Earlier I’d told Ma I didn’t have a crack of any kind in the case that I could get a fingernail under, no thread I could pull to unravel it. But now there was blackmail. In effect, Soranden had blackmailed Mike Volker for a hundred thousand dollars. It was unlikely, but possible, that Mike was the first. It would take a certain kind of tax evasion, and a certain kind of tax evader, for Soranden to pull it off, but chances were he had blackmailed others. From what Volker had said, Soranden was pretty smooth about it. He would have a blackmailee over a barrel. It would be someone with a lot to lose, someone the IRS could go after like a pack of bloodthirsty weasels.
Blackmail. If the FBI had a hint of that, Volker would be the first to know. It sounded like the kind of information the FBI might be able to do something with, but how could I push them in that direction without putting Mike back in that whirlwind? We’d taken his case, such as it was—or we would once I convinced Ma we should. She loves pro bono. Therefore, we couldn’t tell the FBI that Soranden had blackmailed citizens without exposing Volker or violating client confidentiality. I didn’t know if that was good enough, but it was what it was, so I gently rested a hand on one of the finest female bottoms in all of North America and dropped off to sleep.
* * *
My phone rang at 7:25 a.m. It wasn’t the burner, which Lucy and I had taken to calling the Munson Burner—a reminder that neither of us had found high school chemistry to be a hoot, but we’d at least picked up the part where you set things on fire in the lab and maybe, with luck, set off an alarm and everyone beats it out of the building and gets the next hour off as firemen drag a hose or two through the hallways.
“Hey, it’s you, Ma. And it’s not even seven thirty yet.”
“Both things I already knew.”
“Must mean you’re caffeinated, ready to go.”
“I am. Sounds like you aren’t.”
“Lucy either. But if you were to call back at, oh, say, ten o’clock, I think we could—”
“Funny you should say ten, since that’s when you and me and Lucy are meeting Paul Werner at UNR.”
“Well, sure, of course. I was kidding about that ten o’clock crack. Just hit me with a quick little reminder—who the hell is Paul Werner?”
“Biology professor. Entomology. That’s bugs in case you didn’t know. Ag building, room 222. Don’t be late.”
“Bugs. Meaning ants?”
“Right. Ants is bugs.”
“And Ag building? Parse that for me.”
“Agriculture, boyo. Southeast part of campus.”
“My gumshoe training tells me this has something to do with Soranden’s skull. I thought you’d given up on him.”
“Willie reminded me we already got a retainer—that flight from Albuquerque. He sounded unhappy, said something about it costing around twelve thousand bucks. We couldn’t give the flight back so I renegotiated the bonus, got him up to twenty-five grand, and told him we—you, mostly—would keep him in mind if anything came up.”
“So we’re back in the game.”
“We are. But if the FBI gets anywhere near us and it’s your fault, you’ll be fired so fast you won’t hear about it until you’re standing in an unemployment line, disoriented and reeling.”
“Wow, Ma. That’s fast.”
“Ag building, room 222 at ten.” She hung up.
Lucy propped herself on an elbow. “Ants, and we’re back in the game. Sounds like your powers of persuasion really are legion. And what was fast?”
“How fast I could be at the unemployment office if the FBI gets onto us. It was so fast the arrow of time got reversed. Even Einstein would’ve been impressed.”
“Groovy.”
“So, Cupcake, no calls to the FBI.”
“Okay, I’ll take them off speed dial.”
* * *
A bunch of classes got out at 9:50, about the time Lucy and I arrived on campus at the agriculture building. I’d forgotten what it was like to be caught in the rush of students headed off to another class, or to the student union for caffeine and calories. Texting while speed-walking was new since I’d been in college. Lucy and I headed upstream against the flow, lucky not to have been swept across campus and into a chemistry class.
Ma met us in the corridor outside the room. She had on tan slacks, a pale orange shirt, and new Nike jogging shoes, puce on black.
“Nice shoes, Ma,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Man, I take a lot of flak, or implied flak.
“I think he means it, Ma,” Lucy said. “They are nice.”
“At least you two’re on time.”
