by J. D. Robb
“There’s no record of her boarding any transportation out of New York. Mr. Applebee, what was your relationship with Ms. Willowby when she left London?”
“Strained, maybe shattered. Stupid, stupid. I was such a bloody berk about it all. I was just panicked, or God knows. We hadn’t planned…it just happened. The pregnancy, and I bungled it. I buggered it up, that’s what I did. I suggested she terminate, and she got upset. Of course, she got upset.”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes now. “God. God. What an idiot I am. We quarreled, and she said she’d have the baby, and give it up for adoption. That I wouldn’t have to be bothered. She went to an agency, I think. She was barely speaking to me and I was so bloody righteous.”
“What agency?”
“I don’t know. We weren’t talking so much as sniping at each other. But she changed her mind. At least she left me a message that she had, and that she was going away. She quit her job, and left her flat. I was sure she’d get in touch with me, that she’d come back. I’ve been trying to find her, but I never thought to try the States. She didn’t take a shuttle from here, or from Paris. That’s where, after I’d begged and groveled, one of her coworkers said she’d gone, at least for a bit.”
“Let’s just get this out of the way. Give me your whereabouts on Thursday.”
“I was here, at my office through Thursday until about eight. I left for Glasgow that night, straight from there. I work for The Times, the London Times. I’ll give you my editor’s name and number, and the hotel where I stayed in Glasgow, so you can verify. Whatever you need. I can make some calls from here—friends of hers, coworkers, the OB she saw when she found out she was pregnant. Maybe someone knows…she might have contacted someone.”
“Why don’t you give me a list of names and contact numbers?”
“Yes, all right. Better from you than the git who mucked the whole business up. I’m coming to New York. I’ll be there this afternoon. I’ll give you my pocket ’link number, in case…”
By the time Eve had taken all the data, she had a cup of coffee on her desk along with her time line, in hard copy and disc.
“We can make calls,” Leonardo began. “Mavis and I can contact the birthing centers and the hospitals again, on the chance Tandy checked in this morning.”
“Call the midwife,” Eve told him. “Have her do it. They’ll talk to her quicker than either of you. Mavis, did Tandy ever mention she’d considered putting the baby up for adoption?”
“She did.” At her station, Mavis sat very still, her hands crossed over her belly. “She told me once she’d considered all the options. And she’d even gone to an agency, taken the first steps toward that one. But she’d changed her mind.”
Reading Eve’s expression, Mavis shook her head. “You think she changed it again, and went into a shelter or agency. She didn’t. She wouldn’t have. She was committed, Dallas, to making a family.”
“It’s worth looking into. Do you remember the name of the agency?”
“I think maybe she said the name.” Mavis pressed her fingers to her temples as if to push the name out of her head. “God, I can’t remember. It was just one of those nights we were sitting around, talking about stuff.”
“If you remember, tell me.” Eve looked over as Peabody and McNab came in. “McNab, you’re with Roarke next door. E-work on the Copperfield/Byson case. Peabody, I’ve got a list of names and contacts in London regarding Tandy Willowby. You take those. Mavis, you and Leonardo can do a search on adoption agencies with London offices. Go through and see if one rings for you. Peabody’s going to need that unit, so you’ll have to take it into another room.”
“We’ll start right now.” Mavis levered herself up. “I feel better doing something. I feel like it’s going to be okay now.”
Peabody waited until Leonardo led Mavis out. “And now that you’ve got her out of the way?”
“Look over the file I got from Italy. Like crime. Woman poofed at thirty-six weeks. No trace of her or the baby. He’s got names from Florence, where she lived before she moved to Rome and vanished. Do followups.”
“I don’t speak Italian. Except for, like, manicotti, linguini, and the occasional caio.”
“Me, either. Improvise. Try this new angle, see if anyone knows if she explored other options. Termination or adoption.”
