A Dime a Dozen

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “You could do that?” Natalie asked, her eyes hopeful.

  “I could try. A lot of the databases I subscribe to for my job can also be used for missing persons searches. Back when I worked for Eli, I used to run missing persons cases all the time.”

  “How hard is it to find someone?” Dean asked.

  “You never know until you try,” I replied. “I’ve turned up people in ten minutes, and I’ve had one or two that I never found. At the very least, I think this would probably be worth looking into, because it relates to my grant investigation in a peripheral sort of way.”

  “Whatever you can do, Callie,” Natalie said, “we would appreciate it.”

  Dean nodded in agreement.

  In light of that, as we finished eating I had them tell me everything they knew about Enrique—his life history, his hobbies, his education level, whatever they could think of. Apparently, the man came to Greenbriar for harvest every year and had been doing so for as long as they could remember. He never took their employment testing, because he dropped out of school somewhere in the elementary grades and didn’t think he was suited for anything but farm labor. Despite his limited education, however, Enrique was a good man, a devoted father, and always calm and even-tempered.

  “According to Luisa,” Natalie said, “His biggest fault is his indecisiveness. Where she tends to act first and think later, she says he’s often frozen in indecision, seeing every side of every issue until it renders him almost motionless.”

  As for hobbies or side interests, Enrique had none that Dean or Natalie knew of. Migrants rarely did, they said, considering their income level and lack of free time. Enrique was an especially hard worker, but he lived hand-to-mouth, as was the only way most of them could.

  Once the Webbers finished telling me all they could recall, Dean admitted that the description didn’t really fit a man who would abandon his family. Perhaps, he said, Luisa had been right, and Enrique hadn’t left of his own free will after all.

  As Dean paid for lunch, I stood by the door, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I had come to Greenbriar feeling certain I would easily move through the grant approval process. But now the complicating factors were becoming too big. From Luisa’s troubles and Enrique’s disappearance to the murder of an unidentified man, it was looking more and more like this million-dollar grant was indefinitely on hold. I didn’t share this with the Webbers, and I wished it wasn’t true, but the investigator in me was waking up, certain that I had to act and figure things out before my beloved in-laws were inevitably drawn deeper into this mess.

  Nine

  We retrieved my car from the Webbers’ house and then returned to the office, where I set up my laptop in the conference room and loaded in their password for wireless internet. Before going any further, I knew I had to step back and get a good perspective on things. I decided it might help to call Eli.

  Eli Gold was one of my dearest and oldest friends, the man who taught me everything I knew about investigating. He was retired now and living in Florida, but we had worked together in Virginia for years, and I still found myself consulting with him from time to time when I needed to reason things out on a difficult case.

  I dialed his number and felt a surge of relief when he answered the phone. We usually chatted for a while before we got down to business, but this time he was on his way out the door.

  “I can give you five minutes, doll,” he said with his characteristic bluntness. “Stella’s meeting me at the yogurt stand on Third and Peters, and if I’m late my mocha chocolate chip ice cream will melt.”

  “I’ll make it fast then,” I said, grinning at the image of Stella waiting for Eli, a dripping cone in each hand. “I’ve got a case that was supposed to be straightforward, but it’s growing more complicated by the hour. Things have begun to intertwine in some very confusing ways.”

  “Play it out for me,” he said. “I’m gonna put you on speakerphone while I put my socks and shoes on.”

  I heard a few clicks and then his voice, farther away, telling me to go ahead.

  “All right,” I said. “I’m in North Carolina, and I’m here to investigate a nonprofit called Migrant Outreach Resource Enterprises or MORE for short.”

  “Why does that sound familiar?”

  “It’s run by my former in-laws, Dean and Natalie Webber.”

  “Ah…” he said musically. “That’s right.”

  “Anyway, we’re considering them for a big grant, and I’m trying to do a charity investigation.”

  “Which you could do in your sleep, I might add.”

  “Yes, well, good thing I’m not sleeping on this job, because I’ve already got a murder, a missing person, and some company sabotage.”

  “Sounds to me like MORE isn’t gonna be getting more money.”

  “At least not until I can straighten out this mess.”

  I went on to give him an overview of all that had happened thus far. As we pondered the facts of the case, I decided to break it down into three parts: find out what happened to Enrique, find out who was terrorizing Luisa, and continue with the parts of the charity investigation that weren’t affected by these irregularities.

  “You can probably kill a bunch of birds with one stone here. You might have an interview with someone about your charity investigation, and it turns out they know a little something about the missing man or the vandalism. You know the drill, Callie. Go about your job and keep your eyes and ears open.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “It is simple. One step at a time, is all. You can do this, girly. I have absolute faith in you.”

  “I’m glad one of us does.”

  The phone clicked and then his voice sounded closer.

