Stuart Woods Holly Barker Collection

by Stuart Woods

  “I think Ham might hear from them again,” Holly said. “They seemed real interested in him.”

  Harry turned to Ham. “You think they might contact you?”

  Ham shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “If they do, will you play along a little?”

  Ham shrugged again. “Let’s see how it goes. I don’t have much time for people like that.”

  “Don’t mention that to them,” Harry said.

  Eighteen

  HOLLY ARRIVED AT HER OFFICE ON MONDAY morning to find a message to call Joy Williams at Southern Trust; it was marked “urgent.” Holly picked up the phone.

  “Joy Williams.”

  “Hi, Joy, it’s Holly Barker, from the Orchid Beach Police Department.”

  “Oh, Chief,” Williams said. “Thanks for calling me back so quickly.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I feel kind of embarrassed about this.”

  “About what?”

  “About my assessment of a certain person at our meeting the other day.”

  “Which person is that?”

  “Franklin Morris.”

  “The loan officer?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, he didn’t show up at church on Sunday, which is unusual. I can’t ever remember his missing a service.”

  “Do you think something may be wrong with him? Ill, maybe?”

  “Ill, no; wrong, yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, he didn’t show up for work this morning, either, and he’s usually here by eight. I called his home, and there was no answer.”

  “Did you send someone to his house?”

  “I went myself.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I didn’t find anything.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, Joy.”

  “I mean, there wasn’t anything to find. Nobody answered the door, and when I looked through a window, the house was empty.”

  “You mean there was nobody home?”

  “There was nothing there—no people, no furniture, no nothing.”

  “You mean, he has decamped?”

  “I think that’s the perfect word, ‘decamped.’ I checked with his immediate supervisor and the other people on the platform, and none of them had heard a word from him.”

  “As I recall, you said he had come from your Miami branch?”

  “No, I said he had come from Miami. We don’t have a branch in Miami.”

  “I must have misunderstood,” Holly said. “Did he come from another bank?”

  “Yes, he had previously been at South Beach Bank. When he applied here, he said he wanted to get his family away from the big city and into a smaller, friendlier town.”

  “Did you check his employment there?”

  “Yes, I faxed them and asked about him. I got a faxed reply the same day from the president of the bank. He said he understood Franklin’s reasons for wanting to leave Miami, and he gave him the highest recommendation.”

  “Have you spoken to the Miami bank president about this?”

  “Not yet. I thought maybe you should speak to him.”

  “I’ll be over there shortly,” Holly said, “and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  “Thank you, Chief.”

  Holly went to Hurd Wallace’s office. “Remember the young loan officer who was the other recent hire at Southern Trust?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sounds like he’s taken a very big powder. I’m going over there now to find out what I can.”

  “Need any help?”

  “Not yet. I’ll call you if I do.”

  Holly collected Daisy and drove over to the bank. When she entered Joy Williams’s office, the woman looked flustered.

  “What’s wrong, Joy?”

  “I called South Beach Bank, and the number had been disconnected. So had the fax number.”

  “You said the president of the bank faxed you a recommendation?”

  Williams handed over a letter. Holly took it, sat down and read the letter.

  “It looks genuine enough,” Holly said.

  “Yes, it has all the right elements for a bank letterhead,” Joy agreed.

  “Did you try Information, to see if the bank had moved?”

  “I did. There was no listing for a South Beach Bank anywhere in Dade County. Also, I looked them up in a directory of banks, and they simply don’t exist.”

  “May I use your phone, Joy?”

  “Of course.”

  “And I wonder if you’d do me a favor while I’m calling.”

  “Anything.”

  “Would you please go down to the platform and ask Mr. Morris’s coworkers not to touch his desk or anything on it?”

  “Of course.” Joy got up and left the office.

  Holly dialed the station and got Hurd. “Will you send our tech over here? I want to go over Morris’s desk and see if we can pick up some prints we can run. I want anyone who might have touched his desk printed, too.”

  “Sure thing. They’re on their way.”

  Holly walked down to the platform, where Joy Williams had gathered the bank’s officers together.

  “Oh, here’s Chief Barker, now,” she said.

  “Good morning, folks. I guess Joy has asked you not to touch Mr. Morris’s desk?”

  Everybody nodded.

  “I’ve got a fingerprint technician on the way here now to see if we can lift Mr. Morris’s fingerprints from his desk. It’s important for me to know if any of you have touched the desk.”

  A young woman’s hand went up.

  “Your name?”

  “Sally Duff,” the young woman said. “I’m Mr. Morris’s secretary. I mean, I work for all the people on the platform. I think I’ve touched it.”

  “We’ll want to get your fingerprints, too,” Holly said.

  “But I haven’t done anything wrong,” she protested.

  “I know that. We just have to be able to distinguish your fingerprints from Mr. Morris’s.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Joy Williams spoke up. “I have a record of Franklin’s fingerprints,” she said. “We take everyone’s prints for their personnel files. It’s a security precaution.”

