The Last Word (19 page)

ACCOUNTANT:
These are difficult times. It would be understandable if you took the money. Maybe
you didn’t do it for yourself. Maybe you did it for your family.

ISABEL:
Does Mr. Slayter know I’m here?

ACCOUNTANT:
No. He doesn’t. This information was brought to us by the board of directors and
we have not yet interviewed Mr. Slayter.

ISABEL:
The board of directors, you say. So you got the phone call about this, and the person
on the other end of the line said, “Hello, this is the board of directors calling
from Slayter Industries?”

ACCOUNTANT:
It was an individual who called but a decision come to by the group, after careful
consideration.

ISABEL:
Mr. Slayter will clear everything up. He’ll tell you that I’m innocent and that I’m
being framed.

ACCOUNTANT:
They said he would protect you. Isabel, the money trail just doesn’t look good.

ISABEL:
It’s not a money trail. It’s a money pratfall. This is bullshit and you know it.
I assume I’m free to go.

ACCOUNTANT:
What makes you so sure?

ISABEL:
If I went into a bank with a note that said I had a bomb in my bag and got away with
ten thousand dollars, I would be arrested and arraigned the moment I was caught, even
if I was only carrying a cat. But white-collar criminals—not that I’m admitting to
being one—are treated with much more respect. In fact, it’s quite possible that a
person who embezzles hundreds of thousands of dollars might not do any time at all.

ACCOUNTANT:
I wouldn’t bank on that, Isabel.

ISABEL:
The next time we meet, I’ll have a lawyer with me.

I hurried out of the federal building and realized I didn’t have a ride. I walked
up to Van Ness and hopped on the 42 bus and rode it to Maggie’s office across the
street from the criminal court building. The bus was packed like a sardine can, but
I found an unsavory seat in back and phoned Edward. Since I was seated between two
men arguing over which one’s girlfriend had the superior hindquarters, I dispensed
with the pleasantries and launched straight into the cold facts.

“Edward. I’m on my way to Maggie’s office. I need a lawyer. You know
that money that’s missing from Slayter Industries? Yes. Well, it looks like some of
it has ended up in the Spellman Investigations checking account.”

At this point the argument got rather heated and I couldn’t really hear what Edward
had to say.

“I’ll call you later,” I said.

After I disconnected the call, a man wearing two vests, a yellowed button-down shirt,
a fedora that had been through every rainstorm in the last decade, trousers that had
never heard of dry cleaning, and an odor of cigarette that blessedly masked the scent
beneath turned to me and smiled ever so politely.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m
Samuel B. Sampson, attorney at law.”

He handed me an old bus transfer, which I suppose was his card.

“We have to fight the system,” he said. “Call day or night.”

It would have helped if the bus transfer had a phone number on it.

•  •  •

Rae arrived at Maggie’s office at the same time I did. Since she had found the deposit
in the first place and was now handling the Spellman financials, Maggie thought it
wise to loop her in.

“Did you talk to him?” Rae asked.

“We talked a little,” I said as we entered Maggie’s office.

“You don’t talk,” Rae repeated.

“You talked?” Maggie said, jumping on me the second I walked in the door.

Maggie had two rooms on the second floor above a café on Bryant Street. Since 30 percent
of her practice was pro bono and another 30 percent for clients who didn’t have a
lot of cash to begin with, she didn’t have the kind of shiny lawyerly office you see
in movies. The shag carpet needed replacing; the paint was a dull ivory that needed
a new coat three years ago. However, David had managed to purchase some of the furniture
from his old law firm at a steal. Her desk, the reception-area couch, and the chairs
were beyond luxurious. The disconnect, once you spotted it, was rather distracting.

“I talked a little,” I said.

“Why did you talk?” Maggie said, shaking her head and flopping down in her chrome
and leather chair.

“Because I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

“It’s the FBI. They have evidence against you. You shut up and you call a lawyer.
You don’t sit and chat and accidentally incriminate yourself,” Maggie said.

