“No cash?” There had been about three hundred dollars in the Sunday donations. Father John felt as if he’d swallowed lead. Leonard sometimes delivered the deposits to the bank, and last night, Leonard had been at the Gamblers Anonymous meeting. Dear Lord, what was going on?
Straighter was reading off the dates and the exact amounts of the deposited checks. “It’s all right here,” he said, thumping the folder. Then he pulled one of the printout sheets free and peered down at it. “All the deposits went to your new account, as you instructed, Father, along with the transfer . . .”
“Wait a minute.” Father John put up one hand. “What are you talking about?”
“You also transferred a thousand dollars from your old account to the new, Father.”
“There’s some mistake,” Father John said. “We have only one account.” Father George hadn’t said anything about opening another account.
Straighter dipped his large head and stared through the half-moon glasses at the printouts. “The longstanding account opened by St. Francis Mission . . .” His gaze crawled down the top page. “Goodness, how many years ago? Ah, here we go. Nineteen seventy-two. And the account opened . . .” The man shuffled the pages. “Four weeks ago,” he said, pushing two sheets of paper across the desk. “You opened the second account yourself, Father.”
Father John glanced down the first sheet: New Account Form, Valley Bank. Typed in the top line was: St. Francis Mission. John A. O’Malley, S.J. On the signature line, his name was scrawled in black ink. He studied the writing. Much like his own, a careful copy.
He slipped the sheet behind the other. A similar form for additional signatories on the account. Above the signature line was the name: Catherine Bizzel.
He handed the forms across the desk, struggling to believe what he knew was true. “Our housekeeper must have opened the account,” he said.
“It’s your signature, Father.” The banker peered over the glasses.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Oh, my. We have a serious problem then. Our records show that forty-five hundred dollars has been withdrawn from this account.” Straighter picked up the receiver and tapped a couple numbers. “Linda, I want to see you a moment.”
The man had barely replaced the receiver when the willowy blond slipped through the door and positioned herself at the corner of the desk.
“You handled this, right?” Straighter thrust the papers into her hand. “Who requested the account?”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” she said, glancing from one page to the other. “Ms. Bizzel said the mission wanted a separate account for auxiliary groups. Ladies aid society, AA, Gamblers Anonymous, religious education. Said the pastor”—she nodded toward Father John—“wanted to keep the finances separate from the general finances.”
She handed the papers back to Straighter, a smile of satisfaction remaining in her expression a moment. Then, as if she’d sensed the charge in the atmosphere, she pulled her mouth into a thin line. “Is anything wrong?”
“Father O’Malley did not authorize this account.” The president kept his gaze on the pages in his hand.
“I don’t understand.” The woman turned toward Father John. “Ms. Bizzel said you were too busy to come in, so I told her you could sign the form and send it to the bank. Well, she brought it back that very afternoon. Everything looked fine.”
“Everything is not fine, Linda.” Straighter swiveled sideways and tossed the pages onto the desk. “You know our policy. Father O’Malley should have signed for the new account in person.”
“But Ms. Bizzel said the mission needed the account right away and Father O’Malley was too busy to get into town. I mean, it was the mission, Herb, and the signature was Father O’Malley’s. We already had a copy of his signature on record.”
Straighter directed a long gaze at the woman hovering at the corner of the desk, hands shaking at her side. Finally, he said, “Leave us, Linda. We’ll discuss this later.”
The woman backed out of the cubicle and hurried past the glass wall, her heels clacking on the marble floor.
Straighter braced his elbows on the desk and blew into clenched hands, his large head bobbing back and forth. “So what do we have here, Father? Embezzlement by one of your employees?” When Father John didn’t reply, he said, “We see this from time to time. Some employee finds a way to open a new account, shuffles funds from the original account and puts in new deposits, then makes withdrawals and clears out the funds. Very smooth, until someone catches on.”
“I’ll talk to Catherine,” Father John said. The leaden feeling was spreading inside him. “She’s a good woman. Something must have happened.” He knew what it was. He tried to imagine the housekeeper in front of a slot machine, pulling the handle, pushing the buttons, eyes locked on the bright, rolling images of promise. Leonard had come to the meeting last night hoping to help his wife.
“I’m sorry, Father. It appears we were lax about the account. Our insurance will cover the loss.” Straighter got to his feet. “Of course I’ll have to report the embezzlement to the Riverton police.”
Police! Father John stood slowly, a sense of unreality swimming around him. He didn’t want to think about the gray-haired woman who liked to make pancakes being pulled into the legal system: arrested, jailed, charged with a felony, shuffled through the courts . . .
“Can’t we work this out privately?” Father John asked.
Straighter came around the desk and clamped a thick hand on his shoulder. “I wish that were possible, Father,” he said, ushering Father John to the door. “You understand, we have to follow bank regulations.” The blond woman kept her eyes averted as they passed the counter in the lobby.
Straighter held the front door opened for him. “We’ll keep you informed, Father,” he said.
FATHER JOHN SAT in the pickup a couple minutes before he turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered into life. He backed through a wall of sunshine, then drove out into the light traffic on Federal, his thoughts filled with Catherine and Leonard and the missing money.