  “Did you have anyone run the prints through the state or federal computers?” Holly asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Williams replied, sheepishly.

  So much for security, Holly thought.

  An hour later, Sally Duff had been fingerprinted, and the technician had gone over the desk.

  “What’s the story?” Holly asked.

  “There’s more than one set of prints here, but there are lots and lots belonging to one subject. I suspect that would be Franklin Morris.”

  “Did you compare them to the prints in his personnel file?”

  “Yes, and they’re different.”

  Holly turned to Joy Williams. “How were Franklin Morris’s prints taken?”

  “By our security department. I sent him down there, and he came back with a fingerprint card.”

  Holly looked at the file. “This card?” It was a standard form available from security supply businesses.

  “Yes, that one.”

  She removed the card from the file and handed it to the technician.

  “Take this back to the station and run both sets of prints. Tell Hurd I’ve gone to Morris’s residence.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Holly looked at the address on Morris’s employment application. “Is this the correct address?” she asked.

  “That’s it,” Joy replied.

  “Thanks for your help, Joy. I’ll let you know what we come up with.”

  Holly left the bank and started toward Franklin Morris’s house.

  Nineteen

  THE HOUSE WAS A NEATLY KEPT 1950S RANCH house in an older section of town, near a golf course. It was made of pink stucco with a concrete tile roof, like
more than half the houses in Orchid Beach. Most of those that hadn’t been built of these materials had been remodeled in them. She parked in the driveway, walked up the front flagstone path and rang the doorbell.

  She hadn’t expected an answer. She tried looking through the front window, but the venetian blinds had been closed. Through a crack at the end, she could see a corner of what appeared to be an empty living room. She walked around to the back of the house and flipped open her cell phone and called Hurd.

  “Hurd Wallace.”

  “I’m at the Franklin Morris residence, and I want you to go over to the courthouse and get a search warrant.” She gave him the address.

  “What’s my probable cause?”

  “A bank officer has left town abruptly a few days after the bank was robbed. I think that ought to do it. When you get the warrant, bring it over here and bring the tech with you.”

  “Will do.” Hurd hung up.

  Holly tried looking in through the rear windows, but each was covered either by venetian blinds or a shade. There was a small pool in the backyard, and she noted that it was clean and that the grass around it had been recently mowed. In fact, the whole place seemed to be very well kept. She sat down in a poolside lounge chair and closed her eyes for a minute.

  “Sorry to wake you,” somebody said.

  Holly opened her eyes to find Hurd and the tech standing there. “Oh, I thought I’d close my eyes for a minute, and I guess I must have dozed off.”

  “We’ve tried all the doors. They’re locked.”

  “Okay, then, let’s break in.”

  “Can I do it?” the tech asked. “I love this part.”

  “Try not to knock the house down,” Holly said. His name was Tommy Ross, and he was a sweet, if naive, kid.

  Tommy approached the back door of the house, which had glass panes over a wooden bottom. He made ready to kick it in.

  “Tommy,” Hurd said, “just break a pane and reach inside.”

  Tommy looked disappointed, but he found a brick bordering a flower bed and broke the pane. A moment later, they were in the kitchen.

  “Nice kitchen,” Hurd said. “The owner must have replaced it when he remodeled the house.” He went to a cork bulletin board in the kitchen and looked closely at the notes posted. “A grocery list, and a list of chores around the house.” He took a thumbtack from the board and pinned the search warrant to the cork.

  Holly pulled on some latex gloves and motioned for Hurd and Tommy to do the same. Then she began opening drawers and cabinet doors. “Well, they took the dishes, but not the cleaning stuff under the sink,” she said.

  Tommy stood at one end of the kitchen counter and sighted down it from a low angle. “This looks clean as a whistle,” he said. “It’s been wiped down, probably with some sort of cleaner.”

  “One of the ones under the sink,” Holly said. “Go find the master bathroom and check that.”

  Tommy left the room, and Holly and Hurd walked into the living room. The place was broom clean and, except for some abandoned things—an ashtray, some bad art on the walls—was empty.

  Tommy returned. “No luck; been wiped down.”

  “Try the front doorknob,” Hurd suggested. “That would have been the last thing they touched.”

  Tommy checked and came back, shaking his head. “Clean.”

  “Dust some surfaces,” Holly said. “Try the doorknobs and the mantel.”

  “This looks like our inside guy,” Hurd said.

  “It does,” Holly agreed. “I wonder if he’s in cahoots with the Harston woman, or if we were just barking up the wrong tree.”

  “I don’t suppose there was some legitimate reason for them to move in a hurry?” Hurd said.

  “Let me fill you in,” Holly replied. “Morris, if that’s his name, was hired on the strength of a recommendation from the president of a nonexistent bank in Miami. He moved up here, bringing a wife and a small child with him, and he stayed until the bank was robbed, then he disappeared without a word to anybody sometime between Friday afternoon, when he left work, and this morning. Probably on Saturday night, since he didn’t show up for church. I wonder how much furniture they had.”