For herself, Eve went back to Peabody’s IRCCA data and took a harder look at the other cases. Possible, she thought, possible one or more of the other open cases was a bungled abduction, resulting in death. Cover up the mistake with rape or assault or theft. Ditch the body.
She picked through the details, pored over the autopsy reports. Then narrowed her eyes at the data on a twenty-one-year-old victim in Middlesex. The mutilated body and fetus had been found in the woods, which the local police had determined was a dump site rather than the murder scene. Mutilation postmortem. COD: head trauma.
Following through, Eve contacted the primary investigator. Fifteen minutes later, she sat back, frowned over at her murder board.
There were differences, she mused. This victim had been married—but only weeks before her death. She had family in Middlesex, had lived there most of her life.
Except for a brief period when she’d gone to London. Gone there, according to the statements taken by the investigator, specifically to look into placing the baby with an agency.
She held up a hand when Peabody crossed the room.
“Just getting coffee,” Peabody told her.
“Twenty-one-year-old vic, England. Pregnant with casual boyfriend, opts to have the baby. Family is upset, don’t like boyfriend much. He’s been in trouble a couple times, doesn’t have regular employment. After some hand-wringing, vic goes to London to look into adoption options. Stays at a hostel for a few days, then moves to a midpriced hotel. Remains in London six weeks before returning to Middlesex. Boyfriend gets steady job, love conquers, and plans are made to marry and keep the baby.”
“But?”
“A couple weeks before her due date, she goes missing. Turns up two days later in the woods near the house she and new husband have rented. It’s a dump site. Murder occurred elsewhere, never determined.”
“They look at the new husband?”
“With a laserscope. Alibied tight. COD was head trauma, most likely from a fall. DB also showed signs of restraints, hands and feet, and minor perimortem bruising on the arms. The body was mutilated after death. Hacked up, and the fetus removed. Nonviable.”
“Nasty.” Peabody glanced toward the door to make sure Mavis wasn’t within earshot. “But there are essential differences to Tandy.”
“And similarities. If you theorize that whoever took these women wanted the babies, and when this vic died, the abductor attempted to retrieve the baby. Too late for that, so he or she covers it up by mutilating the body, then dumping both of them.”
Eve rose to add the new picture and name to her board. “What have we got? Three young, healthy pregnant women. None of whom were legally attached to the father at the time they conceived. At least two of them sought information on adoption.”
“Make it three for three,” Peabody put in. “Italian vic’s cousin confirms Belego researched that option, and made an appointment with a counselor regarding same.”
“Got a name?”
“No. But the cousin’s going to ask around, see if Belego mentioned it to anyone.”
“Three for three speaks to me. Let’s try this. Search for agencies that have offices in London, and Florence and/or Rome. I’ve got the name of Tandy’s obstetrician in London. We’ll tag him, too. But first, let’s see if the doctor’s associated with any adoption agencies or counselors.”
A quick search revealed that Tandy’s OB volunteered three days a week at a women’s clinic. The same clinic, she noted, that the woman from Middlesex had used while in London.
Worth a conversation, she decided, and spent the next fifteen minutes tracking down the doctor.
After
she’d spoken to him, she added his name and the clinic to her board. “He confirms that he gave Tandy the name of some agencies, and counseling services. He can’t confirm whether she visited any as she canceled her followup appointment with him, and requested copies of her medical records. He’ll check his book, get back to me with the date she called to cancel, and he’s sending a list of the agencies and services they routinely give to patients.”
“All that’s in Europe,” Peabody pointed out. “If Tandy was taken, it was here.”
“It’s a small world,” Eve answered and turned as Roarke stepped in.
“I think you’ll be interested in our findings, Lieutenant,” he said, and handed Eve a disc.
16
EVE SHIFTED TANDY ASIDE WHILE ROARKE INPUT data into her unit, and ordered it on-screen. It seemed like a lot of numbers to her, in a lot of columns in a complicated and overly detailed spread sheet.
He, apparently, saw a great deal more.
