“I don’t think that’s too likely,” Pete said. “The ranch is isolated, so the thief is very unlikely to get back there, and whoever comes back there will immediately become the prime suspect. No, I think it’s likely that the jewels are gone.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. But gone where?”
“I think the thief took them home with him. Or her.”
“But I’m the only one who’s home! Other than Carl and Peggy. I don’t think they did it, and I know for sure I didn’t.”
“Look,” said Pete, “let’s think about the situation from the thief’s point of view. He gets there, he sees the jewels, he gets the idea to steal them. He couldn’t have known about them in advance because no one knew Ann was coming until the last moment. Therefore, he couldn’t have made plans to steal the jewels in advance. Obviously, he couldn’t steal them, put them in a package and mail them to himself or to a rented postbox—he just wouldn’t have had the materials or the stamps in advance. He couldn’t keep them because if the theft was discovered early, everyone and everything would be searched. No, the safest thing would be to steal them, drive home, put them safely away, and then drive back to the ranch before anyone woke up. To make sure no one woke up, he, or she, got some sleeping pills from somewhere and put them in the cider.”
All of a sudden, I saw where he was headed. “I think I’m following you, Pete. We need to look at the car rental receipt, right?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re e-mailing it to me. Let me look at it on my desktop. I never seem to be able to get this cell phone to download attachments properly.” Five minutes later, I came back with the relevant information.
When I got back, Pete said, “There were only two cars out there—yours, and Carl’s and Peggy’s. Didn’t you tell me their car badly needed a tune-up, and you could hear it a mile away?”
“He couldn’t risk taking that car and have it wake up someone. So he must have taken the rental car.”
Pete handed me a slip of paper, on which he had written
C = $60.00 + $0.15M
I didn’t have to remember a whole lot of algebra to remember what it meant—the cost C of the rental car was $60.00 plus the number of miles M I had driven times 15 cents a mile. He took a moment to subtract the tax off the bill.
“The rental car cost was $120.30. That means we have to solve the equation
$120.30 = $60.00 + $0.15M
“The mileage cost comes to $60.30,” he continued, “so the car must have been driven 402 miles.”
(Algebra continued on p. 162)
“It’s about 120 miles from here to the ranch,” I said. “That means that I drove the car about 240 miles. So that leaves 160 miles unaccounted for.”
“Assuming that the thief drove as directly as possible, it would be around 80 miles each way. That looks like it rules out Marty and Sheila—they both live in Santa Barbara. I guess it’s narrowed down to Sue and Myron.”
“I’ll go in and talk to the police right away,” I said. Then I stopped. “Can you give me a lift? My car’s still in the shop.”
We conveyed our suspicions to the local police. They listened to my story but still told me not to leave town. I could understand their reluctance to abandon me as a suspect, and I spent the next few days in agonized uncertainty. However, I received a welcome phone call on Wednesday from Carl and Peggy. The police had kept a discreet eye on Myron Wallace’s home, about 75 miles away to the north (I guess he made junkets into L.A. to check out the restaurants). Myron had an unsavory visitor, a local underworld fence, late Tuesday night, and Ann’s jewelry had been found in the fence’s possession. I didn’t think that dabbling in stolen jewels invalidated his restaurant recommendations, and I still intended to try the ones whose names he had given me.
In a burst of generosity, the police had given credit where credit was due. Ann Robinson had called us full of thanks, and more tangible offers of gratitude. Any reasonable fee and expenses would be immediately paid.
Which led to the question of how reasonable the fee should be. It wasn’t much work for us, and we settled for $3,000 for the fee. However, it has always been a good policy to make sure that the client pays for all expenses relevant to solving the case. Of course, that meant the $120.30 plus tax for the car rental. Plus the $250 deductible on the insurance policy for repairing my car—after all, if I hadn’t been in that accident, Ann might never have gotten her jewelry back.
