As Husbands Go (39 page)

“What do they do?”

“They’re auditors, but they bring an investigative mentality to an issue. A good one will have a combination of financial expertise, knowledge of fraud—and fraudsters, too, you might say—and real savvy about how businesses operate. You’d find them working on cases like Enron, or cases where a corporation is involved in a deal it has questions about.”

“Why would a plastic surgeon need a forensic accountant?” I asked.

“Any number of reasons, I suppose,” Liz said. “But . . . I’m just thinking out loud here. Maybe it was somehow connected to those e-mail exchanges Dr. Gersten was having with his office manager.” She must have clicked another couple of times because she said, “Donald Finsterwald. Did you read those e-mails on the CD?”

I hadn’t, but I would.

Chapter Thirty

The guard at the security desk in the lobby of Martin Ruhlmann’s building smiled at me and Grandma Ethel and said, “You girls must be sisters.” I guessed Grandma Ethel was thinking something close to what I was, like
Cut the shit, you creep,
but as he and an elevator were all that was standing between us and the forensic accountant, we smiled with delight.

Martin Ruhlmann and Associates might have been full of accountants, but it wasn’t a green-eyeshade sort of place. It had the English-club look, right down to a male receptionist in a suit and tie sitting behind a huge mahogany desk. The walls in the waiting room were covered with antique lithographs of what I thought were drawings of rooms in old English clubs. “You have good eyes,” Grandma Ethel told me. “Look. The stuff in the frames hanging on the walls. No, the pictures inside the pictures up there. Are they pictures of more rooms in English clubs? Are you supposed to think,
Hey, maybe it goes on forever
.”

“Maybe.”

“Like anyone gives a shit. Oh, I forget to tell you: Sparky says either this Ruhlmann is the one man in New York who hasn’t heard about Jonah getting killed, or he’s treating whatever information he had about whatever Jonah went to him for as confidential.”

“It’s possible that the police tracked him down already, and whatever he had to say wasn’t important,” I suggested.

“Maybe.”

A secretary, a woman in one of those dress-for-success suits from the seventies or eighties, except without the stupid little tie, led us into
Martin Ruhlmann’s office. He stood and, like a proper English gentleman, did not try to shake our hands until we offered ours. Well, mine, because my grandmother was too busy eyeing a grandfather clock in a corner, barely managing not to sneer at it.

We spent the first few minutes on what a fine man Jonah had been. Ruhlmann was unreadable. He might have thought Jonah was terrific, or he might have loathed him, but his words said nothing except every cliché about someone who’d recently died. There wasn’t any body language to read, either, unless staying behind a desk with his hands in his lap said everything.

I decided to get to the point. “Could you tell us what the investigation you were doing for my husband was about?”

“This is a fairly complex, technical undertaking,” he said.

“Try us,” Grandma Ethel told him.

I couldn’t get over how his mouth moved when every other part of him remained frozen like a still photo with animated lips. “Essentially, I was asked to look into the use of the practice’s surgical suites. The use that was reported did not appear to be in keeping with the gross quarterly revenues.”

“Was it Jonah who hired you, or was it the partnership?”

“Just Dr. Gersten.”

“Do you want to explain what you mean by the use of the surgical suites?” my grandmother asked.

“I really wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Dr. Gersten had a legitimate legal interest in the business of Manhattan Aesthetics.”

“And doesn’t my granddaughter, who is Dr. Gersten’s sole heir, have a legitimate legal interest?” My grandmother, in her pink Chanel once again, looked like she should be wearing storm-cloud gray.

“I would have to look into that,” Ruhlmann said. “Or rather, have our attorneys look into it.”

“When can you do it?” I asked.

“I can have the answer for you within the week. Possibly a little longer, but I’m sure once they get going on it—”

Grandma Ethel cut him off. “Not good enough.”

“I’m afraid, Mrs. O’Shea, that while I can certainly appreciate your interest and your granddaughter’s, and your desire to know any details as soon as possible, I have to see that this is looked into in a proper manner as soon as possible.”

Grandma Ethel rose in one graceful swoop. “Mr. Ruhlmann, you’re obviously a gentleman, and I hope you think we’re ladies.” He nodded. “Good. Then let me tell you something about dealing with ladies of our caliber. Don’t fuck with us.”

As we got into the elevator, my grandmother asked me, “Coarse enough for you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

“Susie, I know you’re worrying that my behavior might be counterproductive. It might be. But dollars to doughnuts, sweetheart, it’ll work. I know how to deal with guys who think they can get away with repro grandfather clocks.”

By the end of the week, we still hadn’t heard from the forensic accountant. I couldn’t believe Jonah had called him Marty or anything less formal than Mr. Ruhlmann. Then it occurred to me that if he hadn’t put down an address or a phone number, maybe he’d been concerned that someone might be looking at his calendar. Donald, perhaps? Or someone else at the practice? Late Friday afternoon, I told Grandma Ethel I was going to call and prod Ruhlmann. She said, “Tell him you’ve got to see him Monday morning, and you’ll be there with your lawyer.”

“I don’t have a lawyer—except the one who did our wills, and her partner, who did the closing on our house. There is no way I can get a lawyer between now and Monday, so I’m not going to give any ultimatums like that.”

“Sparky will be here tomorrow morning. She can stay till Monday night or Tuesday, okay? You can’t ask for a better lawyer. NYU.
Law Review
. Need I say more?”

