by Bob Blanton
“At lunch.”
Between classes, Emily tried to grill Matthew for details, but he refused to talk, saying that he didn’t want to be overheard discussing the case.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Okay, how about you start talking,” Emily demanded as soon as they were in her car heading for the sushi place.
“I saw him log into some offshore accounts. Four of them had one million deposited into them. It immediately moved to the fifth account; that one has five hundred twenty million in it.”
“Wow, the drug business sure has been good for Graham.”
“Yes, but why was only four million deposited? There had to be eight million in each of those suitcases.”
“Maybe he wants to spread the deposits out so it doesn’t look like the women have so much money at one time. That’s consistent with his planning.”
“Probably right. I’ll have to check their houses for the rest of the money.”
“So you found them?”
“I’ve got their addresses. I’ll search for the houses tonight.”
“What about Peters?”
“She texted me that she’d like to meet tomorrow afternoon.”
“Interesting. I wonder what’s up. Anything else on Graham?”
“No, he monitored the accounts this morning and then went to the airport.”
“Boo, kind of boring?”
“You call finding five hundred twenty million dollars boring?”
“Well, we knew it was there. It might be a little more than we expected, but there was no surprise. The surprise was the four gorgeous women who were handling the money. And you just have their addresses. Should I come over tonight to help you search their places?”
“Why, do you think I need help?”
“Well, they were gorgeous and you might need to search through their unmentionables.”
“And having you there is going to help how?”
“You might need someone to explain what everything is.”
Matthew snorted. “You just want to be there, and you’ll probably make it worse by teasing me, so no thanks.”
“Come onnnn.”
◆ ◆ ◆
On Tuesday evening, Emily and Matthew drove to Mission Bay to meet with Agent Peters. They told their parents that they were going to have dinner with a friend and discuss an article they were working on for the school paper.
When they reached the hotel, they walked around the back and entered Agent Peters’ room from the beach.
“Hey, Barb, how are you doing? Wow, you changed your hair.” Agent Peters had dyed her hair a light brown, giving her a very different look from the blond they’d driven with from Dana Point.
Agent Peters did a little double-take at the two unrelated comments. “I changed my hair so I would be harder to recognize. I’ve had to go into the office a couple of times. I had to talk to my boss yesterday morning, so things aren’t so good.”
“So they know you’re not dead. Why is that bad?”
“Yes, my boss, my friend who’s been helping, and the head of the task force. The warrants we asked for this week tipped the task force guy off. He pulled Harry in and Harry had to tell the truth.”
“And what does Harry know and what did he say?” Matthew asked.
“He just knows that I checked the Starbucks’ video and did some follow up. Then we got the warrants and tracked everything thing down. And that’s what he told the task force head, Bertrand Whitehead. We just went over it with my boss today.”
“Did you get the warrants?”
“Yes, we’ll be checking the contents of the packages when Dante mails them. In fact, they should have already checked them by now.”
“I assume they’ll send them on?”
“Yes, but Bertrand wants to pull Dante in for questioning.”
Matthew shook his head violently. “If you do that, Graham will know and pull the plug on everything.”
“I know, but we need more hard proof against Graham to get a warrant for when he does his Catalina run. I wanted to time it so we pull him in on Monday when Graham is coming back from Catalina, but Bertrand overrode me.”
“Can you at least convince him to interview Dante downtown in the office building where he works? Then as far as anyone knows, he’s in a meeting for a few hours.”
“That might work. That jackass is stomping around like a . . . a . . . a jackass.”
“Is he mad that you’ve made so much progress without him?” Emily asked.
“Yeah. He’s trying to figure out how to put his stamp on this so he gets the credit.”
“Because you’re a woman?”
“No, because I’m not him. He did the same thing to Michael Garity last year. He’s just a political . . . jackass.”
“Well if you can convince him to interview Dante at the accounting firm instead of pulling him into police headquarters, maybe things will turn out. But even then I can’t see how Dante will keep it together for a whole week. It would be much smarter to wait until just before the Catalina trip.”
“You’re right, it’d be smarter to wait, but he’s cutting me out of the decision loop. I’m not finding out his plans until he’s announcing them to the task force.”
“Well, right now there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Come on Matt, you could do some listening in for Agent Peters.”
“Geez, Emily. It’s not like I don’t have other things on my plate.”
“Matt.”
“I’ll try. Where is his office?”
Agent Peters gave Matthew the pertinent details then gave him a big smile. “And what did you learn this weekend?”
“Oh, just that Mr. Graham is moving the money to the Cayman Islands like we thought. He uses the same trick with the two jets, so he arrives on a local flight and doesn’t have to go through customs. He did the same thing this morning when he flew back to Charleston, so there is no record of him having been to the Caymans.”
“Tell her about the gorgeous babes.”
