by Peggy Bird
Shortly after they parted with a quick kiss in front of the coffee shop, she got a call on her cell. Trace.
“Can’t live without me after only a few minutes?” she said when she picked up.
“Juliet, I have some information about your clients’ problems I think you’ll be interested in.” He was all business in spite of calling her on her cell and not her office phone.
“Okay. Do you want to come here, or should I come to you?”
“I’d like you to bring as many of your clients as you can round up to the bank tomorrow at two. I have three home office officials coming down from Portland to meet with us then.”
“Can you give me a hint what this is about so I can pass it on to my clients?”
“All I can tell you is we may have resolution to the problem.”
“All you can tell me, or all you know?”
His laugh finally moved the conversation from the stiff and formal to the personal. “You know me too well. It’s all I know. My boss says they want to make the announcement to everyone, including bank staff here, at the same time.”
Chapter 18
It took Julie and Heather the rest of the day to get the entire client group notified about the meeting with the bank officials. Not everyone was able to attend, but on Tuesday afternoon, about twenty people were crowded into the bank’s largest conference room well in advance of the appointment time. Promptly at two, Trace and three other people walked in: a tall, middle-aged, African-American man; an older, white-haired man; and a dark-haired woman. The woman’s well-tailored, going-to-court suit, her low-heeled shoes, and her serious looking hairstyle made Julie believe she was looking at a fellow attorney.
Trace began, “Thank you all for coming here on what was short notice. I have three people with me from our home office in Portland. Let me first introduce the man who’s going to run the meeting.” He indicated the African-American man. “This is Jonathon Monroe, the head of the bank’s information technology department. With him is Emma Jacobs, from the legal department, and Henry Alexander, the man I report to. Jon, why don’t I sit down and shut up so these folks can hear from you.” And he did.
Clearly amused by his introduction, Monroe looked around the room, a slight smile on his lips. “Thanks, Trace. Always glad to work with someone who wants to get down to business without a lot of preliminaries. And with a group of people who are motivated enough to move their schedules around to be here.”
From the back of the room came a sotto voce comment from one of the seniors. “Damn straight we’re motivated. It’s our money that was stolen.”
“And that’s why I’m here,” Monroe said. “We’ve spent a lot of time chasing ghosts trying to figure this out. Two different firms specializing in protecting companies from computer hacking have been over our system, at all our branches, with a fine-tooth comb. They found no indications of any hacking anywhere. Ever. They assured us we have one of the best computer security systems in the business. They did a couple updates while they were in there looking around, but they turned up nothing to help us identify what was going on here in Ashland. And only in Ashland.”
A few hands went up; a whole lot of questions were shouted out by other people not willing to wait to be recognized. Monroe held up his hand like a flagger on a road construction project and said, “Please. If you’ll hold your questions until I’m finished, I’d appreciate it. I think what I’m about to say might answer a lot of them.” Julie added a stern look to his suggestion, focused on one or two of her most irritating clients. The hands went down and the noise level followed, albeit reluctantly and with grumbling from more than a few people.
“After we’d done the Sherlock Holmes thing of eliminating the obvious answers first, we started looking for other ways the information could have been stolen. Trace tells me your attorney Ms. Payne has experience in this area, and he relayed a couple suggestions she made that tracked with what we were already beginning to look at. So we were all on the same page.”
“What page was it?” one of the students asked.
“It came down to two possibilities—a bank computer with the information was stolen, or the information itself was transferred onto something and removed from the bank.” Monroe was pacing the floor at this point, focused more on what he was saying than on his audience.
“We’d already eliminated the stolen computer possibility. No computers—laptop or desktop—were missing from this branch. Not now. Not for the past few years. When computers were replaced, the hard drives were destroyed according to bank policy. So that wasn’t it.”
He stopped and looked out at the group. “Then we looked for who would be able to transfer the information onto something and walk out with it. Not very many people have access to all the right information plus the skills to send out the phishing letters and malware to the account holders.”
“So,” Trace asked, “who dunnit?”
Monroe looked at his watch. “I’m expecting someone in a few minutes who’ll answer that question,” he said.
Julie, who was sure the IT head was enjoying this performance, raised her hand. When he recognized her, she asked, “If you won’t tell us who yet, will you tell us how?”
“We were looking for flash drives or an external hard drive taken to a home computer. We found computer traces of suspicious downloads, along with the times and the login of the probable perpetrator once we started looking for that instead of a hacker.”
“Why didn’t the guy Clyde Lindstrom hired find the same information you did?” Trace asked.
Before Monroe could answer the question, there was a knock at the door. Everyone stopped talking. Julie was almost convinced everyone had stopped breathing while Trace went to the door and opened it.
To the visible surprise of everyone except the three Portland bank people, Clyde Lindstrom was standing there.
Henry Alexander waved him into the room. “Please, join us, Clyde.”
Julie saw the man she’d known as a responsible banker and stand-up member of the community scan the room, his eyes resting here and there on specific people. With every face he seemed to recognize, he grew paler, his breath became more labored.