She must have taken the cash out of the deposit bags and filled in new deposit slips for the amount of checks. He’d already endorsed the checks. All she had to do was deposit them in the new account. She’d also transferred a thousand dollars out of the original account.
Catherine Bizzel was desperate.
He drove south, then took the right turn into the reservation, the sun hot on his hands gripping the steering wheel. Another mile and he made a left into the mission. Leonard’s truck was nowhere in sight, but Catherine’s twenty-year-old Ford was parked in front of the residence. He pulled in next to the Ford.
The aroma of fresh bread rolled over him the minute he opened the front door. He followed the aroma down the hallway to the kitchen where Catherine was standing at the sink, her back to him. Water gushed out of the faucet.
“That you, Father?” She glanced over one shoulder, then turned off the faucet and faced him, drying her hands on the white apron tied at her waist. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll have your lunch.”
“I just came from the bank, Catherine.” Father John motioned the woman to the chair on the other side of the table. Her expression froze, as if the muscles beneath the skin had seized up. Then she groped for the top of the chair and worked her way down into the seat.
He kicked back the chair across from her and sat down. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“I guess you know.”
He nodded. “I don’t know why.”
There was a scuffle of footsteps behind him, and Father John looked around. Leonard loomed into the doorway, a circle of perspiration on the front of his denim shirt.
“Come in,” Father John said to the man.
“No, Leonard!” Catherine screamed. “You go away. I gotta talk to Father John alone. This ain’t got nothing to do with you.”
Father John clasped his hands on the table and leaned toward the woman. “He’s your husband
, Catherine. He has a right to know.”
“I already know.” Leonard strode into the kitchen, pulled over a chair, and sat down, facing his wife. Perspiration glistened on his cheekbones; his black hair looked wet. “This gambling you’re doin’ has gotten out of hand. I seen our savings account. It’s cleared out, Catherine. All that money we been putting aside.”
The woman dropped her head into her hands. Her sobs, when they came, were low and muffled, her shoulders shook against the back of the chair. After a moment, she steepled her hands under her nose. She might have been praying. “I borrowed some money from the mission,” she said, her voice as small as a child’s.
“You what?” There was a bark of incredulity in her husband’s voice.
“They said they was gonna take it outta you, Leonard. I got scared. I didn’t know what they’d do.”
“Hold on.” Leonard took his wife’s hands and cushioned them in both of his. “You’re not making sense. What’re you talking about?”
“The night I lost at craps. I was winning, Leonard,” she said, warming to the topic. “I was winning big. We was gonna retire, go live in Denver by the kids. Then, all of a sudden, my chips was swept away. This white man—he looked real nice—comes up to me and says, ‘You were on a roll.’ Boy, was he right. ‘You can get lucky again.’ I thought, that’s also right. Sometimes my luck went away, but it always came back. So he says, ‘We can stake you.’ He handed me a couple hundred.”
“Oh, God, Catherine. You took money from a loan shark?” Leonard let go of his wife’s hands, straightened himself against the chair, and stared up at the ceiling.
“I didn’t know he was one of them loan sharks. I never seen him before.”
“Well, what did you think?” Leonard was shouting now. “Some nice guy trying to help you out?”
“Let her finish, Leonard.” Father John kept his own voice calm.
Even before the woman had cleared her throat and begun talking, he knew how it would go: She’d lost the money, then borrowed more. She’d lost that. The loan sharks had demanded payment with so much interest she could never pay it back. She’d cleared out the savings account, taken money from the mission.
“They kept coming around,” she said. “I got scared.”
“God, Catherine! Why didn’t you tell me? Some white men threatening you, and you didn’t tell me? I would’ve taken care of ’em.”
The woman was crying softly, blowing her nose into the tissue she’d pulled out of her apron pocket, wiping at her eyes. “It was my problem, Leonard. I figured I’d borrow from the mission and pay it back, just as soon as . . .”
“You kept on gambling!” Leonard said.
Catherine blew her nose and looked down at the table. “How else was I gonna pay everything off?”
Leonard exchanged a glance with Father John, then looked back at his wife. “It was the deposits wasn’t it? You said you’d run the deposits over to the bank so I could finish my work around here. You helped yourself to the cash.”
Silence settled over the kitchen. Outside the window, a bird was chirping. When Catherine looked up, there was so much pain in the woman’s eyes that Father John had to force himself not to turn away. He said, “You’d better tell him the rest.”
Slowly, in a monotone voice, as if she were talking about someone she didn’t know, Catherine explained about opening the account and making the withdrawals.
Leonard went as quiet as stone, the circle of perspiration widening on the front of his shirt.
When Catherine finished, Father John told them the bank was going to report the embezzlement. “You have to talk to a lawyer,” he said to Catherine. “Vicky’ll help you.”
The woman reached over and placed a hand on her husband’s. “You don’t have to stay by me, Leonard. What I done was wrong. I turned into some old Indian woman I didn’t know.”
“Well, you’re my old Indian woman.” Leonard took his wife’s arm and helped her to her feet. “We’re gonna stick together, Catherine.”