Maggie began pacing and then chomping on a cookie from her pocket. Rae, apparently,
knows where Maggie keeps her junk food stash. She found a tub of licorice in the closet/kitchen
and returned with a fistful.

“Listen to me carefully. Next time, even if all the agent wants to do is play miniature
golf, you tell him you need your lawyer with you. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said.

“How could you not assert your Fifth Amendment right?” Rae asked.

“I’m going to do that right now.”

•  •  •

I took a cab to Slayter’s office and debriefed him.

“Ten thousand dollars, that’s all?” he said.

“This is serious,” I said.

“For one thing, this isn’t a significant amount of money,” he said.

“Are you referring to the ten grand or the one hundred and fifty grand?”

“Both,” he said.

“Rich people.”

“I understand that’s a lot to you, but when we find the embezzler, he or she won’t
be a criminal mastermind. Don’t worry about this, Isabel. Everything will be fine.”

“What next?” I asked.

“Back to work,” he said. “Business as usual. This will be over before you know it.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

“You wish.”

Just then Lenore entered Edward’s office, dressed to the nines in the middle of the
day, carrying one of those purses that cost more than my car.

“Isabel, so nice to see you,” she said with a perky voice and dead eyes.

“Yes, isn’t it,” I said with dead everything.

“How are you feeling today, Edward?” Lenore asked.

“Much better, thank you.”

“Were you not feeling well?” I asked Slayter.

“I was just a little under the weather last night. Can I have a minute alone, Lenore?
Just one minute?” Edward asked.

Lenore reluctantly left the office. Edward folded his arms impatiently and walked
over to the window, looking out over bustling Market Street.

“What happened?”

“At dinner two nights ago, I couldn’t remember her name and I had a panic attack.
I pretended to be sick to cover.”

“You think having lunch with her is a good idea?”

“Isabel, I like her. I like the company. The answer to my illness isn’t to be alone.
It’s not the answer to anything. Go home, go back to work. Everything is going to
be fine.”

I believed him.

I
had the weekend to recover from my FBI interrogation, and then I returned to work
at Divine Strategies. Since I had been imprisoned in the file room for two weeks,
it was difficult to gather information, observe unusual behavior, or get sexually
harassed. Although I did notice something one doesn’t see every day when I surfaced
from my fluorescent dungeon one morning and took a brief break to rebandage my paper-cut
wounds. Brad, Bryan, and Maureen were in Bryan’s office sitting around his desk reading
from a thick book that sure resembled the Bible, although I couldn’t remember the
last time I actually saw one.

When Layla drifted by, I asked her what they were doing.

“Bible meeting. They do that every Monday. Sometimes Thursdays. Or when business is
slow.”

“Just the three of them?” I asked.

“Every once in a while Betty joins them, but she’s not a regular.”

“Do you know who started it?”

“No. But Maureen is the one who keeps it going. At least if Brad or Bryan forgets,
she reminds them.”

I was about to call it quits and tell Edward that the company was so squeaky clean
the term
wet blanket
came to mind when I noticed an unusual
string of events one morning. Steve Grant, art director, walked into the office of
his boss, Brad Gillman. The water cooler was right outside Brad’s office, because
when he was a child he was struck by lightning (at least that’s what Layla Bryant
told me in the bathroom) and a phenomenon of that affliction is that the person, should
he or she live, tends to be thirsty. It was only natural that the water cooler should
take up residence outside Brad’s office. I was at the water cooler, drinking more
water for those highly uninformative bathroom reconnaissance missions, when I heard
Steve ask Brad for a raise, in a polite and reasonable manner. Brad said that he was
very pleased with Steve’s work and would discuss the raise with Bryan Lincoln, second
in command, and Steve returned to his office.

Brad stepped into Bryan’s office; I couldn’t hear the conversation, but it was brief.
Then he strode over to the office of Maureen Stevens, the office manager, which was
located next to the copy room, where I conveniently had copies to make.
¹
If you weren’t using the copy machine and stood in a particular sweet spot and no
one noticed you, you could overhear a solid 48 percent of the conversations in Maureen’s
office. Fortunately I got the 48 percent worth hearing.

