None of the references mentioned Edu-Pub. Very interesting. I dug deeper and decided to follow the largest path which seemed to nail him as a Cambodian theologist. Yeah, right.
I soon learned that Cambodians speak nineteen different languages, the most common called Central Khmer, with a smattering of Mandarin and other combinations that I couldn’t translate. The country was predominantly Buddhist and Muslim. I e-mailed requests to my various identity networks in search of visas, driver licenses, birth certificates, and the assorted accoutrements of modern living, then worked my way through any English-speaking sites on the search list. Anyone who has ever seen the asininity that Google can turn up in a search will appreciate my patience.
I found nothing useful under the English language sites and began on the Edu-Pub angle. I reached a deadend immediately. Their website was specious. It didn’t exist in any public corporate forum that I could immediately determine, but I had their financial statement. I sent a copy to another VA who worked with an accountant and asked for a translation.
While I waited for a reply from my Cambodian contacts, I started hunting for my favorite shyster. My appointment with Reginald the Thief’s partner wasn’t until later that afternoon, but I wasn’t wasting any time.
Given that the payments on Reginald’s brand new Mercedes were four months past due and his mortgage company was threatening foreclosure, I was pretty certain I wasn’t the only one hot on his trail. I also uncovered two convictions for possession of drugs and an outstanding warrant for the sale of illegal substances. My guess was that Papa Reginald had bought Reginald the Lesser out of jail the first two times, but daddy—my grandfather’s attorney—had bitten the dust by the time of The Lesser’s third arrest. It looked like Reggie’s wife filed for divorce after the first conviction. Who in their right senses would name their daughter Araminta? The name gave me visions of a horse-faced woman in pearls. Old money. Had Reggie run through it all?
While I was poking around, I checked on Tex to be certain nothing new had turned up overnight. The D.C. cops moved at a snail’s pace. According to the news reports, the murder victim’s fingerprints had been found in the senator’s library. Go figure. The woman had worked for Tex. Did the cops think she wore gloves? One witty reporter thought it important that Ms. Carstairs had been wearing Manolo Blahniks when her body was discovered. Just because her shoes cost as much as two weeks’ salary didn’t mean she’d paid for them with blackmail proceeds or that Tex had bought them for her. Working women knew where to find bargains.
My bet was on Ms. Carstairs’ ex-husband, but the only mention of him was that he’d been verifiably out of town at the time of her death.
Grumbling at the media’s lack of imagination, I returned to Brashton the Thief and worked through the better part of the afternoon. I was in the middle of rifling through his mortgage company’s online files when the front door banged open with a crash that rattled the porcelain on the mantel.
I could hear EG screaming at Nick all the way down the hall. This was not the way to make our landlord happy.
“They want to put me in fourth grade!” EG shouted, flopping on the worn brown leather sofa after flinging open the library door with a crash that probably left a hole in the paneling.
“That’s what you get for not studying,” I muttered, scanning the mortgage file before someone realized it was open.
“That’s what she gets for not having any school records.” Nick sauntered in carrying a cup of Starbucks. “If you’re really good on that thing, you’ll locate her medical records. They won’t let her in at all without proof she’s had her rabies shot.”
“Vaccinations,” EG corrected scornfully. “And I can tell you where to find them. But I won’t.”
“Then I’ll make some up and you’ll go to fourth grade. Now go away and let me work.” I was starting to remember why I’d run away from my family. It’s hard to concentrate when Masterpiece Theater is playing in your front room.
“I’ll run away again!” EG shouted, leaping up and heading toward the library door. “If you won’t help my dad, I don’t have to stay here and be treated like a moronic baby.”
“That’s how you get treated if you behave like one,” Nicholas hollered down the hall after her, although the clatter of EG’s shoes on the stairs probably drowned him out.
Anxious about hanging onto the roof over our heads, I could almost hear the disapproval emanating from a lamp base. Grandfather’s downstairs desk chair was too large for me, but most things were. I sat back and waited, holding my breath. Sure enough, our landlord’s dry voice broke the silence following EG’s flight.
