by Diane Kelly
“Good afternoon to you, too.” I stepped up to the counter. “Is Dr. Maju available?”
“I’ll check.” Kelsey picked up her phone, punched a button, and spoke into the receiver. “Tara Holloway is here. Do you have time to speak with her?” She listened for a moment. “Great. I’ll send her back.” She returned the phone to the cradle and looked back up at me. “Room three.”
“Thanks.”
I stepped through the door that led back to the examination rooms. The door to room 3 stood open. Ajay sat on a rolling stool inside, entering patient data into a computer. He wore his usual Converse high-tops and jeans. When I stepped into the doorway, he looked up and stood, the gap in his white lab coat revealing a T-shirt with a Wonder Woman graphic.
“Hey, Tara.” Though Ajay smiled in greeting, his eyes remained hard and distant. He looked as tired and upset as I felt. No doubt he’d had trouble sleeping, too.
“Hey, yourself.”
I closed the door behind me and hopped up onto the crinkly paper of the exam table. “I’m assuming Christina told you about the case she and Nick are working?”
“The cartel?” Ajay said. “Yes, she did. It’s eating me alive. I’ve been popping Tums nonstop. I’ve got so much chalk in me I could poop drywall.”
I could definitely relate. “I flavored my coffee with Pepto-Bismol this morning.” It was true. And surprisingly, not nearly as disgusting as it sounds. “Can I trust you with a secret?”
He rolled his weary eyes. “Of course. I’m a doctor, remember? HIPAA requires me to keep my mouth shut so I’ve had lots of practice keeping secrets.”
“Point taken.” I leaned toward him and kept my voice low. “Nick took a secret phone with him. He contacted me this morning.”
Ajay’s face brightened. “So they’re all right?”
I nodded, pulled my covert phone out of my purse, and held it out so Ajay could read the screen.
His shoulders relaxed. He looked up and put his palms together as if in prayer. “Thanks be to Vishnu.”
Not to be outdone or to create jealousy between the gods, I looked up and issued a silent prayer of thanks to Jesus. While I had His attention, I asked for His continued protection. I’d already interrupted the Big Guy’s morning. Might as well go for broke, right?
Ajay looked me over. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“So do you.”
“Touché. I can prescribe a sleeping aid if you’d like.”
Though I appreciated the offer, I declined, thinking about that pill-covered coffin at the Unic. Rather than pop a pill, I’d self-medicate with the help of el doctor José Cuervo and a magical lime-flavored elixir.
As I stood to go, Ajay stepped toward me and gave me a long, warm hug.
“Thanks for coming by,” he said. “You made me feel a lot better.”
We chuckled at the irony.
When he released me, I gave him a smile. “I’ll send you a bill for my services.”
He opened the door for me. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything else?”
“Of course.”
He handed me a green lollipop from a plastic bowl on the counter. “Good girl.”
* * *
After leaving the emergency clinic, I visited one more victim, an eighty-seven-year-old man named Freddie Babcock who lived alone in an older but well-maintained condominium northeast of downtown. His face was lined with age, but contained more laugh lines than worry lines, a sign of a life well lived. His hair, though stark white, remained thick and curly. He walked with one of those four-pronged canes, but managed to get around pretty well.
As I entered his place, my eyes spotted a sandwich sitting on a plate on his kitchen table. It had one bite taken out of the top left corner. Looked like he’d been just sitting down to lunch when I arrived. “I can come back in a half hour if you’d like.”
“No, no,” Freddie said, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s not a problem at all. You know, I make a mean pimento cheese sandwich. Why don’t I make one for you and you can join me?”
“Thanks,” I said. “But we’re not permitted to accept anything of value from a taxpayer.”
“The sandwich would cost only forty-seven cents to make,” he said, disappointment registering on his face. “That’s hardly anything.”
I realized the man might be less interested in feeding me and more interested in simply having some companionship. “How about I run to that Chinese place across the street and get something for myself to bring back here?”
His mouth spread in a smile. “Now you’re talkin’.”
I returned in less than five minutes with a container of sautéed snow peas, an egg roll, a bottled water, and three fortune cookies. The counter clerk had thrown in a couple extra when I’d slid a tip into his jar.
Freddie had set me a place at his table.
“This is nice,” he said, raising his glass of tea as if in toast. “Usually the only company I have is my TV set.”
While we ate our lunch, I asked him the same questions I’d asked Roy Larabee and Jessica Weiss.
Though Freddie had once misplaced his license for a couple of weeks, he’d eventually found it in his toolbox. He gestured to his windows, which bore a silvery lining. “I’d been using it to get the bubbles out of the thermal window tint. I guess I’d accidentally tossed it into the box along with my cutter when I was finished.”
“Understandable,” I said. “Who’s your television and Internet provider?”
“AT&T,” he said.
Darn. There went my theory about the Internet installers. No sense calling Roy Larabee about it now.
I sighed inwardly. Again, my questions had proved fruitless. Maybe I was asking the wrong questions. Problem was, I didn’t know what other questions to ask.
