"Yes, indeed." I flipped the printout closed and got to my feet so I could pace. "When Lenny Caseaux was the GM in Boston, he stole over two hundred grand from Nor'easter by paying fake invoices to this Crescent Security company. It was nickel-and-dime stuff- it took him five years-and it didn't seem like enough to buy a union contract. But seven hundred thousand in ten months would be plenty."
"Buy a contract? You lost me."
"Lenny paid Big Pete to make sure Nor'easter's IBG contract proposal failed."
"Who's Big-"
"Pete Dwyer," I said. "He runs the union up here."
"Lenny bought the contract-"
"-to make the merger happen." I paced around the bed and back again. "That's exactly what I'm saying."
"And then got Majestic to pay for it." Matt was getting into it now. "Brilliant. The guy's a genius."
"A genius? I think you're missing the bigger picture here."
"Okay, so he's an evil genius. I never would have guessed that Lenny Caseaux had the brains to pull off something like this and not get caught. Contract fraud, election tampering-you're talking federales here. The FBI. Probably the Securities and Exchange Commission since it impacted the value of the company. Definitely fertile ground for shareholder lawsuits. No wonder everyone wants to keep this buried. And he got away with it."
"That's the part I don't get. I can understand how he could approve payments to himself at Nor'easter, although why the auditors didn't catch it, I'll never know."
"From a financial controls standpoint, Nor'easter was a nightmare. That part would have been easy. The genius of the plan was getting Majestic to fund the payoffs."
"How could he have done that? He didn't work for Majestic at the time, and he couldn't approve those payments himself."
"You said that Crescent was a security company." I could hear Matt sucking on his pen as he talked, something he always did when he was into heavy thinking.
"A fake security company."
"Lenny could have set up Crescent as a provider of consulting services to the deal. As part of due diligence, they could have been hired to review training programs, check compliance, test checkpoints, stuff like that. With a deal like this, you can do just about anything. You've got consulting fees all over the place, and it just becomes part of the negotiation as to who's going to pay for what. He probably got an agreement that Crescent could bill Majestic instead of Nor'easter. It even makes sense because Nor'easter was short on cash at the time. And the fact that it was a pre-purchase adjustment makes it that much easier to hide. There's no budget, and two hundred grand a pop wouldn't really stick out compared to the other charges on this list." He snorted. "You should see the attorneys' fees."
"So Lenny and the other Nor'easter investors who wanted to cash out of the airline business anyway figured out a way to get Majestic to pay the kickbacks which ultimately insured that Majestic would buy their company-at a profit. And Lenny apparently set it up."
"I told you, pure genius," he said.
"I still don't get how he could even get Crescent considered as a vendor. As you said, someone would have to negotiate that."
"That's easy. Lenny Caseaux sat on the negotiating team for Nor'easter."
"He did?"
"Yeah, I thought you knew that. That's where I met him."
"Did Ellen know him back then?"
"We all knew him. He's not exactly shy. And he was always hanging around Ellen."
I thought about what Molly had said about how Ellen might have responded to Lenny, to someone who showed interest in her. "Did they seem… did they know each other well?"
"Who?"
"Lenny and Ellen."
"They spent a lot of time together, which is why it makes sense that she's the inside person."
"Ellen?" The spiral phone cord caught on the frame at the foot of the bed and nearly sent the phone flying.
"As you pointed out, Lenny needed someone on the team to approve his invoices and not ask questions. Lenny Caseaux and Ellen Shepard spent so much time together people started thinking they had a thing going on. So it works like this: Lenny-who-is-Crescent sends her the invoices and she approves them. Majestic cuts a check to Crescent and the paperwork goes to file. Lenny buys the contract, the deal goes through, and he and his pals cash in. Ellen gets her promotion to a job for which she has not a single qualification. And there you have it. Makes perfect sense."
"Do you have any proof at all for what you're saying, or is it all just conjecture?"
"What do you think happened to the original of Ellen's pre-purchase agreement schedule, the one that was in archives?"
"I have a feeling you're going to tell me."
"Ellen swiped it."
"What are you talking about?"
"After she called me and I told her where she could find the files, she flew to Denver, went out to the archives warehouse, and took it."
"How do you know this?"
"When the archivist couldn't find the file, I took a ride out there just to make sure he knew what to look for. When my secretary made the request, all she'd given him was a reference number. When I described to him the schedule that I wanted and told him that it was in the merger files, he told me that Ellen had been there in person. In the flesh."
"Does he know her?"
"He doesn't get that many visitors, and he remembered her red hair. It reminded him of his sister. She asked him to show her where the merger files were. Who else could it have been? Something must have happened to make her think that it was going to come out and she needed to hide the evidence."
"Something like what?"
"I don't know. You found out about it, didn't you? Maybe someone else up there knew about it."
"Lots of people up here seem to know about this," I said, "but no one talks. It's like the Irish Mafia."
"Maybe someone threatened to talk. Whatever…"
I thought about the mysterious Angelo and whatever he knew and the fact that Ellen had fired him. I thought about Dickie Flynn and his deathbed confession. I slid down to the floor, where I could get back into my briefcase. "When was this trip to archives?" If Ellen had been in Denver, it would likely be on her list of secret travel destinations.
"He said it was the first day he was back at work after the holidays."
The last trip she'd taken had been to Denver- United on December 29. It was right there on the calendar. She went out and back in the same day. Eight hours of flying and only three hours on the ground in Denver. You'd have to have a singular purpose in mind to do that. I felt so disappointed. Betrayed, even. "You didn't even know her," is what Bill had said to me, and he'd been right. And the package, maybe we couldn't find the package because she'd destroyed it. "What about the hard copies of the invoices, the signatures?"
"Gone, too, although no one in Accounting remembers seeing her there."
"I just can't believe this about her. Can you, Matt? You knew her. Can you really see Ellen doing something like that?"
"I think I have a way to find out for sure. What if I can find out who signed the Crescent invoices?"
"Then you would be very clever, indeed. I thought there were no copies around."
"We had this admin support person on the task force, Hazel. She was viciously organized. It was scary. And she worked with Ellen a lot."
"Did you know her?"
"She loved me. I used to bring her lattes in the morning just to stay in her good graces. I figure I'll buy her another double-tall for old time's sake and find out what she's got. I doubt if she'd have copies of the invoices, though. The best she might have is some kind of record of who signed. That sounds like something she'd do. If Ellen signed them, then we'd know for sure."
I pulled myself up and wandered back to the window. "When do you think you might know something?"
"I've already got a call in to Hazel. As soon as I get something one way or the other, I'll call you." There was a slight pause. I'd run out of things to say and was just waiting for him to run out of steam. "You haven't commented on my theory, Alex. It's pretty amazing, don't you think, how all the pieces fit, and especially how I figured it all out?"