Corruption of Faith

by Brenda English

  Each of the names was followed by a column of numbers and dates. I looked at the figures, first in confusion and then, when I realized they must represent amounts of money, in astonishment. The totals must run into the millions of dollars, I thought. I looked again at the numbers and names, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

  It appeared that the five men—at least three of whom we knew had been members of the Bread of Life Church—had been funneling large amounts of cash, apparently to their minister or his son over a period of time that stretched back for two years. I knew that I was holding the answer to the question of where the missing money from the estates of the three dead men had gone. But what had the money been for? What kind of deal were these people involved in with Brant?

  I looked up at Cooper, questions running through my head.

  “Could these be donations to the church?” Cooper asked me.

  “I don’t see how,” I told him, shaking my head and looking back at the ledger sheet. “The dates are all wrong, at least for Marshall. The other secretary at the church and Marshall’s wife both told me he stopped going about a year ago, but these entries go right up until about three weeks before he died. If he had stopped going to church there, why would he keep donating money to it?”

  I studied the sheet some more. And what was Brant doing with the money they had been giving him? I wondered. Where was it now?

  “The Caymans?” I asked Cooper. In asking the question, I knew the answer. “Brant is sending the money to the Caymans.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Cooper said. “I don’t know what these guys are up to, but if you want to hide large amounts of money, that’s one place to effectively make it disappear.”

  So where could I go for the answers? Obviously I wasn’t going to find out from anyone at the Caymans’ bank that Brant and Barlow had listed as their island mailing address and that probably housed their account. Three of the men on the list were dead. Whatever answers they had known, they weren’t telling. But there were two other people involved who were, I hoped, alive and well and who must have at least some of the answers I needed.

  “I think,” I said to Cooper, “that it’s time for me to go talk to Mr. Ulm and Mr. Rivers. You think you can track down who they are for me?”

  “I’ll run their names through right now,” Cooper said, turning to his computer. “Will you be around for a while?”

  “Yeah, I’ve gotta go make some phone calls for a feature I’m working on. Okay if I take this?” I was still holding the printout of payments.

  “It’s yours,” Cooper said. “I’ll give you a buzz as soon as I have something.”

  An hour later he called to say that both Ulm and Rivers were still alive and among us. The names had sounded familiar because Ulm was president of the First City Investors, a local brokerage firm, and Rivers was a high-profile developer who had made a fortune redeveloping run-down properties in prime real-estate spots such as Old Town Alexandria and northwest D.C. Cooper found a feature story on Rivers that mentioned his membership in the Bread of Life Church in Springfield. Ulm’s church membership was still a question mark, but I figured it was a pretty good bet that he probably belonged to Brant’s church as well.

  I considered calling the two men’s offices to try to make appointments with them for the next day, but finally rejected that idea. If whatever they were involved in with Brant was in any way questionable, I didn’t want to give them a chance to duck me or to have time to make up some cover story about what they were up to. The element of surprise can be a wonderful thing.

  I hung up the phone and asked myself the same question I had been asking since the beginning: what did any of this have to do with Cara’s murder? Could she possibly have been a participant in whatever these men were doing? No way, I answered myself. Cara would never knowingly have been involved in anything questionable.

  Okay, I thought, she wasn’t involved in whatever it was. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know something about it. I knew, because I had seen his arrest and prison records, that Daniel Brant was not what he was pretending to be. Now I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Cara had known it, too. If she had somehow learned about Brant’s deception, then her letter to Amy began to make a lot more sense. And if Cara had reason to think that Brant wasn’t the minister he was pretending to be, that he had lied about who he was and was involved even now in some sort of dubious scheme, she would have been devastated.

  Was it Brant who disappointed you so bitterly? I asked her. Did you find out somehow what kind of man he really was?

  But, surely, I thought, if she had learned something like that about someone she admired as much as Brant, wouldn’t she have said something to me? It was becoming increasingly apparent to me that the answer was no, that there might have been any number of things Cara had not shared with me, and I didn’t understand why not.

  Because she didn’t want you to say, “I told you so.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked aloud.

  You’ve always been the cynic, the suspicious one, the opinionated little shit answered. Cara didn’t want you to know that her judgment could have been so bad and that, when you go looking for the worst in people, in this case you might have been right.

  “Well,” I responded, “I sure would be in your case.”

  So if I’m just part of your psyche, what does that say about you?

  As usual, there was just no reasoning with him. I gave him a mental finger and picked up the phone receiver to do some more work on my school-board feature. I couldn’t let my reporting suffer just because the muck into which I had foundered while trying to solve my sister’s murder was getting deeper and deeper.

  It was seven o’clock in the evening and just past the first of the three deadlines that rolled around at the News on a daily basis. The editors at the copy desk were in the final throes of clearing pages for the paper’s first edition. Those who already were off deadline were relaxing, stretching, wandering out to the cafeteria for coffee before the next deadline at nine P.M. I was working on a first draft of the school-board story when my computer blinked a message that I had E-mail. I saved my story, went into the mail system, and called up the message. It was from Rob Perry.

