A Killing in the Market (6 page)

Before Officer Riley could finish his sentence, Frank, Joe, and Callie had raced ahead of him.

When they got to the women's room, Frank and Joe started to push through the door.

"Hey!" Callie yelled, stopping them.

Frank felt himself blush as he and Joe stood back so Callie could go in.

Through the closed door came rattling noises and the muffled sounds of Aunt Gertrude's and Callie's voices.

Before long the door opened. Callie had her arm around Aunt Gertrude, supporting her. The older woman looked as though she had been crying.

"It's all right," Callie said softly. "Let's just sit down."

Aunt Gertrude sobbed softly as she was led into the police lounge. "I — I just feel so trapped. Nobody's going to believe me!"

Callie helped her to lie down on a couch in the lounge.

"Squaaaawk! Can't whistle without my vit-tles!"

They both jumped at the parrot's screeching. Aunt Gertrude had forgotten that Con Riley had taken the bird to the station house for safekeeping.

As Callie glared at the bird, it said, "No sweat! Brrrock!" Callie glanced back at Aunt Gertrude, but she had leaned back and shut her eyes. She seemed calmer, so Callie went back out.

"What happened in there?" Frank asked.

Callie shot Officer Riley a confused but angry look. "She fell down."

"She what?" Riley said.

"She fell down!" Callie repeated fiercely.

Not until she and the Hardys were outside did she tell them what had really happened. "I went in and found her trying to escape out the window."

Frank and Joe stared at Callie, a tense silence falling over them. No one could say it, but it was clear that Aunt Gertrude was not acting like an innocent person.

"You can't see through these windows!" Joe complained, trying to get a view of the New York City skyline as the train trundled along the next morning. The boys luckily had the day off from school.

Frank shrugged his shoulders as he glanced at the badly scratched Plexiglas. "Oh, well, we paid them to get us there, not entertain us."

Foooosh! As if in answer to Joe's problem, the train plunged into a tunnel, and everything around them was pitch-black.

Joe sat back in his seat. "You sure Callie didn't stow away on this train? She might be in some disguise. You know, a thin, peach-faced man with a bushy mustache and a high-pitched voice — "

"Nope," Frank said with a laugh. "I had a long talk with her this morning. Besides, she knows that it wouldn't be proper at a funeral."

Clifton had called them the night before to tell them Simone was being buried that day. The boys hadn't the heart to tell their aunt—she had wanted to go to the funeral but was still being detained.

"Last stop, New York!" the conductor's voice rang out. "Remember to take all personal belongings!"

"Let's go!" Frank said, stepping into the crowd of people jamming the aisle to get out.

As Joe followed his brother out of the train, he self-consciously pulled down the legs of his dark suit, which were riding up his calves. "I can't figure out what happened to this thing. It fit me last spring."

"Growing pains," Frank replied.

When they got onto the platform, Frank led Joe through a warren of tunnels to the subway, which whisked them downtown.

They emerged four stops later in Greenwich Village, which always reminded Frank of a citified Bayport. Once they got away from the busy avenues, they walked down a quiet residential street of tightly packed brownstone buildings. The late-morning sunlight shining through the leaves of the small trees lining the block dappled the sidewalk. About halfway down the block, people were filing into a building with a small sign that said Moretti Brothers Funeral Home.

As they crossed the street to the funeral parlor, Frank and Joe noticed two men stop in front of the building. One was thin, dark, and balding, with a neatly tailored blue suit. He looked uncomfortable speaking to the other man, a broad-shouldered guy who strained the seams of an expensively tailored gray suit and chomped on a cigar as he listened.

A raised voice carried. "It's merely an accounting procedure, Norm," the balding man said. "I do it to adjust cash-flow figures, for tax purposes."

The other man pulled the cigar out of his mouth and waved it as he spoke. "I wasn't born yesterday, Spears. My assistants are going nuts over this!"

"Unbelievable," Joe said quietly because they were now ten feet from the men. "Talking about business, even at a funeral."

" 'Spears,' " Frank whispered. "That's the name that Clifton mentioned."

