Monahan 01 Options

by Rosemarie A D'Amico

  I stood up in the tub and reached around him for the towel hanging on the rack. With the towel held primly in front of me I asked him to get up so I could get out of the bathtub.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled and left the bathroom without looking at me.

  I was more perturbed now than I had been when I overheard Leech demanding an alibi. I dressed quickly and found him sitting on the balcony on a kitchen chair that he had moved out there.

  “How did you answer Leech when he asked for an explanation of your whereabouts in the last seventy-two hours?” I had decided a flank attack might be better than firing from the hip. No more demands like last night, from me.

  Jay shaded his eyes from the sunlight with his hand and peered up at me. My arms were crossed against my chest and I quickly dropped them and consciously eased the muscles in my face. I tried my best not to look like a schoolmarm.

  “I told him the truth. I hadn’t left Dodge City.”

  “And when he didn’t even crack a smile, you realized he was serious.”

  “Yeah. Dead serious. I told him what I’d been doing. He recalled seeing me at the funeral. I told him that after the funeral I spent the afternoon downtown at the Public Library. Dinner at Bigliardi’s with you and Vanessa. Slept in my own bed, alone, so I didn’t have any witnesses. Thursday I had lunch with that friend I was telling you about, the analyst. Dave Smithson. That afternoon I was back at the library, doing more research. Slept alone, again,” he sighed. “I tried wrenching his heart strings with that one but he wasn’t budging.”

  I smiled but didn’t interrupt.

  “Friday I went to Ottawa. I had to go and see my mom.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s great.”

  “And how did she take the news?”

  I knew that had to have been a difficult trip for Jay to make. His mother was incredibly proud of her offspring’s accomplishments, and rightly so. As poor as his family had been, his mother had insisted that they all attend university. Jay and his sisters all had graduate degrees and they were supporting their mother now. Jay was the last to graduate, and when he secured his job, he and his sisters had finally insisted that their mom quit her job and move out of the old neighbourhood in Centertown Ottawa. They had bought her a nice condominium overlooking the Canal and provided her with more money than she knew what to do with. She was the queen of Tuesday night bingo at the Glebe Community Centre now and Jay had told me that she placed pictures of her kids around her at the bingo table for good luck. The fact that Jay had been fired under questionable circumstances would not have gone over well with Mrs. Harmon.

  “She was rightfully indignant, at first. And then when she listened to what had actually happened, how Rick had accused me and then fired me, I could tell she was going to box my ears,” he laughed. “I think she’s worried about me not getting a paycheque and she wouldn’t believe me when I told her I wasn’t destitute. I had to show her my passbook from the bank to prove that I had money in savings. She was ready to give me money because she told me she never spends half of what we give her.”

  He leaned the chair back on two legs and put his feet up on the railing of the balcony and stared at his bare feet.

  “You know,” he continued quietly, “mom wanted me to move back home. I told her this wasn’t a complete disaster, yet, and that I’d get another job. Besides, who wants to work in a town where the only jobs are with the federal government and all they do is whine about the Senators not winning the Stanley Cup?”

  Jay dropped his feet and the front legs of the chair hit the floor. “Traffic was heavy on the 401 and it was late when I got back. I checked my messages as soon as I got home, around ten-thirty and came over here right away.”

  My breath came out slowly when I realized I had been holding it all along. These were all reasonable explanations of his whereabouts. We’d discuss why he didn’t call me, some other time.

  “Did Leech ask if you slept alone last night?” I said with a laugh.

  “No.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me down on his lap where I curled up and put my head against his chest.

  “Why were you doing all that research? Checking out companies in your job search?”

  “No. As corny as it sounds, I was looking for the truth.”

  “Ah, the eternal search for truth. Tell me old wise one, what’d you find?”

  He thought it would be better if he showed me.

  The file Jay retrieved from his car was about an inch thick and he sorted the various sheets of paper in piles on the kitchen table. He held up a few sheets stapled in the corner and passed them to me. The top sheet read University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business, MBA Graduates, Class of 1998. Listed below, in alphabetical order were the names of the graduates. Jay’s name was highlighted in yellow on the second page.

  I smiled and passed it back to him. “Adding this to your resume?”

  He didn’t answer and handed me a single sheet of paper that had a section in the middle highlighted. I read in small type in the top, right-hand corner Who’s Who 2002. The highlighted section read Oakes, Christopher Earl, B.Comm., MBA: Chairman, CEO and member of the board of directors, TechniGroup Consulting Inc., B.Comm, University of Illinois, 1973, MBA, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, 1975.

  The section went on to describe Chris’ past jobs, the charitable foundations he graced with his presence, and his marital status, or lack thereof.

  All of this was old news to me so I handed it back to Jay. He exchanged the Who’s Who photocopy with another single sheet which I immediately recognized. It was our company’s standard biography sheet which had a picture of Oakes and a couple of paragraphs describing his background. The few words describing his academic past were highlighted. I didn’t bother reading any of this and I looked expectantly at Jay who silently offered me another piece of paper.

