In my role as Herb’s executor, I used the account number and sort code on his statement to send an e-mail to his bank informing them that Mr. Kovak was deceased, and would they please send me details of all his accounts, and especially the balances.
Somewhat surprisingly I received a reply almost immediately thanking me for the sad news and advising me that they would need various pieces of original documentation before they could release the information I had asked for, including the death certificate, a copy of the will and an order of probate.
And how long would it take to get that lot?
I heard Sherri go along the corridor to the bathroom.
At least my troubles with Billy Searle were minor compared to hers.
I took the front cover sheet off the Racing Post and folded it up, as if not being able to see the damning words would in some way limit their damage to my reputation and career. I put the offending piece in my pocket and went to throw the rest of it into the wastebasket under Herb’s desk.
The basket had some things in it already, and, I thought, as I’ve looked everywhere else, why not there?
I poured the contents of the basket out onto the desk.
Amongst the opened envelopes, the empty Starbucks coffee cups and the screwed-up tissues were lots of little pieces of paper about an inch square. I put the cups, envelopes and tissues back in the basket, leaving a pile of the paper squares on the desk. It was fairly obvious that they were the torn-up remains of a larger piece, so I set about trying to put them back together. It was a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but without the picture on the box to guide me.
I fairly quickly established that the pieces had not been from one larger piece but three. I slowly built up the originals in front of me. They were each about six inches by four, printed forms with words written on them in pen, similar forms but each with different writing. I stuck the bits together with Scotch tape.
“What are you doing?” Sherri asked from the doorway.
She made me jump.
“Nothing much,” I said, swiveling the desk chair around to face her. “How are you feeling?”
“Dreadful,” she said, coming into the room and flopping down into the deep armchair. “I can’t believe it.”
I thought she was about to cry again. I wasn’t sure whether the dark shadows beneath her eyes were due to tiredness or her tearsmudged mascara.
“I’ll get you some more tea,” I said, standing up.
“Lovely,” she said with a forced smile. “Thank you.”
I went through to the kitchen and boiled the kettle. I also made myself another coffee and took both cups back to the living room.
Sherri was sitting at the desk, looking at the pieces of paper. I sat down on the arm of the big armchair.
“Do you know what they are?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “They’re MoneyHome payment slips.” She sipped her tea. “One for eight thousand, and two for five.”
“Pounds?” I asked.
She looked at them.
“Dollars. Converted into pounds.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“I use MoneyHome all the time,” she said. “It’s a bit like Western Union, only cheaper. They have agents all over the world. Herb sent me the money for my airfare via MoneyHome.”
“Are any of these slips from that?”
“No,” she said with certainty. “These are the slips you get when you collect money, not when you send it.”
“So Herb collected eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of pounds from MoneyHome?”
“Yes,” she said.
“When?” I asked.
She looked at the reconstructed slips carefully. “Last week, but not all on the same day. Eight thousand on Monday and five each on Tuesday and Friday.”
“Who from?” I asked.
“These only tell you which MoneyHome office it was collected from, they don’t say who sent the money.” She drank more of her tea. “What’s all this about anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just found those torn-up sheets in the wastebasket.”
She sat drinking her tea, looking at me over the rim of the cup.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I was a friend of Herb’s and a work colleague,” I said, giving her one of the business cards from my wallet. “He made me the executor of his will.” I decided again not to mention that he had also made me the sole beneficiary.
“I didn’t know he even had a will,” Sherri said, reading from my card, “Mr. Nicholas Foxton, BSc, MEcon, DipPFS.”
“He made it five years ago when he first arrived at Lyall and Black,” I said, ignoring her reference to my qualifications. “Everyone in the firm has to have a will. The senior partners are always saying that we can hardly advise our clients to plan ahead if we aren’t prepared to do the same. But I have absolutely no idea why Herb chose to put me in his. Maybe it was just because we sat at desks next to each other. He’d only just landed in the country and perhaps he didn’t know anyone else. And none of us really expect to die when we’re in our twenties anyway. But he should still have named you as his executor, even if you were in the United States.”
“Herb and I weren’t exactly talking to each other five years ago. In fact, I’d told him by then that I never wanted to see or hear from him again.”
“Wasn’t that a bit extreme?” I said.
“We had a flaming row over our parents.” She sighed. “It was always over our parents.”
“What about them?” I asked.
She looked at me as if deciding whether to tell me.
“Our Mom and Dad were, shall we say, an unusual couple. Dad had made a living, if you can call it that, acting as an unlicensed bookie round the back side of Churchill Downs. He was meant to be a groom but he didn’t do much looking after the horses. He spent his time taking bets from the other grooms, and some of the trainers and owners too. Sometimes he won, but mostly he lost. Mom, meanwhile, had worked as a cocktail waitress in one of the swanky tourist hotels in downtown Louisville. At least that’s what she told people.”
She paused, and I waited in silence. She’d say it if she wanted to.
“She’d been a prostitute.” Sherri was crying again.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
She looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “I’ve got to tell someone.” She gulped. “I’ve bottled it all up for far too long.”
Between bouts of tears she told me the sorry saga of her and Herb’s upbringing. It amazed me that I had sat next to him for all those years without realizing the hurdles he’d had to overcome to be a financial adviser.
Herb and Sherri’s father had been an abusive drinker who had seemingly treated his children as unpaid slave labor. Both of them had excelled in school but their father insisted that they drop out, aged sixteen, to go work, Herb as a groom in the Churchill Downs stables and Sherri as a chambermaid in one of the tourist hotels where her mother had plied her trade.
Herb had rebelled and run away to Lexington, where he had secretly applied for and won a free place at a private high school. But he’d had no accommodations, so he’d slept on the streets. One of the trustees of the school had found him there and offered him a bed. The trustee had been in financial services, and hence Herb’s career had been decided.
He’d stayed in Lexington after high school to attend the University of Kentucky on a scholarship, then, as the top graduate, had been offered a job at J.P. Morgan in New York.
I wondered how such a highflier had come to move from one of the global assets management giants to a firm such as Lyall & Black, a relative tiddler in the financial pond. Had he somehow done something to thwart his career prospects in New York?
Sherri, meanwhile, had been good at her job and bright about it, and she had been spotted by the management of the hotel for further training. That was ultimately how she came to be in Chicago, where she was currently assistant housekeeper in a big hotel in the same chain.