by Curry, Edna
Rosie put a hand on her brother’s sleeve. “Please do what you can, Lee.”
“You know I’ll do my best, Sis. I never could refuse you anything. Maybe we could go talk to Kirk some more tonight. To see if he’s remembered anything more about the mugging, I mean, since he’s gotten his memory back.”
“All right. I’ll see you tonight, then.”
~*~
Kirk picked up the phone when Lester finally returned their call. “Uncle Lester? Kirk, here.”
“Kirk? Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried about you. It wasn’t like you to turn off your cell phone and not call in.”
“I left you a message that I would take this assignment after all. Didn’t you get it?”
“Yes, but then we couldn’t contact you anywhere, so I didn’t know what to think.”
“Anyway, I was supposed to be on vacation, remember?”
“Yeah, but you usually give in and take an assignment anyway, which you’re going to do now, aren’t you?”
Kirk sighed. “Yeah, I am. I have to know what’s going on here.”
“Something’s screwy, that’s for sure. They told you about Ken getting mugged and having amnesia, didn’t they? How is he?”
Kirk drew a deep breath. Once more he’d have to prove who he was. “Lester, it wasn’t Ken who was mugged and had amnesia. It was me.”
“What? You?”
“Yes, me, Kirk. When I woke up in the hospital, they identified me as Ken. I’ve been right here all the time, living as Ken. It’s Ken who is missing.”
“Prove that to me,” Lester demanded.
Kirk sighed. But he came up with a few memories for Lester that Kirk was sure Ken wouldn’t know about. “I convinced Melvin by telling him a few things Ken wouldn’t know about, too.”
“Okay, I believe you’re Kirk,” Lester finally acknowledged. “But can you two figure out what’s going on there?”
“I think Ken just took off with a lot of cash, but I have to follow all the paper trails to be sure. Besides, I can’t let him get away with this, even if he is my brother.”
“Good luck. Are you sure you’re feeling okay? Last I heard from Rosie, you were still looking pretty peaked.”
“I’m okay except for a headache now and then. My head’s pretty hard, you know.”
“Ha. In more ways than one. By the way, my detective found your luggage.”
“Really? I was afraid the muggers had gotten all of it.”
Lester gave him directions to the motel where Donald had tracked him.
“I’ll pick it up, provided they’ll believe I’m me without my ID,” Kirk laughed, then sobered. “We’ve had more trouble. “ He told his uncle about being shot at and the apartment fire.
“This sounds pretty dangerous, Kirk. Be careful. Let Melvin help you on this one. Two minds will solve it faster than one.”
“All right,” Kirk said reluctantly.
He could hear Lester sigh over the wire. “I know working with Melvin isn’t pleasant for you, but do it anyway this time, okay?”
“Yeah. But I need my ID. My driver’s license, credit cards and so on. I need to get all the credit cards cancelled that were stolen, if those apes who attacked me haven’t already maxed them out. I don’t have any of the account numbers or phone numbers here to do that.”
“I’ll get Miss Livingston right on that. She can find the numbers and cancel them, then have new ones sent to you there. But you’ll probably have to come back here to get your driver’s license. They’ve gotten really fussy about replacing lost ones, now. Homeland security problems, you know.”
Kirk frowned. “I can’t fly without my driver’s license. It’ll take too much time to drive.”
Lester grinned. “Well, you said you had Ken’s ID. Why not use that to fly back here to get your own? That should work okay. Nobody ever could tell you two apart except your mama.”
Kirk laughed. “Right. Good idea. Speaking of my mama, have you heard from her or Dad lately?”
“Talked to your dad a few days ago when I was trying to locate you. They were fine.”
“Damn. You didn’t get them all worried that I was missing, did you?”
“I don’t think so. I told them you were supposed to be on vacation, but I needed to talk to you, and your cell phone wasn’t working. So I wondered if they’d heard from you and had a different phone number where you could be reached.”