“Emily! Anyway, he has four women pick the money up from the airport. They must arrive on a local flight about the same time, so they just pick up his suitcases from the carousel.”
“Where do the women go?”
“Each of them lives in a separate villa. Obviously, they know each other, but they live separately. It looks like they each deposited one million dollars on Monday.”
“Only one million?”
“Emily thinks Graham’s having them spread the deposits out so it doesn’t look like they’ve got so much at one time.”
“Makes sense. Go on.”
“I’ve got their names and addresses. I checked out the villas last night. Each of them has a large safe and the safes have the other seven million in them. They’re prepackaged in deposit envelopes of one million each.”
“Mr. Graham likes to take care of the details. Okay, what else have you learned?”
“That’s it so far. Well, except that one of the villas is still under construction. The woman is living in the guest house behind it. One of the others is still having work done to it.”
“That sounds like Mr. Graham is putting his money in real estate. That’s better than having it sit in an account.”
“Okay, but he’s got over five hundred million in his account there.”
“Whew! I wish we could seize it.”
“You can’t?”
“Probably not. The Caymans have pretty tight privacy rules. And how would we prove which account he’s stashing the money in?”
“Well, Matt can move the money.”
“Oh! You know that would be a good thing. We don’t want Graham to have access to a lot of money when we bust him.”
“Just let me know when.”
“Okay. Now, anything else?”
“I’m going to research the deeds for the villas and see what I can find out about the women.”
“Give me their details and I’ll run a background check on them.”
“Here,” Matthew wrote the information he’d gathered on the hotel tablet.
“You even got their passport numbers.”
“Might as well.”
“Barb, we’re going to dinner, do you want to join us?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t think we should take the risk of anyone connecting us together. When this breaks, there could be some backlash and I don’t want you two caught up in it. We should talk again on Friday after we interview Dante.”
“And after Matthew has some data on the jackass.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Doesn’t this feel like we’re secret agents?” Emily asked as they drove down to Mission Bay to meet Agent Peters again.
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Come on, lighten up. Have some fun with this. It’s exciting. By the way, you never told me what you learned about Agent Whitehead.”
“I learned that he is a jackass. I did tell you that they delayed questioning Dante, but we’ll have to see what Agent Peters thinks of what I heard.”
They parked across the street down from the hotel and made their way to Agent Peters’ room from the beach like they had on Tuesday.
“Hi, Barb.”
“Hey you two. I assume you’ve heard they’re going to hold off pulling Dante in.”
“Matt just told me.”
“Did you hear anything after he agreed? He was pretty pissed off after the meeting,” Agent Peters said.
“Yeah, he had plenty to say. Most of it inappropriate. He and his buddy Abrams were ragging on you for quite a while after the meeting. You need to keep on your toes, he said he’s aiming to take you down.”
“I’m not surprised. He’s got me cooling my heels. Did you learn anything else?”
“I’m not sure; he and Abrams were talking about the warrant for the jet. It sounded like they wanted to enter it while it’s at Catalina. Tell me they’re not stupid enough to try and examine the cargo until Graham is in possession of the drugs.”
“I wish I could. But those two think they’re super agents. They think they can pull anything off. I’ll try to talk them out of it. There’s another meeting on Wednesday, then, of course, next Friday when we interview Dante.”
“Is he going to let you be involved?”
“He kind of has to. I’m the one who saw the activities. There might be something I noticed that we didn’t catch on camera, so he would really be going against protocol if he freezes me out of it.”
“Okay, so should we meet again next Friday?”
“Sure, same time, same place.”
“Wait, you’re supposed to tell us about the women in the Caymans. Both of you!” Emily gave Matthew an accusing look.
“Oh, sure, I don’t have much,” Matthew said, “but we can review it.”
“Oh, do tell.”
Matthew rolled his eyes but started down his list.
“Two years ago, Mr. Graham formed a digital corporation in the Caymans. That’s like a numbered bank account. All control of the corporation is based on being able to access a secure database and send instructions to the agent that is hired to manage it for you. It’s completely anonymous.”
“Doesn’t that mean the agent can steal it from you?”
“No. It’s a legal company in the Caymans. So you can instruct the courts to take action. You just have to provide them the right codes from the corporation. Anyway, once he formed the company, he bought five empty lots around George Town. He paid thirty percent down and financed the rest. It cost him thirty million dollars.”
“So, he’s been putting his money in real estate like we thought.”
“Some. He kept things leveraged. After four months he starting building a house on one of the lots. They first put in a small prefab guest house. It was pretty nice. Then they started to build the big villa. That must have been when he decided he needed someone he trusted more to deal with the money and stuff. So he hired the blond, Melanie Strickland, to manage the building activity. I assume that’s when he also started to have her handle putting the money in the bank.”
“How could he trust her?” Emily asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It wouldn’t take much to convince a single woman that she shouldn’t cross him. Besides, he was paying her well.”
