Face Value (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

“All most people saw was Muslim and Christian, light and dark, tall and short.” Rebecca Hamel shrugged. “We had more in common than most folks realized.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“We were both the first kids in our families to go to college. Both of our dads are blue-collar guys who work with cars.”

“Really?”

“Sari's dad works the assembly line at the Ford Motor plant in Dearborn. My dad fixes cars in his own garage down on Gravois.”

Rebecca Hamel and I were having lunch in a back booth at Atomic Cowboy, a hipster restaurant in the Grove, and thus off the lunchtime radar for Warner & Olsen lawyers. I wanted to make sure Rebecca would be comfortable.

I'd been intrigued by her from the moment I watched her interview. Despite her fair hair and fashion model features, there was nothing perky about her. She had a cool aura with a hint of grit.

More important, though, was her relationship with Sari. Although they met when the firm assigned Sari to serve as Rebecca's associate mentor for Rebecca's first year at the firm, it was obvious from the video interview that their relationship had grown far deeper over the year and a half before Sari died. Despite Stanley's uncanny ability to spot inconsistencies and other clues in his review of the video of our suspects, it was clear to me that we'd need more than just someone reading facial actions to figure out whether Sari's death was indeed a suicide.

Rebecca leaned back in the booth and shook her head, her eyes distant.

“What?” I asked.

“We weren't twins, Sari and me. I go deer-hunting each fall with my dad. Been doing that since junior high. He started taking me about a year after my mom died. He taught me everything from cleaning a rifle to field dressing a kill. I invited Sari to join us this year.”

“And?”

She smiled. “Sari was horrified. Never held a rifle in her life. Couldn't imagine shooting anything. She was a vegetarian.”

Rebecca's smile faded. “Deer season opened that Friday at dawn. Sari died Thursday night.”

The waiter arrived with our food—hamburger and fries for Rebecca, grilled fish tacos for me.

After the waiter left, I asked, “Did you notice any change in her mood those last few days?”

Rebecca pondered the question. “She broke our rule the last day.”

“What rule?”

“No emails.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sari and I made that rule. We couldn't believe how many emails we'd get each day from people on our own floors. This one litigation partner—his office is two doors down from mine. I get at least five emails a day from him, sometimes long ones. He could save time by walking twenty feet down the hall and talking to me. Same on Sari's floor, which is mostly corporate. So we made our rule. If you don't have time to come see the other person to talk about something, then you have to call them on the phone. But no emails. Ever.”

“I like that rule. So what happened?”

“That last day. Thursday. We were supposed to have lunch.”

“And?”

“Around ten that morning my computer beeps. Means I have a new email. I checked. It was from Sari. First ever.”

“What did it say?”

“Real short. ‘Can't do lunch. Need to reschedule.' Something like that.”

“What did you do?”

“I stared at the message. Should have picked up the phone.” She shrugged. “But I sent her a short reply. Something like, ‘No prob—can reschedule.' I ended it with something like, ‘You okay?'”

“Did she respond?”

Rebecca shook her head. “I had to leave early that day. Get my rifle ready, pack my gear. On opening day of the whitetail season my dad picks me up at around two in the morning. It's about a two-hour drive down to this property one of my dad's buddies owns. They served together in Vietnam. He's a Homeland Security agent now. Anyway, I left early that day—or at least early by law firm standards. Probably around five-thirty. But first I went up to Sari's floor. I'd been bothered by that email. I wanted to check on her.”

“Was she there?”

Rebecca nodded and pursed her lips. “It was odd.”

“How so?”

“She was standing at the window, back to the door, just staring out and twisting a handful of her hair. I can remember trying to figure out what she was looking at. Her window faced north. Beyond her I could see a towboat pushing a line of barges up the Mississippi. I called her name. She spun around, eyes wide. But then she lowered them and sat down. I asked her what was going on.”

“And?”

Rebecca shook her head. “All she said was, ‘Not now.' ‘When?' I asked. ‘Later,' she said. I told her I'd be back in two days and we'd talk.” Rebecca paused. “She was dead by then.”

