Scammed (6 page)

Greg frowned. “Account inspector? What kind of nonsense is that?”

“Just that: nonsense. You're an accountant, so naturally you know that. But your parents had spent their lives avoiding the modern world. When the call came, your dad was working, but your mum was the one who always did the business anyway, so she took it. This ‘inspector' was a con artist, of course, but very plausible and clever. He told a scary story about the bank's computer being broken into by hackers, and a whole lot of convincing garbage about needing to freeze accounts in order to stop them being plundered. To do this, he asked for their account numbers, passwords and codes and . . .”

“She
gave
them to him?”

“Everything!”

“Oh, Christ!”

“Thinking that she'd done the right thing, saving their precious Mexico fund, your mother was very relieved. At the time, she didn't even tell your dad, figuring he had enough on his mind. But a few days later, when she called at the bank to pick up her precious cashier's cheque, there was no money. The account had been cleaned out. Of course, your mum was devastated. But somehow she got herself home, and then she had no choice but to tell Walter.”

“I'm amazed she dared.”

“Apparently, she thought the only way was to bite the bullet and get it over with. That was her final mistake. She went out to the studio where he was working and just—told him. Your dad was first shocked, and then furious. He threw down his brush and took a blind run at her. I don't suppose he even knew what he was going to do. Whatever it was, he never got the chance. He tripped over an easel and fell down hard and . . . well, you know the rest.”

Outside it was now night, the sky as dark as the mood that had descended on the little room. As the full import of what he'd been told filtered, layer by layer, into Greg's mind, he felt the last residue of the paralysis that had possessed him, ever since he had found his mother's clothes by the river, finally depart. Replacing it was a still, cold rage, making him feel not just released, but powerful, more strangely alive than he had felt in a long time.
Account inspector!
he thought savagely.
If I could lay my hands on him right now, I'd kill the bastard.
But none of this emotion showed on his face.

He said quietly, “I can see why you were so shocked. That story must have been terrible to hear, and even harder to tell. So, for what it's worth, thank you.”

“I'm just sorry I had to be the messenger. Now that you know, does it help you to understand what happened?”

Greg shrugged. “I guess it has to. One other thing. On the night she died, my mum said something that—I realize now—should have been a clue as to what she intended. She asked if I'd let you keep using Dad's studio.”

Lucy looked astonished. “Really?”

“At the time I didn't know what she meant. But now I can answer. My dad was a difficult guy, but it seems in some ways you knew him better—and certainly stood up to him more—than any of us. So, as far as I'm concerned, you should feel free to come and go, use the studio, or whatever, all you want.”

“You're very kind.”

Greg smiled, feeling—considering his still-simmering anger—absurdly gallant. “It's my pleasure. Now I must be getting along.”

As he turned away, she stopped him with a gentle touch. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I've no idea. I'll know better when I've decided what I'm going to do about all this.”

“What
can
you do?”

Greg shrugged. “Don't know that either. But you can be very sure—
something.”

C
owichan, which in the Coast Salish tongue means “warm land,” is the name borne by a number of geographic features on the south end of Vancouver Island. The Cowichan Valley is a fertile depression bounded in the west by the spine of the island and on the east by the ocean. Cowichan Lake is an extensive body of water sitting at the upper end of the valley. This, in turn, is drained by a river of the same name, which winds eastward for forty kilometres until, after skirting the city of Duncan, it empties into the sea at Cowichan Bay. In winter, this waterway can be a swift torrent, barely tamed by control gates at the lake end, saved from flooding only by the high, wooded banks that confine most of its length. For the rest of year, the flow is more benign—host to fishermen, swimmers and tuberiders galore—but even then, it is never less than lively, demanding care and respect.

Upon rising on the morning after he talked to Lucy, Greg's first action was to make coffee and walk down to the river. No longer did he try to avoid the place where his mother had launched herself into the hereafter; indeed, he went there purposely. Though his face showed no emotion, his mind hummed with a continuous background harmonic of anger, as strong and as cold as the waters flowing by.

Deliberately, he gazed at the spot where the sad pile of his mother's clothes had lain, letting the memory act as a spur to the resolve that was hardening within. What action this would produce he did not know, but the stimulus was necessary. All his life had been spent gently, in mild pursuits, top priority going always to the avoidance of conflict. This had brought comfort and security, but also isolation and loneliness, alienation from the people who had given him being. “You don't know what you've got till it's gone.” The sentiment from the old song had an uncomfortably appropriate resonance right now. His family—all but his semi-stranger sister—was certainly gone, dispatched in little more than the blink of an eye. That he was not to blame didn't matter. That nothing would ever change what had happened was not the point. If life was not to be completely meaningless, eventually he had to make some kind of response.

With that understanding firmly in mind, Greg returned to the house, showered, made breakfast, then set about the obvious things that needed doing. He'd already decided to take some time off work; since he had vacation time accumulated and May was slack, this wouldn't be a problem. But because it was Sunday, he couldn't tell his employers till tomorrow. The rest of the day he spent tidying and sorting and exploring the “office.” Though it had once been his bedroom, he wasn't sleeping there, using his sister's room instead.

As executor, it was his legal duty to sort out his parents' affairs, no small task, but one for which training and temperament made him well qualified. The rolltop desk where he'd discovered the will was the obvious starting point. The chaotic jumble of its contents no longer bothered him; creating order from other people's mess was, after all, what he did every day. By the end of the day, the first winnowing was done: bills, receipts, correspondence, bank statements were all organized into piles, ready to be gone through later in greater detail.

