Beads of Doubt (16 page)

“I guess you heard that Tess has ovarian cancer,” I said. “She was at a stage IIIc when she was diagnosed. Her gynecologist, a man, wouldn’t take her seriously, and then it was too late.” Stage IV is when they send you home to make out your will.

“I’m sorry.” He knew what Tess was going through, because he’d watched his mother die of ovarian cancer. He knew about the false hopes and the hurts, and how it almost always ended. “I’ll listen anytime you want to talk about it.”

I nodded, but I didn’t have anything to say just yet. I didn’t want to explore my fears or my feelings—I only knew that every time I thought of Tess my heart hurt so bad I was afraid it would splinter into pieces.

“And,” he went on, “if you want to change the subject, we could talk about the murder at your back door. That can’t have been easy.”

I took in a long breath, focusing my thoughts on the murder, which was just as tragic as Tess’s illness, but not so close and personal. “It wasn’t easy, and it’s gotten harder with my mother and my aunt Miranda involved.”

I’d have explained more but someone else was calling me. “Ms. Camd—I mean, uh, ma’am, uh, hello? Are you here?” It was Lauren.

I stood up and said to Nate, “Popularity is not all it’s cracked up to be.” Then I opened the door. “Out here.”

“Oh, great! I did it. I got into Andrew’s computer.” She was holding her laptop, practically running up the stairs. “I couldn’t get into everything of his, but he kept copies of all his bank statements electronically. I have those.” She came out the door and stopped dead when she saw Nate. “Oh. You’ve got company.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Nate said. “I’ve sheltered Ms. Camden from the police before. I love illegal activities.”

Lauren looked stunned.

“He’s kidding,” I said. “It was a misunderstanding, that’s all. I was hiding from the police behind a rock and Nate just happened to find me.” I closed the door, just in case she was tempted to run back in the house. “Have a seat and show us what you’ve discovered.” We moved the cheese and glasses so Lauren could put her computer on the small table.

What she had was interesting, especially since she had decoded most of it already. “This is Andrew’s bank account,” she said, sliding her finger around her touch pad. A long list of numbers came up. She used the cursor to point. “It’s pretty straightforward. I have to assume that this is a car payment, this is for groceries, and this is rent.”

“That much? You could buy a house for that.”

“This is Austin,” she reminded me. “Most of these expenses are easy to figure out. Now, here, it appears he put a portion of his money into a 401(k) at a brokerage firm. Some went into his savings account. Nothing really very astounding.” She moved the cursor some more. “By following transactions I could see the money go from his checking to his savings. Then it started getting interesting, because the money didn’t stay in savings all that long. About every three months it moved. I think I know where it is. You see,” she said, clicking around so that an entirely new screen appeared, “this is his business account. Lots of money going in and lots of money coming out.”

Nate and I both leaned forward for a better look.

“His business was doing pretty well,” I said, look
ing at the numbers. Half a million dollars had gone in, then another half million. It looked about $250,000 of Andrew’s personal money was deposited as well, before there was a withdrawal of $400,000.

That’s the way the numbers went, the dollars piling up and then a large amount coming out. I couldn’t tell where it was going, and neither could Lauren.

Lauren said, “I don’t have access to his Quicken files just yet, but I’ll bet I can find them. Then we’ll know where the money is now.”

“Hello?” Beth’s voice came up the stairs. “Kitzi, I’m back.”

“Come on up,” I called.

She appeared in the doorway. “Hi. I won’t stay; I just wanted you to know I was here.”

“That was fast,” I said.

“Dwayne got a page and had to go.”

“Come on out. Lauren found something very interesting. Take a look.”

She squeezed in beside me, pushing me a little closer to Nate, and scrolled through the numbers in the business bank account.

“Am I cynical,” Nate asked, “or does this suggest a Ponzi scheme to anyone else?”

“I was just thinking that,” I said, going over the dollar amounts again.

Lauren nodded. “Me, too.”

