The Fundamentals of Murder (Davey Goldman Series Book 2)

by Love, William F.

  “I really do need to know what this is regarding, Mr. Goldman,” said Priscilla. This lady was as cool and in control as Nancy was harried and disorganized. And about a quarter as pretty, which was fine by me. I’d had about all the prettiness I could stand — at least for a while.

  At that, in her severely tailored suit, Priscilla fit the decor nicely. The Commercial Accounts department of Mid-City National Bank took up the whole eighth floor of a modernist skyscraper on Sixth, just south of the Park.

  The reception room was subdued and sophisticated, with plenty of abstract art on the walls overlooking several well-padded chairs. Two of the latter were currently occupied by expensively garbed old geezers who looked like their pacemakers needed repairs. I watched them nervously out of the corner of an eye, hoping I remembered enough CPR to do the honors in case either or both collapsed.

  Worried about the prospect of a life-threatening emergency, I must have made a face, because Miss Moran said icily, “I have to ask that, Mr. Goldman. It’s my job.”

  “Sorry. That frown wasn’t for you. I just had an unpleasant thought.” She responded with a tentative smile that did wonders for her appearance.

  I smiled back. “Just tell Mr. Stubbs it’s the gentleman that I.I. Schwartz spoke to him about.”

  As Priscilla picked up the phone to call Stubbs, I said a quick prayer to the gods of Wall Street that Ike hadn’t forgotten to call Stubbs. Ike Schwartz, a charter member of the Irregulars, is probably my closest friend and has been, ever since both of us were toddlers down on Delancey Street.

  I’d called him the night before, right after Regan and I decided I needed to talk to Stubbs. As a partner in a Big Six accounting firm, he knows lots of bankers. Turned out Ike and Stubbs were racquetball buddies, a break for me.

  “Be glad to put in a good word for you, Davey. Or should I tell him the truth?” Ike’s always had a cruel sense of humor. But he soon got serious and told me some things.

  “Lee’s an okay guy, Davey. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He does have a temper, though. I heard he had some nasty things to say about Laura Penniston when she threw him over for Bob Theodore. And I can remember when he —”

  “Hold it! Did I hear you right? Stubbs used to date the woman?”

  “Sure, Davey. Hot and heavy, up till a year or two ago. He’d set her up in business with the original loan. Then when she dropped him and started dating that hot accountant, Stubbs was furious. But she apparently calmed him down. I can tell you this: he was as upset at her death as anyone. Even flew out to Wichita for the funeral.

  “One thing, though. For God’s sake, don’t try any of your so-called humor on him. Guy’s got no sense of humor whatsoever. Typical banker.” (This from an accountant.) “And don’t use his first name, which is Marion. He hates it.” Ike promised to give Stubbs a call first thing and give me a good intro.

  Waiting for Priscilla Moran to reach Stubbs, I took a closer look at the art on the walls, especially the largest and most abstract one. I decided it was either a three-legged octopus or a portrait of a badly decayed Elizabeth Taylor.

  I was still studying it when a man in a suit a shade darker than mine came bustling into the room. Lantern-jawed, balding and athletic-looking, he was half a foot shorter than me but compensated with vigor and sparkle.

  He scoped the room quickly, located me and gave me an FDR smile: chin up, teeth shining. All he lacked was the cigarette holder.

  “Mr. Goldman? Any friend of Ike Schwartz is a friend of mine!” I gave him my hand and tried not to wince as he crushed it. “I’m Lee Stubbs! Come on back!”

  I followed the banker into a large, oak-paneled office with some large plants in the corners and three more examples of someone’s idea of art on the walls. These three seemed to run to differently tinted squares of various sizes. The largest was a series of blue rhombuses (rhombi?) running off to the horizon, tilting westward as they did. Stepping closer, I checked the title. “Untitled.” Good choice.

  “Like it?” Stubbs said to my back.

  “Oh, yeah!” I enthused. “I’m really into baseball!”

  “Oh?” he said doubtfully, squinting at it through new eyes. “Ah, yes, I can see what you mean. It really is a baseball motif, isn’t it?” He waved for me to sit in the chair in front of his desk. I obeyed but, feet planted wide, hands behind his back, Stubbs didn’t take his eyes off the picture.