  This one looked vaguely familiar. It was a photocopy of a trade magazine feature article about Chris Oakes that had been written about three months after Chris joined our company. The blurred photocopy didn’t do justice to the original photo that had appeared in the magazine. The photo had pictured Oakes sitting at a desk with an active computer screen behind him. The article had described Oakes as a real computer wizard and it talked about how he used the computer at all hours of the night, sending e-mails and messages to his employees and executives. The article was a joke because Oakes didn’t even have a desk, let alone a computer in his office. Chris could no more operate a computer than I could fly a jetfighter. He was just like Rick Cox - a technophobe and ashamed to admit it. I remember when I read the article I thought they should have been referring to voice mail, not e-mail.

  Jay had highlighted several paragraphs that described Oakes’ academic achievements.

  I handed this back to him and said, “So?”

  “The coup de grace,” he replied and handed me more papers. This set looked similar to the first one Jay had handed me. University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business, Class of 1975.

  “Do you see Chris’ name anywhere on that list?” Jay asked me. I flipped the pages to find the O’s and carefully read the names.

  “You won’t find it on there,” he told me as I read. “I checked the years before and after 1975, and his name doesn’t appear. I called the registrar’s office and they told me he was registered and dropped out in his first year.”

  “So, the man’s a liar. Why hasn’t anyone discovered this before now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe when someone reaches his level, they forget to check references,” Jay said.

  “Well, Sherlock. What other goodies have you come up with?”

  “When I discovered that he’d dropped out of Western, I knew something was fishy in Denmark. I realized then that there was a missing link because his resume of his past jobs only starts after his alleged graduation from MBA school.”

  “He was probably slinging hamburgers,” I off
ered. “Not exactly something you want on your resume.”

  “Well, Kate. I’ve discovered he wasn’t slinging hamburgers,” he announced.

  chapter forty-six

  Jay had uncovered a squirming can of worms and when we put all of the information together it led us down a dangerous path.

  Chris Oakes hadn’t been slinging hamburgers between 1973 and 1975. He had been the treasurer of a small textile company in Hamilton, Ontario. The path that led to this revelation was quite convoluted, and after Jay spread out more papers on my kitchen table, he explained.

  Jay was standing in front of the wall in the kitchen tracing imaginary lines across his fictional whiteboard. I was glad he didn’t have a marker in his hand because I was sure he would be writing all over the wall.

  “Oakes wasn’t the only officer of the company I checked out,” he was telling me. “I pulled the background dossiers on all the senior guys, and all of the directors, and discovered a few interesting things. First of all, most of the directors’ paths have crossed at some time or another in the past fifteen years. They’ve either served on the same boards, or were members of the same charitable foundations, or went to school together. All of their backgrounds as they’ve reported them checked out. Except one.” He paused for effect.

  “You want me to guess?”

  He nodded his head and said, “Sure. But you’ll never get it on the first try.”

  I was never one to back down from a challenge. “Can I ask one question first?”

  “Come on. Just guess,” he said impatiently.

  I wanted to know if it was an officer or director of the company who didn’t check out but when Jay wasn’t amenable to the game, I guessed.

  “Larry Everly,” I pronounced.

  Now it was Jay’s turned to look surprised.

  “You’re right. How did you know?”

  “Ah ha! So I was right,” I rubbed it in. “But it was just a wild guess. I just don’t like the man. Most of the directors are harmless old men who are puppets. Everly on the other hand, isn’t old, and he isn’t harmless. He’s a snake. So, what didn’t check out about him?” I asked eagerly.

  He pulled out a sheaf of papers from the bottom of a pile that were paper clipped together and tossed them at me. I removed the paper clip and saw that it was a copy of each of the directors’ biographies. Stapled to each biography was a copy of each director’s entry from Who’s Who.

  “Take out Larry’s and check out what he said was his first job.”

  “Bittman Brothers,” I read out loud. “1973 to 1975.” My face was a question mark.

  “A small, family-owned, Wall Street brokerage house,” Jay told me and tossed more papers at me that were photocopies of excerpts from the Survey of Industrials, a directory that is released each year listing various industrial companies. Jay had photocopied an excerpt from the 1973 edition and highlighted a company called Weinstein Textiles. Weinstein Textiles were described as a manufacturer of industrial strength textiles located in Hamilton, Ontario. Revenues, number of employees and a list of the company’s officers followed. Chairman of the Board and President was a Mr. Robert Weinstein and on the same list I found the names of Christopher Oakes and Larry Everly. Chris Oakes was named as company Treasurer and Larry Everly was District Sales Manager.

  “Well, well, well,” I said smugly. “Mr. Everly must have been carrying a big load back then, commuting daily between Hamilton and New York. It must have taken a toll. Did you check it out?”

  Jay nodded. “Of course. I called around and discovered that Bittman Brothers had been gobbled up by one of the larger brokerage houses in the mid-seventies. I managed to track down the son of one of the founders of Bittman Brothers who’s still in the business and he told me that Larry Everly never worked there. In fact, he knows Larry because Wall Street’s a small world. Told me they’d have been lucky to have Larry working there. He said if he remembered correctly, Larry was in the Toronto area during those years, working for some sort of manufacturing company. So, I searched the Survey of Industrials and found Larry Everly. And Chris Oakes.”