CHAPTER 6
MESSAGE FROM A CORPSE
It looked like my move from New York to Los Angeles was working out well. There’s something very pleasant about living in a city where the majority of its inhabitants seem to be easygoing, and on any given day the weather is somewhere between tolerable and idyllic, and generally a lot closer to idyllic than tolerable. It never snows, and even though it gets hot, it’s not like the humidity-saturated heat of a New York summer day. On the downside, I still wasn’t reconciled to separating from Lisa, but it was clear that Los Angeles had an abundance of prospects. It was just a matter of finding one that clicked.
In addition, it was clear that Pete and I got along well. Yes, I wouldn’t have minded if he wasn’t so obsessed with sports, but then, sports was an all-consuming passion for a large segment of the population. Also, Pete seemed to have a knack for solving problems of the type that never seemed to arise in New York but kept popping up in L.A. At any rate, when I proposed the idea of formally joining forces, he accepted with alacrity. We had complementary talents, and we felt that between us we could probably do a pretty good job of cutting whatever Gordian knot we encountered. So we had some business cards printed up, and we were in business.
It was understood that Pete’s talents did not include hustling up potential clients. He’s not antisocial, but he doesn’t realize that in order to get a few clients, it is necessary to meet a lot of people. That means accepting a lot of invitations. That doesn’t bother me, as I like going to parties. And so I found myself at a party in Beverly Hills. I wasn’t exactly trolling for clients, but you have to be alert to opportunities.
In this line of work, opportunities don’t so much knock as talk, and so you have to get in the habit of being a good listener. I make it a point to try to listen, at least occasionally, when an individual rambles on interminably about events in his or her life. So I did a good job of listening when Alma Steadman, a wealthy widow I met at this party, told me about her problems. These included having to deal with an executive in her husband’s organization who was possibly trying to defraud the company, a son who kept fooling around with actresses rather than trying to find a nice girl, and her widowed sister from Vail who had moved into her Beverly Hills mansion and kept trying to steal her (Alma’s) boyfriends. After about fifteen minutes, I gave her our business card, smiled sweetly, and went off to try to make other acquaintances.
Pete was out the next day, and so I happened to be on duty when the phone rang. I picked it up.
“Lennox and Carmichael, Investigations.” We had decided to put the Lennox first because it sounds better if the two-syllable name comes before the three-syllable name, especially when the accent of the three-syllable name is on the first syllable.
“Good morning.” A slightly nervous female voice that I thought I recognized. “Could I speak to Mr. Carmichael?”
“Speaking.” Terse makes you sound like a detective.
“Oh, hello. This is Alma Steadman. You may remember we met at the O’Connor party yesterday.”
“I do, indeed. What can we do for you, Mrs. Steadman?”
She hesitated. People are always a little nervous at first with a detective. Then she took the plunge. “I believe I’ve been robbed, Mr. Carmichael.”
“Would you like to come talk to us, Mrs. Steadman?”
“Do you suppose you could come here instead?”
“Certainly. What time would be convenient?”
“How about tomorrow at eleven?”
“That’s fine. Would you c
are to give me a preliminary idea of what your problem is?”
“There’s about $400,000—I’m sorry, I have to go.” She hung up.
Pete arrived home later that afternoon. My conversation with Alma Steadman had been so brief that I was able to repeat it to him practically verbatim.
“You know, Freddy,” he remarked immediately, “there was one very unusual thing about that phone conversation.”
It was important to let him know he wasn’t dealing with someone who just got out of kindergarten. “You mean the way the conversation ended. Obviously someone whom she suspected was involved had come into the room,” I finished smugly.
“I mean besides that. She didn’t say, ‘I’ve been robbed.’ She said ‘I believe I’ve been robbed.’ Now, most of the time, when you’ve been robbed, you know it.”
“Maybe she bought a painting that she thought was genuine, and it turned out to be a forgery. Or fake jewelry.”
“Maybe.” He looked a little dubious. “But why would she have ended the phone conversation so abruptly? Oh well, we’ll find out tomorrow.” He wandered over to the TV set and started looking at a random baseball game.
