The Black Tortoise

by Ronald Tierney

  “Bottle blond,” he said, laughing. “Though of course I don’t know firsthand.” He managed to make his smile dramatically evil.

  “Are you gay?” he asked, in the same tone one might use to ask someone to pass the salt. If all else fails, be direct.

  “Vanessa had nothing unkind to say about Madeline,” I asked in place of answering his question.

  “I only ask because it’s a puzzle. I usually know right away. I’m not coming on to you. Patrick and I are very happy.”

  “That’s great. Perhaps I’ll get to meet Patrick sometime,” I said. “Emelio, I have a one-track mind. Vanessa?”

  “I don’t think she and Madeline have much contact. And Vanessa’s skill set is dealing with difficult, demanding clients. Insincerity is built into the job description. If you asked her about the Nazis, she’d say something like, ‘I’m sure they meant well.’ All Madeline really wants is to be worshipped. That’s in Vanessa’s professional toolbox.”

  “Doesn’t Vanessa oversee the box office?”

  “She sets it up. But it’s a program. She might step in if there’s a glitch, or if the client complains. The program has been in place for quite a while. It’s glitch-free. It runs on its own.”

  I took a bite of my blackened-rock-cod sandwich.

  In this interlude, his eyes appraised me as a wild animal might, assessing danger or considering a menu item.

  I was uncomfortable and decided to reignite his obvious passion for gossip. “I found some interesting old news stories on Madeline’s historic theater company back east,” I said.

  Emelio poked at his salad. “It seemed pretty shady, but the mayor of that little town took the fall.”

  “She started a consulting business,” I said.

  “She and her husband ran it,” he added. Emelio had done as much investigating as I had.

  “The checks you cut have to have two signatures, right?”

  “Mine and hers,” Emelio said.

  “How interested is Madeline when she signs the checks? Does she ask questions?”

  “She doesn’t pay attention. I think I could get her to sign my laundry receipt.”

  It was all very interesting. But it wasn’t my job to criticize or make suggestions about effective management techniques or job qualifications beyond the financial sphere. My plan was to meet with Madeline at two and wrap it up for Mr. Lehr. I would tell him there were serious morale and management problems, but that financially, I saw nothing illegal.

  “You have a beautiful home,” I told Emelio to guide the conversation toward a comfortable area while we finished lunch.

  He beamed. “I was so lucky. The owners couldn’t pay their mortgage, and it was right before the housing market exploded again. Timing is everything. Patrick and I were getting more serious, and he had some funds tucked away.”

  On the walk back he said, “You might have guessed it, but my youth was pretty rough. People beat me up. I was headed in the wrong direction, destined to be a loser, a nobody like the rest of my family. But look at me now. I travel. I have a fine job, a great house, a handsome lover.”

  “Now all you need is to get the executive director’s job,” I said, only half joking.

  He smiled. “Think positive, I say.”

  Madeline’s door was open. Emelio waved enthusiastically as I approached the dragon’s den. We were fast friends now, co-conspirators.

  Madeline wasn’t at her desk. She was across the room, staring into an ornate mirror.

  “Scientists believe that humans aren’t the only animals who are self-aware,” I said.

  She turned and looked right through me. I wasn’t there.

  “We have an appointment at two,” I said.

  “You’re the accountant,” she said, making me as inconsequential as possible.

  “The forensic accountant,” I said.

  She gave me a second, more serious glance. She understood the difference.

  “I can’t possibly see you today. I have things to do.” The words were clear, but the tone had a pity me kind of quality.

  “I’m about done here,” I said. “I can leave the rest to the attorneys and investigators. I had hoped I could close this out myself.”

  She walked around behind her desk.

  “I’m sorry. I overcommitted. It’s not easy turning this place around. It’s like a battleship. I get no cooperation. Be a saint and give me until tomorrow morning. Could you possibly come back then?” She was acting more and more forlorn. “Maybe early. At eight, before things get crazy. I promise to give you my full attention.”

  “I’d be honored.”

  I’m pretty sure she thought I meant it.

  The morning was a replay of the previous day’s. The fog hung low. There was a chill in the air. I wished I had worn something that would block the cold, wet wind from cutting through me. The office was locked. I walked to the end of the pier and leaned carefully over the railing, the top of which was now missing. I thought I might see the sea turtle again.

  Something was there, all right. And at first I thought it was my little shelled creature—turtle or tortoise—with a shiny black shell, but it was a plastic rain slicker. What it covered could have been almost anything, I suppose. But I was pretty sure it was a body. My belief was confirmed when the choppy water flipped up the slicker and I made out a face bobbing lifelessly. It was as if the pale corpse were shedding a second skin or emerging from its shell.

  I called 9-1-1. As I provided the operator with information and answered her questions, I saw Marge. She was in a helmet, walking her bicycle along the pier toward my discovery and me. I motioned for her to speed things up. She did.

  She came alongside and leaned her bike against the pier. I pointed down.

  “Oh God,” she said, her voice a mix of surprise and horror. “It’s David.”

