A Dime a Dozen (28 page)

We puzzled around that one for a while but couldn’t come up with any logical conclusions. I reminded Natalie we were wasting our time on conjecture anyway, at least until the results of the autopsy came out.

“There is one thing I have been wondering,” I said. “I witnessed a very strange encounter yesterday between Karen Weatherby and Pete Gibson. Is there some sort of history there? I thought maybe Pete was her ex-husband or something.”

“Ex-husband?” Natalie said. “Goodness no, Callie. Pete is Karen’s brother. Well, stepbrother, I guess.”

“Stepbrother?” I asked, my eyes wide.

“Yes. Didn’t you know? Lowell Tinsdale, the man who owns Tinsdale Orchards? Pete’s stepfather? He’s Karen Weatherby’s father.”

“Why didn’t I know that?” I asked. “She never said anything. In fact, when I was with her at Go the Distance, she acted all weird about the orchard. I asked her if she wanted to go there with me, and she practically threw me out the door.”

Natalie exhaled slowly.

“That’s because Karen and her father are estranged,” she said. “Karen’s story is really quite sad.”

Natalie seemed reluctant to indulge in what might be considered gossip, but I told her that as a part of my investigation of MORE I needed at least a general understanding of the ties that bound the head of one of the charities they supported with the owner of the biggest orchard in town.

“Karen’s mother died in childbirth,” Natalie explained. “Lowell was devastated when she passed away.”

“How sad.”

“He also didn’t have a clue what to do with his new baby girl. He brought in a woman to take of her, and then he left the raising of Karen to her. He buried himself in his work and the orchard simply thrived. I heard he was putting in fifteen-hour days, seven days a week. Whatever it took to erase the pain, not to mention avoid the little girl who was growing up to look just like her mother.”

Natalie looked out at the water silently for a moment.

“Of course, there’s no substitute for parents,” she continued, “and the hired help let poor little Karen simply run wild. I heard a rumor once that the day she started first grade, they had to send her home early because she smelled so bad. The other students called her ‘Birdy’ for years because her hair was so knotted. It looked just like a bird’s nest.”

“The poor thing,” I said. “I bet she didn’t have a friend in the world.”

“Oh, she had plenty of friends—three or four months out of the year, at least. The migrant children.”

“Ah,” I said, picturing it all clearly in my mind. An orchard owner’s lonely daughter probably would have found great solace among migrant workers’ children.

“Back then, you know, there weren’t all sorts of rules and regulations like there are now. The migrant kids either helped their parents in the fields or stayed out of the way at the migrant camp.”

“The migrant camp?” I asked. “Down by the creek?”

“Yes. Karen used to spend every possible minute she could there, playing with the children who weren’t working. She learned their games and taught them things like hide-and-seek. Lowell left that girl to her own devices for thirteen years. Is it any wonder…”

Her voice trailed off, and I looked at her, surprised to see her blushing.

“What?” I prodded.

She lowered her voice, even though we were the only ones home.

“Is it any wonder he eventually found her in a compromising position in one of the barns with a migrant boy?”

I closed my eyes, imagining both the pain and shame of the young Karen and the rage and confusion of her father.

“Needless to say,” Natalie continued, clearing her throat, “that was probably the first time Lowell Tinsdale had paid a moment’s attention to the girl in thirteen years.”

“What happened?”

“Well, for starters, he forbade Karen to have anything else to do with any of the migrants ever again.”

“Ouch.”

“When he saw that wasn’t going to hold, he sent her off to boarding school in California.”

“Oh, Natalie,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “That must’ve destroyed what was left of the poor girl’s spirit.”

Natalie sighed.

“I don’t really know what happened to her after that. She managed to get through junior high and high school, and then she stayed out West for college. I do know that once she graduated from college she announced to her father she was going to be an activist for migrants—and then she severed all ties with him.”

“Served him right, I guess,” I said.

Natalie nodded.

“He was none too happy about it,” she said, “but what could he do? Karen was a grown woman. She had her own life to live. She was even married for a time.”

“So how did she end up back here?” I asked. “I assume she’s been out of college for, what, maybe ten or twelve years now? Did she decide that the ties had been severed long enough?”

Natalie exhaled slowly.

“I don’t know, Callie,” she said. “When Karen first moved back last year, Dean and I made great overtures toward her, you know, bringing her food, helping her move in, inviting her to church. She would never talk about herself, her past, or her father at all, except to say that she had become a Christian a few years ago and that ever since she had felt the Lord leading her to return home and help the migrants here. I don’t know much beyond that. If her intention was to reconcile with Lowell, that certainly hasn’t taken place yet, as far as I know. Now with him so ill, I have to wonder if they’ll ever make their peace.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked, anticipating the answer before she gave it.

“He has a lung disorder,” she said. “COPD. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I doubt he’ll live to see next year.”

“He looked pretty awful when I met him yesterday.”

“You met him?” Natalie asked. “At the orchard?”

“Yes, he came out when the police were there.”

I described his hollow face, his stooped posture. Natalie told me a bit more about his condition and said that, as sick as he was, she was surprised he had come out of the house at all.

“What’s with the house anyway?” I asked. “For such a thriving business, the mansion looks like it’s falling apart.”

“That’s Lowell,” Natalie said, nodding. “Since he got sick, he doesn’t want people around, doesn’t want the noise or the activity of maintenance or repairs. He putters around in that big old home with no one but his nurses and attendants to keep him company. Everyone else is off limits.”

