Two Bits Four Bits (10 page)

“Were you and Kandy
Chilton sleeping together?” Reese blurted out, leaning
forward.

“Reese! For Christ’s sake
show some respect, would you?” Clemmer said, looking at me and
shaking his head.

I watched Clemmer for a
few seconds. Just long enough for him to understand I knew what
they were doing.

“You overplayed that a
bit,” I said to Reese. “Way too much drama for it to work right. I
mean, you just need to be a little bit bad, not come off like a
rabid pit bull. That way Clemmer, by being just slightly nicer than
you are, can draw me in and get me to connect with him. And, if I
do that then maybe I’ll feel comfortable enough to give him some
useful information. But, if you play it all aggressive like you
did, and if I’m timid enough to actually be afraid of you, I’m
liable to just shut down and ask for an attorney.”

Reese frowned,
confused.

“Come on, Reese,” Clemmer
said, standing up. “You can’t good-cop bad-cop a trained
investigator.”

I shrugged. “Might’ve
worked if he were a tad more subtle.”

“Subtlety’s never been his
strong suit,” Clemmer answered, leading his partner to the door.
“Thank you for your time. We’ll look forward to hearing from you if
you come up with something.”

* * * *

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

Thursday morning, I was
out in the pasture behind my folks’ house making a mental inventory
of the rusting farm implements parked there and trying to decide if
any of it was salvageable. My cell phone rang. It was Jay Bradley
from the bank. He sounded nervous and said he had something to show
me. I agreed to meet him at The Yucca Inn, a small restaurant next
to the South Commerce Branch of Elmore National Bank that
afternoon.

Jay Bradley arrived
shortly after I did, and we sat in a corner booth of the diner,
well away from the only other patron; a weathered looking farmer
wearing dusty overalls and a cap bearing the logo of a cottonseed
company. Even though there was no chance of anyone overhearing him,
Bradley spoke in a low voice and kept glancing towards the door as
he told me about his discovery.

We ordered coffee and he
began by giving me an overview of how the bank accounts for its
currency and coin. He explained that each teller maintains a cash
box and a coin vault, and balanced their cash at the end of each
day’s work. There was also a main vault, accounted for separately,
with which the individual tellers could exchange cash to as needed.
When they balanced their cash at the end of the business day, each
teller created a detailed listing of the currency and coin
contained in their cash box and coin vault. It was essentially an
inventory of the cash they finished the day with.

Typically each combination
of cash box and coin vault assigned to a teller was balanced daily,
and if a teller wasn’t present to balance due to illness or
vacation, a pair of supervisors would balance it for them. The task
of balancing the cash and coin of an absent teller was relatively
simple. Since the teller had presumably balanced their cash at the
end of the previous day and had not taken in any additional cash
nor given any out, the supervisors needed only to count the cash
and coin and verify that it matched the total reported by the
teller the previous day.

Bradley explained that
sometimes when supervisors balanced the cash for an absent teller
they would fail to actually open the teller’s coin vault and count
the coin, since the amount of money tied up in coin was relatively
insignificant in comparison to the currency the teller held. He
also explained that each teller station had two extra locking
drawers usually kept unlocked locked since most tellers used them
for supplies, rolls of adding machine tape, rubber stamps and the
like.

“I talked to our teller
supervisor this morning to make sure they counted all of Eva’s cash
and coin since we haven’t heard from her since last week. She and I
came out here together this morning to do the count. We balanced to
her cash sheet exactly. But we found some things in Eva’s coin
vault and extra drawers that I think you should see.”

We finished our coffee and
walked next door to the small branch bank. Bradley introduced me to
a pleasant looking woman named Beth Ann, the teller supervisor from
the main office, who was helping fill in while Eva was absent.
Bradley then led me to a small, locked office beside the teller
stations. He closed the door and sat behind the desk. I sat down
across from him as he opened a drawer and pulled out a book of
deposit slips for a business account.

“This may not be anything,
but I can’t figure out why Eva would have deposit slips for one of
our business accounts locked in one of her drawers, along with
rubber stamps with the business name on them.”

He handed them across and
I read the name of the business printed on them: Kwik-Stop
Convenience Stores, and a street address in Odessa, a city twenty
miles to the south.

“Is there a Kwik-Stop here
in Elmore?” I asked.

“No, never has been. They
opened an account with us a few months back, but I never understood
why. We don’t have a branch in Odessa, so if they want to do
business they’ve got to drive all the way up here. And, they seem
to make pretty regular deposits.”

He handed me two rubber
stamps, one containing the three lines showing the name and address
of Kwik-Stop Convenience Stores. The other contained the words “For
Deposit Only” above the name of the business and a string of
numbers that matched the account number on the deposit
slips.

“So this is unusual? For
Eva to have some deposit slips and rubber stamps? Your tellers
don’t ever help their customers prepare their deposits?”

“You’re right, we
sometimes do that. But that’s not all I found,” Bradley answered.
Reaching into the drawer again, he handed over another set of
deposit slips and rubber stamps. These bore the name WTEG, Inc.,
also with an Odessa address.

“And, then there’s
this.”

He handed me a small flat
key with a number on it. I recognized it as a safe deposit box
key.

“
I checked the number on
the key, and it’s to a safe deposit box that’s registered to
Kwik-Stop Convenience Stores. It was in Eva’s locked drawer along
with those deposit slips and rubber stamps.”

“And why would it be
unusual for Eva to have this?”

“Well, for one thing, each
safe deposit box has a card containing the signatures of people who
are authorized to access the box. There are only two names on the
Kwik-Stop signature card, and they don’t include Eva’s.”

