A Bitch Called Hope (23 page)

While he fussed with the thermos and sugar packets, she opened her bag and pulled out her notebook and a small recorder. “Do you mind if I record our meeting?” she said.

“No, of course not.”

He turned and slid the coffee mug alongside the recorder. Maybe there was a slight shift in posture, a shift in his voice. But then, it was her job to look for a shift.

“There are just a couple details about your financial history you could clear up for us,” she said.

The leather creaked as he leaned back in his desk chair. Lennox asked him about his history at Harkness-Deerborne Investments. She asked him whether he left Harkness voluntarily.

“They told you I didn’t leave voluntarily?” His face stretched in a grin. “I told you back when we first met I’d quit to start my own investment business. You remember me saying that?”

She remembered. But what she said to Dan was, “Why would they say you’d been let go?”

Dan carefully set his coffee mug on the desk and made eye contact. “Truth is Harkness is too risk-averse for a guy like me. I attracted too many high rollers. Made my boss nervous.” He shook his head. “But they never fired me— that’s bullshit.”

She made a note in her book. Whether he was fired or not made no difference. It was more about putting him on the defensive and seeing what he revealed. “Tell me about Pike Investment,” she said. She looked for gestures, changes in tone of voice, repetition of key phrases, a hundred little tells.

“What do you want to know?” He resumed his relaxed posture like everything was peachy keen.

“How did it work?” she said.

“I took several clients with me when I left Harkness. Mostly the guys that wanted something with a higher yield than Harkness could offer. I was paying out two to three points over prime.”

“One of the clients you took with you was your father.”

“That’s right.” Dan leaned forward. “What about that is noteworthy?”

“It’s just Ham was saying that Bill was financially conservative. Ham said Bill’s only foray into the market was with you. Did your dad know you were dealing in high-risk securities?”

Dan smiled gently. “All respect to Ham, I’m sure he’s good at what he does, but I know more about my old man than he does.”

“So you’re saying your father wasn’t a conservative investor.”

“It wasn’t a question of conservative. He didn’t understand the markets. Didn’t want to. He liked making money and expected the same kind of return as his real estate. As long as I delivered he was fine. Not, and he’d gripe.”

Lennox paged back in her notebook until she found a date. “Is that why he closed his account on November 2nd of 2007?”

There was a slight hitch of tension in his jaw. “He was launching that subdivision with Mac, although I don’t know why he didn’t go to the bank.”

“Did you ask him?” she said.

“Yeah, I asked him. He gave me the I’m-your-father-it’s-my-money. He didn’t want to hear any bullshit, his word, about investment vehicles.”

Dan’s expression read both put out and resigned.

“Five hundred thousand?” she said. “Did you cut him a check the same day?”

No wonder he looked so unhappy; listen to her, she was bulldogging him.

“Where are you going with this?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“I don’t remember.”

He looked out at the wetlands. Lennox glanced over and saw the heron fishing off a half-submerged log.

She paged through her notebook again. “Less than a year later, last October 10, you shut down Pike Investments and filed Chapter 11. Did your bankruptcy have anything to do with your dad pulling out?”

“The Dow fell twenty-four-hundred points that month. People are still blaming the Street for losing their pensions. And the handful of people who didn’t get creamed were keeping their dough in their mattress. Back in August, two of our loans defaulted. My investors wanted to pull out. They sued me. I sued them. The whole thing spiraled down from there.”

She said, “Bear with me, Dan, I’m just trying to understand. Why were you being sued?”

“They challenged the agreements they’d signed with me.” Said matter-of-factly like he was talking about the rainfall that winter.

“I still don’t understand,” she said.

“We were loaning money primarily to mortgage and finance companies. That kind of thing is different than playing the stock market where you can jump in and out. This was a closed-ended fund. When you invest you agree to stay in until the fund liquidates.”

Dan had his hand up around his mouth and chin. She could feel him jitter his leg under the desk, become aware of it, and stop. She was on to something.

