Knitting Bones (15 page)

“Thank you,” said Godwin in his most businesslike voice, and did as he was bid.

On four a young woman in a dark, modest suit was waiting. “This way,” she said, and led him down a corridor to an open door. Inside was an office exactly halfway between totally chaotic and utterly neat. Stacks of files covered half the desk with a few more on a side table, but there was no loose paper. The two visitors’ chairs were clear, and so was the thinly carpeted floor. Venetian blinds that were dusty but not dirty were pulled halfway up, revealing a window that had probably been washed this summer.

Standing behind the desk was a light-skinned African-American man with a close-cropped natural generously sprinkled with gray. He was slim and very handsome, wearing a white dress shirt open at the collar, his blue tie pulled loose. “Come in, come in!” he said in a pleasant voice, extending a hand.

Godwin shook it. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said, and took one of the chairs when Morrison gestured at it.

“I understand you want to ask me about the speech Bob Germaine gave at an Embroiderers Guild of America banquet last Friday night,” said Morrison, coming to the point directly, the sign of a busy man.

“Yes.” Godwin got out his beautiful notebook, opened it to a blank page and wrote down the date and Morrison’s name. “Who wrote the speech Mr. Germaine was to give at the EGA banquet?” he asked.

“Bob did. He wrote all his speeches, he was very good at that. Of course, he sent them around for approval in advance.”

“So you saw it?”

“Yes, of course. I was his immediate supervisor. He will be sadly missed.” Morrison paused to consider his next sentence, touching the fingertips of both hands together. When he spoke, it was in the same ordinary tone. “He was a very good man, not just good for the Heart Coalition, he was a
good man
. What happened to him was shocking—and a disgrace to our city.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Godwin, a little surprised at the strength of the words spoken with a minimum of emotion. “How long had you known Mr. Germaine?”

“Ten years—it would have been ten years in December.”

“Was he generally well liked by everyone?”

Morrison thought about that briefly. “Yes, I’d say so. Certainly everyone who knew him at all well liked him. He had a way with him, you know. He was very passionate about our mission, plus he was a gifted speechwriter,
and
clever and thoughtful about campaigns. Not a quiet man, however. Not one to keep his opinions to himself.”

Godwin made a note. “Did this create problems here at the Heart Coalition?”

“Not really. I mean, you always get some people who think anyone who speaks his mind, especially if he can turn a phrase, is grandstanding. And others who don’t know sarcasm when they hear it.” Morrison smiled. “His riff on Why I Can’t Give to Your Charity Today was very amusing.”

“But it wasn’t a problem, you say.”

“Not a problem.”

Godwin made another note. “Now, here’s a different topic. Has there ever been a problem with a thief at the charity?”

“That depends on what you mean by
thief
.”

“You know, stealing.”

Morrison smiled. “You mean stealing funds? Embezzlement? Or stealing a wallet?”

“Well, any of that, I guess.”

Morrison leaned slightly forward and said very seriously, “There has never been any malfeasance among the executives here.” He leaned back. “On the other hand, we had to fire an employee very recently for such misdeeds as stealing an employee’s take-out Chinese lunch.”

Godwin smiled. “Hardly the same thing as stealing a twenty-four-thousand-dollar check.”

Morrison smiled back. “Hardly. But it was part of a series of small thefts.”

“How did you find out it was him? Or was it a her?”

“A him. The big clue came when he was taken to the hospital after a car accident. The series of thefts immediately stopped. A look at his employment record showed they began a few months after he started working here. And, he was on parole for theft by fraud. Under our Rules of Employment, employees’ desks and lockers are subject to search without notice, but we rarely invoke that. Still, in this case, we thought we had good reason—and it turned out we did. His locker was opened, and in it was an iPod with a dead battery that had gone missing.”

“Did he admit to the thefts?”

“Rather surprisingly, he did. In fact, I heard that he appeared relieved at being caught.”

“Interesting,” said Godwin, writing that down. “I suppose he was part of your maintenance team?”

“No, he worked in our mail room. One of his responsibilities was delivering mail, which is how he found several opportunities to take things that were out on peoples’ desks.”