  “All right, hon,” he said, “Stella awaits. Gotta fly for now.”

  I thanked him for listening and hung up the phone, feeling encouraged.

  I decided I would begin with a computer search for Enrique Morales, ask for some more information from Dean and Natalie, and finally set up some appointments for the peripheral charities so that I could go out and, as Eli said, keep my eyes and ears open.

  Ten

  From their records, Dean got me Enrique’s full name, date of birth, and social security number. With that as a starting point, I would attempt to track the man down, though his itinerant status was going to make this missing persons search a bit more difficult than the average case.

  I said a quick prayer before I began, and then I kept my eyes closed to try to clear my mind of all distractions except the pursuit of this missing man.

  If some physical trouble had befallen him—an abduction, an accident, an animal attack—then the investigation would require the examination of physical evidence, something that could no longer be done because so much time had passed. If that were the case, then I would need to talk to the police to see if I could get a look at their records of the investigation after the original disappearance.

  If, however, Enrique had left of his own accord, then chances were that somewhere, somehow in the months since then, he had done something that had left a record. That was the hope I was going on now and the type of thing that I would spend the next hour looking for. Though it was quite possible for someone to slip under the radar, it at least deserved a try.

  After googling his name to no avail, I went down more specific avenues, using Enrique’s information to scan various databases to which I had access. One by one I checked telephone records, marriages, divorces, bankruptcies, property records, and other court-related filings. A few Enrique Moraleses did show up here and there, but once I weeded them out by age or social security number, my man was nowhere to be found.

  Considering Enrique’s migrant status, it didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t exactly left behind a paper trail either before or after his disappearance. I sat back in my chair and thought hard, trying to picture the life of a migrant and how it differed from a mainstream American. For a migrant there would be no re
al estate transactions, no credit reports, probably no bank accounts. There was a possibility that his name would pop up in the public assistance databases—things like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps. Unfortunately, those records weren’t available to private investigators, not even through LexisNexis or any of the other subscription services I maintained. Of course, the police had probably already gone down these roads, using official avenues to see if Enrique was sitting back somewhere collecting assistance checks or if he had been arrested.

  For now, I went online and did a search for “migrant services,” and I was amazed at the number of programs that popped up for migrants needing help across the country. From health care and dental visits to education, there were many nonprofit groups and government agencies that seemed to be involved with serving migrants in one way or another.

  I was intrigued with a certain type of place, many of which appeared under the category of “travel assistance.” Apparently, there were migrant welcome centers of sorts along many of the picking routes, where vouchers were given out to qualifying migrants for inexpensive hotel stays, meals, and gasoline. “Getting you through the night and back on the road” was one place’s slogan. Thinking that Enrique might have availed himself of something like that, I borrowed a map from the office and did a concurrent search for such places along the highways he could have taken as he left the area, particularly the ones between here and New York City.

  I tried calling a few of the places, but after several disconnected phone lines, I realized they were most likely seasonal in nature and wouldn’t be up and running year-round. Trying to come at the information another way, I went back into several of my paid databases and with a lot of clicking was eventually able to find my way to a database of a place called the Office of Local and Rural Health. It had data on food, hotel, and medical vouchers given out to migrants for most of the states I wanted to check. The names “Enrique and Luisa Morales” popped up a number of times, but when I limited the search to those dates on or after last November 11, the search came up empty.

  As expected, everything I’d tried had come up empty.

  Disappointed, I logged off of the computer and went to find Dean and Natalie, who were sitting in Dean’s office, hunched together over a legal pad covered with scribbles.

  “No luck,” I announced quietly after I shut the door behind me. “At least to the computer and the types of records I have access to, this man does not exist after November 11.”

  “We’re not doing very well, either,” Natalie said. “We made a list of the people who were working here then, and there’s not a single person on it that we would suspect of stealing files or sabotaging the database.”

  I took a seat across from them and suggested they bounce their thoughts off of me.

  “Well,” Dean said, “it helps to understand that our work is very seasonal in nature. Because the bulk of the picking is finished by the end of October, most of the migrants are gone by then. At the bigger orchards, a few migrants are paid to stick around and close out the job, but by and large our staff here drops significantly before the first of November.”

  “Okay.”

  “The records were left in the Laundromat on November 17. At that time, we had eight employees. The data was erased on November 23, and by then we were down to five employees, not counting Luisa.”

  Natalie handed me the list of names.

  “Two of those people can be counted out automatically. One of them was at a convention in Florida at the time, and the other was in the hospital having gallbladder surgery. That leaves three people, three women, on the list of possible suspects.”

  “What about the one at the convention?” I asked. “That could’ve been faked.”

  “She was the keynote speaker for the night of the twenty-third.”

  “All right, then she’s in the clear,” I said, smiling.