Her eyes watered as she took a bite of the hamburger and chewed.

We ate in silence for a while.

“I've done a lot of thinking,” she said.

“About her death?”

Rebecca nodded. “I did some research. There are about a dozen warning signs for suicides. Sari had none of the obvious ones.”

“Such as?”

“Threatening to kill yourself. Suddenly doing risky things. Talking about death in odd situations.”

“But?”

“There are other possible indicators. Withdrawing from friends or family, having feelings of depression.”

She looked down at the half-eaten hamburger. “I wonder if I'd paid more attention, if I hadn't been so focused on that hunting trip, maybe I could have done something.”

This seemed the right moment. “Maybe there was nothing anyone could have done.”

“Maybe.” Rebecca looked up. “Maybe not.”

“Maybe she didn't commit suicide.”

Rebecca narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”

“Let me explain.”

Part 3

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lawyer in possession of a good book of business must be in want of an equity partnership.

Tony Manghini
Manager of Office Support Services
Warner & Olsen, LLP

Chapter Twenty-eight

“And?”

He shrugged. “It's probably no big deal.”

“Pinky,” I said, “what's with the shrug?”

He pursed his lips and tugged at the skin on his neck as he stared up at the ceiling.

He lowered his eyes. “I'm probably too much of a skeptic.”

“You're a CPA, Pinky. Being a skeptic is a good thing.”

“Please tell that to Naomi.” He gestured toward the framed photograph of his wife on his desk. “Know what her nickname for me is? Mr. Party Pooper, that's what.” He sighed. “Sixteen years of marriage and that's my nickname.”

Pinky was Pincus Zuckerman, a principal in the accounting firm of Grossberg, Bernstein, Feldman & Zuckerman—or, as Benny referred to them, Jews “R” Us. I'd known Pinky since my junior year of high school. We'd been paired, to the great good fortune of my GPA, as lab partners in Chemistry. We may have seemed an unlikely pair back then—he was a short, pudgy, nearsighted self-described nerd, and I was a cheerleader and varsity field hockey player. But we became good pals that year, much to the astonishment of our respective circles of friends.

While some might try to attribute my affection for Pinky to an odd affinity for overweight brilliant Jewish boys, he and Benny Goldberg were about as opposite as two overweight brilliant Jewish boys could be. Benny was fat in the muscular way an offensive lineman in football is fat. Indeed, he'd played offensive tackle on his high school football team. Pinky Zuckerman was fat in the soft, mushy way the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was fat. Benny had an unruly head of curly black hair—the classic Jewfro—whereas Pinky had finally given up on the comb-over and was now bald except for a wreath of hair on the back and sides of his head. And finally, of course, Benny was the most vulgar person I have ever known, while Pinky had never—NEVER—uttered a curse word in my presence.

Pinky had been my accountant since I moved back to St. Louis and opened my law office. He did my law firm's books and my personal taxes. He'd also served as an expert witness for me in two trials involving an accounting of profits. The juries adored him, and the court of appeals upheld his opinion both times.

I'd consulted him on the personal financial records of Dr. Jeffrey Mason, the defendant in my sexual harassment lawsuit on behalf of Sofia Garcia. We were scheduled for a court-ordered mediation in about two weeks, and I assumed that the mediator would pressure my client to settle for mid six figures, which was far less than I thought we could get at trial. But it's one thing to hit the jackpot in court, and it can be quite another to try to collect on that jackpot. Because Mason had more than six million dollars invested in something called Structured Resolutions, I wanted to get Pinky's assessment of the doctor's liquid assets before we went into the mediation.

“So what made you skeptical?” I asked. “Structured Resolutions?”

He nodded.

I said, “I never even knew that those kinds of businesses existed.”

“Oh, they're more common than you think. There are some big players in the structured settlement business. Companies like Peachtree Settlement Funding and J.G. Wentworth and Liberty. They buy structured settlements from plaintiffs who want the money now instead of spread out over time. That's how they advertise: get cash for your structured settlement payments now. Some guy settles his medical malpractice claim for a million dollars, but under a structured settlement he actually gets fifty grand a year for twenty years. If he wants to cash in and take a huge discount, he can go to one of these outfits.”