No question, Pete may have had the brains to be a detective, but the heart and soul were a little bit lacking. I tried to recall what she had told me about her problems.
George Wilson was her husband’s right-hand man, and vice president in charge of finance for her husband. George and Harry Steadman had gone to Vanderbilt together. George worked for some life insurance firm, but Harry had dangled stock options in front of George. Stock options are tremendous incentives, and they had pried George loose from the life insurance firm, which I gathered was located somewhere in the mid-South. I’m a little hazy on states in that neck of the woods because, let’s face it, most of what happens in the U.S.A. happens in the really big cities, and there aren’t many in that area.
Al Steadman was their only son. He had some sort of executive position that allowed him to do a playboy number with the starlets who frequent Beverly Hills and Hollywood. He had actually done more than a playboy number with one named Vicki Ventana. Vicki was one of those actress types who pop up briefly, get a small but continuing role in a TV series, and then find Mr. Right and start a family. Mr. Right had been Al Steadman, at least until they got divorced.
Gwen Turner, Alma Steadman’s sister, had accepted Alma’s offer to live with her in Beverly Hills. Gwen was displaying an unseemly interest in Vaughn Ellis, Alma’s latest beau. This hadn’t got her kicked out of the house—yet—but the relationship between the siblings was strained, though not to the point of fraying completely.
I decided to offer these capsule commentaries to Pete if he was interested. He wasn’t. I was seething a little but not as much as I might have been because a no-hitter was in progress, and it’s hard to pry Pete away from the tube in such situations. I sat stoically through a hitless fifth, sixth, and seventh inning and then departed. I’m not even sure Pete noticed. I just hoped he’d generate some interest after eleven tomorrow, when it might actually matter.
At eleven the next morning, we were greeted at the door by a butler who told us that madam was waiting for us in the den. He escorted us to its door and exited discreetly. We knocked.
Nothing happened. We knocked again. Still no answer. “Mrs. Steadman?” I asked, feeling that I should be the one to speak, as she might recognize my voice. Still no answer.
The door to the room was open a fraction. “I guess we’re just supposed to go in,” Pete said. We entered a living room with a collection of elegant impressionist art works, rich leather sofas, bookcases, and a beautiful bar. It was, however, the outsized mahogany desk in the center that caught and held our attention. Behind the desk was a sumptuous leather chair. Leaning forward in the chair, her head on the desk, was Alma Steadman. It was not necessary to be a homicide expert to tell that Alma Steadman was dead, for there was a pool of blood large enough to satisfy a school of piranhas and an indentation in her head that had “blunt instrument” written all over it.
I hadn’t had a whole lot of experience with death, but I could tell from the gagging sound behind me that Pete had even less experience with death than I did. His eyes wide, his hand covering his mouth, Pete was throwing up.
I took charge. “Don’t touch anything!” I snapped at Pete. I took out my cell phone and called the Beverly Hills police. There’s an app for that. Within three minutes, a squad car was at the door, and a minute later we were talking to a Lieutenant Brad Gillette.
Lieutenant Gillette was bald, in his late thirties, and extremely efficient. I noted that he could have used the product with which his name was closely associated, for he badly needed a shave. Contrary to what I had always read about the enthusiasm of the members of the homicide squad for private detectives, it didn’t take much to convince Lieutenant Gillette to accept our story that we had been called in to consult about a theft.
Shortly thereafter, a medical examiner arrived. He was somewhat older than Gillette, maybe in his early fifties, and was extremely clean-shaven. He was the first to touch the corpse, excluding the murderer.
“What’s this?” he said, as he lifted Alma Steadman’s blood-soaked head from the table. Ugh.
Alma Steadman had slumped forward on top of a thick 8½ by 11 manila envelope, on which was written “For Lennox & Carmichael.” That was written in ink, but it was not the only thing on the envelope. Outlined in red was a large, bloody “V.” I thought that, if this got to the press (which everything does nowadays), maybe it wouldn’t be the best of publicity for Lennox & Carmichael, but then I realized that there’s no publicity like the publicity that surrounds a murder investigation.
