A Dime a Dozen

by Mindy Starns Clark

  We tossed out ideas for illegal activities, but none of them seemed to fit the person or the area.

  “Maybe he’s an art thief,” she said, “like a cat burglar. He goes out and steals—”

  “Harriet,” I interrupted. “We’re talking about an older man. I don’t think he’s out doing anything very physical.”

  She continued to throw out other ideas, each more implausible than the next, while my mind worked with a conundrum that had been on my mind all day. Finally, at a break in her brainstorming, I brought it up.

  “There is one thing about Zeb that’s really been bothering me,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The day I toured the orchard, he came there in his truck to buy a bin of apples, something he apparently had never done before.”

  “So?”

  “So, who’s to say he wasn’t coming there to buy the bin that had the body in it?”

  Harriet sat back, wiping her mouth with her napkin.

  “Did he say why he wanted the apples?”

  “To make apple wine,” I replied. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”

  “I think wine can be made from a lot of different fruits. Hey, maybe he has a still, out in the woods. He spends his nights up there, tending to it. Maybe he makes so much money selling hooch that he has to launder it through his charity!”

  “Hooch, Harriet? Nobody makes hooch anymore, at least not illegally, for profit. I seem to recall that Prohibition ended about eighty years ago.”

  I gathered our dirty dishes and carried them to the sink.

  “It was just a suggestion.”

  “I know,” I said as I turned on the faucet and squirted soap into the dishpan. “We’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

  I plunged a plate into the hot sudsy water. Sometimes my mind worked best when I was concentrating on other things.

  “Hey, why don’t we go do something fun tonight?” Harriet said, getting up from the table to put away the food.

  “I’m not going line dancing,” I said.

  “There’s no place to do that in town anyway,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me. “But I saw a bowling alley. Or I bet we could find a movie theater.”

  “Sorry, Harriet,” I said, “but I’ve got more work to do.”

  I also wanted to spend some time on the phone with Tom, though I didn’t tell her that.

  “What kind of work can you possibly do at this hour that would accomplish anything?”

  “Internet research. It’s time to hit some more of the criteria. I have some phone calls I need to make, too.”

  “Fine,” she said. “But I’m tired of working. I guess I can watch a movie or something. You’ve got a pretty good collection here.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah, a whole cabinet full.”

  She crossed the room to swing open a door on the entertainment center, revealing several shelves of DVDs. I realized that they must’ve been bought and put there by the Realtor in her efforts to make this place a more appealing rental unit.

  “Well, there you go.”

  Harriet came back and finished putting away the food, and then she grabbed a towel to dry the dishes I had washed. We worked side by side in companionable silence and, again, I thought how pleasant it was to have someone with me. I loved my job enormously, but all the time I spent alone on the road was starting to take its toll.

  “So, Callie,” she said casually, and by the tone of her voice I could tell there was nothing casual about it, “now that you’re dating Tom, has he told you what J.O.S.H.U.A. stands for?”

  “No,” I laughed. “That one’s still a mystery.”

  “I think about it all the time,” she said. “My best guess is that it’s Just Our Secret Hidden Undercover Anonymous Foundation.”

  “Don’t think so, Harriet.”

  “How about Jelly On Spaghetti Has Untold Aromas? Janie’s Oversized Shoes Have Unusual Arches?”

  “Hey, you’re pretty good at this.”

  “Well? What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I figure it’s something religious, like Jesus Our Savior Hears Us Ask.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s bound to be pretty cheesy. No wonder he doesn’t publicize it.”

  While Harriet went back to the DVD cabinet and picked out a movie, I dumped the dishwater down the sink and wiped the table clean to set it up for my internet work. I figured it would take at least two hours to do all I had to do, but if I were successful, then I could scratch several more criteria off my list.

  I tried calling Detective Sweetwater but got her voice mail again. I left another message and then used the wireless password the Realtor had given me to go online. I was surprised to see an e-mail waiting for me from Tom.

  I sat back in my chair, a slow smile curving my lips. No matter the problems and confusion here, he was still coming. We would finally be together in four days!

  I got offline and headed for the bedroom to call him. Harriet was so absorbed in her movie that she didn’t even notice. Hopefully, I would be able to reach him and hear the wonderful, calming sound of his voice.

  Thirty-Five

  Fortunately, I was able to get through without a problem. Tom said he was packing up some important files and papers in his office, and he would be leaving for the airport momentarily. I had no idea what kind of work he had been doing in Singapore, only that it involved a closeknit team of computer people and that the project was highly classified. He couldn’t have told me about it even if he wanted to, though I doubt he would’ve wanted to. Talking about himself didn’t exactly come naturally to him.

  Today, however, he seemed a bit more introspective than usual. He sounded tired, and he said that he was so homesick right now he couldn’t stand it.