Room 222 was a biology lab, complete with lab tables with gouged but essentially indestructible black tops, Bunsen burner outlets, ten or twelve aquariums that held tarantulas, scorpions, beetles, toads, and other low-maintenance critters.
Paul Werner was in his mid-forties, five-five, thirty pounds overweight, balding, small features in a round face, blue eyes. When he saw Ma, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation of what she’d brought him. Never in my life have I done that, even when I was eight years old and it was time to open Christmas presents. I’m not sure where the gesture came from, but it looks damn silly so I’m not going to add it to my repertoire.
“Whatcha got for me, Maude? You were a bit cryptic on the phone.”
“I need you to identify a bug. And keep it quiet.”
He flinched at the word “bug.”
“Quiet, huh?”
“That’s right. Just between us.”
“I must say that sounds deliciously ominous.” He craned his neck to look up at me, then took in Lucy. “Well, hello, there, miss. What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
They stood eye to eye. He shook her hand. “Charmed.”
Charmed. I’ve never said that when meeting someone for the first time. I could try it out, see if it got a laugh.
“And you are …?” Paul said to me.
We shook hands. “Mort. Charmed.”
He laughed.
Yep, it worked. I would have to try it on O’Roarke.
Then he gave me a closer inspection. “You look familiar. Have we met before?”
“It’s possible. But not in person.”
“Cryptic.” He turned to Ma. “Wonderful. A day of mystery, and it’s not even noon.” He gave me the kind of look he might give a bug he hadn’t expected to find. “Mort. I’ve heard that name recently. Don’t tell me, though. I’ll see if I can place you.”
Ma took his arm. “When you do, if you do, none of us were here, Paul.”
He hesitated. “How … mysterious. Well, then, what can I do for you?”
“Tell us whatever you can about this.” She got a plastic container out of her purse, opened it, got out a bit of tissue and opened it, showed him the ant.
His face fell. “Another one. That’s all?”
“What do you mean ‘another one’?” Ma asked. “And it’s freakin’ gigantic, so what do you mean, ‘that’s all’?”
“Well, it’s a Maricopa Harvester Ant, common as sin. Not around here, though. And the police showed me one a few days ago. Someone from the FBI was with them. They asked pretty much the same thing.”
Feds and police. Werner was the local expert. Of course they’d haul that ant over here, get the skinny on it.
“It’s huge,” Ma said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Some harvester ants are. Huge, I mean. This one’s a good size.” He pulled a small steel ruler out of his nerd pocket and held it up to the ant. “Three point two centimeters. She’s a big girl. You’d never see anything like her around here, but you’d see plenty in Arizona.”
“Arizona.”
He shrugged. “Harvester ant population in Arizona would outweigh the entire human population of the state. By a good margin, too.”
“Ten of those puppies would weigh as much as a person,” Lucy said.
Paul looked startled. “Oh, no, it would take a lot
more—”
“Kidding,” she said.
He gave her a goofy grin and slapped his head. “Oh, yes. Silly me. Of course, you were kidding.”
“But they are big,” Lucy said.
“Yes they are. They also have the distinction of being the most venomous insect on the planet.”
“Venomous, huh?” Ma said.
“Very. They don’t bite, though. They sting like a bee, but with venom about twelve times more toxic. You wouldn’t want to find yourself in the middle of them. If one ant stings you, it releases a pheromone that attracts the rest of the colony. If you get stung once, it’s time to run.”
“Or before you get stung,” Lucy said. “But they’re mostly in Arizona?”
“More than any other state. There are twenty-two species of harvester ant, but pogonomrymex badius, the Florida harvester, is the only one found east of the Mississippi.” He indicated Ma’s ant. “This one is pogonomrymex maricopa, found only in arid chaparral habitats, in the Southwest. Not much of that in Nevada. This one came from Arizona, no doubt about it. Best guess, east of Phoenix and maybe Gold Canyon, or around there, possibly up in the hills.”
“Will they eat flesh?” Ma asked.
“They’re seed gatherers, but, yeah, they’ll eat just about anything they find.” He gave Ma a look. “This’s about that skull the police found, isn’t it? That IRS fellow.”