  I didn’t want to add one more thing to your list of stuff to deal with before your sister’s memorial service, but now that it’s over, I think we need to talk about some things with your beat. You want to set up some time in the next couple of days to do that?

  I looked up and saw he was watching me from his second “office” at the copy desk, where he was sitting because we were coming up on deadline. We eyed each other for a few seconds, and he raised one eyebrow in question. I faced the screen again and sent a response.

  Sure. Is there a problem I should know about?

  Let’s just say, his answer came back almost immediately, that I think you probably need a change of pace from the school beat.

  I looked at the response for long seconds, then slowly closed my eyes. I should have known better, I thought, than to believe I was hiding my waning enthusiasm from Rob. He watches us like a hawk, not in an effort to catch us in screwups, although those don’t get past him either. Rather, it’s like his early-warning system. He constantly monitors the temperature and tenor of the city room and its staff, alert to the nuances of body language and voice and to the vitality of the stories we write in an effort to deal with problems before they reach the full-blown stage. Christ, I thought, all I need is to have to deal with this on top of Cara’s murder. And I hated with everything in me the idea that Rob might see me as a developing problem.

  I opened my eyes. Rob had walked over to my desk. He winked at me and said, “Don’t sweat it. We’ll work it out.” I gave him an apologetic smile and nodded. He walked on past and out the newsroom’s back door toward the cafeteria, apparently unperturbed by whatever deficiencies in my work had tripped his monitors.

  But I was mortified. The word failure is not allowed
in my dictionary. I had never learned how to quit. Not in school. Not at my job. Not in pushing myself to be the best at whatever I was doing. In high school, that had made me “brainy” and a sometimes object of derision. As a reporter, it made me “tenacious,” a good thing as far as an editor is concerned. In my own estimation, it just made me reliable and good at what I do. Sutton McPhee always comes back with the story. Sutton McPhee gets to the bottom of what’s going on. Sutton McPhee doesn’t panic or get intimidated. Sutton McPhee doesn’t fall down on the job. At least not until now. Even if the situation wasn’t as drastic as that, I was bored with the schools, and I knew it. And Rob knew it. And I didn’t like that worth a damn.

  Tuesday

  Eighteen

  I struck out with Stephen Ulm the next morning anyway, even without calling ahead and tipping him off. When I showed up at his Tyson’s Corner office, his secretary, an officious woman of about my own age who clearly had an exaggerated opinion of her boss’s (and thus her own) importance, told me he was out of the country for two weeks and pointedly suggested that next time I save myself a trip by making an appointment in advance.

  I took in her black hair, pinned into a perfect chignon, her navy-blue dress with matching shoes and a strand of pearls, and the taut line of her thin lips and decided that women, too, could qualify as pricks. I fought down about six different cutting responses that surfaced in my brain but that would be extremely counterproductive if I had to make a return trip, and thanked her politely for her help. The number one rule from Sutton’s Book of Practical Reporting is: “Try not to piss off the secretaries; they control the access to the people and information you need.”

  At Carl Rivers’s Old Town Alexandria office, I had better luck—after a fashion.

  “He’s in a meeting, I’m afraid,” said his secretary, a woman in her mid-fifties, with gunmetal-gray eyes and hair to match. “And unfortunately, he has a very full schedule today. If you’ll tell me what this is regarding, I can check his calendar to see if he might have some time next week.” She unconsciously reached up to pat her short, fluffed hair and then tugged at the hem of her charcoal-gray suit jacket, taking no chances of a chink in any of her armor.

  “I’m afraid that would be too late,” I told her, still trying to keep my voice neutral and unoffended. I was determined to see him one way or the other, but there was no point in being nasty unless I had to. “Actually,” I went on, “I really think Mr. Rivers will want to see me when he knows why I’m here.”

  I took my reporter’s notebook out and wrote a brief note to Rivers, then folded it twice and gave it to the secretary. “If you’ll take this in to him, I think you’ll be surprised at just how quickly he’ll find time to talk to me.”

  She took the note and began to unfold it.

  “I wouldn’t read it if I were you,” I told her warningly, but with a friendly smile still in place. “It’s very personal, and I think Mr. Rivers would be rather put out if he knew anyone else had seen it. Even you.”

  That earned me a hard glare, but she refolded the note, turned away, and walked to Rivers’s office door, where she knocked and then went in. About ninety seconds later she came back out and held the door open. “Please come in,” she said unhappily. “Mr. Rivers has a few minutes free.”