  “The problem is the idea of where home is,” he told me. “Because I miss so many conflicting things. I miss my condo in California, where I have all of my stuff and where I can just relax and kick back. But I miss my family in Louisiana, and I miss the food there and my nieces and my mom. I miss the foundation in Washington and being involved with people there, going to meetings, helping the power brokers do their thing. Most of all, Callie, I miss you. I know we were only together that one time, but I miss seeing you, I miss being with you. How do I roll all of this into one logical solution? Going ‘home’ means all of those things to me, but mostly it means going back to you.”

  “Then get back here to me. The rest we can do together.”

  I held my breath, knowing that was probably the boldest statement I had made to him yet. I wanted to be “home” to him, wanted to be the center point to which all of the other details of his life were secondary.

  “That’s kind of what I had in mind,” he said. “I think it’s time to lay the groundwork for our future.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I’ve decided that it might be best if you and I spent some time alone together first, really getting to know each other. I’ve been working out the details, and I think you’ll be pleased with what I’ve lined up. Just have your bags packed by Sunday and await further instructions. I plan to whisk you away to somewhere very special.”

  “Ooo, now you’ve got me intrigued. Tell me about it.”

  “Nope, it’s a surprise,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “But you won’t be disappointed.”

  “Tom, you could show up here wearing a burlap sack and carrying a box of pimento cheese sandwiches and I wouldn’t be disappointed.”

  “Oh, darn!” he exclaimed. “How did you figure out my plan? Now I’ll have to come up with something else!”

  We laughed, but he refused to reveal anything no matter how hard I pleaded. I worried aloud that I might not have the proper clothes to wear, but he assured me that we could buy anything I lacked. As we talked, images filled my mind of the two of us in some glorious Hawaiian paradise: days basking in
warm tropical breezes, sunset walks on the beach, dark nights under the stars…

  It sounded wonderful, although those dark nights under the stars had me just a tad concerned. I was all for getting away alone, but I hoped he didn’t assume my assent meant one room, one bed.

  “I just…” I began, not knowing how to put it. “I don’t want you to think that I, that we…”

  “Say no more,” he responded quickly. “I know where you’re headed, Callie, and you don’t need to worry. My intentions are honorable. Though that’s not to say I don’t fight thoughts of us…” He cleared his throat. “Its difficult not to think about it.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “It is for me too.”

  “But this relationship is important to me,” he continued, “and it needs to be worked out in accordance with God’s Word. That’s just how it is.”

  I closed my eyes, thanking the Lord for sending me such an amazing man. Bryan and I had shared a deep and passionate intimacy in our marriage, but I believed without question that sex was meant only for marriage and not outside of it—not even with the man of my dreams.

  “For now, my dear, I’ve got to go. The airport awaits.”

  I told him to have a good flight and that I would try to wrap things up by Sunday. Once we hung up the phone, I realized that I never had told him about the investigation, the murders, or anything else that was going on.

  Still, I felt good about the conversation that had transpired, and by the time I walked back out to the living room, my heart was soaring.

  Thirty-Six

  There was still a lot of work to do. Back at the computer, I pulled up my database and reviewed our progress thus far. Except for the problems with Su Casa, and of course the issue of the security violations that had gotten Luisa fired, I felt the investigation of MORE overall was winding down. Harriet still had some financial work to do, but basically between the two of us we had managed to satisfactorily cover every criteria except two: “is well rated by outside reporting sources” and “has a good reputation among its peers.”

  Considering MORE’s black eye with the county, I expected to have a few problems with that last one. Nevertheless, I hoped to get enough good opinions to balance out the bad, and to that end I went online and worked on the last two criteria.

  Ignoring the sound of Harriet’s movie on the TV, I worked through every one of my reporting sources, from Guidestar and the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Guide, to ECFA and Dunn and Bradstreet. MORE came out smelling like a rose, and I was especially pleased to see that the American Institute of Philanthropy Charity Rating Guide gave them a grade of “A.”

  For the final criterion, I sent out a number of e-mails to contacts in the industry, asking for references on MORE and any personal input they might be willing to give. In the morning, I would interview someone at the County Migrant Bureau, just to get their official opinion on record.

  I was about to wrap things up when I saw that the reports from the asset inquiries had already come in. I downloaded them to my hard drive and then opened the files.

  I always loved asset reports, probably because they satisfied the snoop in me. I usually used an agency out of Tampa, and the profiles they put together for people I had an interest in were almost always dead-on accurate. I wasn’t sure how they got some of their data, but there was no crime in my possessing the information, so I continued to depend on them to help me do my job and tried not think of what it took for them to do theirs.

  I looked at Karen Weatherby’s profile first. According to the information in front of me, she had reported an annual salary of approximately $45,000 on her tax returns for the last three years. She owned no property, though she did have a small IRA, one savings account with $11,249 in it, and an excellent credit rating. There was a trust in her name, established by her father and accessible by her when she turned twenty-one. It didn’t look as though she had touched the money, which now totaled more than $500,000. Otherwise, she had no assets except her car, a three-year-old Chevy Impala. This did not answer the question of the $49,000 vehicle, so I still had some work to do.

