“You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“No. Not one of them noticed his name tag enough to read the fake name he was using. But they all remember the face.”
“You mean he was doing one of them scam things, like the Nigerian stuff?”
“At first, that’s what I thought. But no…there’s something going on here that’s a little different. The first contact Marsh had with anyone in Regál-that we know of, at least-was a couple of months ago. On December fourteenth, he delivered a check for a little more than three thousand dollars to Serafina Roybal. In exchange, she gave him a cashier’s check for five hundred bucks or so. To cover what the sweepstakes company called taxes and exchange rate. I have the original letter.” She pulled out her pocket notebook and flipped pages. “Thirty-two fifty in winnings, five fifty-two in fees. She netted twenty-six ninety-eight.”
“That’s until the check bounces,” Torrez said. “Ain’t that the way these things work?”
“And that’s the catch. The check didn’t bounce, Bobby. It cleared just fine, and the money is sitting in Serafina’s bank account. I had Gayle track down the telephone number and address that was listed on the stationery for the sweepstakes company in Calgary. It’s a real place. No one answered because it’s the weekend, and I’ll pursue it more on Monday. But the business exists. At least it has a storefront. The Calgary PD is willing to cooperate in any way they can, if we feel the need. Anyway, there has been plenty of time for the check to clear, which evidently it did.” She leafed through the notebook.
“And then it gets bizarre. Marsh delivered a second check, this time for about twenty-eight hundred even. He collected a personal check from her this time for about five hundred. He told her that the company didn’t usually do that, but he apparently made the decision so Serafina wouldn’t be inconvenienced.”
“Go figure. She could have just stopped payment.”
“But she didn’t. She had no reason to. The winning check was good.”
“You’re shittin’ me. So she won twice, is what you’re sayin’.”
“Exactly. And Marsh made a point of telling Joe and Lucinda when he delivered their first check that multiple winners were common…that he thought it might be some sort of computer glitch.”
“Glitch, my ass.”
“The multiple wins thing is part of it somehow. I’m sure of it. What better way to sucker somebody in.”
“Ain’t breakin’ the bank, though,” Torrez mused. “A few thousand ain’t much of a jackpot.”
“No, it’s not. That’s part of the puzzle, I’m sure. The thing we have to remember is that Chris Marsh wasn’t a legitimate deliveryman. The company on his name tag doesn’t exist. Jackie scouted that on the Internet.”
“So why’s he doin’ it? Odd way to play Santa Claus. Unless he’s settin’ somebody up. Is he cheating the Canadians?”
“That’s one possibility, Bobby. I’ll follow up on that Monday. But here’s what I’m thinking. Serafina won twice, and word of that’s going to go through the village like wildfire. A month or more before that, the Bacas won a legitimate state lottery jackpot. And that’s a lot of money.”
“Like more than a hundred grand, I heard.”
“That’s right. After taxes, it’s a nice old age pension. Well, then, consider what happens next. A month later, more or less, Serafina wins twice, two nice little nest eggs. She’s a bright woman, Bobby. I don’t think she’d fall for sending money off into the blue, in hopes of getting a prize.”
“People do it all the time.”
“I know they do, and maybe she would fall for it. But I don’t think so. I would hope that she wouldn’t. But this way, she is face-to-face with a personable young man who looks the part…uniform, name tag, white truck with a logo on the door. When one of the package delivery folks comes to our door, we trust them, don’t we? Just like the mailman.”
“I’m wondering now if that’s part of it,” Torrez said.
“I think it is. Remember COD? You take the parcel, and the postman or delivery agent collects the COD fee. We trust them to do that, right? We’re used to it now. We sign the gadget, and take the package, just like Christmas. That’s what Serafina did. And the check she received was good. Both times. At least the bank hasn’t said otherwise, and it’s been weeks-plenty long enough to notice a bogus check. And how long does it take the good news to spread?”
“Minutes, maybe. And then?”
“And then he does it again, this time with Joe and Lucinda. The first time, they won a little bit more than Serafina.” She lifted the page. “Eight thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars. They handed over a bank check to the driver-Chris Marsh-for just over fourteen hundred. That means their net winning is almost seven thousand.”
“That’s enough to make ’em short of breath,” Torrez muttered.
“Indeed it is. And the driver delivers, just like with Serafina. And this time, he plays off her experience, telling Joe and Lucinda that it hasn’t been unusual for someone to win more than once…maybe it’s even a computer glitch back at the home office.”
“Oh, sure,” Torrez said. He frowned. “But they got the money, am I right? The check was good?”
“It was good. There again, there’s been a couple of weeks for it to clear. No problems. But I’m beginning to think that Marsh’s making the comment about multiple winnings is enough to get them thinking, Oh gosh, maybe we’ll win twice, you think? And sure enough. The big one. The letter comes telling them that they’ve won $178,900, the big one. And what’s the risk? They don’t have to send money off to Nigeria or someplace like that. The handsome young man will come to their door with his official truck and his official this and that, and trade checks. He gives them a check for $178,900, and they hand over a cashier’s check for $30,413. They’re ahead $148,487. A nice chunk of change.”
“If the check is good,” Torrez said. “Don’t make no sense to me that it is. I ain’t never heard of a sweepstakes working like that. I never understood how those things made money.”
“In the legitimate world, I think it’s just a different way of spending your advertising budget,” Estelle said.
“Any chance of rousting Terri out of his weekend for some answers?” Terri Mears, the identical twin of Sergeant Tom Mears, was chief operating officer of Posadas State Bank.
“He’ll cooperate, I’m sure. The problem isn’t on this end. No one in some other financial institution is going to be working. We’d have to find someone in Calgary who has computer access after-hours, or at the issuing bank in Las Cruces. That’s going to take as long as just waiting a day until Monday morning.”
“If we have to, though…”
“If. And all this prompts the question of what Chris Marsh is doing with a fake ID, maybe a fake sign on his truck, and maybe a fake electronic signature board.”
“And all of that seventeen percent shit sounds official.” Torrez held up the letter that Estelle had handed him. “Listen to that nonsense: ‘those charges amount to 16.981 percent…’”
“Very official. And the comment about ‘by law’ is convincing.”
“We don’t know about the second check for the 178 grand, do we. That ain’t had time to clear?”
Estelle shook her head. “Lucinda Baca deposited it on Friday afternoon.”
“What time?”
“About three thirty or so.”
“Well, shit. What’d she wait so long for? She got it, what, Wednesday evening sometime?”
“Exactly. I don’t know why she waited, except she just did. Maybe they wanted some time to stare at it some, trying to figure out what to do with it.”
“You takin’ bets?”
“No. I have a sinking feeling, is what I have,” Estelle said. “If the setup was aiming at Joe and Lucinda all along, it worked pretty well. Counting Serafina’s two checks and the first one to the Bacas, that’s $11,800 or so invested. They copped a second check from the Bacas for $30,413. But when it shakes all out, that’s about twenty grand for profit.”