When we finished our lunch, I handed Freddie one of the fortune cookies and opened one of the others for myself. “What’s your fortune say?” I asked.
“A fool and his money are soon parted.” He shook his head. “They got that right. I feel so stupid for giving out my bank information. My son wants to put me in a home!”
“Don’t feel bad,” I told him. “A lot of people were taken in by this scam. Many of them much younger than you.”
His gaze moved to the slip of white paper in my hand. “How about yours?”
“Conquer your fears or they will conquer you.” This fortune hit home. My fears about Nick and Christina were costing me sleep and making it difficult for me to concentrate at work. I wished I could be put into a medically induced coma until they returned. I wasn’t sure how much more worrying I could take before I’d develop an ulcer.
I cracked open the third cookie, handing half of it to Freddie to eat. The fortune inside said He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
Great. Just when I’d been trying to set aside those niggling fears about El Cuchillo, this darn fortune dredged up the horrifying thoughts all over again.
“You play cards?” Freddie asked me, pushing his plate aside and retrieving a deck from a basket on the table.
The last time I could remember playing cards was with Christina when we’d been working an undercover gig in a crack house a year ago. Good times. “I don’t play often,” I admitted. Still, I didn’t want to leave Freddie disappointed. “But a game or two could be fun. Just promise you won’t embarrass me too much.”
We played fifteen hands of blackjack. Freddie beat me each time.
I gave him a smile. “What part of ‘don’t embarrass me too much’ did you not understand?”
Freddie chuckled. “You need to get back to work?”
“Yes, unfortunately. If word got out that I was spending my afternoons playing cards with an attractive older man my boss would can me.”
He walked me to the door, one hand on his cane and the other on the doorjamb as I turned around on his porch.
“I’ll let you know if we find anything out.”
He nodded. “I’d appreciate th
at. You take care now, Miss Holloway.”
What a nice guy. He reminded me of my granddad. I hoped I’d get to the bottom of things, not only because it was my job and would be another successfully closed case for my upcoming performance review, but for Freddie’s sake, as well. Nobody should take advantage of such a nice guy.
I headed next to visit some of the banks where the withdrawal had been made.
The manager of the first bank was a tall, narrow woman with dark hair cut in a short, layered style. She waved for me to follow her. “This way.”
As we walked past her assistant, she asked the young man to summon the teller who had handled the bogus withdrawal. He nodded and picked up his phone as we continued on into the manager’s office. After I stepped inside, she closed the door behind me.
As the woman took a seat behind her desk, I sat down in one of the sturdy chairs in front of it. She turned her computer monitor sideways on her desk so that we could both view it. “Our security team was able to pinpoint the car on the security video.”
“Great!” If I could get a license plate number, this case could be solved in short order and I could move on to the next case in my stack.
The woman clicked a button on her keyboard to start the video. The clip playing on the screen showed a pickup truck with tinted windows pulling into the farthest drive-thru lane. No doubt the thief had picked that particular lane because it would be the easiest to escape from should the teller become suspicious. The truck was either black or dark blue. It was hard to tell for certain given the poor quality of the video. It was also difficult to tell the age of the truck given that models for pickups tended to vary much less than cars. The pickups being built today looked pretty much the same as those built even eight to ten years prior.
My eyes moved to the truck’s bumper. Though Texas law required all vehicles registered in the state to bear license plates on both the front and back bumpers, this truck had no plate on the front. Damn. With any luck, there’d be one on the back. But given that it appeared the front one had been removed, I had my doubts.
As the driver’s window rolled down, a man’s face appeared. He was clearly not Roy Larabee, though, truth be told, it was hard to say what he looked like with much certainty. He sported one of those hats with the hanging flaps on the sides and back to keep the sun off his neck. The flaps covered part of his cheeks, making it difficult to determine exactly how wide his face was or its shape. He’d pulled the brim of the hat down low enough to meet the top of the dark sunglasses he wore. He wore an aloha shirt and a plastic Hawaiian lei around his neck. That was odd. Then again, maybe the guy was Jimmy Buffet.
On the screen, he slid a withdrawal slip and what appeared to be a driver’s license into the heavy cylinder. He closed the end of the cylinder, inserted it into the bottom of the tube, and punched the button to activate the vacuum. The cylinder could be seen being sucked up into the channel.
As the thief waited for the cash, his fingers drummed the steering wheel, a sign he was anxious or excited or both. Or maybe there was just a good song playing on the radio. A moment later, the container reappeared, plummeting down the tube with its stolen contents. A smile broke on the man’s face as he reached out, retrieved the envelope of cash and the counterfeit driver’s license at record speed, and took off, wasting no time.
The camera angle showed the back of the truck now and, sure enough, there was no plate on the rear bumper, either. There were also no identifying bumper stickers. Double damn. Given that half of the vehicles on the road in Texas were pickups, it would be virtually impossible to narrow down who the truck belonged to.
A rap sounded on the door and the manager called, “Come in.”