  Trinksie Atkins seemed to be a study in near-poverty. Apparently, she had filed for bankruptcy last December, and now she had exactly $329.42 in her checking account. She had no savings account and did not own a home. She paid insurance on two vehicles—an old Toyota and Snake’s ancient Impala.

  Turning to Butch Hooper, I saw that his financial picture was a bit more complicated. He reported an annual income in the low six figures, and he seemed to own an enormous amount of rental properties in and around Greenbriar. Add to that his CDs, IRAs, a good bit of stock, and about $20,000 in savings bonds, and he was quite comfortable. There was nothing wrong with that, as long as it had all come from his forprofit business.

  Butch’s father, Zeb, presented a much more confusing picture. Though he seemed to own a lot of property as well, most of his was completely undeveloped and therefore generated no income. And though by all rights he should be as wealthy as his son—he was the one who founded Hooper Construction, after all—according to this he had a checking account with a few thousand dollars in it, a savings account with a few thousand more, and not another single asset except his home and his land. It made no sense. Unless he had a gambling problem or something, Zeb Hooper should be much more well-off than this record showed.

  Of course, I thought, sitting forward, there are always offshore accounts. Maybe he’s stashing his money in Switzerland or something. On a hunch, I scrolled through my contacts until I found the one I was looking for, a young computer hacker I knew in Seattle who was willing to provide almost any kind of information for a price. His particular specialty was unearthing credit card records.

  “All I want to know,” I said once I had gotten him on the phone and given him Zeb’s information, “is if this guy has been taking any trips. I’m especially looking for trips overseas.”

  He agreed to see what he could find out and said for me to call him back in an hour or so for the results. As soon as I hung up the phone it rang, and I answered it thinking it was my hacker friend calling me back with a question.

  Instead, it was Detective Sweetwater, following up on my voice mail messages from earlier, when I told her about Pepe’s information regarding his father’s comments on the day he was killed and also that I had a feeling I knew who the person was I had seen running through the woods. I switched to the phone in the bedroom, where we could talk.

  “I’m sorry to call you so late,” she said, “but with information that important, you should’ve asked someone to radio out for me.”

  “It was just a hunch, though,” I said. “Based on a dark shirt and a baseball cap.”

  I described seeing Snake in the parking lot at Su Casa, and the feeling I had gotten when I looked at him.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be more certain that it was him,” I said. “But I just wanted to suggest that you might want to look in his direction.”

  “All right,” she said. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Have you gotten an ID on your John Doe yet?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” she replied. “And now things are complicated by the Morales murder.”

  “How is that going?”

  “Not well. It’s a little hard to follow a trail that’s four months old.”

  “I might have some relevant information for you,” I said. “Though I was hoping to wait until I had my proof a little better organized.”

  “By all means, jump right in,” she said. “I can use all the help I can get.”

  I explained to her that our financial investigation of MORE had turned up some irregularities with Su Casa. It appeared as if someone there might be using the organization as a front for laundering money.

  “I don’t know what that might have to do with Enrique’s murder,” I said, “except that their building is located near where he disappeared. Also, Snake works there part time. Tenuous connections I know, but still.”

  �
��You have proof of this money laundering?”

  “Sort of. To really investigate, you would need to pull cancelled checks, bank records, and all of that. But we have enough information to justify an investigation. The authorities would have to take it from there.”

  She was quiet for a moment, obviously mulling that over.

  “There’s a guy in Asheville who handles white-collar crime,” she said. “I think I might defer to him in this. Could you meet with him tomorrow and show him what you have?”

  “He’d do better to sit down with my associate, Harriet. She’s the financial whiz on my end who uncovered this.”

  The detective took Harriet’s cell phone number and said she would be putting her man in touch. When our conversation was finished, I went back into the living room, joined Harriet wearily on the couch, and told her to expect the man’s call.

  Thirty-Seven

  How I found myself at the Greenbriar Lanes Bowling Alley a half hour later is another story. Somehow, in my conversation with Harriet, I realized I could do something the cops couldn’t do without a warrant—I could poke around a bit for further proof that Snake was tied in with the vandalism on Luisa.

  Consequently, Harriet and I ended up cruising the bowling alley parking lot, looking for Snake’s car. On the one hand, Harriet was not at all happy about being involved with the physical part of my investigation. On the other hand, she was feeling wired up and glad to get out of the house.

  She was driving, and we both rolled down our windows, peering through a misty nighttime fog for the vehicle in question.

  “You said it’s a light blue Impala?”

  “Yeah. You see it?”

  We drove slowly up the parking aisle and passed directly behind Snake’s car. There was no question it was his. The bobble-headed Chihuahua peered out at us from the back dash.

  “Circle around again,” I said softly, pulling on a pair of gloves.