John Andrus was a likable guy in his late thirties. He was stocky, dark-haired, well-tailored, with the strong features of a character actor. We talked in Fort’s study. Andrus had brought along the documents in a black dispatch case.
“This report summarizes an awful lot of leg work,” he said. “He had thirteen months of activity. It would average a little under fifty thousand a month converted into cash. He didn’t want to attract attention, obviously. He opened up checking accounts in six other banks. He fed the money through the seven accounts. Apparently he also, in addition to cashing checks at the banks, cashed checks at clubs, restaurants, and hotels where he was well-known. He cashed in his securities holdings at at least four different brokerage houses. I think this summary by month of the assets converted to cash and the cash withdrawals through the checking account is very close to actuality. See, here is the biggest month for sale of assets, over two hundred thousand. He converted seventy-two thousand into currency last January, and that was the biggest month. The smallest was last June. Twenty-one thousand. He was a very respected and respectable man, Mr. McGee.”
“Strange behavior.”
“We’re a little dazed, frankly. We had the estate set up so beautifully. Residuary trusts, insurance trusts, 28 beautifully drawn instruments. And when the time comes to put them into effect, we can’t find anything except some very minor asset values. It wasn’t really big money, of course. But it’s enough to be worth handling properly. We’ve been through all his personal papers and records, and there isn’t a clue. It’s distressing.”
“To you and the IRS too.”
He frowned. “Unfortunately the man assigned to it was not too experienced. He got very agitated. He was going to attach everything in sight, the small equity left in the house, Mrs. Geis’ insurance, the cars and so on. So we elected, as executor, to have the estate appraised one year from the date of death, as is our option. I imagine the IRS man thought it was some sort of attempt to evade estate taxes.”
“But you don’t.”
He looked shocked. “Of course not! Fortner Geis was not a stupid man, and I think he was an honest man. I think he would… weigh all the alternatives, and do what he felt he had to do.”
“Which one of us is going to say the nasty word, Mr. Andrus?”
He shrugged. “Okay. Blackmail. I investigated that possibility with Mrs. Geis, and with the daughter, Mrs. Trumbill, and with young Mr. Geis. I also checked with… some of the doctor’s associates. It is a complete blank. Well, not exactly a complete blank. Mrs. Trumbill was very distressed when her father married a woman so much younger, and a woman… not quite on the social level of the Geis family, let us say. She suggested that her father might be paying out large sums to protect Mrs. Geis.”
“From what?”
“When her father brought her back here, Mrs. Trumbill thought it would be wise to… have her stepmother investigated. She got a report on what had happened to Mrs. Geis’ first husband and her two children in Buffalo over six years ago.” He hesitated, looked troubled, and said, “I have a lot of respect for Gloria. I like her a great deal. And I do not like Heidi Geis Trumbill. Mrs. Trumbill suggested to me that perhaps Gloria in a jealous rage had killed her neighbor and her first husband, and the two children who witnessed it, and then someone who could prove that’s what happened showed up and the doctor was paying that person to keep silent.”
“Heidi seems to have a nasty mouth.”
“She thinks Gloria had her father hypnotized. I felt duty-bound to check out her murder theory. Nonsense, of course. According to the Buffalo police reports, a neighbor saw Gloria turn into the driveway and get out of the car with a bag of groceries about two minutes after the woman had phoned the police about hearing the shots. When I told Mrs. Trumbill about that, she gave me a strange little smile and said perhaps if we kept on digging we’d probably find something sufficiently nasty in Gloria’s background to account for where the money went. And, if not, it was obvious that she had talked the Doctor into putting his estate into cash and turning it over to her. How could we be sure, she asked, that Mrs. Geis hadn’t already taken it out of the country?” He sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t let it bother me. Estate work gives you a chance to see people at their worst.”
“How much would Heidi have gotten?”
“The way it was set up, and you must understand that there were insurance policies cashed which would have built the estate up to over seven hundred thousand. Once the estimated taxes and expenses were paid, Gloria would have gotten three hundred thousand, and his children a hundred and fifty thousand each. Three trust funds. Heidi’s was the most restrictive. She was limited to the income only, say seventy-five hundred a year, and at the time of her death the principal amount was to be divided equally among her children, if any, and her brother’s children. Roger was to be given the right to withdraw in any year up to ten per cent of the amount originally placed in trust for him. Gloria was to have the house and all physical property, and the right to withdraw all or any part of the monies in trust at any time. When he learned of this provision, Roger said it proved that his father was not of sound mind at the time the instruments were drawn up, because it did not make sense to give a woman untrained in the handling of money complete freedom of access to three hundred thousand dollars, while restricting the son, who was in the business of handling money, access to not more than fifteen thousand a year of the principal amount.”
“Great kids, those two.”
“Unfortunately I’d say they’re about average.”
“If nobody ever finds out where the money went, what happens? Can Gloria lose that insurance money?”
“No. There’ll be no estate taxes at all. The governrnent can’t merely assume she has the money, and procede against her on that basis. I imagine they’ll keep careful track of her, and if she seems to be spending more than her income, they would ask awkward questions.”
“She thinks she’s being watched now.”
“She might be. If it bothered her too much, I’d arrange to find out who is behind it. Oh, there was something else I discovered when I was asking Mrs. Geis about the possibility of blackmail. She said that there was a clumsy attempt to blackmail the Doctor over two years ago, nearly three years ago in fact.”
“On what basis?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I think it would be more proper if Gloria told you about it.”
“Sure. I understand.”
“Mr. McGee, I think it would make sense if you would advise Mrs. Geis to close this house and let us put it on the market. I think we might be able to clear fifteen out of it, possibly a little more. I hate to see her run through what she has in her own checking account so quickly.”
“She said Fort’s attorney, Mr. Waldren, advised her to stay put.”
“It was my impression he meant she should stay in the Chicago area. Well… I have other reports here, but they don’t help us much. He died on October seventh. It wasn’t until early November we began to realize most of the capital asset value had disappeared. By then the trail was cold. He’d wound it all up four months earlier, in July. If he was turning the money over to someone, we have no way of telling when or how or who.”
“Gloria said he seemed happy that last year-as happy as you could expect a man to be under those circumstances.”
“That’s puzzling, Mr. McGee. He would have had to be under strain no matter what the reason behind it was.”
“Strain,” I said. “I guess it’s relative. I remember a story about him in Time magazine. I can’t remember the details. It must have been at least ten years ago. He flew over to some place in the Middle East and took a benign tumor out of some politician’s brain. He operated for nine hours, and he could have lost the patient at any minute of those nine hours, and there was a chance that if he did lose him, some of the wild-eyed members of the party would have gunned him down when he left the hospital in spite of the troops they’d assigned to guard him. There was some background in the article on him too. In World War II in Europe he went AWOL from the General Hospital where he was on the neurosurgical team, and they found him at a field hospital trying out and getting good results with a nerve graft technique that had to be done as soon as possible after the wounds happened. He’d made his request through channels and nothing happened, so he reassigned himself. The only time I knew him was when he was in Florida and married Gloria. Okay, a very mild and gentle guy. But he had that look. The ones who get past the point of ever having to prove anything to themselves or anyone else have that look. We laid on the bachelor brawl bit for him. By two in the morning there were just the three of us left, Fort, a friend named Meyer, and me. Fort started telling doctor stories. He talked until dawn. Meyer said it had been a long time since he’d had anything shake him up that much, anything that started him thinking in a different kind of pattern. I have this feeling, Mr. Andrus. Anybody who tried to lean on that nice mild guy would do better trying to pat tigers, I think.”