At a few minutes after ten on Monday, Sparky Burns was sitting
in the chair closest to Martin Ruhlmann’s desk, but she leaned in even closer. “I admire prudence,” she told him. “But you and I know there is no professional privilege of confidentiality for accountants unless you were working under the direction of an attorney.” Ruhlmann cleared his throat, and she said, “What we are asking of you is not imprudent. Dr. Gersten paid you for your services. Mrs. Gersten would like to hear what you found.”

“You mean what he hired me to look for,” he said. Granted, my grandmother’s toughness might have put Ruhlmann off a tad, but even before that, he had been about as aloof as a guy can get without actually being nasty.

Sparky centered the large, round face of her wristwatch on her arm and studied it. “We can have this discussion now. We have no intention of staying for lunch. Or we can come back after an extended period of filings and depositions. You call it.” She sat back in the armchair and flashed a look at my grandmother that could not have meant anything but
Keep quiet
. My grandmother, without a word, opened her handbag, rearranged her wallet and compact, and snapped it shut.

Ruhlmann had perhaps hoped to outwait Sparky or give her the silent treatment, but finally, he said, “I have a meeting outside the office at eleven-thirty.”

“Shall we begin, then?” Sparky asked.

“A check arrived in the mail at Manhattan Aesthetics made out to Dr. Noakes for thirty-seven thousand dollars. No one could figure out where it came from, because the checking account belonged to something called the GP Fund. Dr. Gersten consulted with his partners, Dr. Noakes, of course, and later, Dr. Jiménez and the office manager, a Mr. Finsterwald. None of them had any idea what the GP Fund was or why it would have sent a check made out to Dr. Noakes. Apparently, the envelope was lost or thrown out, so there was no return address.” Ruhlmann took time to adjust the points of the linen handkerchief sticking out of his jacket pocket. “When Dr. Gersten was reported missing, and then found dead, I was still in the process of trying to track down who or what the GP Fund was.”

“Why didn’t Jonah give the check to the practice’s regular accountant to trace?” I asked. For a second I felt uncomfortable, like I had tried to steal Sparky’s scene, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I believe he wanted to investigate the matter himself. He was hoping to discover where the check came from and whether its existence was some sort of a mistake, a bookkeeping oversight, or perhaps something—part of something—devious. He was curious about what the GP Fund was. He wanted to see if the check could be the tip of a very unpleasant iceberg.”

“So you were hired to explore where this thirty-seven-
thousand-dollar check came from?” Sparky asked.

“It wasn’t only the check that was troubling him. There seemed to be quite a bit of inventory shrinkage from the surgical suites in the practice’s office.”

“They did most of their surgery there, not at the hospital,” I told Grandma Ethel and Sparky.

“In retail sales, ‘inventory shrinkage’ can mean shoplifting or employee theft. But in a medical practice, Dr. Gersten was concerned with much more than dollars and cents. What was missing, as I found out, was not at all what he’d expected. It was not easily marketable drugs that had been stolen, but instruments, supplies, anesthesia itself. He couldn’t understand why and wanted to know if there was a black market for that sort of thing.”

“So no one else in the practice knew that he came to see you?” I asked.

“I don’t believe so,” he said. “I was to speak only with Dr. Gersten, no one else. My instincts tell me no one else knew, but my instincts don’t bat a thousand.”

“When you heard about Dr. Gersten’s murder, did you contact the police?” Sparky asked. Ruhlmann didn’t answer. “Did you get in touch with either of his partners?”

“No,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what I need from you before we leave,” Sparky said. “I need your notes on the inventory shrinkage. I want a copy of the thirty-seven-thousand-dollar check and whatever information you
did manage to get on the GP Fund.”

“I have very little on the GP Fund.”

“I have a suggestion,” Sparky said. “You need to get cracking on the person or persons behind GP.”

“I’m really not interested in pursuing this matter beyond this meeting,” Ruhlmann said.

“You listen to me!” Sparky snapped. Ruhlmann moved. His head snapped back against his leather chair, and his jaw dropped. It was the equivalent of someone else having a major seizure. “There is no excuse—Don’t interrupt me with some line your lawyer fed you. There is no excuse whatsoever for your not notifying the police about Jonah Gersten consulting you. Interested or not, you are still on this matter. I might suggest it’s your highest priority.”

Chapter Thirty-One

When Martin Ruhlmann called that night, it was clear he regretted dropping his jaw. He sounded like he had such a stiff upper lip—to say nothing of his lower one—that I had trouble understanding what he was saying.

“The GP Fund is not an entity of any sort,” he said. “It’s the bank account of a woman named Phoebe Kingsley. I believe she’s a socialite. Her husband is Billy Kingsley.”

“Is that a name I’m supposed to know?” I asked, but very politely.

“He owns StarCom. He’s considered one of the great figures of the . . .” I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying because people don’t speak clearly when their jaws are clenched. I asked him to repeat it. “The telecommunications industry. I gather he and Phoebe Kingsley are separated and a divorce is in the works. But that’s neither here nor there. Does that conclude our business, Mrs. Gersten?”

“My lawyer will let you know, Mr. Ruhlmann. Thank you for calling.”
Phoebe Kingsley?
I thought. I pursed my lips, furrowed my brow, and waited for the name to ring a bell. It didn’t.

Grandma Ethel and Sparky passed on pizza and went out to an Indian restaurant. After I put the boys to sleep, I roamed around the house and wound up in each of their rooms, gazing at them. That peaceful euphoria mothers are encouraged to feel each time they look at their children came to me once in a blue moon, almost always when they were asleep and incapable of shrieking, hurling their Spider-Man accessories, or crayoning a mural on a silk-covered wall.