“Two accounts were questionable for me,” he began. “The first, McNab and I agree, has gaps, little voids. A precise, methodical accountant such as Copperfield wouldn’t have these voids in one of her files.”
“Tampered with?”
“Again, McNab and I agree.”
“Yeah.” McNab nodded. “I might not get the financial mumbo, but I know when a file’s been diddled with. At least some of that diddling corresponds with the dates you gave me when Copperfield first talked to Byson about finding something, when her assistant claimed she’d logged on after hours. Some of it goes back farther.”
“Someone very carefully removed and/or doctored her work,” Roarke continued. “Someone, in my opinion, with a good working knowledge of accounting.”
“Inside job. What’s the file number?”
When he gave it to her, Eve looked up the corresponding file name. “Well, well, well, it’s our old friends Stubens, Robbins, Cavendish, and Mull.”
“Interesting.”
“You said it was a law firm.” Grinning, McNab pointed at Roarke. “Blinders on, but you slammed it.”
“Billable hours.” Roarke used a laser pointer to highlight columns from his blind copy still displayed on-screen. “Retainers, partners’ percentages. Odds were.”
“But do we have them on anything?” Eve asked. “Illegal practices, finances, taxes?”
Roarke shook his head. “You have the gaps, and when they’re filled in you may. But the numbers jibe, and nothing on the surface appears off.”
“But it is,” Eve complained. “It is off.”
“On the second account I’ve brought up, something certainly is.” He switched displays. “The bottom lines add up precisely,” he continued. “And the account would, I believe, hold up under most standard audits. But what I found, and what I suspect your victim found, were areas of income and outlay that were carefully manipulated in order to add up. On their own, they simply don’t. There are fees—here.”
He used the laser pointer to highlight a section. “These fees repeat—not in amounts, but in precise percentages of coordinating areas of income—and simply don’t jibe. Always forty-five percent of the take, if you will, and with the corresponding amounts, that same percentage appears first under an area of nonprofit contributions, making it exempt from taxes. Which, in the way this is manipulated, makes that fee exempt.”
“Tax fraud,” Eve said.
“Certainly, but that’s only one piece of the pie. The income itself is split into parts, juggled into subaccounts, with expenses attached to, and deducted from it. The income, minus this, is then tumbled back into the main. It’s then disbursed—the sum of it—in a way that, since I have to guess, I assume is through some sort of charitable trust. The client received a hefty write-off, straight from the top, which you see here. Annually.
“The amounts vary, year to year, but the setup remains constant.”
“How much are they washing?”
“Between six and eight million a year, for the time frame I’ve been working with. But it’s more than that. There are simpler ways to evade tax, and to launder money. I’d have to say this particular client has income that is perhaps not strictly legal. It’s an operation,” he told Eve. “Slickly run and profitable, and with these fees and expenses, I’d say a number of people have a piece of it.”
“Copperfield would have found this?”
“If she was looking. Or if she had a question and dug back to find the answer to it before she took over the account. Once you start to peel at the layers, they lift off systematically, simply because the setup is very systematic.”
“I don’t get it.” She shook her head. “I don’t mean the numbers, it’s a given I don’t get them. But I don’t get why. If this is an operation like you say, why didn’t they just keep a second set of books?”
“Greed’s a powerful incentive. There are hefty tax breaks under this system not only for the questionable income, but for all of it. But you have to report the income, the outlay, to get them.”
She nodded. “What’s the blind number on this file?”
“024-93.”
She went back to her desk, called it up. “Sisters Three. A restaurant chain. London, Paris, Rome, New York, Chicago.”
“A restaurant?” Roarke frowned. “No, that’s not right. These aren’t the accounts of a restaurant.”
She rechecked. “That’s how it comes out.”
“That may be, but these aren’t the files and accounts for a restaurant.”
“Roarke, I’m looking at the file, the file Copperfield marked ‘Sisters Three’…And none of the names in the account are listed anywhere but on the label.”
“She switched files.”
“Labels. Discs. Now why would she do that? And who did she switch it with?”
