by Jim Riley
She flashed the ID card the Dalton furnished.
"I'm afraid I must insist that you talk with me."
Johnson hesitated.
"Okay. Give me a few minutes. Donna, please come to my office. Ms. Dupre, Donna will let you know when I am available."
He abruptly turned and left the receptionist area. Donna gave Niki a thumbs-up sign and grinned. She picked up a pad and followed Johnson into the back offices.
Niki examined the modestly designed office. Portraits of wildlife adorned the walls. One was of an alligator, its mouth wide open, on the bank of Lake Marepaus. Another depicted a brown pelican, Louisiana state bird, in flight. Others displayed various ducks from the mallards to the green-winged teal, floating down to natural waterways in the marshes of the southern part of the state.
After ten minutes, Donna reappeared.
"He can see you now," the young lady said. "I love how you handled him. He's not accustomed to being challenged, especially by a woman. Be careful, though. He has more tentacles than an octopus."
Niki laughed. “I've had a few dates like that. I can handle him.”
She entered the hallway leading to the back. The investigator correctly assumed that Johnson's office would be at the rear of the hallway. Entering his office, she noted the shark contrast in the furnishings and artwork in his office compared to the reception area. The art on Johnson's wall was original paintings by some of Louisiana's most talented artist. The intricate details and unique Cajun ambiance capture by the local painters amazed Niki. His desk and matching credenza were made with the finest bald cypress available, not a normal use of the natural timber.
"What can I do for you, Ms. Dupre? I must warn you that my time is limited, even for special investigators."
Niki took a seat in an adorned leather chair.
"Then I'll get down to business, Mr. Johnson. You are a partner in this business. Correct?"
Johnson nodded while ogling at Niki.
"Mr. Wilson was also a partner. Correct?"
Again the broker said nothing.
"There is a third partner, a man by the name of Hugh Carter. Is that correct?"
"Yes, but Hugh is a silent partner. He is not involved in the day-to-day business affairs. He made a significant investment to help Scott and me get started."
"According to the records, all three of you were equal partners. Has that changed?"
"No, that is still correct," Johnson replied.
"What happens to Mr. Wilson's share of the business now?"
"We have a succession plan filed with the SEC. I'm sure you've seen it." Johnson challenged Niki.
She smiled and pulled some papers from her briefcase.
"I have a copy. The problem I have with it is that it isn't specific. It says that in the event of death of one partner, the other partners have the right to buy the decease’s share from his estate. Can you clarify that provision for me?"
"What do you want to know?"
"Which of you will by Mr. Wilson's share of the business and who sets the price?"
Johnson chuckled.
"You get down to business, don't you? I will procure Scott's interest in the company. His wife has no interest in it other than as a source of revenue."
"And the price?" Niki asked.
"We haven't gotten that far yet."
Johnson looked away.
"Sheila, that's Scott's wife, and I are good friends. We won't have problems working something out."
"How would you describe your relationship with Sheila Wilson?"
"What are you implying?" Johnson's voice rose.
"I'm trying to get the facts. Did you and Mrs. Wilson have a relationship beyond friendship?"
"No way. Scott was my friend and my partner. I could not do that to him. I am happily married. How do you get off asking that kind of question?"
The unmistakable anger was written all over Johnson’s face.
Niki pulled out another package from her briefcase.
"According to the phone records, there were numerous calls to the Wilson residence from this office."
"Scott called Sheila all the time. He enjoyed talking to his wife."
Niki looked down at the records.
"There are so several phone calls from your extension, Mr. Johnson. How do you explain that?"
Johnson coughed nervously. "Sometimes Scott and I worked in my office. I guess he called her from my phone while he was in here."
Niki smiled.
"Then he also borrowed your cell phone?"
"Huh?"
"There are numerous calls to the Wilson home from your cell."
Sweat poured down Johnson’s face despite the cool air in the office.
"I must have been calling Scott. Sometimes he worked from home."
"That's odd. The records show that Mr. Wilson's extension was being used several times at the same time you placed phone calls on your cell phone to the Wilson home. Would you like to take another stab at that one, Mr. Johnson?"
The broker wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his expensive shirt.
"I guess one of the other guys was always using his office while he was home."
Niki pulled out another sheet of paper.
“According to the ticket log, Scott Wilson was fulfilling stock purchases and sales while on his own phone with his customers. Want to take another shot at it?”
"Where did you get all the information so quick?" The bewildered man asked.
"Your firm is registered with the SEC. They watched their members closely since the Bernie Madoff fiasco. The Senate's finance committee has access to all their records, which means we have access to all your records."
"But I have constitutional rights to privacy."
Niki smiled.
"That is correct. You sure do as a private citizen. But you don't as a registered representative. Your firm has no expectation of privacy when doing business with the public."
"Maybe I should call my attorney."
"No problem. Have him talk to Senator Dalton Bridgestone. He's on the committee. He will be interested to find out why you're lying to me."
Johnson sighed.
"Okay. What do you want?"
"It would be nice to start with the truth. I always find that's as good a place to begin as any."