  “Yes, I definitely see what you mean,” he went on in a more assured tone, nodding at it. “I see what you mean — the diamonds and all. Yes, definitely baseball. I wonder why I never saw it before.”

  I raised my eyebrows. It was nice to finally find someone agreeable. But I sent myself a memo: no leading questions with this guy. I could wind up with lots of information all fed from me to him right back to me.

  Stubbs got over his frenzy of baseball fever and down to business.

  “Well,” he said, settling in behind his desk. “Ike tells me you’re a private detective. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m just looking for information about a Steven Sarnoff. I gather he was a friend of Miss Penniston’s and a customer of yours. “

  Stubbs frowned, closed his eyes, then nodded abruptly. “Yep, that’s right. I believe he owns Models for Hire. Yes. May I ask why you want to know?”

  “Of course. I’m working with the lawyer who’s defending the Strangler John suspect, this guy, Fanning. We believe he’s innocent, so I’m investigating the four deaths, concentrating for the moment on Miss Penniston. I have reason to think Mr. Sarnoff may know something about it and I’d like to talk with him.”

  “Fair enough, Davey. But just how does he fit in?”

  “I’m not even sure he does, Lee. But it looks like he may have been stealing from Penniston Associates. Laura had just found out about it and was plenty hot. She got a phone call from someone just hours before her death. She went out, apparently to meet whoever called her; and her body was found next morning. I’m pretty sure that call was from Sarnoff.”

  The banker’s eyebrows went up. “Wow! Is that right? Then why the hell aren’t the police looking for him?”

  I nodded. “Well might you wonder. They’re not looking for him because they’ve never heard of him. And they haven’t heard of him because they’re so sure they’ve got the murderer in jail, they’re not asking any questions. As I told you, I don’t think Fanning did it. So I’m looking for Sarnoff. And I hope you can help me.”

  Stubbs nodded soberly. “Sure. I’ll tell you what I can. What do you want to know?”

  I leaned forward. “First of all, do you know Sarnoff? I mean, personally.”

  “Nope. Not personally or any other way. Never met the man.” I must have winced, because Stubbs added, “Sorry about that.”

  “But he’s a depositor in your institution, isn’t he?” I mentally shook my head. Now I was starting to sound like a banker. It was time to retire the dark suit. Permanently.

  “Well, yes he is,” Stubbs was sounding even more doubtful. “Or rather, not exactly. I mean, his company is, Models for Hire, but I don’t think he is. Just a minute.” He pushed a button on his desk and waited. In a few seconds a tall, thin brunette with a bad overbite stuck her head in the door. Stubbs looked up, gave a brief smile. “Cindy, get me the Models for Hire file, will you? My desk file and the credit file, if you would.”

  Cindy disappeared.

  “The file will show,” Stubbs went on, “but I don’t think we have anything personally from Mr. Sarnoff. Nope. I don’t think so.” His voice trailed off. He glanced at me, at the baseball picture, and back at me. Possibly he was beginning to realize he’d been had. He seemed to be examining that possibility from all angles when Cindy returned, bearing a large folder.

  “Here’s your desk file, Mr. Stubbs. I’ll go over to Credit and get the credit file.” She left. Lee leaned forward and started paging through the file.

  “I keep some information on my accounts with my secretary so it’s close
at hand,” he said, repeatedly licking a finger as he paged. “Copies of memos, things like that. Let’s see. Models for Hire, Models for Hire. … Ah, here it is. Now let’s see what we’ve got.” He squinted and turned more pages.

  He gave me a quick glance. “I’m just seeing if we have any memos describing his having come in here. Or our going to him. Umm, it doesn’t appear like it. Seems the only one we can be sure of who knew him was Sandy.” Stubbs blushed and cleared his throat. “That’s, er, Sandra Norville, the office manager for Penniston Associates. According to this, she opened the account and brought the resolution and sig cards originally.”

  “Uh, sig cards…?”

  “That’s signature cards, sorry.”

  “May I see?”