“That sounds okay.”
“Yeah. But it wouldn’t hurt to give them a jingle, you know. They care about you.”
“Right. I’ll do that. And Lester?”
“Yeah?”
“How in the hell are we going to explain to them what Ken’s done?”
Lester gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. I keep hoping by some miracle, he’s not guilty.”
“Me, too. But I don’t think it’ll happen this time.”
“I love you boys like my own. Guess that’s why I kept forgiving Ken his mistakes and giving him another chance over and over.”
“I know you did, Uncle Lester. It’s not your fault he screwed up again. Maybe it’s just an illness and with the right treatment he’ll get over it. If he’ll agree to that.”
“Yeah, but that’s a pretty big if. He always says he doesn’t have any problem. It’s gonna really hurt your mama. Ken had to know how she’d feel about this. I can’t understand that boy.”
“I can’t either. I hope he’ll contact them on his own.”
Lester whooshed out a long breath. “Don’t count on that.”
“You’re right. That would be too easy. I’ll see if I can make it to Chicago in a few days to get my ID.”
“See you then. “
Kirk and Melvin worked for hours on Ken’s computer and with his invoices and bank statements.
When he called Rosie in to bring him some files, she seemed in a better mood. Looking around at the stacks of invoices, she said, “Boy, you’re really going through stuff, aren’t you?”
Kirk ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Yeah.”
She picked up a couple of invoices from the stack nearest her and looked at them with a frown. “Idlewild Forest Products? Lone State Supplies? Who are they? I’ve never heard of them.”
Kirk eyed her suspiciously. “What do you mean, you never heard of them?”
“I mean I handle a lot of stuff by phone. I talk to some of them so often I have their phone numbers memorized. I have the contact info for all the companies we deal with. But not these.”
Kirk looked at Melvin. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah.”
“Bingo. Dummy companies. That’s how Ken did it.”
Melvin nodded with a wide grin of triumph. “But which ones are the dummies? I’m not familiar with all the companies in this area.”
Kirk nodded. “Me either. But Rosie is. Right? You just said you know which companies this store buys from?” He looked at her for confirmation.
“Of course. I told you, I deal with them all the time.”
“Good. Come on, Rosie. We need your help now. Go through these invoices. Tell me which companies this store deals with and which ones you don’t recognize. These are all sorted by company. So you just need to check a couple of invoices in each stack to see which ones are legit.”
Rosie looked confused. “But if the companies aren’t real, where did the invoices come from?”
Kirk laughed. “I’m sure Ken found it easy enough to make them up with computers and your own business software.”
She eyed him and chewed her lip. “You mean Ken made up invoices for companies and then wrote checks to them and made it look like he paid legitimate bills?”
“Right. And most likely he put the money into an account he controlled and then moved it again into one of his own accounts.”
“But wouldn’t the banks know he was that company?”
Kirk shrugged. “He could have done it all by mail or online.”
&nb
sp; Her hazel eyes flashed anger. “That’s awful! I’m beginning to wonder if I really knew Ken at all.” She pulled up a chair and went to work, checking the piles of invoices.
Gradually their suspicious proved correct. She found several more companies that were only dummies. They felt sure Ken had made the invoices himself on his computer, copying product details and prices from invoices from other companies. He transferred money to his own accounts but credited those payments to these companies in the store files to make it look like he had paid legitimate bills for product sent to Latham’s store.
After a couple of hours, Rosie said, “I have to do the bank deposits before I leave, Kirk.”
“Sure thing, Rosie. Thanks for your help.”
She went back to her office and Kirk and Melvin continued their search.
By the end of the day, they had traced checks to several accounts in the Cayman Islands, so were quite sure that’s where Ken had gone.
The question was, had anyone helped him do this? Had Rosie known what was going on? If so, why had she helped them? To cover her own involvement? He hoped not.