At that moment Clifton came out of the funeral parlor, a quizzical look on his face. "Ah, Frank and Joe!" he called out. "Good to see you." He stepped down the stairs, shook their hands, and glanced at the other two men. "Have you all met? Frank—and I assume this is Joe Hardy." Joe nodded. "This is Justin Spears, Mr. Simone's accountant, and Norman Fleckman, one of his close business associates. Frank and Joe are helping me on this case."

Frank was surprised that Clifton would be so open about it, but Clifton gave him a reassuring look. "These two men have agreed to provide information on Simone and his activities."

"How do you do?" Spears said, extending his hand.

Fleckman grunted and made his way up the stairs to the funeral parlor.

"We just got news that the priest has been delayed in traffic," Clifton said. "There's the big ticker-tape parade downtown for the World Series champs."

Spears looked at his watch and grimaced. "You know, it's a busy day for me. I'm afraid I'll have to be going after I offer my condolences to Mrs. Simone. By the way, I have something to show you, Eric."

"Well, I've really got to stick around. My first obligation is to Mrs. Simone. She's very upset. Frank and Joe, why don't you go with Mr. Spears to see what he has?"

"Of course," Frank said, looking curiously at Clifton.

As the accountant went in, Clifton held the Hardys back. "I thought you'd like to follow up on him, because if he's guilty, your aunt goes free," he explained. "Also, if he is hiding anything, he may let his guard down with a couple of kids."

Minutes later the three emerged from the funeral home. Spears led the way to the nearest avenue and hailed a cab to take them all downtown. Soon the low, stately brownstones gave way to Wall Street's huge glass and steel skyscrapers.

"This whole thing is baffling to me," Spears admitted as they sped down the street. He smiled modestly and adjusted his glasses. "My business is usually so—undramatic, you see. I just push numbers around. But now I've discovered some very suspicious things in my records."

The cab stopped in front of a thirty-story building with a set of brass-trimmed revolving doors. After Spears paid the cab driver, they all walked into a gleaming marble-walled lobby. Within seconds an elevator brought them to Spears's fifteenth-floor office. There was no secretary in the reception area.

"I hope my assistant hasn't gone out to lunch yet," Spears said. He turned the large brass knob and pushed against the polished mahogany door, which swung open. "Ah, good. He must be here. Enter, my friends."

But as Frank and Joe stepped into the room, they froze. Spears was right about his assistant being there—but he wasn't going to be of much use. He was sprawled unconscious on the floor on a bed of papers!

Spears's eyes widened as he took in the wreckage — drawers had been pulled out of filing cabinets, shelves were ripped out of the walls, his desk was overturned. This hadn't been a search. Someone had simply trashed the office.

Spears gasped when he looked up and saw the wall above his desk. In thick, bold letters, the word beware had been scrawled in blood!

JOE KNELT BESIDE the assistant, who was curled up next to a filing cabinet, his blond hair across his face. There didn't seem to be any cuts or bruises. Joe felt the young man's wrist. "He's got a pulse," he said, then gently shook the man.

"Wha - what's going on?" The assistant's eyes flickered open, and he jerked himself away from Joe. "Get your hands off me! I swear I'll call the police!"

"Easy, easy," Joe replied softly. "We're here to help. Mr. Spears is with us."

"Justin?" the man answered, still dazed. A look of relief washed over his face as he saw his boss.

"Are you okay, Bart?" Spears asked, and the man nodded. "What happened here?"

Bart's look of relief disappeared as he sat up and looked around the office. He put his hand to his forehead, obviously in pain, remembering what had happened.

"I — I don't know," he said. "There was a knock on the outer door, and it was two guys who said they were here to do the annual service on the copier. I let them in, and all of a sudden one of them came after me. So I backed away ... " He looked at the filing cabinet behind him and rubbed the back of his head. "I must have fallen against that."

As Joe helped Bart into a chair, Spears moved up close to inspect the wall that had been splattered with the word beware. "Some kind of red paint," he said, looking at the foot-high letters. "Someone is trying to scare me."

"Any idea who?" Frank asked.

Spears sank into the seat by his desk. "Well, no! I'm an accountant, not a — a boss of the underworld."

"You don't have any enemies? Anyone you've had a fight with?" Frank pressed.

