“She could have collected on her cousin’s insurance policy,” Meyer said.
“Sure, but that would have been the end of it. The trust called for those stocks to be turned over to U.C.L.A. if Claudia died. A college, for God’s sake! How do you suppose Josie felt about that? Look, I’m not trying to hand a homicide on her. I just think she took advantage of a damn good situation. Claudia was in that boat alone. When she fell over the side, Josie really tried to rescue her, no question about it. But she missed, and Claudia drowned. Okay. Josie went all to pieces, couldn’t talk straight, crying, sobbing, real hysterical woman, we’ve seen them before. But came the dawn. And with the dawn, Josie began thinking. They were away from the city, strangers in a strange town. Claudia had drowned but no one knew that she was Claudia. No one but Josie. She had no identification on her, remember? Her purse was in the car. Okay. If Josie identified her cousin correctly, she’d collect twenty-five grand on the insurance policy, and then all that stock would be turned over to the college, and that would be the end of the gravy train. But suppose, just suppose Josie told the police the girl in the lake was Josie Thompson? Suppose she said, ‘I, Claudia Davis, tell you that girl who drowned is my cousin, Josie Thompson’?”
Hawes nodded. “Then she’d still collect on an insurance policy, and also fall heir to those fat security dividends coming in.”
“Right. What does it take to cash a dividend check? A bank account, that’s all. A bank account with an established signature. So all she had to do was open one, sign her name as Claudia Davis, and then endorse every dividend check that came in exactly the same way.”
“Which explains the new account,’ Meyer said. “She couldn’t use Claudia’s old account because the bank undoubtedly knew both Claudia and her signature. So Josie had to forfeit the sixty grand at Highland Trust and start from scratch.”
“And while she was building a new identity and a new fortune,” Hawes said, “just to make sure Claudia’s few friends forgot all about her, Josie was running off to Europe. She may have planned to stay there for years.”
“It all ties in,” Carella said. “Claudia had a driver’s license. She was the one who drove the car away from Stewart City. But Josie had to hire a chauffeur to take her back?”
“And would Claudia, who was so meticulous about money matters, have kept so many people waiting for payment?” Hawes said. “No, sir. That was Josie. And Josie was broke, Josie was waiting for that insurance policy to pay off so she could settle those debts and get the hell out of the country.”
“Well, I admit it adds up,” Meyer said. Peter Byrnes never wasted words. “Who cashed that twenty-five-thousand-dollar check for Josie?” he said.
There was silence in the room.
“Who’s got that missing five grand?” he said.
There was another silence.
“Who killed Josie?” he said.
15
Jeremiah Dodd of the Security Insurance Corporation, Inc., did not call until two days later. He asked to speak to Detective Carella, and when he got him on the phone, he said, “Mr. Carella, I’ve just heard from San Francisco on that check.”
“What check?” Carella asked. He had been interrogating a witness to a knifing in a grocery store on Culver Avenue. The Claudia Davis or rather the Josie Thompson case was not quite yet in the Open File, but it was ready to be dumped there, and was truly the farthest thing from Carella’s mind at the moment.
“The check was paid to Claudia Davis,” Dodd said.
“Oh, yes. Who cashed it?”
“Well, there are two endorsements on the back. One was made by Claudia Davis, of course. The other was made by an outfit called Leslie Summers, Inc. It’s a regular company stamp marked ‘For Deposit Only’ and signed by one of the officers.”
“Have any idea what sort of a company that is?” Carella asked.
“Yes,” Dodd said. “They handle foreign exchange.”
“Thank you,” Carella said.
He went there with Bert Kling later that afternoon. He went with Kling completely by chance and only because Kling was heading downtown to buy his mother a birthday gift and offered Carella a ride. When they parked the car, Kling asked, “How long will this take, Steve?”
“Few minutes, I guess.”
“Want to meet me back here?”
“Well, I’ll be at 720 Hall, Leslie Summers, Inc. If you’re through before me, come on over.”
“Okay, I’ll see you,” Kling said.
They parted on Hall Avenue without shaking hands. Carella found the street-level office of Leslie Summers, Inc., and walked in. A counter ran the length of the room, and there were several girls behind it. One of the girls was speaking to a customer in French and another was talking Italian to a man who wanted lire in exchange for dollars. A board behind the desk quoted the current exchange rate for countries all over the world. Carella got in line and waited. When he reached the counter, the girl who’d been speaking French said, “Yes, sir?”
“I’m a detective,’ Carella said. He opened his wallet to where his shield was pinned to the leather. “You cashed a check for Miss Claudia Davis sometime in July. An insurance-company check for twenty-five thousand dollars. Would you happen to remember it?”
“No, sir, I don’t think I handled it.”
“Would you check around and see who did, please?”
The girl held a brief consultation with the other girls, and then walked to a desk behind which sat a corpulent, balding man with a razor-thin mustache. They talked with each other for a full five minutes. The man kept waving his hands. The girl kept trying to explain about the insurance-company check. The bell over the front door sounded. Bert Kling came in, looked around, saw Carella, and joined him at the counter.
“All done?” Carella asked.
“Yeah, I bought her a charm for her bracelet. How about you?”
“They’re holding a summit meeting,” Carella said.
The fat man waddled over to the counter. “What is the trouble?” he asked Carella.
“No trouble. Did you cash a check for twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Yes. Is the check no good?”
“It’s a good check.”
“It looked like a good check. It was an insurance-company check. The young lady waited while we called the company. They said it was bona fide and we should accept it. Was it a bad check?”
“No, no, it was fine.”
“She had identification. It all seemed very proper.”
“What did she show you?”
“A driver’s license or a passport is what we usually require. But she had neither. We accepted her birth certificate. After all, we did call the company. Is the check no good?”
“It’s fine. But the check was for twenty-five thousand, and we’re trying to find out what happened to five thousand of ...”
“Oh, yes. The francs.”
“What?”
“She bought five thousand dollars’ worth of French francs,” the fat man said. “She was going abroad?”
“Yes, she was going abroad,” Carella said. He sighed heavily. “Well, that’s that. I guess.”
“It all seemed very proper,” the fat man insisted.
“Oh, it was, it was. Thank you. Come on, Bert.”
They walked down Hall Avenue in silence.
“Beats me,” Carella said.
“What’s that, Steve?”
“This case.” He sighed again. “Oh, what the hell!”
“Yeah, let’s get some coffee. What was all that business about the francs?”
“She bought five thousand dollars’ worth of francs,” Carella said.