“What’s all this?” Lindstrom asked. “I was told I was to meet with someone from the home office. Something about my retirement.”
Jonathon Monroe introduced himself, adding, “Which is exactly what we’re here to discuss, Mister Lindstrom. Or more accurately, your future. Please, sit down next to Mister Watkins.”
Turning away from the now chalk-white and sweating Clyde Lindstrom, Monroe addressed the group in front of him. “Unfortunately, here is the source of all your—and our—problems. Our former bank manager, Clyde Lindstrom.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I never caused any problems,” Lindstrom said.
Monroe continued as if he had not been interrupted. “Mister Lindstrom and, it turns out, his nephew, are quite skillful with computers. Between the two of them, they stole customers’s account information, sent phony emails and malware to those customers, and, most important, took money from the accounts of some of the people in this room.”
“This is all trumped up to get the bank off the hook because of their bad security system.” Lindstrom’s face was red with anger, his voice indignant. But Julie had enough experience with witnesses to know the indignation was a cover for fear. She could hear it in his voice. She could see it in the way he squirmed in his chair and wiped his hands on his pant legs as if to wipe off his sweaty palms—or his guilt.
“You may have tried to erase them, but we found enough traces of what you did to lead us to you. And we’ll soon have more evidence,” Monroe said to Lindstrom. “The Ashland police are now at your and your nephew’s houses, removing computers and computer-related gear. And before you ask, yes, they have the warrants they need to do it.”
Lindstrom stood and squared his shoulders. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this bullshit from a bunch of peopl
e who’ve shown no appreciation for what I contributed to the organization. Who forced me out in favor of some young punk who’d never even been to Ashland and doesn’t know jack shit about the community. I’m leaving.”
Emma Jacobs stood in his way. “You’re not going anywhere, Mister Lindstrom. We have a lot of questions for you.”
“I’m not saying anything without an attorney.”
“That’s your right.” She looked like she was about to say something else, but Lindstrom interrupted.
Making a move toward Julie he said, “This is all your fault, you slut. You and the punk you’ve been sleeping with. If you hadn’t …
Trace leapt to his feet and grabbed the collar of Lindstrom’s shirt so tightly the older man couldn’t finish his sentence. Only Jonathon Monroe’s intervention kept Trace from what seemed to be his intention of punching the older man. Two other people sprang to Julie’s defense—one senior from her client group and, surprisingly, the college student who had caused her so much heartburn by wanting to gouge the bank for all the money he could. They too went for Lindstrom but were restrained by others. Most of the rest of her clients gathered around her as if to form a protective shield. People were shouting. No one was still seated. It was a meeting gone completely out of control.
In the midst of the melee, a uniformed policeman stepped into the room. “Need assistance here?” he asked.
“I think we do, officer,” Henry Alexander said.
The cop pounded his flashlight on the conference room table like a judge trying to gavel down unruly spectators. Everyone in the room froze in place like a stop-action frame in a cartoon. Fists were raised; mouths open. Shirts were clutched; fingers pointed.
“Now that I have your attention,” the officer said, “I suggest we all calm down so I can do what I was sent to do. I’d like to walk away with only the person I was sent to arrest, not have to call for backup to cuff half the people here for causing a disturbance.” Before he could get his flashlight back on his equipment belt, the room quieted, and most everyone took their seats.
The officer brought a pair of handcuffs from behind his back and approached Clyde Lindstrom. As he cuffed the former bank manager, the officer recited the familiar words of the Miranda warning.
In minutes, the officer and Lindstrom were gone. As those in the room continued to return to order, Trace came to Julie and knelt by her, took her hand, and kissed her knuckles. “You okay, Juliet?” he asked. He rubbed her arm as he spoke.
“I’m fine, thanks.” She shrugged. “Sticks and stones, you know.”
“He threw quite a pointed stick or a pretty large boulder at you, whichever you want to call it.”
“He can’t hurt me, Trace. Not now.” She squeezed his hand. “We better get the meeting over. I imagine you and the folks from Portland have a lot to do before your day’s over.”
“Yeah. I’m afraid dinner tonight is off.”
“I figured.” She also figured half the room was eavesdropping on their conversation, so she let go of his hand and shooed him to the front of the room.
Jonathon Monroe stood. “So, as you can see, we think we have finally solved the mystery. It’ll be up to the D.A. to see if we’re right but I’m confident we have the evidence to successfully press charges.” He paced the floor again as he was speaking, clearly pleased with himself and his people.
“From what we’ve pieced together, Clyde Lindstrom retrieved information on the bank’s customers during the six weeks before he retired. While he was in and out of the office packing up his personal belongings, he may have been trying to get more information to use, although we think all the damage was done with information he collected while he was still working for the bank. He wouldn’t have had access to any of the computers after he retired although he may have been trying to work around that system.”
Julie raised her hand. “The nephew … what was his role?”
