„Then we got ‘em,“ said Riker. „The old man told me that Edwina changed her will every time she had a fight with her husband.“
„In that case,“ said Robin, pausing to look over the mass of cartons, „the earlier wills were misplaced. You won’t find them on the index. You won’t find them at all. But they’re here.“
Charles Butler stood at the center of the room, sifting through another carton. „Why didn’t Quentin Winter hire a lawyer to break the will?“
„That’s an easy one,“ said Riker. „The Winter family’s lawyers have always been Smyths. Now I got a question. Why would the law firm keep all this stuff. If it incriminates them, why not destroy it?“
„Lessons of Nixon,“ said Robin. „The cover-up is always worse than the crime. They’d rather look incompetent than go to jail for fraud.“ He waved one hand to include every carton in the room. „I don’t have to look at their Financials. I know you’ll find a penny-perfect accounting for every fee and payout. It might not be honest, but it’ll look good on paper and it’ll pass an audit.“
„All right,“ said Mallory. „So the firm had to convince Quentin Winter that it wasn’t in his best interests to contest the will.“
„Right,“ said Robin. „If they couldn’t create the trust from the will instructions, then they’d lose a huge administration fee.“
„And it’s not like Quentin was left out in the cold.“ Charles placed a folder on the desk. „That’s a summary sheet for payouts in the first year. He had more income than he could spend. There’s a generous housekeeping allowance, a maintenance allotment for each child and a guardian’s draw.“
Robin studied the file, then nodded. „The firm padded out his monthly draw. My God, this trust fund was worth twenty-five million dollars. You know what that is in today’s dollars? Maybe a quarter-billion.“
„More,“ said Mallory, whose gift was calculation.
Walking had become a great effort for Bitty Smyth. When was Aunt Nedda coming home? She undid the bolt and slumped to the floor. One ear pressed against the door, she listened to the loud conversation downstairs. Her father’s voice joined the cacophony of invectives and blame flying back and forth across the wide front room below. Sheldon Smyth was slurring his words. She knew her aunt had not yet arrived. Aunt Nedda would not be privy to this conversation of family matters. On hands and knees, Bitty crawled back toward her bed and pulled the telephone off the nightstand by its cord.
Rags awoke with a start and flapped his wings. „What?“ He came out of his cage on the run and squawking. Even the bird could see that something was wrong with his mistress.
Charles Butler and Robin Duffy had retired to the more comfortable furnishings of the private office across the hall, where the furniture was not made of cold steel, where a humidor was stocked with Havanas and the whiskey was single malt.
When Riker returned with a take-out meal, his partner was standing before her cork wall, studying the yellowed papers of financials from an era of filing cabinets.
„For the first twelve years, the trust fund outlay should never have exceeded the interest earnings.“ She glanced back at her glowing monitor screen and its display of more recent data. „Today the trust is only worth forty thousand dollars.“
Riker lit a cigarette and took a long contemplative drag. He did his best thinking when he smoked. „Figure cost-of-living increases, more money for each new kid, and you still can’t spend it all, not with a cap on the draw.“ And now he dealt with the greater problem of finding something to pass for an ashtray. He settled on a metal cup, dumping its stash of paper clips out on the desk blotter. Experimentally, he dropped in his burnt match, and his partner did not hurt him.
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.“