“Did you find any evidence that he took bigger things? I mean, for example, since he was in the mail room, might he have stolen money coming in as donations?”

“People don’t send cash anymore, or very rarely. And a check made out to the Heart Coalition is hardly something Mr. Milan could cash, is it?”

“Oh. No, I guess that’s right.” Godwin felt abashed at not seeing that obvious flaw in his question. He hid his embarrassment by making a rather lengthy note. Finishing that, he rose. “I think I’ve taken enough of your time. Thank you very much.” He stood, then thought of something.

“Just one more question, please, Mr. Morrison,” he said. “What did this Milan fellow look like?”

Morrison looked surprised at the question, but answered readily enough. “A little over average height, I think, dark hair and eyes, strong looking, as if he worked out, or used to. He was polite, smiled a lot, but was just a little standoffish.” Morrison shrugged. “Or, maybe he was intimidated by the executives on this floor. The mail-room supervisor says he was developing a bad attitude—but I think that’s hindsight illuminated by his turning out to be a thief.”

Godwin smiled. “Yes, hindsight is pretty generally twenty-twenty. Well, thanks again.”

Down in the lobby, he unclipped his badge and handed it to the guard, turned, and nearly walked into the side of a wheeled cart with four shelves on it loaded with mail.

“Oh! Sorry!” said Godwin.

“No problem,” said the man pushing it, a burly fellow with straight brown hair. He wore a dingy white dress shirt, dark green trousers, and an impatient expression.

“Say, you work in the mail room, don’t you,” said Godwin.

“Say, you must be a detective or something,” retorted the man.

“Something like that. Actually, I’m involved in an investigation of Robert Germaine’s disappearance, and now his death. This is probably nothing to do with the case, but could I ask you some questions about the man from the mail room who got fired?”

“What’s Tony Milan got to do with anything?” demanded the man loudly.

Godwin lifted a hand in a shushing gesture. “Like I said, probably nothing. But you never know, you know? Now I can see you’re busy, so can I meet you outside of work? I can buy you a cup of coffee or something.”

The man tilted his head a little to the side and half closed his eyes. Godwin recognized the look as that of a straight man taking the measure of a man he suspected was gay. So Godwin gave him a bright smile and brought out the flowered notebook. “I’ll write down anything you want to tell me,” he said in his most dulcet voice.

“George!” the man appealed to the guard, asking in that single word if this odd person was for real.

“Unwind that kink in your tail, Mitch,” drawled the guard. “He’s been up interviewing Mr. Morrison, so he’s the real deal.”

Mitch said, “How long is this gonna take?”

“Five, ten minutes,” estimated Godwin.

“All right, let’s do it now.” He wheeled the mail cart to a place behind the guard’s desk. “I’ll be back,” he said, making it more of a threat than a promise. “Come on,” he said to Godwin and pushed through a door on the other side of the lobby from the elevators. Godwin snatched up the clip-on visitor badge and followed.

The door led to a set of metal stairs thinly coated with a cement-like substance stained gray-blue. The stairs resounded loudly under their feet as Mitch hurried down, Godwin right behind him. A corridor at the bottom of the stairs led to a long, narrow room, mercilessly lit with hanging fluorescents. The front portion was much smaller than the back, set off by a plywood counter. There were three orange plastic chairs. Mitch took one and waved Godwin to another.

“Now, what do you want to know?” Mitch said.

“Who was this man who got fired for stealing?”

“His name was Tony—Anthony—Milan. He was an excon, on parole, so I guess we shouldn’t’ve been surprised that he didn’t work out.”

“I understand he was in a car accident?”

“Yeah, I visited him in the hospital.”

“When did the accident happen?”

“Oh, around eleven p.m. Friday before last.”

Godwin made a note of that. He asked, “Is it possible that Mr. Milan knew about the big check coming from the Embroiderers Guild of America?”

“Sure. A lot of us did. In fact, we got a request from Mr. Germaine to keep an eye out for the check coming in the mail—then he called the next day to say ‘Never mind.’ He was going to go pick it up in person, because it was bigger than expected.”

“Did he say how much bigger?”

Mitch frowned at Godwin. “What does all this have to do with Tony?”