He went back to re-filing the legitimate paid invoices. Ken certainly could have been a lot neater with his bookkeeping. Maybe he hadn’t been on purpose in order to hide what he was doing? Then Kirk sat up straighter in his chair, staring at the paper in his hand. “Will you look at this!”
“What did you find?” Melvin asked.
“A receipt for a million dollar life insurance policy on Ken, paid for by himself.”
“Life insurance? But what good would that be to him? You have to be dead to collect it, don’t you?”
“Or pretend to be dead and have an accomplice collect it for you.” Kirk thought about the capsized boat and the white Cadillac parked at the cabin. Had Ken intended everyone to think he’d drowned that day? Only Kirk had shown up and conveniently been mistaken for Ken, so no one had reported him dead or missing. Had that been only an unlucky, or lucky depending on your viewpoint, coincidence? Or had Ken really drowned that day?
No, all of this missing money and Ken’s purchase of the large life insurance was too much of a coincidence to believe if Ken hadn’t set it all up. He was most likely alive.
Now Kirk only had to convince Lester of all this.
But how had Ken planned to collect on that life insurance? Surely he would have to have help doing that?
He had to find that policy to learn who Ken’s beneficiary was. But he had a sneaking suspicion it would be Rosie, the sweet fiancée.
Why did knowing that have to hurt so much?
~ * ~
The intercom buzzed on Lester’s desk. “Kirk is on line two, Mr. Latham,” Miss Livingston announced.
“Thanks.” Good. News at last. Kirk never called in unless he had something to report. He picked up the phone. “Hello, Kirk. What have you got?”
“We traced the bank transfers to accounts in Grand Cayman Island, Lester. So most likely that’s where Ken is, too.”
“Good. Give me the details.” Lester wrote down the bank information as Kirk gave it to him. “Good job. I’ll send someone down there to check out the situation and see if Ken is really there and if anything can be salvaged from this mess.”
“Mom will be happy to hear he’s okay, at least.”
“Yeah.” Lester chewed on his cigar. “If we find out he’s okay, that’ll make it easier for me to tell her about this.”
“I know. But it’s Ken’s doing, not yours, so you shouldn’t feel responsible.”
“True. But I thought I could turn him around. Maybe I should have forced him into some kind of gambling therapy or something instead of just giving him another chance to change. I suggested therapy, but he didn’t want to go.”
“Maybe after all this, Ken will be willing to go. I’ve heard therapy only works if the gambler wants to change, Uncle. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Any other news?”
“Ken took out a million dollar life insurance policy on himself.”
“A million bucks? Wow! So he planned to live high after he left Minneapolis, eh?”
“It looks like it.”
“But life insurance? How was he planning to collect that? Pretend to be dead?”
“Yes. And have someone else collect the money, then get it back from them himself.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“We think he wanted everyone to think he drowned out at the cabin. His car was missing and they found it out there, and his boat was capsized out on the lake.”
“Yeah, my PI told me that.”
“So Ken probably set all that up somehow, before he left the day I got mugged. I’m guessing he flew out that afternoon under a false name.”
“That was the last day anyone saw Ken?”
“Yes. Rosie worked with him until noon that day. He said he was going fishing at the lake and gave her the afternoon off. He was supposed to pick her up for dinner, but never showed.”
“And that’s the day you flew into Minneapolis and got mugged?”
“That’s right. Rosie’s brother Lee is a police officer, and he thinks Ken owed money to loan sharks who were threatening him.”
“A police officer? You didn’t get the police involved, did you? We need to keep this quiet.”
“I’m not so sure that’s going to be possible, Lester. The loan sharks or whoever these guys are, are escalating the violence. The police may be the only way to clear this up.”
Lester sighed heavily. “If we have to, we have to, I suppose. But it’s not going to do our business any good.”
“Getting some of us killed won’t do us much good, either, Lester. Remember, I’ve been mugged, shot at and had my apartment house burned down. These guys are not kidding around. And some of their messages have threatened Rosie as well.”