Beth leaned back. “I am not a numbers person, and I don’t know what a Ponzi is. Can anyone give me the short version?”

“The name comes from Charles Ponzi,” Lauren said, jumping into an explanation. “In the 1920s he found that by changing foreign stamps for American ones the exchange rate made him a profit. Something like 400 percent initially. He began telling people that he could double their money in ninety days.”

Beth looked puzzled. “Very creative, but there was obviously some flaw.”

“Several,” Lauren said. “He had to get things through customs, and there were delays, but that didn’t stop him. There were people literally lined up around the block to give him money, and the average was three hundred dollars. That was a lot of money back then. He had to hire staff to keep up with the demand, and of course he was spending money like mad, too. He bought a mansion, jewels for his wife—things that people do with newfound wealth.

“At first, he paid the early investors off, with the funds that came in from the second and third tier. This made everything look legitimate. Then a Boston newspaper ran a story about him, questioning whether his company and the money were legitimate. Quite a few people demanded their money back.”

Nate added, “He actually paid off a lot of them, but when the government did an audit they discovered he’d returned so much money that he was bankrupt.”

“Part of it was,” Lauren said, “that he’d never purchased all the stamps or international reply coupons to make the plan work.”

“Which,” Nate concluded, “is why his last name, Ponzi, is synonymous with pyramid schemes. End of story.”

Beth looked at me. “Do we get college credit for this?”

“I already knew it,” I said. “Pretty interesting, though, isn’t it? Ponzi always maintained his innocence, and I’ve wondered if he could have pulled it off if he’d been just a little bit quicker on the uptake.”

Lauren shook her head. “It wasn’t possible. He was collecting too much money. We did the calculations in one of my business classes and if you start with just eight people, by the time you reach the ninth level, or maybe the eighth, you’d have to have everyone in the United States investing.”

Beth put up her hand to halt the discussion. “Very interesting. So Nate, you’re thinking that Andrew was doing a Ponzi scheme instead of legitimately investing the money?”

“Something just suggests it to me,” he said. “Lauren, you know more about his business than the rest of us. Was he? Could you tell?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was hired to help Houston when Rebecca was sick, and so primarily I handled Houston’s correspondence and his clients. Once we got caught up I did research on commercial real estate and potential subdivisions for him. Andrew was my go-to guy when I had questions. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that he talked about other investments—I guess the ones that were just his. He was researching something in Corpus Christi or Galveston. And something at the lake here.”

We all stared at the computer screen with its lines and rows of numbers. They all represented Andrew’s money. Or perhaps his clients, but in either case, we were peering into his private world. It gave me a very odd feeling—as if we were being voyeurs and we couldn’t even apologize to him for being so rude.

“You know,” Beth said, “almost every account in the world has money going in and out, so that shouldn’t be odd. We have to find out where the funds were going, don’t you think?”

“That’s our next step,” I said. With some regret I added, “If only we’d gone into that meeting Andrew was having on Thursday.”

“He invited us to come in afterward,” Beth corrected. “Not during it. I thought I heard arguing in there.”

“There was,” Lauren said. “The Yancys were furious with Andrew. I was afraid Mr. Yancy was going to have a heart attack. I was sitting at my desk and I could hear him yelling.”

“Really?” I said. “What were they so mad about?”

“Money. I didn’t hear the whole story, but I think their statement had an error on it. Andrew kept saying that it was a simple computer error—some kind of glitch in the program, but they either didn’t believe him, or they were using it as an excuse, because they demanded their money back. Andrew told them it was too early and they’d have to wait, which really set them off.”

Nate leaned forward to ask, “Did it ever get resolved?”

“I don’t think so,” Lauren said. “They did finally leave, and they seemed calm by then. I asked Andrew if they were okay, and he said something like, ‘Oh, sure.’ He said it was all a misunderstanding. How were they during the cocktail party?”

“They were here?” I asked.