“That depends.”

“On what?” Mitch was definitely looking suspicious now.

“On what Tony looked like. Do you have a photograph of him?”

Mitch stared at Godwin for a long few moments, then sighed and pushed himself up from the counter with both hands to show how tiresome all this was. He went through a door to the back part of the mail room, then pawed through the center drawer of a big green desk until he came up with a sheet of paper.

He brought it back out and handed it to Godwin. It was a good-quality photocopy of an ID badge. The man staring out of a corner of it was Stoney Durand.

“I
even got his address!”
crowed Godwin on the phone. “But I simply
had
to get back to the shop. Marti has a class to get to. But I
recognized
him, Betsy! Mitch Wilson, his former boss, showed me a copy of his ID card and I’m
sure
he’s Stoney Durand, the man who is
well known
among a
certain set
in the gay community. And Stoney Durand is really
Tony Milan
—See how
right
you were about
choosing a phony name
that sounds like your
own,
you’re so
clever!
He used to work at the
Heart Coalition,
in the
mail room
—isn’t it
brilliant
that we were both right about that! But we know
more
than
who he is,
we know
where he lives!
His former boss gave me his address, he lives in an apartment near Uptown. He’s the man who took the
check
at the
banquet,
so
obviously
he’s the man who
killed Bob Germaine!
I just
wish
I’d had time to
pay a call
on him!” When excited, Godwin used a lot of italics.

“No, you don’t!” exclaimed Betsy sharply. “Oh, Goddy, I’m so relieved you came back to the shop, and bless Marti for having a class so you had to relieve her. If Tony Milan murdered Bob Germaine, he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to murder someone who comes knocking on his door to accuse him of it.”

“Oh, p’shaw, as Fibber McGee would say, puh-
shaw!
I’m no idiot, I wouldn’t have
accused
him, not to his
face!
Besides, he was in a bad car accident, he’s got a broken
arm,
a broken
leg,
and a
skull fracture!
He couldn’t harm a
flea!”

Betsy drew a shocked breath. “When did this happen?”

“The same night he murdered Bob Germaine and stole the EGA check.”

“Wait a second, wait a second, maybe that’s an alibi? Could he have been like me, in the hospital when the check was stolen?”

“No, no, the accident happened
after
the banquet.
Hours
after. Mitch says he visited Tony in the hospital and they talked about that. He says it was really late, going on midnight, when the accident happened. Some drunk ran a red light—not Tony, the other guy. Tony was in intensive care for a day and a half. He took a big knock on the head, he doesn’t remember anything after leaving work around five on that Friday.”

“All right. And that could explain why the check wasn’t cashed, couldn’t it?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Godwin, without any italics.

“And how do you know he’s at his apartment? If he’s so badly injured, why isn’t he in the hospital?”

“They sent him home—you know how they are, they tossed
you
out on your ear while you were still dizzy from the
anesthetic!”

Betsy chuckled. “Well, not quite. But almost. So he must have been there about the same time I was. In fact…” She frowned in thought.

“What?”

“I was just remembering that they were bringing someone up on the same elevator Jill and I came down on, a young man who had a lot of injuries. He looked awful, I remember feeling so sorry for him, it made me feel less sorry for myself. I wonder if that was Tony Milan. No, wait, it couldn’t have been, that was two days after the banquet.” She shook her head at her silliness.

“Well, if they were bringing him up from intensive care, that might be him you saw. Did the man you saw have dark hair?”

“I think so, but his head was all wrapped up. And his face was so bruised I don’t think his own mother would have known him. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Goddy, you’ve done great work, I think you’ve solved it, and I’m going to call Mike Malloy and let him go talk to this Tony Milan.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“He will,” Betsy promised. “Or some member of the police department will. I’ll call you back after I’ve talked to him.”

She dialed the nonemergency number of Excelsior’s police department and asked for Sergeant Malloy. “One moment, please,” said the woman who answered, in a very professional voice Betsy didn’t recognize. It gave her a little pang that Jill wasn’t there anymore.

“Sergeant Malloy, how may I help you?” Malloy’s flat tone took any warmth out of that query. Though, of course, he rarely had someone call him at work with good news.