Then he turned to me. “Angel. Mortimer Angel. Of course. You’re the one who found it. I’ve seen you on television a time or two. Thought I’d heard the name.”
I nodded, and Ma said, “None of us were here.”
Werner turned to her. “Hush-hush deal, huh? I don’t get much of that. As in, ever.”
“Not so much hush-hush as personal,” she said. “Private. Let’s keep it that way.”
“If you want, sure. So, anything else I can tell you?”
Ma thought for a moment, didn’t come up with anything, then I said, “How long would it take a colony of those ants to eat a pound of hamburger?”
His eyebrows went up. “Interesting question. Not sure I’d find it in the literature. Might be something to add to my list of summer projects.”
I liked this guy. “Best guess?”
He shrugged. “They’re voracious. It’s nature. Get what you can as fast as you can. A pound of hamburger, huh? Might take a good-sized colony half an hour to tuck that away if it was spread out some so they could all get at it.”
“Half an hour? That’s all?”
“It’s a guess. They don’t fool around. But they wouldn’t eat it on the spot. First order of business would be to nip it into bits and hustle it down into the nest.”
Which is what happened to Soranden. It seemed too dark to ask Werner for an estimate about how long that took, so I didn’t, but I had the feeling Soranden’s skull was empty and clean as a whistle in a few hours, no more than a short afternoon.
Oh, and when someone says, I want to pick your brain, that isn’t what they mean. Usually.
Jeffrey Dahmer might be an exception.
Okay, that’s dark.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SOUTH SIDE OF the UNR campus was a mile and a quarter from Ma’s house. She told us she’d walked over, hence the new shoes. In fact, Ma was on an exercise kick, walking two or three miles a day when the mood suited her. It still suited her, since she walked the mile from the biology building to my house on Washington Street. She let herself in the front door, found Lucy and me in the office, going through the Soranden contraband.
“That the stuff Fairchild gave you?” she asked. “The crud they gathered up in Soranden’s house?”
“Uh-huh. And his office,” I said. “We were going through his car maintenance records. Oil changes, tire rotation.”
Ma stared at me. “Je-sus H. Christ, talk about glomming onto the least likely thing first.”
“He’s kidding, Ma,” Lucy said.
“With Mort, there’s no way to tell. Although he said ‘we,’ which includes you, and you wouldn’t do that, so—” she gave me a look that would decompose rubber—“good one, Mort.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
More evil eye, then she took in the paper pile. Finally, she said, “I’d look at bank statements and any other financials first. And—” she picked up the doodle pad—“what the hell is this?”
“Guy was a doodler,” I said. “Probably on the phone.”
“That’s sometimes good.” She studied the sheet for a while. “Area codes 916 and 917. Huh. Sacramento area and New York City.” She looked first at me, then at Lucy. “You tried phoning these yet?”
“First thing,” Lucy said. “916 numbers were for an auto body shop and a nursing home. 917 got us the Port Authority in Manhattan.”
Ma grunted. “Sacramento stuff’ll be easy to check, if we want to. Port Authority is … weird.” She looked over the pile a moment longer then picked up a Xerox sheet of addresses and phone numbers.
“This looks good,” she said. “You checked these names or phoned any of these numbers yet?”
“Haven’t had time, Ma,” I said.
“You can go over Soranden’s oil changes while Lucy and I have a look at this.”
Well, shit. Guess I’d asked for that.
“Or,” Ma said, “go through his bank statements. And this Edward Jones stuff. Follow the money.”
That was more like it.
Ma settled on a couch beside Lucy. They checked out Soranden’s one-page address book, which ought to take two or three minutes. I went through banking crud. Ronald Soranden had the usual bills, payments, deposits. Money in, money out. It looked like his average checking balance was about $3,500, give or take. Nothing there. Savings account went up slowly and was at about $9,400 when he went missing, but deposits were small, more or less evenly spaced. Nothing like a hundred thousand dollars lying around. At semi-regular intervals, eight or nine thousand dollars were taken out, leaving two or three thousand in the account. Suspicious. I liked that. We might end up doing to Soranden what we’d done with Volker—go on a fishing trip, see if he had accounts for which we didn’t have statements.