  If Rivers had been in a meeting, it apparently was with himself. As I walked into his spacious office, furnished in lustrous mahogany and black leather above sand-colored carpeting, I saw him standing alone and looking out the bank of windows behind his desk, his back to me, apparently watching the scene below him on King Street. His hands were at his sides, my note grasped in the right one. He turned from the window and took three steps to the large, ergonomically correct executive’s chair behind his desk, in which he sat down as if he were twenty years older than the fifty-two-year-old man I knew he was. His hair was completely silvered, but that alone wouldn’t have aged him so much. Instead it was the downward turn of the lines of his face, the gun-shy look in his washed-out blue eyes, and the beaten-down angle of his shoulders that added the extra years to his appearance. I had to wonder if he had looked younger before his secretary took my note in for him to read.

  Considering the note’s message, I decided it was pointless to stand on the formality of waiting to be offered a seat, which Rivers seemed in no hurry to do. I seated myself in one of the two guest chairs facing his desk.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said.

  Rivers leaned forward and put the note on the desktop, using both hands to smooth out the wrinkles he had inflicted on it, but touching it gingerly, as if he were afraid it might explode in his hands. He looked up at me.

  “What does this mean?” he asked. On the sheet of paper, I had written: I know about your special financial arrangement with Daniel Brant. We need to talk about it. I had signed with my name and the fact that I was a reporter with the News.

  “It means,” I said, deciding to try to shake him up more by being blunt, “that I know about the money you’ve been giving Daniel Brant, the minister at your church. According to my information, it comes to about—no make that exactly—seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars so far. I know that it’s going into a bank account in the Cayman Islands. I want to know what happens to it after that, what it’s for.”

  Rivers’s face had taken on a gray tinge, as if he weren’t getting enough oxygen. God, I thought, I hope this guy isn’t getting ready to have a heart attack right here.

  If he does, you could withhold CPR until he tells you what he knows.

  I’m not ruling out anything, I thought.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Rivers said finally, sounding as if he was going to strangle on the words. “I don’t know anything about any such money. I haven’t been to that church in months now, so why would I be giving Brant money?”

  “So you’re saying you haven’t given Brant almost three quarters of a million dollars, that you aren’t involved in some sort of deal with him?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  I didn’t believe a word of it. “And you don’t know why four other members of your church were giving him money either?”

  Rivers had looked back down at my note, which he still held against the desktop with his fingertips. At this last question, however, his head came up sharply and he looked at me in what I was convinced was genuine surprise.

  “No,” he said finally, convulsively picking up the note and tearing it into small pieces. “I don’t.” His shoulders had squared as well, and I understood that something about my question had angered him, although I didn’t think his anger was with me.

  This time I believed his denial. He really had not known about Marshall and the others. I suspected his anger was at Daniel Brant for deceiving him so thoroughly and at himself for the disastrous position in which he had placed himself by trusting Brant in the first place.

  “I don’t know where you came up with such wild accusations,” Rivers said abruptly, standing up, “but I want you to leave now. I don’t know anything about this, and we have nothing else to talk about.” He emerged from behind the desk, walked heavily over to open the door to the outer office, and spoke through it.

  “Mrs. Singletary,” he called to his secretary, “this reporter is leaving now.”

  I could see there was nothing else to be gained here at the moment, so I went without putting up a fuss. But when I reached Rivers where he stood at his office door, I handed him one of my cards.

  “If you decide, after thinking about this, that you have some things you want to talk about, please call me.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but he took the card.

  I nodded silently at Mrs. Singletary as I passed her on my way out. She looked somewhat triumphant, but I let it wash right over me, thinking that I probably knew more about her future at the moment than she did.

  Nineteen

  I spent the rest of the day at the office, finishing my draft of the school-board feature
. Later that evening I stood at my living-room windows, watching the car lights go north and south on I-395 two blocks west of my apartment. In my hand was the cordless phone from my kitchen, and I was dialing the number for Peter Kelton, James Kelton’s son, that I had gotten from the operator in the Charlotte area code. The phone rang three times and was answered by a small voice young enough to obscure the child’s gender.

  “Is your father home?” I asked.

  “Just a minute,” the child said, and put the receiver down with a clank, which was followed by calls of “Daddy” and muted adult voices in the background.

  “Hello?” Peter Kelton said a few seconds later.

  “Mr. Kelton?”

  “Yes, speaking.” His voice sounded frazzled, the syllables clipped, as if I had intruded in the middle of something he was busy doing.

  “Mr. Kelton, my name is Sutton McPhee. I apologize for calling you at home at night, but it was the only way I knew to reach you. I’m an education reporter for the Washington, D.C., News.”

  “Oh?” he said, clearly mystified by why I would be calling him.

  “But I’m not calling you as part of my job as a reporter,” I explained. “I’m calling because I think you might be able to help me with a personal matter. My sister, Cara McPhee, was shot to death at a bank ATM here a few days ago. She went to the same church as your father, Mr. Kelton, and although this probably sounds odd, I was hoping that you might be able to help shed some light on any possible connection she might have had with your father.”

  I could tell that my brief explanation for my call had left Kelton even more confused.

  After a few seconds’ silence he said, “Ms…. uh, McPhee, was it?”