“Mike, it’s Betsy Devonshire.” She waited for the usual deep sigh—which didn’t come. “Mike, are you there?”

“Sure I’m here, where do you think I am?”

“I think I may have some important information about the Germaine case.”

“Oh, yeah?” This was not said sarcastically, but in a tone indicating real interest. “Have you talked to the investigator in Minneapolis PD?”

“No, but Jill says his name is Omrick or something like that.”

“
Oh
-mer-nik, Sergeant Stanley Omernic. But why don’t you first try it out on me?”

“Thank you, I will.” Betsy hid her surprise at this sign of respect for her opinion—Mike had long considered her a pest and an unnecessary complication in his cases, and only grudgingly would he have acknowledged that she had been helpful in the past. “You may know that Godwin DuLac took my place at the EGA banquet the night Bob Germaine disappeared. Well, he says the man who accepted the check set off his gaydar.”

“Oh, sheesh! Godwin! I might’ve known!” Now that sounded much more like the old, familiar Mike Malloy.

“No, now listen: Bob Germaine is not gay. And we have talked with someone at the banquet who says the man who accepted the check was not Mr. Germaine, but someone else.”

“Just one person says this?”

“Yes, I know. But this person volunteered the information, we didn’t go looking for her. She says she had Bob Germaine pointed out to her the day before, so she’s sure it wasn’t Bob Germaine up there making an acceptance speech, but someone who looked vaguely like him. And Godwin has run Stoney Durand to earth. His real name is Tony Milan—and he was recently fired from the Heart Coalition’s mail room for theft. Godwin saw a photograph of him, and he looks to Godwin like the man who carried a great big check out of the banquet room. Godwin has been complaining that the photo of Bob Germaine he’s been shown doesn’t look much like the man he saw. So that’s two people who don’t think it was Germaine.”

There was a studied silence on Malloy’s end of the line. Then a faint sound of someone clearing his throat. “Those are interesting tidbits,
if
they’re factual.”

“Do you think Sergeant Omernic would listen to me? I think this should be checked out. After all, someone stole Germaine’s clothes. Maybe it was so he could impersonate him better.”

“Any ideas on why the check hasn’t turned up?”

“Because he got into a car accident that same night. He was seriously injured, a concussion and broken bones. He’s out of the hospital now, but we have his address. I told Godwin the police would check him out; otherwise, he wants to do it himself. Mike, would it be too much to ask you to speak to Sergeant Omernic, tell him I’m not just thrashing around carelessly, playing sleuth to amuse myself?”

The silence this time was longer. “I tell you what. I’ll call Omernic and say that we have an intelligent civilian who may have pertinent information about this case. I’ll give you his phone number and you can call him in about an hour. Okay?”

That was more than she expected. “Thanks, Mike.”

E
RSKINE
Morrison was elbow-deep in reports from area reps on the new fund-raiser campaign when his phone rang. Answering it, he heard, “I’m so sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Morrison, but we got a little problem here and maybe you can help me to handle it.”

The caller was Janice Hamilton, head of accounting, she of the soft Southern accent and the mind like a steel trap. If there was a problem Janice needed help with, it was a serious problem.

“Can you come up right now?”

“Yessir, I can.”

She came in a few minutes later, a heavyset black woman in a red pantsuit with white trim and low-heeled red shoes, limping on her bad leg, waving several documents in one hand. “I think we have us a serious problem here,” she said, coming to a stop and falling heavily into one of the chairs against the wall.

“What kind of problem?” he asked.

“We may have another thief here at the Coalition, and it ain’t just take-out Chinese he’s stealin’, but contributions.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“You mean, Lord have mercy, and you got that right. If this gets out, we’re likely to lose our jobs, if not the whole Minneapolis branch. Now here’s how it came to light.” She held up a thin collection of pink phone slips. “This lady, Miss Elena Bedford, called last week to say she sent us a two-hundred-dollar check in honor of her mother, who passed this past spring of congestive heart failure. Miss Elena sent it in to us in July, and now she’s pulling together her records for taxes and she couldn’t find any acknowledgment from us for her gift. So she’s been calling us and I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find any record of receiving it. But the check has been cashed, according to her bank statement. Now you know how nowadays banks don’t send your cancelled checks back to you, so Miss Elena wrote her bank asking for a copy of the front and back so she could claim it. An’ what she sent me is a photocopy of the bank’s printout copy, so it’s kinda hard to read. But it’s clear enough.” She rose awkwardly, handed the top sheet to Erskine, and fell back into the chair again.