"Wait a second!" Joe interjected. "What about that guy who was arguing with you outside the funeral home? What was his name again — Fleckman?"

Spears thought for a minute. "Norman Fleckman ... " he said, nodding his head. "He's a client of mine. I do his financial records. Actually, we haven't been on good terms lately."

"Bad enough for him to do this to you?"

Spears sighed. "Well, I'm really not supposed to reveal client information — "

"This could be a clue in a murder case, Mr. Spears," Joe prodded. "We're up against a wall, and an innocent person has become the prime suspect."

Frowning, Spears considered Joe's words. Finally he answered. "Well, I suppose under the circumstances ... " He shrugged once. "I may as well admit to you that I think Fleckman's business dealings are not always—shall we say, the most honest. He used to work with Simone at Thompson Welles, but then he branched off to form his own investment firm when some of the partners began complaining about his tactics." Spears gave a smile. "Simone could be very persuasive in his own quiet way, but Fleckman is much more—aggressive. In fact, so aggressive that he began stealing away some of Simone's clients.

"I can't prove it, but I think Fleckman got involved in a little bit of swindling. It seems, from what I've pieced together, that he'd carefully select his victims from among his elderly clients, people who didn't know the market, who depended on him to explain everything to them. He'd tell them their stocks had tumbled — that their money was as good as gone. Get their signature on a paper. But in reality the stocks had actually doubled or tripled. That's how I think it worked, but I can't prove it—yet."

"I can see what Simone had against Fleckman, but what did Fleckman have against him?" Frank asked.

"The more clients Simone lost, the angrier he got. So he started to put together bits of information about Fleckman and his shady dealings. I think he threatened to blow the whistle on him."

"Something bothers me about this," Frank said. "Simone's record had to have been pretty spotless if he was willing to expose Fleckman."

"That's right," Spears said. "Henry Simone was completely honest."

"Then why the alias?" Joe asked. "And what did he do with our aunt Gertrude's money?"

Spears looked blank. "I don't know. He might have taken an alias to escape Fleckman. Maybe he was beginning to play rough. As for the money ... "

"Maybe we should examine Simone's records," Frank suggested. "I'd like to see just how honest he was."

Behind them, Bart had been fiddling with the computer terminal, trying to see if it was still working.

"Bart, call up Simone's file, will you please?" Spears asked.

Bart's fingers danced over the keyboard. Instantly the screen showed columns and columns of numbers with the name SIMONE, HENRY above them.

The four of them sat around the screen as Spears explained the numbers. Every cent was accounted for.

Spears pressed a few keys and a new set of figures appeared on the screen, with the heading PERSONAL INCOME AND INVESTMENTS. "Unfortunately," Spears explained, "Mr. Simone made a few bad investments for himself and died with very little money of his own."

Frank and Joe examined the screen. Sure enough, many of Simone's investments showed losses, and his net worth was very little.

Frank noticed there was no reference to his aunt Gertrude's money going into Simone's account. Where was it? And how could he tell her that her life savings had disappeared?

"So his ex-wife wouldn't have done him in for his money?" Joe said.

Spears laughed. "If so, she'd be in for a big surprise."

So much for Clifton's suspicion about Spears as the next beneficiary, Frank thought. "If you don't mind, Mr. Spears, I'd like a copy of Simone's and Fleckman's records. I'll be discreet and give them back soon. I have a feeling this case is going in a new direction."

"It's highly irregular, but if you promise to keep them confidential," Spears answered. "Bart, will you please print out a copy?"

As Frank and Joe left the office with the evidence, they heard the solid click of the office door's deadbolt.

"Okay, next stop, Elite Eye," Frank said. "I'd like to point out a new suspect to Eric Clifton."

Joe laughed and glanced through the records as they walked toward the elevator. "Look at this!" he said. "Half of Simone's client accounts were closed out this past week!"

As Frank reached for the papers, he heard a distant ding.

"Come on!" he said. Running around the corner toward the elevator, he shouted, "Hold the door, please!"

At the end of the long cream-colored hallway, two men in suits were leaning against a wall across from the elevator doors. As the doors started to shut, one of them reached out to hold them open.