The teller, a fortyish woman with rail-straight brown hair, eased inside, closing the door behind her. She wore the bank’s standard blue button-down with their logo embroidered on the chest pocket.
“Take a seat, Tammy,” the manager said.
Tammy glanced from the manager to me and back again, her eyes bright with anxiety. She was smart enough to realize that being called into the boss’s office unexpectedly was rarely a good thing, and when there was a strange woman in a suit there, too, the stakes had to be high. She slid into the chair next to mine, perching primly on the edge rather than settling back.
I introduced myself. “I have a few questions about a fraudulent withdrawal that was made here a couple months ago.”
“What?” Tammy’s eyes widened. Apparently this was the first she’d heard about the situation.
“You handled the transaction,” I said. “We’d like you to watch this video and see if any of it seems familiar.”
The bank manager played the video again.
I watched Tammy closely. There was always the possibility, however slim, that she might be in cahoots with the thief. I noted nothing unusual as she watched, though, no increase in respiration, no jitters. When the video finished, I asked, “Do you happen to remember that customer?”
Tammy shook her head. “I don’t remember anyone coming through wearing a lei and a weird hat like that. If I had noticed him I would probably remember. Of course, it’s hard to see the far lane from the teller window. There’s usually a car or two in the way and the poles block the view, too. Sometimes I can’t even see the person I’m dealing with.”
Her explanation seemed viable. Heck, when I went through my bank’s drive-thru, I often couldn’t tell who I was dealing with, either. But I’d driven all the way here, I might as well be thorough, right? “Do you have certain procedures for handling withdrawals at the window?”
“Yes.” She sat up even straighter in her seat, like a kid being quizzed by a teacher. “We always ask for identification. Then we compare the signature on the driver’s license or ID card to the signature on file for the account to make sure they match.”
I mulled that piece of information over for a moment. “What about the number on the license? Do you compare that to the number you have on file?”
“No,” she replied. “The driver’s license number doesn’t appear on our computer screen.”
The manager interjected a comment here. “For our account holders’ security, we don’t give tellers access to any more of their personal information than necessary.”
“That makes sense,” I said. When personal information was compromised, businesses ended up with a major PR problem, especially if the breach came from within.
Tammy looked at her boss and, when the woman nodded, continued. “When the customer sends us their license, we double-check that the name on the license is the same as the name on the account.”
I mulled a little more. “Is there a limit to how much cash a customer can withdraw at the drive-thru?”
“Three thousand dollars,” Tammy informed me. “If they want to withdraw more than that, they have to come into the lobby.”
The manager chimed in again now. “Three grand is the standard limit in the banking industry for drive-thru withdrawals.”
No doubt the thief knew of the withdrawal limit. That would explain why he kept all of his withdrawals under three grand even when many of the accounts contained far more money. He couldn’t risk going inside the bank where he’d have a much more difficult time escaping should his nefarious intentions be discovered. Of course he’d been a crafty SOB. Every one of the fraudulent withdrawals he’d made had been on the first or fifteenth of the month, payday for most people, the day when their accounts would be flush.
“Thanks for taking the time to meet with me. Here’s my card if you think of anything else.” I held out a card to each of them. The way I was running through business cards lately I’d need to request a new box soon.
“If you catch the guy,” the manager said, “please let us know as soon as possible. We’d love to recover some of that loss if we can.”
I gave her a nod. “Will do.”
Most of the banks had reimbursed their customers for the fraudulent withdrawals, though at least one of them was dr
agging its feet, alleging that the customer was negligent in providing the banking information to the thief and should bear responsibility for the loss.
My visits to the next two banks yielded no new information. Both of them showed me their security videos, and the same dark pickup appeared in both clips. At the bank where Jessica’s withdrawal had been made, the video clip showed that the person driving the truck had worn a woman’s wig and a flowery scarf around his neck while making the withdrawal. Unfortunately, the teller had no recollection of sending $1,200 through the tube to a cross-dressing thief in a pickup truck.
Not a productive afternoon.
It was after five by the time I wrapped things up. Given that my roommate/BFF was working late and that my boyfriend was undercover somewhere in the dark and dangerous drug underworld, it looked like I was on my own for dinner. Why not treat myself to a nice meal at my favorite French restaurant, Chez Michel?
chapter twelve
Table for One
I pulled into the lot and circled to the front doors, waiting as a couple on a midweek date exited their car in front of me. Once their valet had driven off in their car, I pulled up and handed my keys to the next young man. I was tempted to hand him my briefcase and see what he might be able to accomplish on my investigation. All of my training appeared to be for naught today.
I stepped inside the restaurant, removed my new black-and-white-striped sunglasses, and slid them into the inside pocket of my purse. As I approached his stand, the maître d’ glanced up and arched a brow. “How many tonight?”
How many does it look like? I wanted to snap. My lack of success—compounded by my lack of sleep and lack of date—had made me testy. “Just me.” Yep, just me, myself, and I. The three of us will have a great time. Maybe we’ll split a bottle of wine.