“I could arrange to have her sent to school in Taiwan if that will ensure peace.”
As I feared, we’d awakened the sleeping tiger. Signing off on the useless mortgage file, I tried to think of something pacifying to say. “Thank you for the offer,” was the best I could do under the circumstances, and even it sounded sarcastic. Which it was. “I’ll locate her records and see that she doesn’t create any further outbursts.”
“Taiwan might be easier.” The voice issued from a sleek console on the table—a genuine intercom. “But you won’t be here next week, so it’s no concern of mine.”
A light went out on the intercom’s switchboard. I studied the buttons but couldn’t determine if it worked both ways. No point in stirring the old hornet by testing it.
“We will not be out of here,” I murmured under my breath as I went after Magda’s little brat. “That third floor is going to be mine.”
The door to EG’s room was locked. She’d chosen the only room in the whole house with a key in the door.
“Use my laptop to locate your school records,” I told her through the oak panel. “If you can do that, I might consider an alternative school.” Not that I had a clue how to find any school, but as I’ve said, I have a soft spot for EG. She really did belong in high school.
Angry silence was the only response. Shrugging, I returned downstairs. I’d given her a choice. If she didn’t want to take it, that was her problem. I might be as close as our family came to normal, but no one ever said I was maternal.
I found Nicholas ensconced on an elegant gold damask sofa in front of the maroon draperies in the parlor, knees crossed and polished shoe bouncing, sipping his Starbucks while perusing a real estate magazine. A copy of Playgirl was on the coffee table in front of him.
“You’ve been a busy lad.” I picked up another of the real estate magazines he’d strewn across the neatly arranged Architectural Digests on the coffee table. “I think we need to hire a lawyer to sue the lawyers.”
“I’m not without resources. I’ll make a few phone calls.” Nick’s professionally shaped eyebrows rose to his hairline as he perused a page. “Here’s a house just down the street. You don’t even want to know what they’re asking for these urban monstrosities. I say we go straight to the attorney general’s office and file a complaint against the spider in the attic.”
“This is D.C. , Magda’s homeground. She probably dated the attorney general. Just ask around for a good lawyer, preferably one who moved here after she left. We’ll know better what to do after we talk to the incompetents who let Reginald the Thief sell our inheritance.”
He studied my baggy black capris with disapproval. “Not wearing those, I trust?”
“Of course not.” I didn’t give him a chance to question further. I worked at home. Career dressing wasn’t part of my expense budget. “I’ve told EG to find her school records. Are you still planning on hanging around until I can finish this job? I could use some back-up.”
“You could use a life, a wardrobe, and a haircut, not necessarily in that order,” he said, looking me up and down with a superior air intended to make me crawl into a hole.
I was aware that I did not meet my elegant brother’s sartorial standards, but then, I didn’t need his approval. I was the self-supporting one around here. “I asked only because I can find our money faster if y
ou can keep an eye on EG and help me poke around on Tex. If not, I can probably call on Patra.” Even our mother had refrained from naming her third oldest child after the Queen of the Nile, but the shortened form was bad enough.
“Patra’s in Greece and I’m here.” Nicholas returned to his magazine. “Go get dressed. I can’t wait to hear what you’ll do to Blackwell Old Boy.”
Reassured, I swung around and nearly bounced off Mallard’s boiled shirtfront. Or did he have a plaster mold beneath that old-fashioned cutaway? I rubbed my nose and backed up.
With a tsk of disapproval, he removed the real estate brochures from the artistic display of glossy magazines. He poked the Playgirl with distaste as if he couldn’t bear to touch it. “We do not serve refreshments in the formal parlor,” he intoned, eyeing Nick’s foam coffee cup.
Nick didn’t glance up from his magazine. “That’s all right, old fellow. I served myself.”
I escaped before learning the outcome of that fray. I was in terror of being thrown out on our ears, but teaching my egocentric family to behave wasn’t happening in this milennium.