She gentled her voice. “So, did your dad agree to stay in until the fund liquidated?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why not?” she said. “It sounds to me like your father bankrupted your company.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “My company was just getting its legs when the market puked. That’s what happened to my company.”

She was not convinced. She watched him as she took a sip of cold coffee. “What about the argument with your father the night you got home?”

A flush crept up his throat. “I asked him for money, he got all Merchant of Venice about it. You’re making a case against me based on an argument with my old man?”

She kept her face neutral and waited for him to answer the question.

He lifted a shoulder. “Like I told you before, I felt like I was done with Chicago. I wanted to day trade my own account. I wanted him to stake me.”

Lennox knew what she was asking must feel like an attack, but she had to get to the bottom of this. It was hard to look at him knowing he was guilty of grand larceny. Maybe she could make her peace with that so long as he was innocent of murder. She took a deep breath and waded in.

“You were desperate,” she said. “Jillian Oster was prepared to press charges if you didn’t reimburse her. You’d go to prison. And after all your father had done for Scott. You must have been furious.”

Dan leaned back in his chair and studied her. His eyes glittered like mica. It felt awful to have him look at her like that. She waited for what seemed forever for him to respond. His silence was intense.

Finally he spoke: “You’re setting me up for the old man’s death.”

“Is that what you think?” she said. She sounded just like a cop. And he wasn’t answering the questions when they got too close to his relationship with his father.

“You know what this is about?” he said. “This is about your jealousy. You go digging in my past, you take a stranger’s version of what went down. You don’t ask me, you just go for the throat. Well, I’m sorry I’m not the man you thought I was. That still doesn’t make me a murderer.”

Who was jittering their leg now? How stupid to think she could have it both ways. Who was she trying to kid? She couldn’t investigate him and expect him to like it. She never had a chance of pulling this off.

“Are you confirming Jillian Oster’s story or denying it?” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “I ripped her off. You happy?”

“Last question. Did you know about your parents’ will?”

He reached over and turned the tape recorder off. “I’m not answering any more of your questions. Fuck you. I’m getting my own lawyer.”

Chapter 37

Lennox drove from Pike Development back through the forest down to the Willamette River. The sky dimmed as she merged onto the Marquam Bridge. The river below was dark and wide. Lennox signaled and turned onto I-84, heading home. She was only doing her job. He could look past this time and forgive her. If he was the kind of a man who could forgive maybe they could get past today.

That was the thing about hope: it blocked you from seeing the truth. The truth was Dan was still a suspect. A suspect with a helluva motive, whose truck most likely was the one that killed Gabe Makem. She was mooning over this guy? She needed her head examined.

It started drizzling by the time she reached her exit. She would stop on the way home and pick up some wine, a carton of eggs. Get her dry cleaning. Try not to think.

Alice was sitting on the sofa watching the shopping channel on television when Lennox got home. She was dressed in sweats. Her hair was unbrushed, her face patchy and flushed. There was no point asking her how her day was. Her day was like Lennox’s. Lennox said hello. Asked her if she’d eaten. No. If she wanted a glass of wine. No.

Lennox turned on the lights as she walked to her office in the back corner of the house.

If Dan’s alibi held up he was more than likely off the hook for his father’s murder. That meant Father Mac was off the hook as well. Of the four men, Dan and Mac had the strongest motives. Was it a coincidence that Gabe happened to use Mac’s likeness in his comic book? She called Mac’s number. It went immediately to voice mail.

She called his office again the next morning after breakfast. A blue sky was doing its best to tear through the cloud cover. With luck, she’d see the sun today. In three rings, the now-familiar voice of Mrs. Abendroth, Father Mac’s secretary, answered. Mrs. Abendroth didn’t have a first name. Mrs. Abendroth was big on attitude. And she wouldn’t connect Lennox to Father Mac no matter how hard Lennox tried.

Lennox paged through her notebook and called the number for Father Mac’s former parish, St. Stephen’s. She made the call and the priest himself answered it.