“Couldn’t someone from
Kwik-Stop have left their key here accidentally? Doesn’t that
happen from time to time?”

“It does, but we have
written procedures to follow when it happens, to limit the bank’s
liability. See, this is a small branch. The people who work here
have to do it all; take deposits, cash checks, help open accounts
and let people into their safe deposit boxes. Each box requires two
keys to open it; the customer’s key, which you’re holding there,
and the bank’s key, which Eva had access to. The fact that she had
both keys meant that she could go into that customer’s safe deposit
box anytime she wanted to.”

“I can see how that could
cause problems.”

“No kidding. Our auditors
would have a shit fit if they knew about this. If an employee finds
a key that a customer has accidentally left behind, our procedure
is for that employee to notify another employee. Then, the two of
them will put the key in a special lockbox with a written inventory
of its contents. That way the key is secured and everybody is kept
honest.”

“Maybe Eva didn’t know the
proper procedure to follow.”

Bradley shrugged. “It’s
possible. Who knows? It just seems odd to me.”

“Have you called Kwik-Stop
to ask about the key?”

“I thought about that,” he
said. “I just wanted more information first.”

He glanced around
nervously and lowered his voice even more.

“With Russell dead and Eva
missing, I would just like to have an idea what we’re dealing with
so I can talk to the Board of Directors about it before any more
shit hits the fan.”

He was looking back and
forth at the key in my hand and then at my face, waiting on me to
respond.

“You want to know what’s
inside that safe deposit box before you call Kwik-Stop?”

His face
reddened.

“I’d give anything to know
what’s in there,” he answered. “Unofficially, of course. If Eva was
doing something illegal, stealing from a customer or something like
that, I’d like a little forewarning so the Board can get ready to
deal with the consequences. I know what I want to do here is
totally illegal and unethical, but I thought that with you having
been in law enforcement you could vouch for the fact that we only
went in to look if I get into trouble.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But who’s
gonna vouch for me?”

* * * *

CHAPTER
TWENTY

The safe deposit vault at
the South Commerce Branch was about the size of a small walk-in
closet, with dozens of small shiny brushed steel doors lining one
wall and a small desk in the corner. Most of the safe deposit box
doors were small, maybe three inches tall and five inches wide.
Towards the bottom of the wall of safes, the size increased, with
the very bottom row being much larger, about ten inches wide by
twenty inches tall. It was into the lock on one of these larger
boxes that Jay Bradley carefully slid the key from Eva’s vault. He
then selected a key from a ring that he’d retrieved from a desk
outside the safe deposit vault and slid it into the other of the
box’s twin keyholes. He glanced up at me nervously as if he were
about to open Pandora’s Box.

I was familiar with the
smaller safe deposit boxes that held a long, narrow lidded
container that slid into the locked safe. But the larger vault like
the one Jay was opening was an open space with a locking door. So,
the renter of the box would simply stack whatever they wanted
inside the box and lock the door.

The renter of the
Kwik-Stop vault had packed the inside of the vault so tightly that
there wasn’t a square inch of space to spare. From the bottom of
the vault to the top, bricks of tightly-bound currency were stacked
in a neat, efficient manner.

“Oh, shit,” Bradley
groaned. “I was afraid of something like this. Oh, man this really
sucks.”

Sitting atop the blocks of
money were more books of deposit slips. I pulled the receipt books
out and read the names of the businesses aloud.

“Shiny-Side Car Wash,
Burger Blaster Drive-Inn, Gameland Arcade, WTEG, Inc.”

The address for each of
the businesses was located in Odessa and I recognized the name
WTEG, Inc. as belonging to West Texas Entertainment Group, Inc.
from my search of Eva’s phone records. But, the address for WTEG
wasn’t the same one I had written down from the phone directory.
The vault also contained a stack of completed deposit receipts for
the same companies, each for several hundred dollars. Bradley
examined each of the receipts.

“They all have Eva’s
teller number on them,” he said.

We agreed that it was best
not to move the money to attempt to count, it since the owners of
the box might recognize if we didn’t re-stack exactly the way they
had left it. The bricks of currency were stacked in several layers
from the front of the vault to the back and we could see hundreds,
fifties and twenties on the outsides of the bundles. Depending on
the denominations of the bills, the total loot could have ranged
from several hundred thousand dollars to upwards of one to two
million. With Bradley’s approval, I removed one blank deposit slip
from each of the books to take with me before carefully putting
them back the way we found them. After locking the safe deposit
box, we went back to the office we had talked in
earlier.

“I’m sure you know we have
to report cash transactions over ten thousand dollars to the
government,” he said. “Each of the businesses on those deposit
slips in that box regularly makes cash deposits that require us to
file those forms. However, there isn’t any law against putting
cash, or anything else for that matter, in a safe deposit
box.”

“So, where does that leave
the bank?”

Bradley scratched his
head.

“Well, technically I don’t
know what’s in that safe deposit box because you and I never looked
in there. If I knew for a fact that one of our safe deposit boxes
contained beau coups of unreported cash, there might be some
liability for the bank for not reporting it to the government.
Thank God we never looked in there.”

“Are you going to contact
Kwik-Stop?”

“I don’t think so. I
really don’t have any proof that Eva did anything wrong. I think
I’m just going to wait to see what happens.”

He got a puzzled look.
“But, what do I do about the key? I’m really not comfortable having
access to both keys to that box. I can’t leave it in Eva’s drawer
where I found it. And, I’d rather not involve any more bank
personnel in this than I have to. Would you mind keeping it for me?
At least until we get things sorted out?”