  “Your research skills amaze me,” I complimented him as I flipped the pages and saw the identical information for 1974 and 1975 directories. In the entry for 1975 Oakes still held the position of Treasurer but Larry had been promoted to Vice-President of Sales.

  “What happened after 1975?” I asked Jay.

  “I couldn’t find any more references to Weinstein Textiles. It appeared to have disappeared off the map.”

  I tried to digest the information. From 1973 to 1975 Oakes had said he was at school getting his MBA, and Larry was supposedly working on Wall Street. Treasurer and Vice President of Sales were legitimate jobs, so why did they both feel it was necessary to lie about those two years?

  “Larry Everly knows damn well that Oakes is a fraud,” I said.

  “And,” Jay pointed out, “Oakes knows that Everly is a fraud.”

  “Disgusting,” I stated. I pushed my chair back and made some coffee. “Where does all this information get us?” I asked Jay as I spooned the coffee into the filter.

  Jay was silent for a moment and then he said, “It gets us nowhere. All it does is create more questions.”

  “Yeah. Like what happened to Weinstein Textiles? Why would it just disappear like that from the reference books?”

  “Because you stop paying to have your company listed. From what I understand the Survey of Industrials sends out a renewal form each year to the companies that are listed in it asking for updated information and a fee to have their company listed again. So,” he said slowly, “I called them. Asked them what had happened in 1976 and why Weinstein hadn’t re-listed.”

  “And?” I asked hopefully, leaning against the counter.

  “They told me I was out of luck. Their records weren’t computerized back then and there wasn’t any way they could check back.”

  “Oh,” I said disappointedly.

  “But,” Jay said brightly. “All those research skills I honed in university paid off. I did the next best thing.”

  This was like pulling teeth.

  “You’ve had the answer all along haven’t you?”

  Jay smirked. “I got the answer but then I hit a dead-end. I started checking out obituaries. I started with this year and worked my way back.” Once again, Jay paused for effect.

  I shifted my weight to the other foot and crossed my arms against my chest. My body language said, you better tell me, and tell me fast.

  “Okay, okay. Robert Weinstein died around Christmas in 1975.” He dug around in his papers and came up with a microfiche copy of a small obituary. He handed it to me.

  Robert Weinstein, Chairman and President of Weinstein Textiles Inc. passed away suddenly on December 17, 1975. Survived by his loving wife Sadie and son Robert Jr.

  I handed it back to Jay who was holding yet another goodie. This time he read it out loud: Robert Weinstein, Chairman of Weinstein Textiles died of an apparent suicide on Thursday night. Mr. Weinstein will be fondly remembered by the many people who had been employed for decades at the textile plant. It was reported that Mr. Weinstein had been despondent recently over the bankruptcy of Weinstein Textiles. He is survived by his wife Sadie and their ten year old son, Robert Jr.

  Something was bothering me and I thought about it as I poured coffee. The name Sadie Weinstein was very familiar to me and I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it before.

  “Have you ever heard the name Sadie Weinstein before?” I asked Jay as I handed him a cup. He shook his head.

  Jay sat down at the table and started rearranging his piles of photocopies. I wandered through the living room and back into the kitchen all the time trying to remember. I played some mind games and envisioned lists of names. Names of friends and family. Names of friends of friends and friends of family. When that didn’t get me anywhere I switched to work. Names of people at the office, people outside the office at law firms and accounting firms. I was
impressed with the number of people I knew but still didn’t come up with any Sadie Weinsteins. And then I remembered typing the name so I knew she was related to something I had done at work.

  “Jay,” I said, trying to get his attention. He was reading something intently and had ignored my wandering around.

  When he looked up at me, I said, “I know her name. And it’s an odd enough name that I doubt I’m mistaken here. I’ve typed her name on my computer and for the life of me, I can’t remember why.”

  His eyebrows went up slowly. “You’ve typed her name? On the computer at work?”

  “Do you see a computer here at home? Yes, at work.”

  “I’ll be right back,” he said over his shoulder as he exited the kitchen quickly and I heard the front door close.

  When he came back he yelled for me from the front door. I found him on his hands and knees in the front hall plugging his laptop computer into the wall jack for the phone. I watched him in silence as he typed a few commands into the computer.

  The modem inside the computer emitted the scratchy sounds of a phone dialling and Jay looked up at me from where he was kneeling on the floor and asked, “You know Kate, it’d be nice if you joined the twentieth century and got a high speed connection and maybe a computer at home!”

  He passed me the computer and I logged on to my system at work.

  I clicked the mouse a few times to get to my file manager, clicked on the search button and typed in Sadie Weinstein. We waited while the computer searched the hundreds of subdirectories and documents on my computer.

  The computer finished its search and told us there were three occurrences of the name and that they were in the directory acquisitions, subdirectory marshton. I had a directory, or file, on my computer containing all the documents we created for all the companies we purchased. Subdirectories were created with the name of each company we acquired. All relevant, computer-generated documents were filed there. Marshton was the name of the company we had just acquired.