“So they're legit?”

“Most of them.”

“And Structured Resolutions?”

He shook his head. “I don't know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can't find anything on them. These outfits typically have a website. It's how they attract plaintiffs looking to cash in, and it's also how some of them attract investors. Most are registered in the state where they are incorporated, and if you dig hard enough you can find some financial information. I even found information on a few of them on Dunn & Bradstreet. But not that doctor's outfit. No website, no financial information, no state of incorporation. They appear to be an offshore entity.”

“Is that bad?”

“Not necessarily. They'd hardly be the first company to set up headquarters outside the country, usually to avoid taxes or regulations. But without reliable financial information on them, I can't tell you whether you could access that money.”

“What about those statements I gave you? The ones they had to turn over to me. Mason seems to be earning a pretty decent return on his investment.”

“Seems to be.” Pinky shrugged. “The company is outperforming the big players in the industry. But those statements are fairly opaque, Rachel. General, conclusory, not much detail. It appears that the doctor owns an interest in a fund composed of annuities. Sort of like a mutual fund, I guess. In other words, Structured Resolutions might not be the actual annuity company but more like a mutual fund comprised of annuities—or interests in annuities of other companies. Again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that outfit. Heck, the numbers are impressive.”

“How so?”

“That doctor's statements go back six years. They show he has been earning a consistent seven percent on his investment all six years. It looks like you need to make a ten-year commitment on each new investment.”

“What do you mean?”

“Over those six years he's bought in three different times, each for more than a million dollars, once for almost three million. But each time you buy in, it's almost like buying an annuity. If you try to cash out before ten years, you get hit with big penalties. Of course, when your ten years are up, you can always renew. It's probably to everyone's advantage. The investor gets to lock in a rate and avoid taxes, and the company gets to minimize the fluctuations of its funds. Like I say, that's probably what's going on.”

“But just probably?”

He shrugged. “I'm just saying I'm a skeptic, Rachel. Here's another example. There's a reference in the statements to audited financials. The auditors are a CPA firm. An outfit called Durlester Minogue. I'd never heard of them. I Googled them and came up with a phone number and a P.O. box in Pontiac, Michigan, which is near Detroit. I called the number a few times. No one ever answered.”

“It just rang?”

“Yep. No voice mail.” He signed. “You do this stuff long enough and sometimes a warning light starts blinking.”

“It's blinking here?”

He nodded. “But some things do check out. Those statements have what they describe in a footnote as a representative sampling of the annuities in the settlements of the underlying lawsuits. There are more than a dozen lawsuits listed. They're all over the country. I had one of my associates do a docket search for the cases. Sure enough, they're all real, and they all settled. So that part is good. The rest, though, makes me nervous. But that's me, and you know me, Rachel. If I were your client and needed to count on money from that Structured Resolution account, I'd feel a lot safer getting it by way of a settlement, even if it's for less than I might get from a jury. You know the old saying: ‘Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.'”

Chapter Twenty-nine

This time Rebecca Hamel and I met in my office. If someone had really killed Sari Bashir, and if that someone was really one of the four lawyers, then more than one public meeting with Rebecca might be too risky for her—and, I suppose, for me. For added safety, since the calendar on her computer could be accessed by others at the law firm, I told her to be sure to enter an out-of-office meeting that would be difficult for someone at the firm to independently verify. That's exactly what she did. According to her calendar, she had an eight a.m. appointment for an oil change at Hamel Auto Repair. The Hamel was Bob, her father.

At our first meeting two days ago over lunch at Atomic Cowboy, I told her about Stanley's belief that Sari had been murdered and explained how we'd come up with a list of suspects consisting of the four attorneys from her law firm who'd entered the walkway to the garage that night, namely, Susan O'Malley, Rob Brenner, Donald Warner, and Brian Teever. I'd asked her to go back through her memories and documents to see what, if anything, she could recall about Sari's dealings with any of those four attorneys. We agreed to meet at my office this morning to go over whatever she was able to recall.