“Andrew gave them tickets last week, and Mrs. Yancy said she was looking forward to seeing the Manse. I don’t know if they actually came, after the argument, but it would seem silly to waste the tickets. And they didn’t have to talk to Andrew.” She looked at me. “Did you meet them?”

“No. I wish I had.” I tried thinking back to the party and the dozens of people I’d spoken to, not to mention all the faces I saw in passing. In retrospect I felt like I’d spent half the night in the closet and the other half in my room being lectured by my mother. “What did Mrs. Yancy look like?”

“White hair. Pretty old. Taller than me. Kind of thin, but rangy looking,” Lauren said.

I thought back through the evening and remembered Andrew talking with an older couple. They could have been the Yancys.

“Are you done with this?” Lauren asked, pointing to the computer. “I’d better plug it in or the battery is going to go dead. I’ll keep looking, though.”

Beth yawned. “I’d better go in, too. I’m tired, and tomorrow is going to be another long day.”

Except neither of them moved, and the computer screen flashed of its own accord, creating temporary darkness, then came back on at the screen saver—a beach and palm trees.

“What happened?” I asked.

Lauren was frowning. “I don’t know. Probably just lost the wireless connection.” She put her index finger on the touch pad, moved it around a bit, and once more the screen changed. “That’s strange. I’m still connected—” Then her mouth opened and she made a little sound.

“What?” I said.

“I just had this weird thought of Andrew coming back from the dead to stop us from looking at his information.”

I put an arm around Lauren. “Luckily we know that’s not possible. I’m betting you have a more logical explanation.”

“Well, it has happened a couple of times before. At the office. Andrew had asked me to edit letters for him, and I was, but then I got kicked off. Just like this time.”

Nate said, “Wait a minute, I think I missed something here. This is your computer and it’s linked with Andrew’s?”

“Uh-huh. I could sit at my desk and work on his things. It’s really convenient.”

“Yes, but why would you suddenly stop being connected?” I asked.

“Well, if someone locks me out from his computer. Andrew would do that sometimes—I guess if he was working on something private. But the other way is when he shuts down.”

“Turns his computer off?” Beth said.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said, “we know that Andrew didn’t lock us out, so we can dismiss that possibility.”

Lauren said, “Then someone just turned Andrew’s computer off.”

“But why would it be on?” I asked.

“He always forgets—forgot, I mean—to turn it off,” Lauren said.

We silently thought about that, watching the computer that remained eerily glowing. I felt like a peeping Tom who’d been caught; it was almost as if the screen was watching us.

“It could be Houston,” I said. “On the way home from the police department he stopped and turned it off.”

“Or,” Lauren countered, “it could be the police. If they decided to take the computer with them.”

I stood up, which felt wonderful. I’d been inactive for too long. “There’s only one way to find out.”

“Are you kidding?” Beth demanded. “You’re going to break into Houston’s office?”

“You wouldn’t!” Lauren said.

Nate was smiling.

“Break into his office?” I said. “It’s up a flight of stairs and I don’t pick locks.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Of course, I’m not going to break in.
If
we were going to Houston’s office, then presumably Lauren has a key.”

“I do, but—”

“But we aren’t going to the office. I’m going to call him on the telephone and see if he’s home.”

Nate started laughing.

Since I’d been so adamant that Rebecca take a sleeping pill, I called Houston on his cell phone and discovered that he was safely at home, getting ready to take a shower.

“How is Rebecca?” I asked. Nate, Lauren, and Beth were standing behind me in the upstairs office, not quite listening over my shoulder, but close.

“She’s just fine. I think she took something to help her sleep, so she should be out in a few minutes.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Well, I was just checking. Have a good night.”

“You, too. ” And he hung up. Of course, he didn’t know how he’d gotten away from the police, and I wasn’t going to tell him.

“You realize what this means?” Nate said as I hung up the phone.

“That Houston Webber is an even more rotten SOB than I’d thought?”

“Maybe, but it also means that you can’t get any more information on Andrew’s investment business. Even if Lauren downloaded everything we saw, it isn’t much help.”