In the process, Greg came across a brochure for the cancer clinic, two round-trip tickets to Los Angeles, and a schedule—but no tickets—for an airline offering connector flights to Mexico. So there it was: physical evidence of a dream that had been shattered. The final piece of the sad puzzle he found not in the desk, but in a nearby corner, as if it had been flung there: an old-style bank passbook, with the deposits and withdrawals neatly itemized. The final entries told the tale all too clearly. A month ago, there had been a deposit for twenty thousand dollars, proceeds from the securities that had been sold. Then later, four withdrawals were itemized in rapid succession, five thousand dollars each, with the closing balance—the discovery of which had set off the fateful plunge to catastrophe—zero.

Greg took the passbook back to the kitchen. He got out the whisky and poured himself a shot, discovering with surprise that, since the night of the tragedy, he'd managed to go through most of a bottle. Well, who cared? His father wasn't going to need it anymore. During his lifetime, he'd done little enough to promote his son's peace of mind, so it was only fitting that he should provide some small comfort now, if only via the medium of his liquor supply. This, in fact, was substantial; Greg discovered half a case of Glenfiddich in the cupboard. The old man, at least in that regard, had evidently not felt the need to stint himself.

Greg downed the first shot and poured another. While he ate supper, he examined the pathetic little passbook again. By that time, he had pretty much decided on the next thing he needed to do.

• • •

Next morning, when he phoned his parents' bank in Duncan, he got an appointment for that afternoon. A hunt through the Yellow Pages then provided a local lawyer who could fit him in within a day: it had been in his mind to apply for probate of the will himself, but, uncharacteristically, he decided he wasn't in the mood to tackle the minor legal formalities. Even his customary business suit felt oddly uncomfortable when he donned it to go into town; living at his parents' place seemed to be having a strange effect on him.

The fifteen-minute drive into Duncan, winding by the river, then through the woods and across the brief stretch of farmland that merged into the outskirts of the town, was an experience so anciently familiar that he hardly noticed. By then his mind was already at the bank, running through the confrontation to come. Of one thing at least he was certain: those people were going to be made to feel very bad for their part in what had happened to his parents.

Downtown Duncan, however, did give him a surprise. It had changed from the sleepy village of his youth into quite a cool little metropolis, with cafés and boutiques, a new town square and some tasteful decoration. He parked near the bank and, realizing that he was ravenous and still had half an hour till his appointment, found a place to eat. At five minutes before one, with his belly full, the adrenalin running and spoiling for a confrontation, he was leaving the café when he suddenly thought,
God, I'm actually pumped. Giving these people hell
is going to feel good. Maybe I'm more like Dad than I knew.

The bank manager had a corner office, pleasantly appointed, with—yet again—a Walter Lothian seascape prominently displayed. His name was Herb Wilshire, a round-faced forty-year-old with a confident handshake and an annoyingly sincere smile. Seeing Greg's eyes on the painting, he nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, Mr. Lothian, I see you noticed. The bank was sensible enough to purchase that a few years back. At my suggestion, I might add. Not enough businesses support local artists, but it is our policy to try. So let me say, first off, how very sad we were to hear of your father's passing. Also—er—so swiftly, your mother. You have my sincere condolences.”

Greg wasn't taken in for a moment. The guy obviously knew full well why he was here, and was trying to soften the ground in advance. That wasn't going to work, and Greg was determined to waste no time with niceties. “Thank you,” he said coldly. “However, I think you should know that I hold this institution at least partly responsible for what happened to my parents.”

Herb Wilshire's smile vanished. “I don't understand.”

“I think that very probably you do, but I'll spell it out, anyway. You must be aware that my parents were conned out of a large sum of money and that it was stolen from their account at this bank?”

The manager looked at Greg speculatively. “Yes, I did know that.”

“Some criminal phoned my mother, pretended to be what he called an ‘account inspector,' tricked her into revealing her secret information and then looted the account of twenty thousand dollars.” Greg produced the passbook and tossed it across the manager's desk.

“It's all documented there.”

Wilshire flipped open the passbook with one finger, glanced at it briefly, then switched his attention to his computer, rapidly tapping at the keys. Greg could not see the result, but the other man studied the screen, chewed on his lip, then looked sharply at Greg. “Mr. Lothian, are you familiar with the term
vishing
?”

“Vishing? What's that?”

“Well, you must know about
phishing
, where fraud artists set up a phony website to mimic the site of—say—this bank, and then, by e-mail, con their victims into logging onto that site and divulging their account information?”

“I've heard of it.”

“Vishing is the same thing, but it's done over the phone. The word stands for
voice phishing
. Instead of using a bogus website, the crook pretends to personally represent the institution—the phony account inspector that you mentioned—and get the information that way. That's likely how your parents were tricked, which is understandable.”

Greg's anger rose a notch. “Understandable?”

Wilshire nodded, apparently oblivious to the effect of his cool appraisal. “Unfortunately, many people, especially those who are older and—how shall I say—less financially astute, are all too easily taken in by this modern brand of grifting. Of course, the bank continually cautions its customers against divulging any of their account and personal information. We post the warnings online and . . .” he slid a printed form in Greg's direction, “mail them out regularly, along with the bank statements. But our best efforts are sometimes ignored, so that all the safeguards the bank has taken such care to institute are useless.”

“But why,” Greg interrupted, “would my parents have been targeted in the first place?”

“That's a mystery.” Wilshire frowned speculatively. “It's possible that someone got hold of a bank statement, perhaps by going through their trash, or stealing their mail. That'd certainly give them all the information they needed to start a confidence trick. But, I'll be frank, it wouldn't have worked if your mother hadn't been so trusting. And when folks are taken in this manner, I must tell you that some people believe that the bank would be justified in disclaiming responsibility.”

“What kind of heartless crap is that?” Greg all but snarled. “You've no idea how important that money was to my parents. No damn notion at all.”