“Even his children?”

She thought about that.

“I don’t know about Pete,” she said finally. “I’m sure he has access. As for Karen, what can I say? Between her and her father, the two of them are like a pair of stubborn mules. But what neither one of them will admit is that the one commodity they don’t have a lot of is time.”

Twenty-Eight

Natalie stayed home to get some things done around the house, but I needed to get into the MORE office, see how things were going with Harriet, and get a good look at my own investigation. On the way, I called June Sweetwater at the police station. I got her voice mail, so I left a message describing my visit from Pepe last night and his revelations about the conversation he had with his father just before Enrique disappeared. I wasn’t sure what Detective Sweetwater would do with that knowledge, but I knew it was relevant to the case—particularly if Enrique’s death was ruled a homicide.

When I came into the office, Harriet didn’t seem embarrassed or uncomfortable, and I decided she wasn’t even aware that Natalie had overheard her conversation with Margaret about me and Tom. It was just as well, since my resulting talk with Natalie had been actually quite liberating. I was glad to know I had my mother-in-law’s blessing to live my life fully, especially if that life ended up including a new husband and some children.

Trying not to picture a bunch of little Toms and Callies running around, I settled down with my computer in the conference room at the opposite end of the big table from Harriet. She was buried deep in her work, eyes glued to the screen, her fingers making a steady clack-clack-clack on her keyboard.

Despite my distracted mind-set, I soon found myself absorbed with my own work as well. I spent about an hour updating my database, typing in all of the information I had gathered thus far, particularly the rave reviews and comments I had received yesterday as I made the rounds of the charities that were supported by MORE. When I finished updating my records, I stood and stretched, glad that I had taken the time to go canoeing earlier in the morning.

“You getting hungry for lunch?” Harriet asked, looking up at me.

“Not quite yet,” I said. “How about you?”

She shrugged.

“Maybe in a while,” she answered. “I have some things I need to go over with you first.”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

I pulled a chair down to her end of the table and then sat, listening as she reviewed her findings with me. As she talked, she pulled up figures on the screen and referred to printouts on the table, giving me an in-depth analysis of what she had found thus far.

Fortunately, she had nothing but good things to say about the MORE finances. She was also ready to sign off on the dental clinic and the Head Start program.

“What about Go the Distance?”

“It checks out fine, with one exception.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m just a little concerned about an expense item. They purchased a single vehicle last summer from Green Valley Motors for forty-nine-thousand-and-something dollars. If that’s a company car, that seems like a bit much for a nonprofit.”

“Yes,” I said, “it does.”

I tried to think of the vehicle I had seen Karen driving the day before. I couldn’t remember the make or model, but it hadn’t struck me as being particularly luxurious. In any event, I would check it out. Expensive company cars were an area of potential abuse in unethical nonprofits. On paper, nonprofit executives could list low salaries and then hide their chief income through expensive side benefits—things like fancy cars, travel for their family, and houses. I thought of one company in Maine that I had exposed just last summer, a camp for kids with disabilities. Turns out, one of the $60,000 camp buses was actually the camp director’s brand-new Porsche. Suffice it to say, after that, I took a close look at every vehicle purchase.

“How about Su Casa?” I asked, thinking of the charity that built the migrant dorms.

“Su Casa is a problem,” she replied. “I’m definitely seeing some red flags there.”

She had my attention.

“There seems to be something odd going on between Su Casa and Hooper Construction,” she added.

“The same people are involved in both places,” I said. “Zeb Hooper and his son, Butch.”

“Well, I’m afraid that Zeb and Butch just might be up to a little funny business. Either that, or somebody is keeping some awfully sloppy records.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked. “Please don’t tell me they’re taking money from one and putting it in the other.”

I thought back to a case I had worked last September. Tom sent me to deliver a grant to a friend of his who headed up a hunger relief organization based in Philadelphia. In the end, it turned out that money was being siphoned from the nonprofit side of the business and poured into the for-profit side, raising some serious issues of legalities and ethics. After that, we were more wary than ever of companies that tried to run both types of enterprises simultaneously. Now whenever we had a for-profit and a nonprofit headed by the same management, we required an independent audit of both places before we would even begin the grant approval process.

“Let me show you,” Harriet said. “It’s hard to explain, but the problem stems from some donations that Hooper Construction made to Su Casa.”

“Donations?”

“Look at this,” Harriet said, pulling Hooper Construction’s records up on the screen. “Last July second, Hooper Construction wrote a check to Su Casa for five thousand dollars, marking it in the books as a ‘Donation.’”

“Okay.”

“Now here’s the entry in Su Casa’s books, recording that donation from Hooper Construction, but instead of five thousand dollars, they’ve got it listed as
twenty
-five thousand dollars.”

“What?”

She showed me the line entry, and though the date and the check number were the same, the amount was not.

“They did it again, over here, the January before. Again, Hooper Construction donated five thousand dollars to Su Casa, but in that instance Su Casa recorded it as a donation of
sixty
-five thousand dollars!”

“What do you think is going on?” I asked. “Is Hooper Construction trying to get a tax deduction on a bigger gift than they actually gave?”

“No,” Harriet said. “That’s what’s so weird. If they were faking the amounts of their donations, then the figures would be reversed. Hooper Construction would be showing the larger amount and Su Casa would be showing the smaller amount.”

“I’m so confused,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “Why would Su Casa want to record a bigger donation than they are actually getting?”

Harriet put the books down, pulled her reading glasses from her nose, and looked at me.