“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Father Melito said. “It’s been twenty years since I worked with Mac.”

Lennox explained that she was running a background check on certain key witnesses in a murder trial.

“Mac is a key witness?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about this on the phone,” Father Melito said.

He gave her the go-ahead. Lennox jumped into her car and drove to a working-class neighborhood not far from the Ross Island Bridge.

Mildew grew along the cracks in the white stuccoed walls of St. Stephen’s. Three scrawny rhododendrons struggled for purchase in the strip of garden between the parking lot and the church wall. It was about as different from Father Mac’s present deal as you could get and still have a Catholic church.

Although his digs were spare, Father Paul Melito most assuredly was not. Six feet and egg-shaped, his face and hands were pink and well-scrubbed. Lennox followed his wide backside down an unadorned hallway to his office. With chubby fingers he motioned her to a tweed chair.

“Now what is this all about?” he said.

Lennox slid her license across the scarred desktop.

Father Melito made a ceremony of fitting the wire stems of his glasses around his pink shell ears. He examined the license and compared her face to the face in her picture.

“You’re not a Catholic,” he said.

Was there a look? A distance between the eyes, a set of the mouth that separated Catholic from Jew from Protestant? “How can you tell?” she said.

He leaned back in his chair. “There is no Saint Lennox.”

“I was named after my mother’s china,” she said. Then she found herself swallowing. “It was supposed to be a joke or something. I usually tell people it’s an old family name.”

She was telling a priest she lied?

He nodded his head. He was a man used to confessions. “How can I help you?” he said.

She sat up straighter in her chair. “I’m investigating a murder that happened back in December. Father Mac was not only a witness, he was also the murder victim’s first cousin and business partner.”

Father Melito steepled his hands, his fingertips pressed into his lips. He moved his fingers below his lips and said, “What are you implying?”

“I can’t get a read on Father McMahon. He’s all charm and can I donate to his outreach,” she said. “But there are people I’ve interviewed with a completely different take on him, people who’ve told me about his history here.”

“Good heavens!” Father Melito said. “Why?”

”The Altar Boys?”

Father Melito had one of those faces you could read from across the room. For his own sake, Lennox hoped he never got close to a poker table.

“Stop, Father. It’s not what you think.” What she wanted to do was squeeze his hand, reassure him, but touching him would probably alarm him more. “I’m not talking about kids here. These guys are grown men known as the capital “A” capital “B” Altar Boys. These two boys were juvenile delinquents back in the days Father Mac served at St. Stephen’s. Father Mac bailed them out of jail, hired attorneys for them. Does any of this ring a bell?”

You really had to see Father Melito’s face. He knew exactly who Lennox was talking about. She watched the Father weigh his options and then decide to confide in her. He said, “This church is served by Franciscans, but His Excellency, Archbishop Harris, went to the same schools as Father Mac, knew of his reputation in outreach. That’s what we do here. Our dining hall serves three hundred people a day, six days a week. Father Mac played a big role in the fund-raising for this facility.”

Turned out Mac’s outreach extended to local hoodlums, two boys in particular, the Altar Boys. And to the acquisition of certain commercial properties in the parish. Father Mac had his own money to invest and invest he did.

“He became known as a bit of a slum lord,” Father Melito said.

“Father Mac didn’t take a vow of poverty?”

“Franciscans take a vow of poverty, but Mac is a diocesan priest and as such can own property. That said, diocesan priests are bound to live a simple life.” Father Melito shook his head. “Simple is one of those abstractions subject to interpretation.”

“I don’t know how to ask this,” Lennox said.

“Go on,” he said.

“Did you ever wonder if Father Mac was using the Altar Boys for anything illegal?”

He looked weary as if thinking about those times wore him out. “Mrs. Guzman can probably help you. She’s been my housekeeper all these years.” He pushed himself away from the desk. “I’ll get her for you.”

As he left the office he turned back to Lennox. What she first took for weariness now looked more like pain. “Mac was never a good fit for this parish,” he said and closed the door behind him.