  She looked at the damaged railing. “I knew this would happen.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, to gather strength or calm herself or both. She went through her bag, pulling out keys. I told her I had called it in. She opened the office and disappeared inside. The sirens had begun and were getting louder. I waited. Marge reappeared with a long pole.

  “What are you doing? I asked. If this was no accident, she was disturbing evidence. There was no thought of rescue. He was dead.

  “Just making sure David doesn’t float away.” Her face was still rosy from the bike ride, but she was upset, clearly upset. Maybe I should go in and get him. She moved toward the edge—to shimmy down to the body, I figured.

  “No, the fire department is coming. I hear them.” I also heard the whooping police sirens, slightly out of tune and out of sync with the wailing fire-engine sirens.

  “David works here?” I asked.

  “He’s IT—the computer guy.”

  She took charge, guiding the firefighters, the EMTs and the police when they arrived.

  I was a little lost, I admit. What could I do? I knocked on Madeline’s office door. I heard a muffled “What is it?” The door opened. She looked out into the crowded office, at the madness of it. She pulled me inside and shut the door behind me.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Your computer guy…”

  “Yes?” she asked with impatience.

  “David has been found dead in the bay.”

  She looked up at the ceiling, no doubt seeing into God’s private office. “Why does everything happen to me?”

  The door opened. Marge was with a large and somewhat intimidating black woman who wore a conservative but stylish gray flannel suit.

  “This is Inspector Hadley from the San Francisco Police Homicide Detail,” Marge said.

  Hadley moved toward Madeline’s desk.

  “You’re homicide?” Madeline asked in a tone of disbelief.

  “No, I’m a meter maid,” Hadley said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Your guest chairs are double-parked.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Madeline s
aid.

  “Make time,” Hadley said, pulling out a notebook.

  “I have a meeting with Mr. Strand.”

  I had suddenly become important.

  “First things first,” I said. I was pretty sure Madeline wouldn’t be able to charm or intimidate her way out of this one. I didn’t leave. I wanted to see this. There was obviously something seriously wrong here. Something more than a little financial pilfering, low morale or inept management. Mr. Lehr was right. He had a nose for these things.

  But I was dismissed by Hadley “for the time being” after she noted who I was, how I could be reached and what I was doing there. The office swarmed with foundation staff, huddled in pockets to gossip. Other cops—plainclothes cops—had arrived and were picking off staff one by one for questioning. At one point I looked over and saw Madeline standing in the doorway of her office. She was looking at the confusion as a monarch might if the enemy were suddenly within the walls of her castle.

  Vanessa had found a quiet corner and was talking into her cell phone. Marge was talking to her maintenance staff. Craig stood by himself, confused and looking at the chaos. And Emelio had just arrived, cutting through the crowd purposefully.

  Outside, uniformed cops, the crime-scene folks and photographers milled about. A sleek police boat had tied up at the end of the pier.

  David, the computer guy, was dead. Was it an accident? The broken rail suggested it was, but it wasn’t absolutely clear. Negligence was likely though. I called Lehr.

  “What do you make of it?” he asked.

  “Murder trumps embezzlement and money laundering. Negligence isn’t much better.”

  “Let me know what you find out.”

  “The police have it now, and you’re already paying them.”

  He laughed. “You have something better to do?”

  “It’s a matter of qualifications.”

  “Trust me,” Lehr said. “It’s about money. It’s always about money. And you are the forensic accountant. What do the police know about such things?”

  Inspector Hadley caught up with me as I got to the curb of the Embarcadero. I was going to hail a cab, an unusual act for me because public transportation was quick and cheap, but I suddenly felt exhausted. Death can be draining, even if it isn’t yours.

  “I thought I told you to stick around,” she said.

  “You told me you’d get to me later. It was a little vague.”

  “Let’s compromise. Now is later. Let’s talk,” she said, no longer scolding. “What brought you here to investigate?”

  I've told her, and she wanted to know what I had concluded.

  “I found nothing so far.”

  “Any thoughts about who might have killed David?”

  “You think it’s murder?” I asked.

  “Don’t know yet. Could be an accident. He leaned against the rail. It gave. He fell in. Couldn’t swim.”

  “You don’t buy it,” I said.

  “I don’t do anything at the moment. What about you? What do you know now that you didn’t know when you started? For example, what do you know about the victim?”

  “I didn’t even talk with David. I talked with four of the top five in management, the people with access to money or who could conceivably get kickbacks. I didn’t see where David had that opportunity. There were no recent major computer purchases nor any such plans in next year’s budget. Other than this special relationship with Madeline, I know nothing about him.”

  “A special relationship?” Hadley asked.

  “She needed a lot of help with her computer, her phone and anything else digital.”

  “And David supplied it? So…?”

  “You’ll have to supply what comes after so.”

  “Take a stab at it,” Hadley said.

  “She took up a lot of his time. She didn’t seem to care that David reported to Emelio and that he had responsibilities other than being her guide in the digital universe.”

  “You didn’t bother questioning him though?”

