Something's Knot Kosher (17 page)

“If we can prove he wasn't involved,” I said, “I'll gladly hand the diary over to the FBI and let them figure out who the embezzler is.”

Lucy had been silently listening and sipping coffee. “And if it turns out Russell is the thief?”

I took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “Then we have a whole new problem. We'll have to find out where he stashed the missing money and give it back so Birdie and Jazz don't lose everything they have.”

Jazz spread his hands on the table in a helpless gesture. “How are we ever going to discover who the real crook is?”

A plan had already begun to form in my head. “I'm going to start with Nancy King. I want to find out the name of the bank employee who recommended she contact Five Star Packaging. I want to know exactly what he said. Then I'm going to look at the loan officers in all the branches of First Encino. At least one of those people—with or without Russell Watson's help—has been executing bogus loans and pocketing the money.”

Lucy raised the orange arches of her eyebrows. “You mean there could be a whole ring of thieves working at the bank?”

I shrugged. “We have to consider every possibility.”

We left a tip for the server and headed for the lobby. I turned to Lucy. “To change the subject, what does the Tony Hillerman room look like?”

“A lot like my living room. Heavy, handcrafted furniture, Navajo rugs, reed baskets, and Indian pottery. And a shelf filled with a whole lot of his paperbacks. What does the Faye Kellerman room look like?”

I thought about all the cheery, bright colors of Christmas and beautiful pastels of Easter versus the monochrome theme of all the Jewish festivals. Manufacturers of holiday decorations didn't seem to realize Jews enjoyed all the colors of the rainbow, too. “Predictable. All blue and white like the Hanukkah section at CVS. What about the Truman Capote room, Jazz?”

He held Zsa Zsa with one hand and waved extravagantly with the other. “It's all Southern. White walls, white iron bed with white linen, ecru carpeting, and two easy chairs slip-covered in blue chintz with white roses.”

“Sounds pretty,” said Lucy.

He put up his hand. “Not even. There's a ghastly painting of trees dripping moss in front of a plantation with a bunch of black slaves working in the fields. And next to Capote's books on the shelf is the
pièce de résistance
—a vintage woman-shaped bottle of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup. Zsa Zsa and I couldn't wait to close our eyes last night.”

I was relieved to hear Lucy laughing again after so many days of anxiety and uncertainty. When we walked outside, the morning breeze had picked up a little. We settled in comfortable wooden rocking chairs in the shelter of the wide porch, and I looked at my watch. “We have an hour before my meeting with Rainbow and her CFO, Nancy King.”

Lucy propped her long legs up on a wooden stool. “Don't forget about the fabric store, girlfriend. I feel the need for some major retail therapy.”

Jazz stood. “Lucy, do you feel like going for a walk? There's a nice park down the street. We could treat the dogs to a little romp.”

“Sure, hon. I'll wait right here while you go get the dogs.”

Jazz and I returned to my blue and white room. After he and the animals left, I called the J.K. Rowling room. Rainbow wasn't answering the hotel phone, and I didn't have her mobile number. I'd just have to trust she'd show up with Nancy King at ten like she'd promised.

C
HAPTER
30

At ten-fifteen, Rainbow walked rapidly across the front porch of the hotel, wearing a black pantsuit. “Sorry we're late.” I recognized Nancy King immediately. Once again, her white hair was heavily gelled on top so it stood up in straight, hard spikes.

I had been sitting in a rocking chair slowly stitching around a blue circle in my Double Wedding Ring quilt. I put down my sewing and offered my hand to the other woman. “You must be Nancy.”

She pumped my hand once and said in a booming voice, “Pleasure.”

Rainbow appropriated the rocker with the footstool and gestured for Nancy to sit next to her. “We just came from McGinty's. Turns out the owner didn't want to sell the restaurant. It's a gold mine for him. He needs a loan to open a second restaurant in Portland. After he showed us his books, I decided to become a silent partner. Not only are his numbers good”—she winked—“I really liked that mushroom pâté last night.”

Nancy briefly glanced at her boss. “Rainbow tells me you need my help?”

I liked the fact she came right to the point, even though her voice was loud enough for people to hear her all the way back in Cottage Grove. I put everything back in my sewing kit, folded my quilt, and removed my notepad from my purse. “I'm intrigued by the notion someone at First Encino made a large loan to a nonexistent company. I'd like to hear about your experience, beginning with the bank employee who recommended Five Star Packaging.”

Nancy clasped her hands in her lap and settled back in her chair, ready to tell her story. “We were looking for a new co-packer.” She jerked her thumb playfully toward Rainbow and grinned. “
The boss
suggested I call Russell to see if he knew anyone.”

“What's a co-packer?” I wrote the word down.

“Co-packer is short for Contract Packer. They put the products their clients manufacture into the packages you see in the stores. Food co-packers often manufacture the food as well. We were looking for a company that does both.”