Then on to the Edward Jones stack. Soranden had a run-of-the-mill IRA with monthly direct deposits from the IRS, and a Roth IRA. I was able to match withdrawals from savings to mutual fund and bond fund purchases in his Roth which meant it was out in the open and my previous suspicions turned to vapor. His bank accounts gave me nothing. His mutual funds in both IRAs were balanced funds, a steady, fairly low-risk buildup over a twenty-seven-year period that now amounted to $412,800. No unexplained deposits or jumps in the total. It was a nice total, but reasonable over such a long period of time. I didn’t see the hundred thousand Volker had given him.
Supposedly given him. All I had was Volker’s and Marta’s word that Soranden had blackmailed him. Volker’s money had gone somewhere, but if he’d purchased gold that he could stash in a safe deposit box and then claim blackmail if he got caught, I doubted I would ever find it. Thing is, that didn’t add up. At all. If he’d cheated on taxes for four years then got caught, claiming blackmail wouldn’t save him. And he’d been paying a thousand a month back into Joss & Volker’s operating account.
Spinning my wheels …
Soranden’s finances was boring stuff. I was coming up with a lot of nothing. At some point I might try to match his monthly expenses—mortgage, car payments, the usual household bills, and a few others, and what he was socking away into IRAs—to his income. Basic IRS technique. But not now.
I looked over at Ma and Lucy. “How’re you two doing?”
“Names and numbers,” Ma said. “Actually, it’s a mess.”
“It’s one page. I thought you’d be done half an hour ago.”
“It’s not like a real address book,” Lucy said. “It was the kind of book with blank lined pages you’d write in, sort of like a diary. It’s not alphabetical. Sometimes there’s an address, some names only have phone numbers. Here, take a look.�
�
I sat beside Lucy and took the sheet from her.
AAA Cal 916-382-4750
Esther Soranden 2250 Penrose Dr. CC 775-059-1003
Alice Ann Loomis 41 W. 6th Ogden UT 385-151-2017
Janet Kay Anderson 916-421-3391 491-128-1782 ext 30
Arnold Anderson 115-242-1803 288-101-0134 ext 322
Michael Gunderson 775-112-0704 385-401-8823 ext 33
Eric Sandolon 632-912-8873 917-528-2297 ext 21
Donna Del Sarron 314-162-1441 311-002-7511 ext 122
Becky Sue Sarron 314-162-1441 917-404-2921 ext 17
John George Soranden Eighth Army G6 APO SF
Debbie R. Nielsen 505-315-9448 883-212-4050 ext 32
Darren Sandolon 632-202-1571 917-200-1035 ext 121
Kate Williams 3056 Walnut Rd. Crofton Md 410-077-9491
Jerry David Reynolds 816-397-4464 816-991-8801 ext 6
Ian Norse Danlord 916-052-1307 201-300-4084 ext 122
Nancy Gayle Elders 972-588-2091 972-194-3303 ext 44
Lara Rose Donndin 412-490-0807 720-019-1837 ext. 104
Bob Newell 915-009-1118 488-350-9922 ext 7501
“What do you think?” Lucy asked me after I’d given it five minutes.
“It’s a mess.”
“Great, thanks for the update. Anything else?”
“Okay, John George Soranden is Soranden’s son. He’s in Korea. Looks here like he’s in the Eighth Army. Kate Williams is his daughter, dental hygienist in Maryland. Esther Soranden is his sister, lives thirty miles away, in Carson City. Alice Ann is another sister. All the rest of it is a mishmash of names and numbers I don’t recognize.”
Ma was on the other side of Lucy on the couch. “It’s worse than that. I’ve been checking these phone numbers. Look at Bob Newell. Area code 915 is El Paso, Texas. But that next number, area code 488, isn’t anything. It doesn’t exist and yet it has an extension. The area code for Ian Danlord’s first number is in Northern California, but 201 is in New Jersey.”
“Call him, Ma.”
She dialed the California 916 number, listened for a while, then disconnected. “Computer says there’s no such number.”
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