  “That’s a thought,” Hurd said. “I’ll check the truck rental places in town.” His cell phone rang. “Hurd Wallace,” he said, then he listened. “Thanks.” He hung up.

  “What?”

  “The fingerprints on the card in Morris’s personnel file belonged to a security guard at the bank.”

  Holly laughed ruefully. “Morris is smart. He must have gotten the guard to give him a demonstration of fingerprinting, then filched the card. Anything on the desk prints?”

  “The secretary and Morris’s boss. Apparently both left this morning.”

  “So Morris cleaned up after himself there, too.”

  “Looks that way.”

  Tommy came back again, looking frustrated. “Zip,” he said. “Absolutely zero.”

  “Try the lawn furniture in the backyard,” Holly said. “Oops, my prints will be on the one I sat in, but only on the armrests.”

  Tommy disappeared again.

  Hurd called the station and ordered the detectives to start phoning truck rental places. “He had to move his stuff somehow,” he said.

  “Let’s go talk to the neighbors,” Holly said. They walked out the front door. “You go left, I’ll go right.”

  Holly rang the first bell and got a young mother with a baby on her hip. “Good morning,” she said. “I wonder if you saw the folks next door over the weekend?”

  “No, we were at my parents’ house in Orlando this weekend. Is everything all right over there?”

  “Apparently, they’ve left town,” Holly said.

  “Really? I played bridge with her on Thursday afternoon, and she didn’t say a word.”

  “Do you know what kind of car they drove?”

  “He had one of those convertibles—Chrysler, I think—and she had a van. I’m afraid all vans look alike to me. I hate them.”

  “Colors?”

  “The convertible was white, and the van was a kind of wine color.”

  “Have you been inside the Morrises’ house?” Holly asked.

  “A couple of times. They didn’t have a lot of furniture yet, so she didn’t really have people over.”

  “How much furniture did she have?”

  “They had a sofa and a recliner in the living room, and a pretty big TV, and I guess they had a bed. She said they were saving up to buy more; that the bank frowned on its people carrying too much credit card debt.”

  “Thanks,” Holly said, handing her a card. “If you should hear from them, would you give us a call?”

  “Sure.”

  Holly walked on, talking to the neighbors. Finally, at the house directly across the street, she got lucky. The owner, a man in his late seventies or early eighties, remembered something.

  “I fell asleep in front of the TV on Saturday night,” he said, “and I woke up in the middle of the night. I do that a lot, since my wife died. I got up to turn off the lights, and I happened to look out the window, and I saw two cars and a trailer pull away from the Morris house.”

  “What kind of cars?”

  “Their cars, a convertible and a van.”

  “And the trailer?”

  “It didn’t have any markings, like those U-Haul things. Looked like a horse trailer to me. Wooden sides.”

  She thanked the man, then returned and reported to Hurd.

  “You got more than I did,” he said.

  “When you get back, put out a report on the two cars and the trailer. I guess the van would have been pulling the trailer.”

  “If they left Saturday night, they could be well out of the state by now.”

  “Yes, they could. Alert the state patrol in Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas.”

  “You know,” Hurd said, “I don’t think I’ve ever run into one like this.”

  “That’s what Harry Crisp said,”
Holly replied.

  Twenty

  HOLLY WENT BACK TO THE STATION AND FOUND another message from Joy Williams at Southern Trust. She returned the call.

  “It’s Holly Barker, Joy.”

  “Oh, thank you for calling me back. Something else came up that I thought you ought to know about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Late Friday afternoon, just before closing, Franklin Morris cashed a check for $3,000 at a teller’s cage. His whole balance was $4,248.22. Management here has started an investigation of all of Franklin’s transactions at the bank, too, but we don’t really expect to find anything much. Franklin’s approval limit for a loan was only $25,000, without an approval from a senior bank officer.”

  Holly thought for a moment. “Did he have to have somebody’s signature to cash a $3,000 check?”

  “Not really, since he was a bank employee. The teller would have checked the computer for his balance, of course, but if he had the money in the account, she would have given it to him without question.”

  “I see. Which teller did he go to?”

  “He went to Mrs. Harston’s window.”

  “I see.”

  “But hers was the only window open at that hour. All the others would have been checking out for the day, and her window was kept open for last-minute customers. The tellers take turns being the last to close, because it means the last teller will have to stay another fifteen minutes or so.”

  “Thank you, Joy. Is there anything else?”

  “Did you go out to the house?”

  “Yes, and you were right. They’ve left the place.”

  “Are you going to arrest Franklin?”

  “We’ve put out a bulletin to various state police organizations, because we’d like to question Franklin. Even if he didn’t have anything to do with the robbery, we’d want him for fraudulently obtaining employment with your bank.”

  “You’re going to arrest him, then?”

  “I haven’t requested a warrant yet, but I will.”

  “Thank you, Chief.”

  Holly hung up and called Harry Crisp.

  “Hey, there, I was just about to call you.”

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I checked out the three names from Lake Winachobee, and came up with nothing—no arrest records, no outstanding warrants.”