“Right. He set up an escrow account for her. He would put money in the account each month, it looks like it was about twenty thousand. The deal was that she had to report to the escrow company each month, showing she was still managing the house. And Graham had to have his digital company certify that he was still engaging her. If either of them fails to do so for more than two months, then the money reverts to the other party.”
“Slick, so he gave them a strong vested interest to continue to assist him.”
“Right. Anyway, eight months later he hired the second woman and started to build another villa.”
“Okay, what else?”
“Once the first house was completed, he rented it out as an exclusive retreat a few times, but I think it must have made him and Ms. Strickland nervous because he stopped doing that.”
“So they just manage the construction and handle the money.”
“Right, based on the records, they each make two deposits a week, one on Monday and the other on Thursday. That means they each make eight deposits for each trip Graham makes, spreading the money out so it doesn’t look like it all comes in at once.”
◆ ◆ ◆
The next Friday, Emily met Matthew at his house.
“I can’t believe you’re ditching math,” Matthew said as he let her in.
“You’re ditching it too.”
“But I can watch the tape and the professor doesn’t take attendance.”
“Well, I’m not going to miss this. Are we ditching French if it goes long?”
“I was planning on it.”
“Good, so was I,” Emily added. “Now have they started the interview?”
“Not yet. He’s just getting to work. Barb said they’d let him get settled in before they called him.”
“Okay, where should we set up?”
“The kitchen table. I think that’s easiest.”
Matthew and Emily took seats next to each other at the Brandt’s kitchen table. Emily started reviewing her math homework while she waited for the interview to start.
At 8:30, Matthew announced, “They just called him.”
“Good.” Emily put her homework away and turned her notebook to a blank page. When Matthew gave her a look, she told him, “I’m going to take notes. It’ll be good practice.”
Matthew shook his head and chuckled.
“Come on, I don’t have an eidetic memory like you. I have to use notes.”
“I wasn’t laughing about that; I was laughing at how serious you’re being.”
“Open it up, let’s see what’s going on.”
Matthew opened his portal on Dante. He was just entering the conference room where Detective Vaughn and another uniformed police officer were waiting for him.
“What’s this?” Dante asked. He started to turn to leave the room. Another police officer blocked his way.
“Mr. Cruz, please be seated. We have some questions to ask you.”
“About what?”
“Please be seated. I’m Detective Vaughn with the San Diego Police department. This is Officer Lester.”
Dante sat down and folded his hands on the table and looked at Detective Vaughn. “Do I need a lawyer?”
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
“I guess I need to know what this is about first.”
“Just a moment please.”
At that point, Agent Peters entered the room.
“This is Agent Peters with the DEA.”
Sweat broke out on Dante’s forehead when Vaughn introduced Agent Peters.
“What’s going on?”
“Do you know this man?” Agent Peters asked, sliding a photograph of Mr. Graham in front of him.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. He might have come in here for something, but I never met him. Who is he?”
“We’ll be asking the questions. Do you know this man?” Agent Peters slid a photograph of Frankie Sutton in front of Dante.
“Sure, isn’t that the guy who sued the police for harassment? He got a big settlement didn’t he.”
“This is he, but did you know him before that?”
“Don’t think so.”
“How about this kid?” Agent Peters slid a photo of Kaleb, the skateboard kid from the Starbucks.
“I don’t recognize him. But then those skateboarders all look alike.”
“How about this man?” Agent Peters slid a photo of Emilio Fields in front of Dante.
“I don’t think so. He might look familiar, but I can’t place him.”
“Then can you explain this?” Agent Peters slid a photo of Emilio dropping a packet of money in Dante’s lap on the trolley.
“That must be where I recognize him from. He tossed that envelope to me. I not sure why.”
“Then why would he do that two weeks in a row? And why would these guys be doing the same thing?” Agent Peters spread eight photos showing the money drops that occurred last Saturday. Then she spread the eight photos for the drops on Sunday.
“I guess I’m a popular guy.”
“It seems that way. Do you know this guy?” Agent Peters placed a photo of the kid Dante used to handle the drugs in front of him.
“I’m not sure.”
“You seem to meet him quite often. You’ve traded backpacks with him three times that we’ve recorded. And you’d be interested to know that we followed him to the North Clairemont Library where we observed him placing packages of drugs under various bookcase shelves.”
“I think I need a lawyer.”
“Sure. If you call a lawyer, you’ll need to make sure they’re qualified to handle murder trials.”
“Murder?!”
“Yes, we’re very interested in your involvement with Evelyn Frye’s death,” Detective Vaughn said.
“I’ve never met that woman.”
“Well, she died after receiving a package of pills, much like those that your dealers deliver to their clients.” Agent Peters punctuated Detective Vaughn’s statement by adding a photo of one of the kids dropping a package of pills under the hood of one of the user’s cars.