“He was the outside investigator whose report said nothing was wrong. And we suspect the nephew also had a hand in sending the malware. He’s more of a computer geek than his uncle is, although Mr. Lindstrom knew his way around the bank’s system thanks to the training courses we paid for him to attend.” There were a few chuckles in the audience before Monroe continued. “We’ll know more about it when we look through their home computers.”
He looked around the room. “Any more questions about the IT end of this?” There were no hands up, only a room full of smiling people. “No? Good. Now I’ll turn the meeting over to my legal colleague for her part of the story.”
Emma Jacobs stood. “I won’t take up too much of your time. I will contact Ms. Payne to work out the details of the settlement the bank will offer you. But here’s the broad outline. We’ve already made whole everyone we know who lost money from an account at this branch. Once we have access to Mister Lindstrom’s computer and can find out exactly what data he has, we’ll be contacting any other people who may have been harmed as you were.”
She pulled a document out of her briefcase. “I have here the list of whom we’ve reimbursed and when, which I’ll leave with your attorney so she can review it and make sure we got everyone who was affected.”
Walking over to Julie she handed her the papers. “One—no, two—last things. I’ll be negotiating a settlement with Ms. Payne to offer you compensation for your time and trouble, and to cover any expenses you may have had such as late fees, overdraft charges, or fees from bounced checks.”
She had her hand on Julie’s shoulder when she added, “Last, we are prepared to cover all your legal expenses.”
From the back of the room came a loud, “Now’s the time to raise your hourly rate, Julie.” It was Julie’s friend, Martha Combes, of course. The laughter following her suggestion relaxed everyone and ended Jacobs’s presentation on a light note.
Trace ended the meeting as he’d begun it, with a short and to-the-point statement. “Thanks for your patience while we figured this out. It took longer than we’d hoped, but it’s finally resolved. The four of us will be around for a while if you have any more questions.”
The floodgates opened. Most of Julie’s clients surrounded Trace and the three bank officials. The few who didn’t hugged Julie, thanked her, and told her how invaluable she’d been in getting the problem taken care of. Emma Jacobs broke away from the scrum at the front of the room to thank Julie for the way she’d handled the case, and teasingly—or maybe not—said if she got tired of a private practice, she might consider working for the bank’s legal department.
Julie waited for a few minutes to see if she could talk to the other two bank officials, but they were so busy with her clients asking questions, saying thanks or whatever, she couldn’t get the attention of either of them. She couldn’t even get Trace’s attention. So she slipped out of the room.
She could barely control her urge to yell, “Yippee!” and do a happy dance as she walked along Main Street. They’d won. She’d won. It was the biggest success she’d had since she’d come to Ashland. This even felt better than the case she’d prosecuted a few years back—a man who’d run a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. The guy in Portland had targeted people who were wealthy, which didn’t make their losses any less important, only less immediately threatening to their health and wellbeing. Her Ashland clients included many who had lost the money to pay for food or rent, who were not able to recover easily from even a $100 hit to their bank account.
It was time to celebrate. She had nothing else on her calendar, and it was close enough to the end of the business day, she felt no guilt about closing up shop. Walking along the street, she called her office to tell Heather the good news.
“Hey, you up for leaving early and having a glass of wine to celebrate?”
Heather squealed her joy. “We won? We really won?”
“You sound like Sally Field. Yes, we won, and they really love us. We got a good settlement for our clients and all our costs covered by the bank. I’m in the mood to buy
my staff a glass of the best wine at her favorite bar.”
“It’ll have to be a quick one. Zane is taking me to meet his parents tonight.”
Zane, with his Harley and nose ring, shaved head and tattooed neck, was her boyfriend. He was also a nurse practitioner, which always amazed Julie.
“Things are that serious, are they? Go home and take your time getting ready. We’ll celebrate another time.”
“Are you sure? I can have a quick drink now and still be ready by six.”
“No, meeting the parents is much more important.”
“Congratulations, Julie. You deserve a celebration. Maybe we should have another party.”
Julie stifled a laugh, remembering the last time she’d followed that particular piece of advice. “We can talk about it in the morning. Good luck meeting the parents.”
She made a few more phone calls only to discover her best woman friend was out of town. Several other friends weren’t answering texts. The one she reached had a performance that night. With Trace tied up at the bank, she was out of people she wanted to celebrate with, so she went home. For the first time in her life, she wished she had a pet. At least a cat or dog would recognize someone who was in a good mood and would party along with her.
In the comfort of her home, she replayed the meeting. Relished the shout out she’d gotten from Jon Monroe, the professional respect Emma Jacobs had shown her—even a job offer, if only in fun. The response she’d gotten from her clients both after the meeting and when Clyde Lindstrom had insulted her. She’d had grateful victims thank her for putting away a bad guy before, but no one had ever ridden to her rescue quite the way it had happened today. And Trace. In front of his boss, her clients, and God, he’d defended her and claimed her as special.
Nothing she’d experienced compared with the events of this day.
The hell with it. Even if she was doing it alone, she was going to celebrate with dinner at her favorite restaurant.