“Please go on.” I clicked the top of my pen a couple of times.

“I called the bank, but Russell wasn't in. One of his loan officers offered to take a message. Her name was Gail. When she heard what I wanted, she told me about Five Star Packaging.”

“What exactly did she say?”

Nancy closed her eyes, etching thought ridges into her brow. “She told me about a company in our area. A new customer recently acquired by the loan department. Five Star Packaging. According to Gail, they were quite successful, because they were about to expand. From what she said, I concluded the bank had just given them a loan to do that.”

“Do you remember Gail's last name?”

“Something Armenian.” She shrugged.

I knew most Armenian names ended with “ian” or “yan,” which meant “son of.” I wrote
Gail (?)ian
on my notepad. “Okay, I can get the specifics later. Please continue.”

“I was interested, so Gail got me their address and phone number. She wished me luck and that was that.”

Gail with the Armenian last name recommended Five Star. I was pretty sure that meant we could rule her out as the embezzler. No criminal would deliberately send someone on a mission that might expose her scam. As soon as we returned to LA, I'd pay her a visit.

Rainbow had been texting but looked up from her cell phone. “Tell Martha about the phone messages.”

“Right.” Nancy nodded. “That same day, I tried phoning the number Gail gave me. Hiring a co-packer was a top priority. But nobody answered. Instead, I got a recorded message to leave my number. I must've called five times over the next two days, but nobody ever called back. You can't run a successful business like that. I sensed something wasn't kosher.”

I had to agree. That was no way to treat a potential customer, especially one as large as Rainbow Enterprises. “Was it a man's voice or a woman's?”

“Man's. With an accent.”

Every hair on my arms stood at attention. “French? Was it a French accent?”

Nancy exhaled sharply. “It might've been. I can't recall.”

I scribbled furiously on my notepad. Was there a connection between Rene Levesque and Five Star Packaging? “What did you do next?”

Nancy shifted in her seat. “I realized the address of Five Star Packaging was near my regular route from home. So the next morning, I took a little detour on my drive in to the city. I expected to find Five Star in an industrial area. Instead, the address turned out to be a mailbox rental store next to a Laundromat. That's when I knew for sure something hinky was going on. I told Rainbow what I discovered and she called Russell.”

I turned to the owner and CEO of Rainbow Enterprises. “Tell me what you said to him.”

“I repeated what Nancy had told me and said I didn't want to do business with a company that wouldn't even return our calls. Given the treatment we'd received, I said he shouldn't be referring potential clients to Five Star.”

“What was his reply?”

Rainbow opened her hands, palms up. “He seemed genuinely shocked. He said he'd never heard of Five Star Packaging but would look into it. I waited for a week, thinking I'd get an apologetic call from the CEO of Five Star. Or one from Russell with an explanation. But nobody ever contacted me. Finally, I got tired of waiting and phoned Russell. He was curt and aloof. He insisted he couldn't discuss the incident with me because it was, and I quote, ‘a confidential banking matter.'”

I stopped writing for a moment. “That sounds just like something Russell would say. He was strictly by the book, that one.”

The corners of Rainbow's mouth turned down. “Yeah, but I was thoroughly pissed at being put off like that. Since I was the one who'd brought the problem to his attention, I deserved to know what was going on and told him so.”

So far, of all the people I'd met in Russell's life, Rainbow was the most likely to approach him as a business equal and make demands. “What did he say?”

“He apologized but didn't budge. He said he couldn't comment on a confidential matter.”

Nancy snorted and bellowed, “Wrong answer!”

Maybe she was hard of hearing. Sometimes the hearing impaired spoke extra loud.

“Nancy knows me so well.” Rainbow smiled. “Russell's reaction only served to pique my curiosity, so I asked her to see what she could find out about Five Star Packaging.” She gestured for Nancy to continue with the story.

“It was pretty easy to determine from public records that Five Star was incorporated as recently as December of last year,” Nancy said.

I stopped writing and looked up. “Did those records reveal who the owner was?”

She shook her head and every hair in her Mohawk stayed as straight as a soldier. “Another shell corporation based in the Caymans. It'll take some digging to trace Five Star to individual names.”

The FBI could probably uncover that information in a minute. Too bad we couldn't tell them yet what we knew. “Anything else you remember?”

The two women sat in silence for a moment.

Nancy bit her lip, took a deep breath, and spoke in a confidential voice—a normal tone for the rest of us. “I've known Russell Watson since I was a girl. He was the one who got me started. The man was as orthodox as they come. Strictly by the book, as you pointed out. I'm sorry, but I just can't imagine him stealing money from the bank.”

Nancy King was a no-nonsense kind of person, loyal to her boss, Sandra Prescott, and to her mentor, Russell Watson. The more she talked, the more my gut told me to trust her. I decided it was safe to show them the diary.

