Serenity jumped down the last few feet. “Yeah, but what about the deposit?”
“We’ve got that one, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Baring Aerospace. Local army and NASA contractor. How could they make a deposit that big to a little nothing? Why? I mean, they’re not even in Maddington, but next door in Jericho.”
Serenity looked up at the second floor, yelled at a man to be careful, and turned back to Doom.
“Doesn’t make sense to me either.” She squinted up at the last wall of glass going up on the second floor. “Doom, I need you to come out of the library and park yourself at Seth Burroughs’s side.”
She put the “Boss” hard hat on Doom’s head, and Doom reached up to tilt it to a hipper level.
“What do I do, other than rock the hat?”
“Write checks. I don’t know why Baring Aerospace is writing their checks, but someone down there does and we’ve got to find out why before this whole thing blows up.”
SITTING IN THE WAITING ROOM at the office of the Baring Community Affairs Manager felt like sitting in Bentley’s office, except without the thermometers. The office felt just like Bentley’s. That is, if Bentley had a ton of money to spend on office decor and the taste to spend it. Even the receptionist was expensive. Well, looked expensive. Everything in the room was designed to show a visitor how big Baring was and how little the visitor was. Serenity opened her notebook and wrote: MAD first floor feeling—warm, inviting. Not rich.
“It shouldn’t be too much longer, Ms. Hammer,” said the rich-but-not-inviting receptionist. “Mr. Franklin is such a big fan of libraries. All of us are.”
“That’s probably why I’ve been waiting out here for an hour; bet he’s finishing up a book for the book club tonight.”
The receptionist gave a lilting, musical ha-ha-ha sound, something she had probably practiced to harmonize with the sound of clinking champagne glasses.
Serenity looked at her watch. Four o’clock. If Franklin was quick, and if she drove fast, she could get to Stem and Stein in time to catch Joe.
That is, if she wanted to catch Joe.
She opened the book she had brought with her, a funny Florida-weird mystery titled Engulfed from Kathleen Cosgrove. Usually, any two sentences of Cosgrove were enough to distract her, three were enough to get her laughing. Today, she read a sentence. Then she imagined herself sitting with Joe on a beach, both smiling. Problems resolved. Partners again. She read the same sentence over, and imagined Joe putting handcuffs on her and shutting down her library.
She got very good at reading that one sentence over and over until she heard, “Ms. Hammer?”
Washington Franklin stood in front of her, smiling. He was a magnificent figure of a man, inspiring-looking with graying hair swept back like Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Except that this modern Jackson had perfectly white capped teeth, skin that glowed orange and features pulled back so tight she was afraid his skull would pop through.
He leaned into her. “Certainly must be a great book you’re reading.” He laughed and she laughed, too, hoping she’d catch the joke soon. “I had to say your name twice to get your attention.”
“It is.” She stood up and smiled. “Sorry for my rudeness.”
Franklin chuckled and his receptionist made the tinkling-champagne sound behind him. “No need to apologize, Ms. Hammer. We all love great books here. Perhaps you can show the book to Natalie and she can order me a copy.”
Serenity held up the book and Natalie snapped a picture of the cover with her phone. “Mr. Franklin reads all the time.”
“Oh, that’s great,” said Serenity. “What are you reading now?”
Franklin’s smile froze and he chuckled again, “Shall we talk in my office?”
“Lovely.”
His desk was a curved piece of aluminum the size of a barn door with nothing on it. He pointed to a framed photograph from World War II on his wall. “Baring gave me this, in recognition of thirty years’ service.”
“They gave you a piece of scrap metal?”
He gave his booster-club chuckle. “Not just scrap metal. When the government was finally going to scrap all the old war planes from WWII, Baring bought them up and made office furniture out of them.”
“Practical.”
“See these holes here? I like to think they’re bullet holes.”
Serenity looked at a pattern of small holes the size of pencil points. Maybe the Japanese used BBs.
“Well,” he smiled, taking his seat behind the wing desk. “Now I get to sit behind this fine old relic and support our community.” He swiveled to a credenza behind him and took out a checkbook. “We love our libraries here at Baring. We rely on an educated population. Yes, sir.” He sat the checkbook on the wing and shifted it back and forth to find a place where the slope of the wing would let him write. “Yes, ma’am, I mean.” Another chuckle. “Even though we’re actually in Jericho, a lot of our engineers and technicians live in Maddington.” He tore off the check and stood up so he could reach across the wing to hand it to her. When he did, the checkbook slid off the wing.
He laughed and bent down to pick it up. “Happens all the time.”
He straightened up, “Well, that ought to put a hundred books on the shelves of your library.”
Serenity looked at the $100 check. “You really must buy a lot of books yourself.”
“All the time.”
She put the check in her purse and snapped it shut. “Thank you so much, Mr. Franklin. But I really came here to ask you about another matter.”
He didn’t chuckle. “I’ve heard about your new library. We at Baring wish we could help, but profit margins in the government contracting business aren’t what they could be. We really have very little money. In fact, when I was awarded this desk I had to contribute a thousand dollars, just because Baring was so strapped for cash.”
“I understand. It’s amazing the sacrifice that companies like Baring make for our country.”
He chuckled. “You do understand.”
“Yes, sir. I had a question about another matter. Bookkeeping for the city is now handled through the MAD, and Baring had a deposit bounce yesterday in one of our accounts.”
He chuckled and waved a hand. “That’s the business side. I’ll get Natalie to take you to the business office.”
“Actually, it was a deposit to a specific small account made from your office. For ten thousand dollars.”
The chuckle disappeared and his eyes grew wide. “Our deposit to the Good Government fund bounced?”
Play along. “Yes, sir.”
“I am so sorry.” He turned back to the credenza, pulled his keys out of his pocket and opened a drawer. “We will correct that right now. I am so sorry. You know that Baring supports good government. The director of the fund knows we support the fund.” He paused and looked back with a begging expression.
“We know, sir.” Serenity put on her best crocodile-mogul smile. She was not used to looking powerful. “We were sure Baring would want to correct it immediately.”
“Yes. Yes.” He pulled out another checkbook and pinned it on the wing with one hand. He looked up at her and his face was white. “You don’t… I mean, the director doesn’t think we need to make a lesson out of this, do we? We’ve got a bid in for the BISAC computer center, and we sure do need to win it.”
Serenity played along. “So you do understand that no bribe, no contract?”
His face hardened. “Bribe? Bribes are illegal. We would never bribe anyone.”
She decided to stay quiet and let him talk.
“We understand that we all need to be team players. Before the Good Government fund, we made contributions to everybody running for political office, and more to those who won. All legal. None of those contributions will win you anything. But if you don’t support the movers and shakers, well, they won’t support you. Your fund just made it easier for us to make one contribution and let you distribute the money.”