  Getting his nod, I got up and came around the desk and read over his shoulder. The memo started with the date — April thirteenth, a year and a half earlier — and the initials MLS. I read the short memo. For all the good it did me. Here’s exactly what it said:

  Opened a/c for MODELS FOR HIRE this day. S. Norville of the related a/c, PENNISTON ASSOCIATES, INC., brt. in sig. cards and res. Res. signed by Steven Sarnoff, Secy. Op. dep. of $2000 per check of PAI, signed by L. Penniston, Pres. Ave. bals. will be low 5-figures. PAI will be making disbursements into the a/c moly, in pymt for modeling fees. Res. does not authorize loans.

  “Is there a glossary?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, we don’t need —” Stubbs stopped, looked at me and laughed. “Sorry. I suppose it is kind of incomprehensible to a non-banker, Dave. A/c means ‘account,’ res is ‘resolution.’ And there’s lots of other abbreviations. What it says, Dave, is that Sandy had Sarnoff fill out some signature cards and a resolution form. Then Laura gave Sandy a check for two thousand dollars to bring here and open the account. That’s the minimum balance for a small commercial account.” Stubbs paused to take another squint at the memo.

  “Sandy told me Penniston pays its models monthly, said Models for Hire would now be a conduit for the fees. See, Models for Hire is just an affiliate. Laura just wanted to save some taxes. We’ve never had any reason to question it. It doesn’t borrow — you’ll notice, the last line of the memo says the corporate resolution didn’t authorize any loans — so we didn’t bother to run a credit check. And the account’s never overdrawn. I get a daily overdraft list, and Models for Hire’s never been on it.”

  Cindy returned with another folder as large as the first but with a shinier cover. “Ah, the credit file,” said Stubbs. “Thank you, Cindy.”

  “Did you want the statistical file?” she asked.

  Stubbs glanced at me, got no answer there, and shrugged.

  “No, that’s all, Cindy.” He looked at the file, fingered the cover and started to open it. His eyes suddenly widened. “Cindy!”

  She reappeared, eyebrows raised.

  “This says Closed!”

  “That’s because the account closed,” Cindy said. “Didn’t you know about it, Mr. Stubbs?”

  “No!” Stubbs was aggrieved. He looked down. “Closed November sixth. That’s what? A week ago yesterday? Last Monday. What’s going on, Cindy? Why wasn’t I told?”

  I looked back and forth from Stubbs to the secretary. Something was haywire. And I had a strong feeling it had something — maybe a lot — to do with Laura Penniston’s murder.

  “Why didn’t I tell you?” Cindy said in hurt tones. “It was only an account closing. I didn’t know that you —”

  “Okay, okay, Stubbs interrupted, raising a hand. “You’re right. But stick around a minute, would you, Cin?” He spun in his chair to face the computer on his credenza. “Excuse me, Dave,” he muttered, playing with the keys, getting a display on the screen in front of him. “This is strange. I need to see what’s…”

  His voice trailed off as he studied the tube. He tapped keys, and words and numbers began running down the screen. He watched intently, still manipulating the keys, finally seeming to get the display he wanted.

  “Here we go,” he said. “Look at this, Dave. You too, Cin.”

  Cindy and I obligingly came around behind the desk and looked at the screen over his shoulder. He looked up at me inquiringly. I shook my head and shrugged helplessly. He smiled and nodded.

  “Okay, let me explain it, Dave. This is the Models for Hire account history. See those numbers? This is a running total of what the company kept in the account.” Stubbs pushed a key and produced a new display. I was beginning to catch on. That was a bank statement on the screen before us, a little like the one I get every month. Every transaction on it changed the balance in the right-hand column.

  Models for Hire, I soon saw, had been a very active account. It had opened with two thousand dollars nineteen months earlier and showed a deposit every month since in amounts ranging from ten to forty thousand dollars. The withdrawals were more numerous, and in smaller amounts. The account balance had never quite reached fifty thousand. The average seemed to be more like ten. Just as I was starting to catch on, Stubbs caught the biggie.

  “Cindy!” he erupted, jabbing his finger at the screen. “Can this be right? Look at all those ATM withdrawals!” His tone had the sound of someone who’d just discovered he’d come to work without pants on.