Rob Brenner, as Stanley had already deduced from the video, had made an unsuccessful pass at Sari. It occurred about six weeks before her death. According to what Sari had told Rebecca, Brenner had given her a legal research task in connection with an upcoming hearing on a summary judgment motion. Claiming, perhaps accurately, that his schedule for that week was booked solid during the days, he arranged for them to meet to discuss her research results over dinner at a restaurant downtown. He had two drinks before dinner and almost an entire bottle of wine during the meal. Sari, a Muslim, didn't drink. They spent maybe ten minutes talking about her research before Brenner shifted into seduction mode. On the way out of the restaurant he put his arm around her waist and slid it down her hip as he suggested that she might like to drop by his condo for a nightcap. When she politely declined, he became belligerent and made a few vague threats about her future at the firm. Sari had been shaken by the experience. After a couple sleepless nights, she'd confided in Rebecca, who was furious and urged Sari to file a complaint, but Sari refused. As far as Rebecca knew, Brenner had avoided all contact with Sari after that.

“And Susan O'Malley?” I asked.

Rebecca gave me a sad smile. “Poor Sari.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Every September the firm puts on this social event for the lawyers. We jokingly call it the Senior Prom. It's always held at a ballroom in some fancy hotel. This year it was at the Ritz in Clayton. Because there tends to be lots of drinking, the firm picks up the tab for anyone who wants to spend the night at the hotel. Susan likes to drink, and she always books a room. Seems she had the hots for Sari. I'm not sure what happened, but she apparently groped Sari in the bathroom or the hallway and tried to get her to go upstairs to her hotel room. Sari freaked out and left the party and went home. I found all this out when I asked her the following Monday why she'd disappeared.”

“Any repercussions?”

Rebecca shrugged. “If there were, Sari never told me.”

“How about Donald Warner?”

“I know Sari worked on some corporate deal with him—some sort of acquisition, I think.” She shook her head. “I don't remember her saying anything about him, good or bad.”

“Did she ever mention running into him somewhere after work?”

“I don't think so.”

“How about research she did on election law issues?”

Rebecca frowned, trying to remember. “Election law issues.”

“Anything?”

“She worked on something. I think it was for Mr. Warner. She mentioned it.”

“Do you remember what she said?”

Rebecca thought about it and shook her head. “Nothing specific.”

“Finally, how about Brian Teever?”

“She worked on one estate plan with him. The clients were a wealthy couple.”

“The Hudsons?”

“Maybe. I can't remember their names. Sari spent time with the wife.”

“Why?”

“The couple had some really valuable things at their house. Paintings, jewelry, stuff like that. Part of Sari's assignment for the estate plan was to identify each item of personal property for some schedule or list or something like that for the will or maybe the trust.”

“Was the wife's name Claire?”

“Yep. That's it. Claire.”

“Do you remember what else Sari told you? About the art or the jewelry or anything else?”

“She told me they had these two paintings that were each worth over a million dollars. They were by modern artists. I hadn't heard of them.” Rebecca leaned back in the chair, trying to remember. “One other thing. She told me that she was bothered by one of their investments.”

“Which one?”

Rebecca shrugged. “I don't remember. She said they had millions of dollars in it but she couldn't find any public information on the company.”

“What did she do?”

“I know she told that woman—Claire—to ask her husband about it. She said something to Mr. Teever, too. That's why I remember.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had lunch with her the day she told Mr. Teever. She told him that morning.”

“And?”

“She was upset. He'd given her a real lecture. She thought she was doing her job, being vigilant and all, but Mr. Teever told her she was way out-of-bounds. He told her she should never talk directly to a client about something like that, that she should only tell him and let him decide whether it merited the attention of the client. He told her to finish up her list of the clients' personal property as soon as possible and that she should cease all further work on that matter. He told her not to contact the wife again. Ever. She left his office in tears.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Mr. Teever can be like that. That's what I told her. None of the associates like working for him.”

“So she backed off?”

Rebecca frowned. “Maybe, maybe not. Sari never said anything to me after that, but she could be persistent, especially if something bothered her.”