  “Callie, I have to be honest,” Natalie said. “I absolutely cannot imagine any of those three women having anything to do with this. They are old and dear friends, members of our church, and lovely women all. I just refuse to believe that any of them would’ve done something so malicious.”

  We talked about the possibility of some other person letting themselves into the building with an unauthorized key, perhaps a former employee or someone’s family member.

  “They might get into the building,” Dean said, “but that wouldn’t allow them to get into the database. I’m not very computer savvy myself, but I know we’ve got some protections in place.”

  I nodded, thinking.

  “Who’s in charge of database security?” I asked. “Are they one of the names on this list?”

  “Ellen Mack is our database administrator,” Natalie said, “but she’s the one who was having her gallbladder out when it happened.”

  “Ken set up the system,” Dean said. “He knows how the security is put together.”

  “Let’s call him. I have some questions.”

  While Dean got his nephew on the phone, Natalie and I went to the break room area and started a fresh pot of coffee. As it brewed, I had her walk me down to the database administrator’s office and introduce us. Ellen Mack was brusque but friendly, in her forties, and wearing a gray skirt and sensible brown shoes. She was obviously a technical person because her office was littered with equipment, including a motherboard that was spread open on her desk like a patient in surgery.

  We spoke for just a minute or two and then excused ourselves, leaving her to her computers and wires and tools.

  Back at the break room, Natalie poured herself and Dean some coffee and I made myself a cup of hot tea. Then we returned to Dean’s office, where he put Ken on speakerphone. Ken explained to us the security levels that would need to be penetrated in order to accomplish such a big loss of data.

  He said there were four levels of password protection, and each level was accessible to fewer people than the level before. At the tightest level, only two people knew the passwords, which were changed regularly.

  “You always want two people to know that final password,” Ken said, “just in case something happens to one of them.”

  “Who would those two people be?” I asked.

  “The database administrator and the database technician.”

  I looked at Natalie, who said, “Ellen Mack and Luisa Morales.”

  I nodded.

  “And Ellen was in the hospital at the time,” I said. “No wonder you thought Luisa did it.”

  “Whenever you have passwords,” Ken added, “there’s always the chance that somebody will get stupid and write theirs down. But when we set up the system, I made it very clear never to do that. Once the disaster happened, if y’all recall, Uncle Dean and Aunt Natalie, we questioned both women extensively, and they both swore they had never written down any passwords.”

  “Is there any way to override the passwords?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Ken replied. “If you know what you’re doing, I guess you could reinstall the operating system and wipe out the entire database. But that’s not how this was done. In this case, large chunks of data were simply erased, and the only way to get that kind of access is through passwords.”

  “So somebody’s lying?”

  “It looks that way.”

  We thanked him for his help and wrapped up the call.

  “What next?” Natalie asked me as Dean hung up the phone.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied, even though I already had several ideas in mind. “For now, why don’t the two of you interview Ellen Mack about those passwords one more time, just to make sure there’s not any question of her having written them down somewhere or told them to someone. For all we know, she mumbled them out as she was going under anesthesia for her gallbladder operation.”

  They smiled grimly but agreed it wouldn’t hurt to revisit the situation one more time.

  “I’ve got some things to take care of,” I said. “But I’ll be in touch later.”

  Back in
the conference room, I packed up my laptop and briefcase. The next stop for me was the police station. I needed to talk to them, to see what they had done, what they knew.

  Before I left the office, however, I asked Dean how I could reach Danny Stanford, the man from Tinsdale Orchards whom I had met at the party last night. Danny and I had tentatively agreed to a tour of the orchard this afternoon at 5:00, but I thought it best to postpone it until the next day, if possible. With all that had happened, the tour had an added interest for me, since I wanted to see the area of the orchard where Enrique supposedly disappeared, the “high block.”

  Dean suggested that I call Karen Weatherby, the woman I had met at the party who was the head of Go the Distance Learning Center. I did just that, and she gave me Danny’s cell phone number.

  “I’m sure he won’t mind putting it off,” she said. “They’re unsealing a room this week, and the timing on that is always kind of tricky.”

  “Unsealing a room? What’s that?”

  She explained that although the apples were all picked in the fall, many of them were stored in special rooms where they remained fresh until they could be shipped throughout the year.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder how you could buy apples year-round, even though they are only harvested in the fall?”

  “I never thought about it,” I said. “I guess I figured they brought them up from South America or something.”

  “Nope,” she replied. “Not at all. They have special rooms that keep the apples fresh. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it has to do with the temperature and oxygen levels.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “I hope Danny will show that to me on my tour.”

  Before we hung up, we made plans for me to visit her facility the next day as well. Despite the questions that now hung over my investigation like a black, roiling cloud, I needed to press onward in other areas of the case, and that included learning more about the different organizations that MORE supported.