The palm of Alma Steadman’s right hand was smeared in blood, but the fingers were clean, with the exception of the tip of her index finger, which was covered with blood. Even a seven-year-old could have made the obvious deduction that she had dipped her finger in blood to scrawl that last letter and then expired.
“I believe I’ll look at this,” Gillette drawled. “It might be evidence.” Pete and I conferred briefly and put in a demurrer.
“It’s addressed to us,” I stated emphatically. “You can’t be certain until you open it that it’s evidence, and we think we’re entitled to look at it while you’re opening it. If you like, I can contact a lawyer who would know for sure, but that would almost certainly delay things, and you probably don’t want that.” Rule 1—always be cooperative with the police, especially if it doesn’t cost you anything, but citizens have rights and you don’t want to give up those rights, even if you don’t always know exactly what they are. That’s why we have lawyers.
Besides, it almost certainly was evidence, and then Gillette would undoubtedly hang onto it.
Gillette hesitated and then agreed. He opened it. There was a check to us for $5,000 marked “retainer,” and a lot of bank statements relating to the Alma Steadman Trust. There was also a scribbled note on which was written, “Al says 6% per year.”
We took a look at the statements. On January 1, 2004, Alma Steadman’s account showed a balance of $2 million—a lot more zeroes west of the decimal point than on my bank account. There were a whole lot of deposits and withdrawals, but ten years later, on January 1, 2014, the balance was $3,197,385. This is not chopped liver.
Gillette had an app for that as well and was doing some calculations on his cell phone. “Ten years at 6% per year is 60%. Sixty percent of $2 million is $1,200,000. The account should total around $3,200,000, and that’s where it is. I don’t see why she called you in.” He rooted around the statements. “Unless there are a lot of unauthorized withdrawals here.”
I took a look at the statements. There were certainly a bunch of withdrawals, but there were many deposits as well. It would take some checking, but I didn’t think I’d find any major discrepancies—certainly not $400,000 worth.
All of a sudden it hit me. There were 10 years’ worth of monthly statements. Notations on them we
re made in handwriting that certainly looked the same as the handwriting on the scribbled note. “Unauthorized withdrawals don’t figure to be the problem,” I stated. “It seems pretty clear that she went over her statements with a fine-toothed comb every month. She’d spot an unauthorized withdrawal in a minute. Incidentally, getting 6% a year in a recessionary interest climate is pretty impressive.”
Pete had been strangely (for Pete) silent. All of a sudden he spoke up. “I think I know what happened,” he said.
Gillette and I looked at him. “Banks don’t pay simple interest; they pay compound interest,” Pete explained. I could have kicked myself. Of course! “If the deposits and withdrawals even out, at the end of the first year she would have made 6% on $2 million, which is $120,000, assuming that it was compounded annually. Her balance at the end of the first year should have been $2,120,000. The next year, she would have made 6% on $2,120,000, which is about $127,200. Compound interest means that not only does the amount you deposit, the principal, earn interest, but the interest that you make also earns interest.”
“Could it make that large a difference?” Gillette asked.
(Compound interest continued on p. 168)
Pete nodded. “Ten years of 6% simple interest would be a return of 60%, as you calculated. But I just checked with an app on my smart phone, and 10 years of 6% compounded annually gives a return of about 79%, and even more if it is compounded more frequently. Anyway, that’s a difference of 19%, and 19% on $2 million comes to …”
“About $400,000!” I said enthusiastically. “That explains why she said that she believed she’d been robbed of about $400,000. All we have to do is find out who arranged for the money to be transferred, and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts it’s her son, Al. After all, she mentions that it was Al who said it was 6% annually. Maybe he thought he could sneak the difference between simple and compound interest past her. Maybe he also thought she’d be so delighted with 6% in the current business climate that she wouldn’t notice.”
L.A. Math: Romance, Crime, and Mathematics in the City of Angels Page 7