Suddenly, the broker collar was too tight. He kept pulling on it with his finger. The confident demeanor he showed in the receptionist area was replaced with nervous tics.
"Sheila and I are seeing each other. She is twenty years younger than Scott and with all the turmoil in the market lightly, he hasn't been able to meet her needs."
"So what you're telling me is that you were screwing her as a favor to Scott because you're such a fine gentleman?"
The frankness from the investigator with all-American features surprised him.
“I―”
"That's okay, Mr. Johnson. Now, if you can cut out all the superfluous self grandidization and stick with the facts, we'll get through this a lot quicker."
Johnson gave her a defeated shrug. "Sheila and I are having an affair. If my wife finds out about it, I'll be ruined."
Niki smiled.
"I'm not interested in ruining your life. I'm interested in finding out what happened to Mr. Wilson. Nothing more."
"Then why are you asking me all these questions about my personal life?"
"Because I need to know who would benefit from Mr. Wilson's demise. I know of at least two people that fit that category. You and Sheila."
"Wait. You are wrong. This thing between Sheila and me is not that serious. We are only fooling around."
Niki closed her eyes, rubbing them before looking at the stockbroker again.
"I thought we were past that. Would your wife say your ‘thing’ wasn't that serious?"
“Well, no―I mean, yes. But that is different. She's not exactly an unbiased observer.”
"Neither are you, Mr. Johnson. You are married, aren't you? You are partners wit
h your lover's husband, aren't you?"
"Can we just get on with the pertinent questions? I told you I'm busy."
Niki looked at her notes.
"I believe these questions are pertinent. And relative." She paused. "Who else besides you and Mrs. Wilson would benefit from Mr. Wilson's death?"
"You won’t quit, will you?" He asked. "For your information, Scott was not the most beloved person in our office. He didn't get along with anyone. Except maybe Donna."
"What were his problems?"
"Scott didn’t think the youngest members of our staff were technically proficient."
"Meaning?"
“Scott believed in technical analysis. That meant he interpreted charts of the stock prices. He believed history will repeat itself and the price of a stock can be determined by its past.”
"How? I don't understand."
The broker regained his composure, knowing he had the upper hand in this field.
“It's called technical analysis for a reason. Plotting the prices of stocks over time, usually the closing prices, will reveal certain patterns. Stocks trade in channels. Technicians call the bottom of the channel ‘support’. And the top of the channels ‘resistance’. They believe it is likely that a stock's price will normally trade between support and resistance.”
"What happens if it doesn’t?"
"Then, depending on which way it breaks out, the old support becomes the new resistance or the old resistance becomes the new support."
"That seems simple enough."
"There is more to it. The charts reveal certain patterns like a 'head and shoulders', a 'flag', a 'pennant', and a bunch of others. Scott didn’t think most of us, including me, correctly interpreted the patterns."
"Who was right?"
"That's the rub," Johnson replied. "As ornery as Scott was, he was right almost all the time. Enough to piss off every other broker in the office."
"Was there open animosity?"
"Hell, yes. I thought I might need a referee for some of our staff meetings, especially lately."
"Why lately?"
"I don't know if you noticed, but the market has tanked. Analysts point to different things. Devaluation of the Chinese currency, the sluggish economy in Europe, our domestic employment structure, or a combination of all these. Scott tried to convince us to get out of stocks and go to cash in all accounts. Unfortunately, he was overruled. Because of this our clients are taking it on the chin in their investment accounts."
Niki jotted down more notes. "So the other staff members are not unhappy about what happened to him, and from what you're telling me, there may be a lot of clients who blamed Scott for their losses."
Johnson nodded. “He was the face of the franchise. He talked to the clients who were losing money.”
Johnson shook his head.
"I'm not sure I can let you do that. We have sensitive information about our clients and their holdings. Don't you need a subpoena?"
"I can get one or you can give me permission. One way, you will appear to be cooperating and the other―" Niki let her voice trail off.
Johnson mulled this over, not liking either option.
"You can go in there, but just to be on the safe side of protecting our clients, I'd like for someone to be in there with you."
He buzzed the front desk. Donna appeared in less than a minute.
"Will you please escort Ms. Dupre to Scott's office and stay with her until she leaves?"
Niki smiled.
"I also need a list of the employees of the company and a list of clients."
Johnson started to object, rising half out of his chair. Then he nodded.
“Give Ms. Dupre whatever she needs.”
Niki followed Donna down the hallway. The sharp difference between Johnson's office and Mr. Wilson's surprised her. Wilson's decor appeared as if it had been designed in the dark of night. There was nothing to catch one's eye on the wall. The metal file cabinets would not have fetched much money at a rummage sale. Several of the drawers were ajar, one about half open. Papers were strewn across the top of the desk, their random distribution giving no hint to priority. An old desktop computer set by the inbox, and a single monitor on the top flashed a bouncing ball.
"Where do you want to start?" Donna asked.
"Let's see." Niki looked around the room. "It appears that Mr. Wilson was not on the leading edge of technology."
Donna laughed out loud.