  I shifted a little so Cindy could move in. I was finding I didn’t care for her perfume any more than her teeth.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Stubbs,” she said, helplessly staring at the screen. She sounded as worried as he did.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, looking from one to the other. I got no answer. The crisis was apparently too acute to waste time on stupid questions from non-bankers.

  Stubbs was shaking his head. “I can’t understand this.”

  “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” I demanded. “And, while you’re at it, what’s ATM?”

  Stubbs’s eyes remained glued to the screen. “Uh, I guess you better go get me the stat file, Cindy.” She left. The banker finally answered my question, his eyes still glued to the screen.

  “ATMs, Dave, are those machines that people get money out of. Automated Teller Machines. We call ours Money Depots. You’ve surely seen them around.”

  His next sentence was barely audible. “But what’s this account doing with all those damn transactions? Sandy told me usage would be minimal!”

  I was catching on. Under the column reading DR (which apparently meant “withdrawals”), the entries seemed to break into two categories. About half of them had the symbol DD beside them, which, Stubbs explained, meant “checks.” (How you get DD out of checks and DR out of withdrawals was something I decided I didn’t really want to know.) The figures under DD were in amounts from a few hundred up to a couple of thousand dollars.

  Then there were the entries with an MD. Those, I gathered, meant “Money Depot.” Every one of those entries was for $300, as far as I could tell, and there were lots of them — six or eight a week. And I began to notice another pattern: they came in pairs. That is, any day there was an MD, there were always two. Never one, never three.

  Stubbs spun his chair back around to his desk, a sheen of perspiration on his face.

  “This isn’t right,” he muttered. He sat for a minute biting his lip, staring at nothing. Suddenly he grabbed the phone and jerkily punched in a number. He drummed his fingers on the desk and threw me a glance.

  “I’m getting Operations.” Which told me nothing, but at least he hadn’t forgotten I was in the room.

  “Why are they all three hundred dollars?” I asked. “And always two a day?”

  Stubbs nodded, opened his mouth to answer, then abruptly raised a finger. He spoke into the receiver. “Uh, yeah. Lee Stubbs in Commercial Accounts. Joe around?”

  Stubbs tilted his head to get my eye, swiveling the receiver so he could speak around it. “Simple, Dave. Our machines are programmed not to give out more than three hundred dollars at a time. And to prevent theft, we don’t permit any one account to take money out of a Money Depot more than twice
in one day. It looks like this guy —” He put the finger up again, and moved the receiver to his mouth.

  “Joe! Look, buddy, can you get me a complete account workup and summary on this account number?” He spun to the screen. “Uh, here we are. Seven, nine, double-oh, four, seven, three. “What? Oh, ‘Models for Hire’… Yeah, right. Anything else you need besides the account number, Joe? Good. How soon can I have it? … Uh, tell you what, Joe. Just call it over, will you? Thanks. Get back to me in the next five minutes and I buy you lunch, okay? … Hell yes, you get to pick the place. Thanks a million, Joe.”

  Stubbs pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “Hot in here,” he informed me. “That was Joe Todd. Good guy. We’ll have the account info shortly. Meanwhile, I’ll fill you in on what’s going on.”

  I grinned. “I can tell something’s going on.”

  The banker didn’t smile back. “Well, I don’t know. It may be okay. I hope it’s okay. Or my ass could be in a sizable sling.

  “See, when Sarnoff opened that account, he asked for an ATM card — our ‘Depot Ticket,’ we call it. So I —”

  “Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I thought you said you never met the guy.”

  “Yeah, right, I haven’t. All our dealings have been through Sandy — that’s Sandra Norville. The office manager at Penniston. Or was — till last week.

  “Anyway, shortly after the account opened, a year and a half ago, Sandy called and said Models for Hire would be needing cash at odd times — something about the models needing taxi fare or some damn thing. I don’t recall. I do recall that she assured me it’d be seldom and for small amounts of money. Nothing like this!” He waved his hand at the computer like the whole thing was its fault.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s got to be a glitch.” He wiped his forehead again. It was a lot of forehead to wipe — most of his head, in fact.

  “I guess I should have met the guy — Sarnoff. I told Sandy to set up a lunch or something, but she never did.” His tone implied it was all Sandy’s fault. I wished he’d settle on just who the guilty party was. The phone rang. Stubbs grabbed it.