that one. “I’m a gambler.”
“Professional?” said Inch. Marconi didn’t reply, and Inch said, “Never mind. If you do it for a living, by definition it’s professional. So you make your money playing cards? I thought the house always won.”
“The house always comes out ahead overall,” said Marconi, “but I’m not the only one playing. What I win, the rest of the table makes up by losing.”
“You’re that much better at the game?” said Inch.
“I am.”
“If you’ve been doing this for any length of time, Mr. Marconi, the casino operators must know you. And they wouldn’t be pleased to see you.”
“Mr. Inch, do you know how many gambling establishments there are in the Pacific Northwest?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Hundreds. There are only forty or so tribal casinos, but five times as many if you factor in the card rooms – and the pull-tab bars, which I’m not counting because I gamble only at cards. But I can play five times a week without walking through the same door twice in a year. And when I go back, I don’t play at the same table or against the same dealer. I have just as good a memory for faces as I do for cards. But the casino operators don’t, and so they don’t know me.”
“They know you at the Umatilla Casino,” said Inch.
Marconi winced. “That never should have happened.”
“I agree,” said Inch. “Maybe for different reasons.”
“If you think that fellow didn’t deserve a good scare, you’re wrong,” said Marconi. “He was cheating everybody, not just me.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“But I never should have pulled that knife,” said Marconi.
“Why did you, then?”
“I lost control,” said Marconi. “I was watching that dealer palming cards and dealing off the bottom of the deck and I couldn’t believe he was so crass about it. He was cheating everyone at the table, even this old lady who was rail-thin and obviously ill. She was shivering; she should have been spending her money on a new coat. I wasn’t feeling too well myself; I’d had a drink and it had hit me harder than usual. I don’t know why; maybe because I hadn’t had much to eat that day. So I was sitting there with a five and a seven, and I asked for a card and he tossed me a queen. I was busted; that happens. But then the old lady doubled down with a pair of tens and he threw her two sixes. She did what any player would do, took hits on both hands, and he tossed her a seven and a nine and she went bust on both of them. She looked like she was going to cry, and that’s when I lost it. I should have just walked away and told her to walk away, too, and given her what little I’d won, but I didn’t. I was too angry. You shouldn’t ever get angry when you’re playing cards; it spoils your judgment.”
“It makes people remember you, too,” said Inch.
“For me that’s even worse. Anyway, that’s when the security guard stepped in. That’s why you’ve been looking for me, isn’t it?”
“He was killed last week,” said Inch.
“Well, if I was going to kill anyone, it wouldn’t have been him; it would have been the dealer. The guard was pretty decent about the whole thing. He did me a favor, sending me to the tribal police instead of calling the sheriff. If I’d gone looking for the guy three years later, it would have been to thank him, not to murder him. The tribal police could have thrown me in jail but they didn’t; don’t think I didn’t appreciate that. I did have to give up the knife, though, and buy a new one. For protection,” he added.
“You don’t carry a gun?” said Driscoll.
“If you want to carry a gun, you’ve got three options. One, get a concealed weapons permit, and as I told you, I’m trying to stay off the grid. Two, carry it concealed without the permit, which is fine until you get caught, but not worth taking the chance. Three, take the open-carry route, which means you’ll really get noticed and branded as a nutcase in the bargain. A knife is better if you know how to use it.”
“Have you ever had to use it?” said Driscoll.
“No. I’ve come close a few times.”
“We’re straying, Driscoll,” Inch said. “Mr. Marconi, where were you on the night of October 12th?”
“Is that when he was killed?” Marconi opened a notebook and thumbed through it. �
��I was in Toppenish at the Legends Casino.”
“I don’t suppose anyone can corroborate that,” said Inch.
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” said Marconi. “Anyway, it’s only a little more than a two-hour drive, so I could have killed the guard and gone back to Toppenish and played for another four hours. But I didn’t. Why would I?”
“I can’t say,” said Inch. He turned to Driscoll. “Do you have any questions for Mr. Marconi, Driscoll? Relevant questions?”
“I’d like to know how he found out that we were looking for him.” Marconi started to speak and Driscoll held up a hand. “No need to be specific.”
Marconi shrugged. “I watch the traffic on the web. My name started coming up so I thought I’d better pay you a visit.”
“I wasn’t close to finding you,” said Driscoll.
“But you weren’t going to give up, either, were you?” said Marconi. “You would have found me eventually. I figured if I saved you the trouble, you –” he nodded at Inch – “both of you would be more inclined to believe what I tell you.”
“In other words, you decided to put your cards on the table,” said Inch.
“The whole deck. Face up,” said Marconi. “Am I free to go?”
“You gave the tribal police a false address,” said Inch.
“Not so,” said Marconi. “That’s where I pick up my mail.”
“Then the Philip Marconi in Boise is a relative?”
Marconi shook his head. “Just another fellow with the same name. We have an arrangement.”
“But you don’t live there,” said Inch.
“I live in my van.” Marconi waved in the direction of the door. “You can always park inconspicuously at a casino; the lots are never empty. Or at a Wal-Mart.”