In honor of the occasion, I donned my denim jumper and a black T-shirt—the most fashionable attire in my wardrobe. Since Nick disapproved of my plain braid, I wrapped it in a more formal fashion at the back of my head. I never wore cosmetics, but I have naturally long lashes and red lips. Why waste money on emphasizing looks when it’s my brains I want recognized? I know, my therapists had a word or two to say about my denial of my mother’s genes, but therapists have weird fixations.
I tried to sneak down the front stairs and out the door with no one noticing. Of course, Nicholas and EG both popped out from across the hall, and Mallard arrived to open the door.
“Just as I thought.” Nicholas sighed and rolled his eyes. “Mallard, keep an eye on the brat for us, will you? We have a meeting with Maximillian’s attorneys, and I believe I need to add the necessary savoir faire.”
Clapping on an English style straw hat with turned down brim, he offered his arm to me. “You either go with me so you look as if you have a keeper, or you wear something respectable.”
“Oh, and I’m sure you’ll impress them,” I mocked in retaliation. “Lawyers so listen to clients in pink ascots, especially when they perfectly match your pink suspenders.”
“Braces,” he replied in his best plummy British accent. “There’s a dear now, out you go. Cheerio, Mallard! Don’t let our little pet plunge into any rabbit holes while we’re gone.”
The weird thing is, Nick can pull this off without anyone blinking an eyelash, as if tall handsome Brits go about with diminutive dorks on their arms all the time. Life is so unfair. He’s younger, dumber, and far less respectable than I am, but he’s the one everyone treats with approval.
I pulled my arm away as he opened the taxi door. “I’ve been managing on my own for a decade,” I reminded him.
“Righto, and you do it so well.” He shoved me into the back seat and climbed into the front to check out the gorgeous Greek driver.
Deciding to treat Nick as a younger, obnoxious sister, I crossed my arms and didn’t speak a word until we arrived at the impressive brick offices of Brashton, Johnson, and Terwilliger. I wasn’t sure Nick noticed my silence. He and the taxi driver were having a voluble dialogue on the nightlife in Adams-Morgan compared to that of DuPont Circle. Nick was far more cosmopolitan than I, and it sounded as if he’d found his niche in the city already.
“Did you have time to make any phone calls while I dressed?” I demanded as we hit the sidewalk in front of the elegant Georgetown office, and I paid for the cab.
“I did.” He pushed open the faux wood door with the fake brass knocker that let us into the lobby. “I have the name of an attorney that should make these farts sweat,” Nick murmured as we approached the receptionist. “Not that I’ve been able to reach him, mind you.”
“I’ll reach him.” I memorized the name of the law office scribbled on the scrap he handed me. I didn’t recognize the attorney’s name, which was good. I wanted a counsel completely independent of the Maximillian family—unlike this firm of Amberzombie and Twitch.
The haughty receptionist led us down a corridor of thick carpet, elegantly striped wallpaper, and closed doors. The place reeked of Establishment. Our guide had sized us up and kept her distance as if we were dog poop on her step.
“Mr. Johnson—Mr. Maximillian and Miss Devlin,” she announced, opening one of the many closed doors.
I did mention that Magda didn’t marry Nick’s father, didn’t I? Whether she intended it or not, he now bore our grandfather’s last name for lack of any other.
Blackwell Johnson rose to greet us as we were ushered in. “I’m sorry we must meet under such sad circumstances. Your grandfather will be sorely missed.”
“You were a friend of his?” I asked, keeping my eyes downcast as I sat in the Federal-blue, satin-upholstered chair he offered. I wouldn’t mind an intelligent exchange of information about my grandfather, but instinct told me this man’s knowledge was as false as his smile. And the corner of his eye twitched. I tried not to smirk at the aptness of my epithet for the firm.
Peering through lowered lashes, I studied Johnson. Fifties, I’d wager, portly from too much fine living. Artificially tanned. Styled silver hair. Botox to iron out wrinkles. His father was probably the original Johnson in the firm’s name. Old money, expensive country club, no doubt lived across the river in Alexandria and never saw a city street closer than from the window of his limo. I didn’t like him, so my decorous behavior was as false as he was.