"To him, twist off caps on his bottles of Dr Pepper was leading technology. He wasn't a big believer in computers and thought the Internet was the beginning of a one world government."
Niki walked behind his desk. She sifted through the scattered documents on top. One listed several companies and the dates that each would be reporting their quarterly earnings. Another had one-sentence news summaries on various companies. An analyst’s opinion on the latest economic indicators was attached to the news summaries.
A couple of manila folders had the recent numbers and names of clients prominently displayed on the tab. Niki opened the first of the two. The client's name was Dennis Hand. Inside the folder, Niki found a listing of the shares of stocks and mutual funds comprising his portfolio. The file contained copies of trade tickets, each listing the date, the number of shares, the symbol identifying the company and the transaction price. Niki saw nothing unusual until the last section of the folder. It was titled 'Communications'.
Donna looked over her shoulder. When she saw Niki studying this section, she explained, "Every time one of the staff spoke to a client, they had to make a note in the file. Most of the time, they recapped the conversation in the briefest of terms. Mr. Wilson thought it was one of those pain–in–the–butt rules. He liked trading He wasn't much on documentation."
Niki looked up at her.
"A lot of these are in different handwriting."
Donna peeked at them.
"Yeah. Whoever talked to the client did the notes. Unless it was Mr. Wilson. Then he usually got me to write them up."
“Did you do this for all his clients or only this one?”
"All of them," Donna answered. "Mr. Wilson's penmanship look like a dyslexic third-grader. He wrote real tiny and with a Donna between block and script. Whenever you see it once, it's easy to recognize. It’s difficult to read, but at least you know who wrote it."
Niki read the last entry.
"Looks like Mr. hand was very upset that his losses. May move account. Two old to take risks."
The writing in the file was clear and legible.
"Did you write this?" Niki asked.
"Yes, Ma'am. That's the clean version of a thirty-minute phone call. I was in here talking with Mr. Wilson when he called. I'm telling you, that man knows some cuss words that would make a whore blush."
Niki's mouth gaped, surprised that the crude analogy.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Blake says stuff like that all the time, and sometimes it just comes out."
"It's okay. Don't worry about it. Did Mr. Hand threatened Wilson?"
Donna laughed. "Only if you call promising to burn down his house, cut off his private parts, and sue him in federal court a threat. Other than that he was cordial. Other than when he told Mr. Wilson something about his ancestry. I don't think Mr. Wilson like that."
Niki reread the brief note.
"Yeah, I don't think his comments about your mama need to be documented. Could Dennis Hand have killed Mr. Wilson?"
Donna shook her head.
"I don't think so. I only met him once. He's a cranky old fart that looks like he's got one foot in the grave, and the other one on an oil slick. Plus, he smelled like sh―like he didn't make it to the bathroom on time. Mr. Wilson would have smelled him even if he didn't see him. There's no way he killed Mr. Wilson. Just no way."
Niki agreed. "It took someone with a good deal of strength to shove that letter opener in that far. If Dennis Hand is as feeble as you’re saying, we can eliminate him as a suspect. Unless he paid someone t
o do it for him."
Niki picked up the other folder. It belonged to Francis Humphrey. She flipped through the first two pages, then turned to the section for communications.
"What can you tell me about Francis Humphrey?" She asked Donna.
“Ms. Humphrey had a ton of money. She inherited it from her father. He owned two of the biggest car dealerships in South Louisiana. Anyway, he got killed when he walked under a hydraulic car rack in the shop. A Ford expedition crushed him flatter than a six-year-old’s breasts. She was only twenty-four.”
Niki scanned the last couple of recaps.
"Looks like she wasn't happy with the direction her investments were going."
Donna laughed.
“You could say that. She went from tens of millions to where you can leave off the tens and the ‘s’ in millions. She is not a happy camper.”
"I thought Mr. Wilson was good at trading. What happened?"
"The same as Mr. Hand. Mr. Wilson didn’t handle those accounts personally. He was taking them from Howard before they went to zero."
"Howard?"
"Howard Jenkins," Donna replied. "He's one of the younger guys, only twenty-six years old. He thought Mr. Wilson was living in the past. Howard has some computer software that models what a portfolio should look like. Only it hasn't worked well lately."
"Tell me about Howard."
"He is one of the guys that likes to tell dirty jokes. He's also suggested lots of things to me. I don't like him much."
Niki nodded. "I can understand why. How was the relationship between Howard and Mr. Wilson?"
Donna giggled. “Mr. Wilson thought Howard was a young, egotistical brat. He called him an ‘arrogant whippersnapper’. I have no idea what a whippersnapper is, but I'm sure he didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
Niki continued to read the reports in the file.
"From what I'm reading, Mr. Wilson was not impressed with Howard. These notations say account mishandled, no correlation between portfolio and objectives, could play sperm in jeopardy. I’d say Mr. Wilson wasn't thrilled with Howard."
"Uh―" Donna hesitated. "There is one more thing you need to know about Howard. He's Mr. Johnson's nephew. That's the only reason he’s still here. Mr. Wilson wanted to fire him a long time ago, but Mr. Johnson wouldn’t let him;"