  I felt chastised. Guilty. Hadley walked back toward the scene of the crime. I flagged a taxi. I thought Hadley smart and suspected she’d do a good job on the investigation. She had me thinking about it all again—she and Lehr.

  David may not have had much access to money, but he had access to information. Emails, searches, phone calls, texts. In Madeline’s case, it appeared David also had access to her personal computer and smart-phone. She seemed to have separated two from the herd—the computer guy and the maintenance guy, the man who had soundproofed her office. Both of them could help her keep secrets. What secrets needed protecting?

  SIX

  I had the taxi drop me off at Zuni Café for lunch. I could do some work at the table, have a decent lunch, maybe a glass of wine, and work it all off walking home.

  I was seated in the bar area, by the window that looked out onto Market Street. I ordered the fennel sausage, Japanese eggplant and a glass of wine of the waiter’s choosing. Some people race cars. Others grow flowers or collect stamps. I eat. I also work.

  I sipped the wine, opened my laptop, clicked on History and went to Madeline’s old website. The thing was, it wasn’t really old. Under Contact Information, the phone number had a 415 area code. One of San Francisco’s area codes. Was she allowed to keep her old business running while getting a hefty salary to run the Black Tortoise Foundation?

  I sent an email to Emelio, asking him to send me Madeline’s contract and David’s résumé.

  Walking is a way I work things out. Today was perfect. The fog had cleared, and after a pleasant lunch I walked Market Street. I reminded myself that David’s death might have nothing to do with Mr. Lehr’s suspicions. It might have nothing to do with work at all. A jealous lover maybe? A mugging gone wrong? Simply a crazy, random act by a stranger?

  The morning’s horror had led me to consider David as the possible keeper of a secret—money related or not. And the idea that it wasn’t money related opened up too many possibilities. I would, as it was popular to say these days, “follow the money,” if I could find it.

  I walked up from Market Street to Douglass and then up to the Vulcan Steps, a separate set of steps a block away from but parallel to the Saturn Steps. There were more than a hundred steps—I counted them once—twisting now and then between the houses on the hill. Every time I made this trek I wondered how the residents moved in or out of homes or had refrigerators or sofas delivered. There were no streets, just the long, steep, narrow stairway. Somehow the people who live here found a way. But whatever it was, it probably wasn’t easy.

  The other thought that passed through my brain as I climbed my way toward home was that the reason I like to solve accounting crimes versus others, such as murder, is that numbers are black and white. You don’t have to interpret them.

  Given that, I was the wrong investigator for this case, unless there was something a computer wizard could do to mask a redirection of funds. Was that the secret David held? While it was too late to ask David, maybe I could find out what his bank accounts looked like or what might be found where he lived. That he worked for Emelio, the director of finance, as well as being Madeline’s chosen slave wasn’t lost on me.

  I had other questions as well. My mind was buzzing. There would be no nap waiting for me after conquering the steps. I made calls, went through the emails Emelio had sent me earlier. A contact at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) returned my call. Emelio wasn’t a US citizen. He had no green card. My contact assured me that this fact was just between us. I didn’t care if Emelio was living here unofficially. Being half Cherokee, I can trace my ancestry back to the original inhabitants, so I could make the case that the majority of US citizens are illegal immigrants. But I did want to check on Emelio’s claim of being a qualified accountant.

  I also received a copy of Madeline’s contract from Emelio. There was nothing specific that forbade her from operating another business. But no court would stand in the way of ousting her o
n the basis that she was operating her own business on the foundation’s property and time. The real kicker, though, was the amount of money the foundation would have to pay to get rid of her.

  What Madeline had negotiated was phenomenal. The Fog City Arts Center had completely financed her move from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific. They had paid her a fortune for creating havoc while she was here. And they would have to provide another fortune for her to leave. An incredible scam. And nothing illegal. She was good. Her lunatic behavior might be part of the plan. Fire the crazy lady before she destroys the entire center. The question was, had she taken even more from the golden goose? And would she murder someone to cover it up?

  David’s résumé provided his home address. I was fighting the idea of going there. Interfering in an active murder investigation was not in my job description, and it was illegal. On the other hand, I knew things Hadley did not know, and it would take her a while to find out those things unless I offered my help.

  SEVEN

  “Nice wheels,” Hadley said, motioning at my old black Mercedes. She was headed toward her unmarked Ford Crown Victoria.

  “It’s more than forty years old,” I told her, to downplay its value and to come across as less snooty.

  “So am I,” she said.

  “Classics both.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, glancing up at the large Victorian house where David roomed. She spoke with enough gruffness to warn me against such smooth talking. I took note.

  “Thought maybe we could help each other,” I said. “Anything inside David’s place?” I looked again at the building to make sure it matched the address on David’s résumé.

  “Don’t play me,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “You know I was hired to find out if someone at the foundation was cooking the books.”

  “Were they?” she asked. Uniformed police were coming out of the house with a computer and some cardboard storage boxes.

  “I had concluded no until I found David floating in the bay.”

  “Yeah, well, that brings me to the subject of your being first on the scene,” she said.