“You’re right, Kirk. I’m being a foolish old man with too much pride in the family reputation. It’s time to file charges against Ken and give the police something to work with.”
“Thanks, Lester. I’ll do that right now.”
With a heavy heart, Lester called his PI, Donald Umber, and explained the situation. “Fly down there and see what you can find out. You still have that picture of Ken?”
“Yeah. He’s most likely on Grand Cayman Island, if those bank accounts are there, so I’ll try that first. What do you want me to do if I find him?”
“Just report to me, that’s all.”
“Shall I let him know I know who he is?”
Lester grinned. “I don’t think that would hurt anything except his conscience, if he still has one.”
“Okay. I’m on my way.”
~ * ~
At quitting time, Kirk called Lester again to update him on their findings.
Lester said, “I’ve been thinking about that life insurance policy and the capsized boat and Cadillac left at the lake cabin.”
“Yeah?”
Lester hesitated, then said, “I wonder if we’d be better off pretending to let everyone there continue thinking you’re Ken for now.”
“Why?”
“Just until we get all this sorted out. Maybe Ken will get impatient and show his hand. You’ll need to keep running the store there until we find someone else to take over, anyway, you know.”
Kirk sighed. “All right. So far, I think Rosie and Melvin are the only ones here who know I’m Kirk. I’ll tell them to keep it quiet for now.”
“What if Rosie’s involved in Ken’s scheme?”
Kirk’s stomach churned at the thought. “I don’t think she knew about this, Lester. If she knew Ken was alive and planned to fly to the Caymans, why would she think I was him when I had amnesia?”
“That’s true. But she could have thought Ken got mugged before he could leave the country. He might not have let her know he’d already left. After all, she’s never met you and had no way of knowing you were coming. So she wouldn’t be thinking about Ken’s twin. She would as
sume it was Ken, wouldn’t she?”
Darn it, the man had an answer for everything. And it could have happened that way. He sighed and said, “I suppose. Okay, I’ll keep pretending to be Ken for a while longer. But I’ll fly back there tomorrow to get back my ID. Ken left me pretty broke here.”
“You can draw some cash out of the store, you know.”
“I hate to do that. Ken’s shenanigans left us pretty far behind on bills already.”
“Oh. I’d better transfer some cash to tide the store over, then.”
“Thanks, Lester. That would be best, I think, for the short term. Otherwise, we’ll get a bad reputation for being behind on paying for inventory.”
“We sure don’t want that. So, you’ve pretty well wrapped up the investigation there, then?”
“Yeah. Since Ken is no longer here, I think we’ve solved the problem. But I’ve changed all of the store’s local bank account numbers just in case.”
“Good thinking, Kirk. Take care. You look them up for me and call me back so I can make that transfer. I’ve got another project for Melvin, then. Put him on and I’ll tell him about it.”
“Okay. Bye.” Kirk handed the phone to Melvin and walked over to Rosie’s office to talk to her.
Chapter 12
Rosie was at her desk, making out the weekly payroll. Her long blonde hair hung around her face in soft waves. Kirk itched to touch it, to run his fingers through it, to make love to her again.
God, he had it bad! She probably wouldn’t give him the time of day, now that she knew he wasn’t Ken.
She glanced up as he came in. He closed her office door behind him.
“Hi, Kirk. Did you talk to Lester? Are we to continue on as usual or what?”
“Yeah, carry on as usual. But there’s something else.” He hesitated. How was she going to take this? He couldn’t wait until he found the policy to make sure if she was the beneficiary. She could tell ten people by then. He’d have to take a chance on her. Besides, his gut told him she was innocent and he’d made his reputation over the years believing his instincts, hadn’t he?
He swallowed and explained what Lester wanted and why. “Lester says it’s important not to tell everyone that I’m not Ken,” he stressed. “You haven’t told anyone here at the store that I’m not Ken, have you?”