Eve began to scroll down the file, scanning her computer screen. “Madeline Bullock. Son of a bitch. These are the accounting files for the Bullock Foundation. They weren’t her client.”
“Cavendish, etc., was,” Roarke recalled. “And they represent the Bullock Foundation.”
“She accessed the foundation’s files,” Eve murmured. “Labeled it under another account. Nobody would bother going into that file on her unit if they were looking for what she had on the law firm, and through them the foundation. Kraus, Robert Kraus. He headed this account, and was—allegedly—entertaining Bullock and her son the night Copperfield and Byson were killed. If you need an alibi, why not pick the client whose books you’re cooking?”
She paced around her desk. “Copperfield sees something in the law firm’s accounts that doesn’t balance for her. Something that connects to the Bullock Foundation—both clients of her firm. Wouldn’t she go to one of the big bosses on this and the foundation’s accountant? She goes to Kraus, expresses some concern, asks some questions. Maybe he brushes her off, or says he’ll look into it. But she’s curious and she’s precise. Something doesn’t add up so she wants to fix it. She takes a look on her own. Sees what you see,” she said to Roarke.
“Makes a copy.” He nodded. “She couldn’t be sure she could go back to Kraus, because she’d asked herself why he hadn’t seen what she’d seen. Who can she talk to about this?”
“Her fiancé. But since she’s come in with questions, Kraus is careful. And he’s going to see she’s accessed, made copies. Time to panic a little. So you threaten, you bribe.”
“And set up a double murder, alibied by two people with a vested interest. Two people who are the face of one of the most prestigious and philanthropic charitable foundations in the world.”
“And who are now accessories to murder, times two. I think I want to have a chat with Bob. Peabody, with me.”
“Ah, Dallas, always happy to be with you, but I think in this case, you should take your number cruncher. No way I can talk the talk.”
Eve pursed her lips, studied Roarke. “She’s got a point. You up for it?”
“Should be fun.”
“And a big sigh of relief
from the math-impaired,” Peabody stated. “McNab and I can work the Tandy Willowby case while you’re talking to Kraus.”
“Good. You’re on Mavis duty. Let’s move,” she said to Roarke.
They didn’t find Kraus at home, but his wife interrupted her Sunday bridge game to tell them he was playing golf at The Inner Circle in Brooklyn.
She was a comfortable-looking woman, spiffed up for the bridge party in baby-blue cashmere.
“This is about that sweet girl and her darling young man, isn’t it? It’s just horrible. I spent such a lovely little while chatting with her at the company holiday party last December. I hope you find whatever vicious person did this.”
“I will. You were here that night, entertaining, I understand.”
“Oh, yes. We had Madeline and Win as our guests. Dinner, some cards. And all that while—”
“You played late?”
“Until nearly midnight, as I recall. I was ready to drop. Actually thought I was coming down with something, I was that tired. But after a good night’s sleep, I was fine. We had a lovely brunch the next morning.”
“Give your wife a little something to help her sleep,” Eve theorized as they drove to Brooklyn. “Plenty of time to get to Copperfield’s, take care of her. Get to Byson’s, do him, get home. Catch a few z’s, then have a lovely brunch.”
“What did he do with the computers and discs?” Roarke asked.
“Yeah, there’s that. Hauled them home. Probably has an office there the wife doesn’t fool with. Or he rented a place to hold them until he could properly dispose of them. Only one little hitch with that particular theory though.”
“Which is?”
“Robert Kraus has never had a driver’s license or owned a car. Whoever did this had to have private transportation. So he worked with an accomplice.”
“Bullock or Chase?”
“Maybe. Likely. Or someone else in the firm. Cavendish or his keeper. It spreads out, the way I see it. One or more people in the accounting firm had to know what was going on. One or more people in the foundation. One or more in the law firm. You said it was an operation. I’m going with that. Where does the money come from? The funds they’re laundering, funneling, juggling? What’s the source?”