He exhaled.
Mallory walked half the length of the wall, then stopped to tap one sheet of pinned-up paper. „Here, right after the massacre. This is when it starts.“ She moved on down the wall, then paused again. „Twenty percent of the money was drained in a period of two years. The firm wrote it off as poor investment of capital.“
„You mean they stole it. I’m betting the guardian helped with that,“ said Riker. „Good old Uncle James. I say he hired Stick Man for the massacre.“
„Him or Sheldon Smyth’s father. My guess is collusion. Nedda went to brunch with the Smyth family on the day of the massacre – conveniently out of harm’s way.“ Mallory walked back to her computer and tapped the keys to change the document on the monitor’s screen. „I found the money, only now it’s well over a hundred million, all in personal brokerage accounts for Cleo and Lionel.“ She printed out a sheet. „This is their investment history. They took a bath in the nineties and again with the tech-stock fiasco. Now their holdings are zero risk, hardly any growth. But they show a deposit income of one million a year that doesn’t derive from stocks and bonds. And I know where it came from.“ She split her screens to pick up an item she had flagged on the law firm’s financial data. „The law firm has a payout of one million every year. It’s listed under client settlements.“
„Lawyers paying clients?“
„Not that simple.“ Mallory spent a few quiet minutes following the money through cyberspace, switching screens, diddling keys, and robbing banks via their databases. „I’ve got a memo to purchase bearer bonds. The dates and the amounts add up on both sides. Lionel and Cleo cashed in those bonds to make their yearly deposits.“
The screen changed again, and Riker turned away the moment he saw the logo for Mallory’s latest invasion, bypassing lockouts to enter Internal Revenue files. It always made him uncomfortable to witness a crime in progress.
„They don’t pay any taxes on the yearly million,“ said Mallory. „The tax is paid to the IRS by a check drawn on an offshore account for a bogus corporation.“
„I feel a headache coming on,“ said Riker. „Who’s doing who?“
„Best guess? It looks like Lionel and Cleo busted the Smyth firm for embezzlement. But simple restitution wouldn’t require money laundering on this scale. What if they nailed Sheldon Smyth’s father for hiring a mass murder?“
Bitty had left the bolt undone, and it had taken some time for this little horror to settle in. Her mind was slipping.
So sleepy.
And her limbs felt like cement. She struggled to make the short trip from her bed to the door, shuffling, unable to lift her heavy feet from the carpet. She slid the bolt home so no one would intrude upon her, not until her aunt returned. Bitty sat on the floor, her back propped up against the door, listening, waiting for rescue. Aunt Nedda should have been here by now. She must come very soon. She must. Bitty called Charles Butler’s office number again.
Mallory continued to scroll down the lists of investments. Riker watched her run calculations of large figures on a split screen. She was so good with the math of money motives. The assistance of a forensic accountant would only have slowed her down.
„I can access trades back to the early eighties,“ she said. „Allowing for dividends paid out and reinvested, market booms and dives, I’d say this stock portfolio was built up from the law firm’s yearly payouts over at least forty years. The Smyth firm is paying back the stolen money, but not to the trust fund. It all goes into Lionel and Cleo’s personal accounts.“
„Proof of embezzlement,“ said Riker, „motive for a massacre. And people ask me why I hate lawyers. I guess murder runs in the family, first the father and now the son. Sheldon’s gotta be the one who hired Willy Roy Boyd. He had to kill Nedda before she started asking questions about the trust fund.“ The detective crushed out his cigarette. „I love this case more and more every minute.“
„This financial arrangement works better for Lionel and Cleo. Instead of a lifetime draw on the trust fund, they have access to all of the money. And now, they’re part of the embezzlement. The restitution money should’ve gone back into the trust.“
„If Nedda dies, they get to keep it.“ And now he understood the elaborate money laundering. „Those two still don’t know that the will and the trust were never valid.“
Mallory nodded. „Because the Winters’ attorneys have always been Smyths.“
Charles poured a drink for Robin Duffy and ignored the telephone on his office desk. One of Mallory’s machines would pick up the call at the reception desk. Before entering into a business partnership with her, he had never been an answering-machine sort of person. If calls had gone astray, he had always assumed that people would call back. So simple. And, in case of emergency, they would send a telegram to the door. Should he be out of town when people called, well, that was their hard luck and one less hassle to deal with.
Now he could not escape his callers. The machine seemed to work for their convenience and not his own. Machines were always conspiring to strip all the charm from his life. Once, he had tried to disconnect the device, and all of the phones had gone dead. Mallory’s wiring was not to be trifled with. He had never attempted another such insurrection.
The phone stopped ringing.
Riker sat on the floor with the emptied-out contents of another carton, searching for a lost child among the papers. „You’re right, Mallory.
Sally Winter never attended a private school, either. No tuition payments.“
„I don’t think she lived long enough for kindergarten,“ said Mallory, leafing through her own stack of files. „There’s no record of payouts for nannies after the toddler years. Lots of medical bills. There was a live-in nurse. After Sally Winter turned four, the nurse’s paychecks stopped.“
„So the kid was sick,“ said Riker. „Maybe she died of natural causes. I can’t see any motive to kill Sally.“
„Then why would Lionel say she’d run away when she was ten years old? You know that was a lie. And why isn’t there a death certificate on file with the city?“
„Sally could’ve died somewhere else. Maybe it was a case of neglect. Uncle James wouldn’t want anyone to know he was an unfit guardian, not before he’d finished milking his cut from the trust fund.“ Riker turned to the open doorway to see Charles and Robin walking down the hall toward the reception room. A moment later, that distant door opened and closed. He guessed that they were making a deli run for food and wondered if they would remember to bring him a beer.
Mallory was sifting through the smallest carton, the one that had belonged to his grandfather. She began to pin the old man’s diagrams of the massacre to the wall.
„Hey,“ said Riker, „you don’t want Charles and Robin to see that stuff.“
„They won’t be back. They’ll be playing poker all night.“
Charles Butler entered his apartment behind Robin Duffy, who headed straight for the library, and now he heard Edward Slope call out, „It’s about time!“
Upon entering the book-lined room, he could hardly fail to notice an old gaming table surrounded by his new club chairs, and three of those chairs were filled by the charter members of the weekly floating poker game.
„Oh, it’s a beauty,“ said Robin, admiring the ornate carving and the touches of gilt and inlays.