I handed over the little red book. “Russell kept this diary hidden in his home safe. We believe the assassin, Levesque, was after this when he tried to break into the Watsons' house. Do any of these entries mean anything to you?”

Nancy put on a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses and pored over the record. “Aside from recognizing the entry for Five Star Packaging, this doesn't mean a thing to me.”

Rainbow leaned over to read the diary. She ran her finger down the list of companies. “I haven't heard of any of these, either. What is it?”

“I think it's a record of bogus loans,” I said.

Nancy pointed to the middle column. “That would explain these dates.”

My ears pricked up, and I readied my pen to write.

She continued. “The entries are made just before the end of the fiscal year, December thirty-first, or before the half-year period ending June thirtieth. If an embezzler wanted to hide the loans, he could bury the information in the massive data generated by annual or quarterly fiscal reports. The specifics of those loans would get lost in the sheer volume of numbers.”

“Could a loan officer do that?” I asked.

Nancy thought for a moment. “It depends on how the data was entered, but yes, I believe he could.”

“Enough to hide it from Russell?”

“It's possible,” she said.

“Except for the most recent entry,” I continued, “each item has two dates approximately a year apart. Do you have any idea what that means?”

Nancy shrugged. “Not a clue, I'm afraid.”

Rainbow leaned forward with a worried look on her face. “You should give this diary to the FBI.”

“Not until I can prove Russell wasn't the embezzler. And if I'm right, I think I've just figured out how to do that.”

Rainbow grabbed my hand. “That'll be great news for Birdie. How will you prove his innocence?”

I tapped my finger on the middle column in the diary. “It's all in the dates. If Russell was embezzling money from the bank and keeping a list of his crimes, the entries would be in a certain order. The first entry would be the first crime. So the dates would progress from the oldest year at the top to the newest at the bottom. And the entries would be written by different pens, using different inks.”

“But this list is in the opposite order,” said Rainbow. “The most recent date is the first entry, and the list goes down to the oldest year at the bottom.”

I raised my thumb in approval. “Bingo! And it looks like the same pen was used, proving the entries were made pretty much at the same time. This tells me Russell wasn't recording his crimes, he was digging for evidence, beginning with the most recent fake loan. He must've gone back through time to see if there were any more of those transactions. As he discovered the others, he recorded them. We don't know who he talked to. But at some point, the real crook must've found out what he was doing and had him killed.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes and studied me. “Birdie was right about you, Martha. You're very good at solving crimes. Just be careful. Someone has killed twice to keep the secrets in this little book.”

A half hour later, Lucy and Jazz climbed the front steps of the hotel with two panting dogs.

“Hey, girlfriend!” Lucy looked around the empty porch. “Where's Rainbow?”

“You just missed her. She and Nancy are on their way to the airport and a quick hop in her private jet back to San Francisco.”

“Must be nice.” Jazz smoothed his windblown hair straight back off his forehead. “Sitting in luxury on your own airplane, sipping mimosas, and using cocktail napkins printed with your initials.”

“More fun than taking a road trip with your friends?” I asked.

Jazz picked up Zsa Zsa, kissed the top of her head, and looked at us with brimming eyes. “Nothing could ever top this. I don't know what I would've done without your friendship and support this last week.”

Lucy stepped over to Jazz and gave him a one-arm hug. She was just as tall as the six footer in her two-inch heels. “We're quilters, hon. That's what we do. Listen, I've got an idea. Let's settle the dogs in Martha's room, and the three of us go check out the fabric store. Maybe I'll find the polka dots I'm looking for and you can look for the iridescent fabric you need for Johnny's peacock outfit.”

I had totally forgotten about the new wardrobe Jazz was creating for Johnny Depp. “I've admired some of your drawings in the car. Have you settled on a theme?”

Jazz tapped his lips with his fingertips. “Hmm. I'm still thinking Detective Debonair.
N'est-ce pas?
I can dress him from casual to business to formal with just a touch of noir and fantasy.”

I pictured the actor in his most iconic roles as Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow, and Willy Wonka. “Sounds just like him.”

Lucy bobbed her head in agreement. “I think it's genius. So how'd your meeting go, Martha?”

I told them what I'd learned about Five Star Packaging, Gail with the Armenian name, and the peculiar dates in the diary. I put my hand on Jazz's arm. “I think you're right about Russell being innocent. I suspect the list shows he was going back through time digging for evidence of more embezzlement.”

Jazz exhaled sharply. “Then you'll give the diary to Agent Lancet?”

“There's just one thing I want to double-check first. I've got to talk to the loan officer who referred Nancy King to Five Star Packaging. If Russell questioned her, I'd like to know what he said. Her responses should settle once and for all that Russell was investigating, not covering up.”