“I met Rathbone several times,” the attorney replied. “Eccentric upon occasion, but one of the old school. There should be more like him.”
“Right. The world needs more men who ignore their offspring,” I agreed pleasantly. “A matriarchal society has many advantages.” If one’s mother wasn’t Magda, the Hungarian Diva.
Lounging beside me in an identical chair, Nick snickered. Except in math, he wasn’t our family’s brightest bulb, but he was smart enough to let me handle the show.
I got to the point. “Do you have a copy of our grandfather’s will?”
“Right here.” Johnson tapped a legal-sized envelope but didn’t hand it over. “Various stocks to charity, the house, its contents, and substantial investments to the descendants of Magda Maximillian.”
“Have you made any attempt to contact us?” I inquired dulcetly.
“I’ve only just begun.” He sounded evasive, as well he should if he’s sitting on a multi-million-dollar embezzlement suit. “I can find no permanent addresses for any of you.”
“Then perhaps you have hired someone to locate Mr. Brashton?”
Even though I looked perfectly innocent with my hands folded in my denim lap and my feet barely touching the floor, Mr. Johnson was squirming in his seat. Guilt has that effect.
“We thought perhaps Reginald would contact us.” He said this with a perfectly straight face, while tapping his pen nervously on his desk. “He was overdue for a vacation and requested several weeks off in July. It wasn’t until he missed a court date that we realized he hadn’t returned. It’s quite possible he’s met with a mishap and has been unavoidably detained.”
A lawyer they didn’t even miss. Our grandfather must have been seriously ill by the time Reggie Three took over his account. I couldn’t picture Maximillian as the kind of man tolerant of imbeciles.
“When did he sell our house?” I asked, thinking as fast as I could.
Blackwell consulted his file. “The records show the estate was closed on July 10th.”
“And Mr. Brashton left for vacation immediately afterward?”
He sat back in his chair and didn’t consult his calendar. “Approximately, I believe.”
He knew where I was going with that, so I skipped to the good part. “You didn’t realize your partner had a court date scheduled for July 11th for illegal sale of drugs, and that with a third conviction, he would have to
do jail time and lose his license?”
Johnson almost ran his finger under his too-tight collar before diverting the gesture to smooth his tie. “I was unaware of that. I’m sure the charge is in error and will be cleared upon his return.”
Right, and wild horses would fly. “What we would like to know is how your firm intends to deal with the disappearance of our funds,” I responded in my most level voice, refraining from calling him liar. No anger here, nosirreebob. Just a purely casual question.
Johnson laughed and shot Nicholas one of those man-to-man looks. “The little lady doesn’t mind saying what she thinks, does she? Refreshing.”
Nick shot his cuffs, crossed his ankle over his knee, and leaned back in his chair, looking like the millionaire playboy he aspired to be. “The lady has been known to make bigger men than you cry. Chip off the old Maximillian block is our Ana.”
I smiled, but I was looking down, and Johnson couldn’t see my expression. Since the attorney obviously didn’t think anyone in denim significant enough to demand an answer, I dropped a bombshell to end his complacency. “We thought it wise to engage a neutral party to discuss the liabilities and charges involved in embezzlement. I trust you and Mr. Oppenheimer can work together.” I waited to see what the name of Nicholas’s legal beagle would do.
Johnson’s face fell four flights. So much for Botox. “Now, Miss Devlin, there is some possibility that—”
“We will have to read the will to understand the full extent of Grandfather’s estate,” I continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “but the house and contents represent a staggeringly substantial sum. Grandfather had promised us the use of his home should we ever have need of it. And now this...” I couldn’t put a name to the usurper without letting the imps of anger out of the cellar. I swept the envelope off the desk rather than mention Graham. “Someone else lives in the home Grandfather meant for us. Exactly how much money exchanged hands?”
Evil Genius Page 5