BRAD:
[inaudible] Steve has asked for a raise. Six percent. I think he’s [inaudible].

MAUREEN:
Offer him two percent; if he threatens to [inaudible], you can go up to three.

BRAD:
[inaudible] How about five percent?

MAUREEN:
I think he’ll [inaudible]. You never know when [inaudible] will need a raise.

Then Brad, the boss, said okay to his underling and returned to his office. At least
now I knew where to focus my investigation. Maureen Stevens.

•  •  •

The Spellman compound had been abandoned by all humans when I arrived that afternoon.
On my desk, I found a photocopy of another check from one of Rae’s new clients, with
a note explaining that she’d already made the deposit. This one was for thirty-two
hundred dollars. Rae’s cut: twenty-four hundred.
²
The name on the check: Emma Lighthouse. I found the Lighthouse file stuffed in Vivien’s
desk under a stack of database printouts. A case number had been generated, but inside
the folder was only a single piece of paper containing Emma’s name and address and
scribbled below that, “10–2
P.M
.” Nothing else. Once again, it might have seemed more sensible to simply ask the
question, but on the off chance that Rae was up to something unusual, it was best
to catch her in the act.

Meanwhile, I ran a more thorough background check on Maureen Stevens, age forty-seven,
divorced, one child, annual income: eighty-five thousand. She paid insurance on a
Mercedes E550 coupe. The MSRP on that is just under sixty thousand dollars. However,
her credit check showed no car payments for the vehicle. Her address in SOMA was a
luxury high-rise. Since she had a teenage daughter, I had to assume she rented at
least a two-bedroom. I phoned the rental office and learned that a two-bedroom in
that building started at $4,100 a month. I also knew that three days a week she left
the office at six o’clock sharp because she had a six thirty private Pilates appointment.
That’s about sixty dollars a pop, times three; you do the math. It’s a lot to spend
on a flat stomach, and she was clearly doing something to her face that also cost
money and kept her from frowning. Even her clothes had that I-don’t-look-at-the-price-tag
feel about them.

Of course, child support and a rich ex-husband could explain that. The ex-husband,
as far as I could tell, had been AWOL since the divorce twelve years ago. There was
no indication of any alimony or child support payments. Her credit score was extremely
high and she was using only 10 percent of the credit on her revolving accounts. Eighty-five
thousand a year is a reasonable salary for a seasoned office manager with twenty-plus
years
under her belt. The thing is, Brad made only one hundred and twenty-five thousand,
and Bryan Lincoln made one hundred and five thousand.

The company financials were sound, and presumably Brad could decide when to give himself
a raise. According to his credit report, he was in serious need of one. His mortgage
was close to five grand a month. His children went to private school (I saw their
uniforms in the picture on his desk) and he was using, on average, over 75 percent
of the credit limits on his revolving accounts. Essentially the support staff was
living the high life and the partners were scraping by.

I’d never seen this kind of generosity in any company model. There had to be a catch.
And I kind of wanted to catch it soon, because the filing was getting to me and my
fingers. While I paced the vacant Spellman office trying to foment a tangible explanation
for the Divine Strategies infrastructure, I got a text on my phone from D, which was
odd since he was sitting right there.

What is a conflict resolution specialist?

I texted him back:
I have no idea. Do you?

No. But I’d look into it.

I turned to D and asked the obvious question: “Do you have laryngitis?”

“No,” D said. He turned his attention to his computer and then began shaking his mouse
vigorously. “These computers are not fixed.”

“Are you more comfortable snitching with your thumbs?” I asked.

“I’m making coffee. Do you want any?” was D’s only reply.

“No, thank you.”

Whatever D’s unorthodox method of communication was, he did remind me that I ought
to investigate my sister’s activities a bit more thoroughly. I pulled Rae’s business
card from my wallet and after very brief consideration decided on the best course
of action. I decided to drop by Len’s place and give him a surprise acting role.