Father John got to his feet and followed the couple down the hallway and out onto the stoop. He watched Leonard help his wife into his brown truck with trimmed branches sticking out of the back. Watched the truck slow around Circle Drive and gather speed before turning onto Seventeen-Mile Road and disappearing behind the stand of cottonwoods.
Then he walked over to the administration building, the sun searing his back through his shirt, the wind washing over him. He found Father George in the back office, staring at the computer monitor. He dragged over a chair, straddled it backwards, and set both arms over the top.
“The bank mystery’s solved,” he said.
That got the priest’s attention, and when Father George looked up over the monitor, he told him about Catherine and the loan sharks.
The man shook his head. “Only thing I know about loan sharks, I learned in the movies. Don’t think I’d want to cross them. Those guys shoot people in the head and bury them in the desert.”
“What?”
“I said . . .”
“I heard you.” Father John jumped to his feet. He hadn’t understood. It had been right in front of him, and he hadn’t understood . . .
Until now.
He swung the chair back under the window and headed for the corridor. “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” he called over his shoulder.
24
VICKY STARED AT the list of Arapaho names. It read like a Who’s Who of casino operations: human resources, hotel, restaurant, buffet, maintenance, security. Only one, Dennis Light Stone, pit boss, worked on the casino floor. A total of thirteen, and every one connected to Matt Kingdom.
She could hear Kingdom’s voice in her head: He knew everybody on the rez; he’d recommended the best people for the job, and they were getting training; he’d wanted the casino to succeed.
And the casino was successful. There were jobs, an influx of cash to the tribe, plans to build the first hospital on the rez, an infusion of money for schools. She slipped the roster of names into a Manila envelope and closed the clasp. Her fingers felt like ice. Everything about the casino was working just as the tribe had hoped. Nobody on the Business Council would want to hear about conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety.
The sound of the telephone ringing jarred her out of her thoughts. She waited for Esther to pick up, then remembered that, thirty minutes ago, the secretary had stuck her head between the doors and said she was leaving for the day.
She lifted the receiver. “Vicky Holden,” she said.
“I’ve found the information you want.” It was Myrna Hancock at the Secretary of State’s Office.
Vicky pulled a yellow legal pad across the desk. “What do you have?”
The woman at the other end of the line started rattling off the legal minutiae of Lodestar Enterprises. Chartered in Delaware, nineteen ninety-six. The usual list of officers: president, vice president, treasurer, secretary. Vicky didn’t recognize any of the names.
“What about Stan Lexson?”
“Vice president in charge of casino operations,” Myrna said. “He’s managed the company’s casinos in the Midwest.”
“Do you have any idea who owns the company?”
There was a pause, a crackle of papers at the other end. “I can tell you what I’ve heard,” Myrna said finally. “The Hastings Group, an umbrella company that owns fourteen smaller companies, all related to the entertainment industry.” She started reading off a list of unfamiliar names: Adolphis, Edgeware, Mariette, Jevron, Omega . . .
“Edgeware!” Vicky felt as if she’d gotten a jolt from a raw electric wire. “Did you say Edgeware?” She balanced the phone under her chin and turned to the computer. Click. Click. The file of casino contracts came onto the monitor. She scrawled down, finally stopping on a page with black letters typed across the top: “Contract between Lodestar Enterprises and Edgeware Supplies.”
“You know the company?” A hint of disbelief came into Myrna’s voice
.
“Give me the names again.”
The other woman started over with about as much enthusiasm as if she were reciting the alphabet. Vicky stopped her two more times—at the names of Jevron and Omega. She pulled up two other contracts. Jevron supplied the hotel linens and sundries, soaps, lotions, shampoos. Omega supplied the kitchen equipment.
“Who owns the Hastings Group?”
There was another crackle of papers at the other end. “We’ve heard rumors that Mickey Vontego is the majority owner. Listen, Vicky, we went up the chain of command to Vontego himself after the Arapaho Business Council informed us they were bringing in Lodestar. We wanted to know what kind of people would be moving into the state. Everybody checked out. No criminal records, no reason for concern. Nothing but years of experience running casinos from Las Vegas to Atlantic City to the Bahamas. Vontego was the only one . . .” She hesitated.
“What, Myrna?”
“Came under suspicion about ten years ago. The Nevada gaming authorities took his license for some minor infraction of the rules, but he disputed the allegation and the license was reinstated.”
Vicky was quiet, trying to arrange this new information into some kind of pattern. Suppose the casino were overpaying for equipment and supplies? Cutting into the tribal profits by enriching the Hastings Group? There was no way to know, not without access to casino accounting records.
Accounting. She flipped through the pages of résumés and slipped out the résumé for the accounting manager. Kevin Newman, seven years experience at Indian casinos in Michigan.
Vicky realized she hadn’t said anything for several moments when Myrna said: “You promised to keep me informed, Vicky. Well? What have you found?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Vicky managed. God, she was still circling the same problem: Matt Kingdom’s control of the jobs. How could she bring her concerns to the state if she didn’t first go to the Business Council? Her people would never forgive her. She’d have to move back to Denver, because no Arapaho would ever trust her.
Killing Raven (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 17