The front of the check showed that Ms. Bedford—or Miss Elena, as Janice’s old-fashioned Southern ways would have it—had bought her checks from a mail-order company, because after a moment he deciphered the squiggle pattern ornamenting the face of it into morning glories being visited by a hummingbird. The check was handwritten in schoolgirl cursive to the Heart Coalition in the amount of two hundred dollars. The back of the check bore the imprint of a stamp as endorsement. It looked at first glance like the one the Heart Coalition used but then Erskine grunted. The name of the payee was the Heart Fund. And the second stamp below it indicated the bank was not one the Heart Coalition had an account with.

Erskine looked up at Janice. “What do you think?”

“I think this is probably not the only check intercepted and paid into this account.”

Erskine sighed. He agreed with her. The degree of effort it had taken to set up this fraud would hardly be worth it for just one check.

“On the other hand, I think I know who we should look at first for this.”

“Who?”

“That man we fired for theft, what’s his name, Tony something—Milan, that’s it. He worked in the mail room, and one of his jobs was opening mail.”

That was actually a cheering thought. Only one crook in the company, not two. And Janice was right, Tony Milan had been in a perfect spot to divert incoming contributions. Someone in Personnel should have thought of that when they found out Milan was a thief and investigated further before firing him. Though wait, if there had been no complaints of missing checks—and there wouldn’t be, because Milan could get them out of the system before anyone else even saw them—there had been no reason to spend time and money looking further. So give ’em a pass on this one.

“Meanwhile, what do we do about this check?” Janice asked.

“There isn’t anything we can do—well, belay that, there is one thing: Contact Elena Bedford and instruct her to contact her bank. Her bank can start an action; it’s called ‘an affidavit of bank fraud,’ I believe. I note that this check has the account number set up by the thief, so the bank can identify him—or her, let’s not get too hasty here—as the person who set up the account and deposited this check.” He handed the papers back. “Is there any way we can determine if and how many other checks were detoured into this account?”

“No, because we never got a chance to run them through our system.”

“So that lets us off the hook, except for the fault of hiring a thief to work in a place where he got to handle money.”

“And that’s a serious fault, don’t you think?” asked Janice. “‘Lead us not into temptation.’”

“All right, yes. We should have known better. But I think the First Express Bank would be glad to open their records on this account if they can find a legal reason to do it.”

Suddenly Janice grinned and cawed, “Hah-heeeeeee!”—her high-pitched laugh. “We may not have been too smart at first, but we learn fast, and Mr. Tony is going to be sorry he thought he could play us!”

S
ERGEANT
Stan Omernic was five-eleven and one-eighty, broad-faced with narrow, gray-green eyes, a twice-broken nose, and dirty blond hair. Minneapolis was going through a bad patch, and he had more homicide cases than he could readily handle, so he performed a kind of triage. The cases involving gang members killing one another went to the bottom and got the least attention, because bad guys killing bad guys was, as far as he was concerned, not altogether a bad thing. The deaths surrounding domestic violence were in the middle, because they didn’t take a lot of effort, and so were easy to solve. The kind involving stranger on stranger were often difficult and took a lot of effort, and so were near the top. On the very top were the hot ones that caught the attention of the press and/or the government. These, fortunately, were few. Ones in which a child was the victim were the worst, the most heartbreaking to work, but happily right now he didn’t have a child murder. On the other hand, the mayor, the city council,
and
the press had been following the Robert Germaine case before it even became a homicide. That a respected man, an executive in a reputable charity, would steal a check representing funds gathered by a sweet group of women needleworkers was odd enough all by itself to get the attention of the press and the chief of police. Now that the suspect had been found in the trunk of his own car, a murder victim, everyone was howling. How could the police have been so wrong in accusing him of theft?