A Penny for Your Thoughts (36 page)

“There’s your culprit right there,” Harriet said, pointing to a number on the screen. “Person number two-zero-two-one. Who’s that?”

“That’s Judith Smythe,” Yolanda replied.

“Judith,” Gwen echoed in a whisper behind her.

Harriet and I glanced at each other. Just as we’d suspected. I felt an urgency grow as Harriet read off the next account number.

We worked that way for the next 15 minutes, verifying a series of transactions in the last two months that showed a total of nearly $200,000 coming into the Smythe accounts from Feed the Need. The first few transfers had been done by Judith; the rest seemed to have been done by Alan. Harriet had just read off yet another account number to Yolanda when she suddenly sat up straight and gasped.

“Whoa!” she said, peering intently at the screen.

“What is it?”

“Hold on a minute.”

She typed quickly into the computer for a few minutes while I watched over her shoulder, trying to figure out what she was doing. I looked at Harriet, but she just shrugged her shoulders. Finally, Yolanda spoke.

“You see that?” she said, pointing at the screen. “We just pulled that account up a minute ago, and the balance was over $300,000.”

“Yes?”

“Now it’s under $10,000!”

I sat back in my chair, wishing I knew a little more about banking and accounting.

“Maybe a big check just cleared,” Gwen said, but Yolanda shook her head.

“Look. The same thing just happened in this account here.”

She typed in some more numbers and a new account flashed on the screen. The account balance was only a few hundred dollars.

“The balance in this account should be about $30,000,” she said.

“You’re right,” said Harriet. “When you had that account up on the screen a few minutes ago, it
was
$30,000.”

Harriet and I stared at each other in surprise.

“Where’s the money going?” I asked.

Yolanda typed some more, then finally blew out a long, slow breath of relief.

“I found it,” she said. “It’s just been transferred into a different account.”

She brought up that account and we studied it on the screen. The balance was over a million dollars, and a long list of transfers had been made into it in the last two hours.

“I don’t get this at all,” Yolanda said, watching the screen, chewing her bottom lip. “That’s Alan’s code number, but I don’t know why he’s doing things this way. I got a big check out on one of those other accounts that I know isn’t gonna clear if he doesn’t put that money back where he found it.”

I sat up straight, my heart pounding.

“Yolanda,” Harriet said. “Can Alan access the online banking system from outside the office?”

“Sure, as long as he logs on.”

“Unbelievable.”

I reached for Yolanda’s phone and dialed the number for Detectives Sollie and Keegan. Though I told the operator it was an emergency, she still put me on hold—and a few seconds of that felt like an eternity. I was still waiting, the phone pressed to my ear, when I heard a disturbance from the front of the Smythe building.

“I’m telling you, he’s not here!” a man said loudly. The three of us got up to see what was going on, and much to my surprise Detectives Sollie and Keegan, along with several uniformed police officers, were marching briskly down the hall. I hung up the phone, wondering if they were coming to get me. I pulled off my scarf and jacket, willing to turn myself in as long as they would look at what we had discovered.

They passed me by, however, so I followed them until they reached the end of the hall and Alan Bennet’s office, which was dark and empty.

“If you’re looking for Alan Bennet, he’s not here,” I said. Keegan glared at me, anger on his face.

“And where the heck have
you
been?” he demanded. “I got a room full of people who need to talk to you.”

By now we had drawn a small crowd. As I opened my mouth to reply, I heard one of the policemen say to another, “He’s not here and not at his apartment. Where does that leave us?”

“Are you here for Alan Bennet?” I asked. “Because I don’t know where he is, but I sure know what he’s doing. I was just trying to call you.”

Keegan raised one eyebrow.

“Follow me. Quickly.”

I led them back to Yolanda’s office, and they crowded around behind her terminal.

“Alan’s had a busy day,” I said softly, waiting until the police had ushered away the curious onlookers. “In the last two hours, he’s transferred over a million dollars into this one account.”

“Is he at the bank?”

“No. He’s doing it over the internet. He could be anywhere.”

I looked at the screen, realizing the balance was even higher now than it had been a few moments ago.

“My guess,” I continued, “is that he’s pooling money from a bunch of different accounts before going to the bank where he’ll either make a giant withdrawal or an out-of-bank wire transfer.”

“Get the bank on the phone!” Sollie barked. Yolanda jumped as she reached for the phone and dialed the number with trembling hands. I stepped out of the way, listening as the cops talked among themselves. Apparently, they had come here with a warrant for Alan Bennet to arrest him for the murder of Wendell Smythe.

“What happened?” I asked Keegan, my eyes wide, wondering what piece of the puzzle had clicked for them to point things to Alan. “I mean, how’d you get a warrant?”

“We got the labs back on the print on the syringe and the hair found on Smythe. They both belonged to Bennet.”

I told him my theory, the one I had been forming for the last few days.

“It’s my opinion,” I said, “that Judith and Alan Bennet were both responsible. I think they may have killed Wendell together, and then Alan went out the back way and returned to his office, while Judith stayed there in her father’s office until he was dead. I think she was still in the bathroom, cleaning up some evidence or whatever, when I came in. I think it was Judith that I chased down the stairwell.”

“We’ve already sent someone out to pick her up for questioning,” Detective Keegan replied, nodding. “But we can’t really hold her for murder unless Bennet implicates her. At this point, we have no proof of her involvement in her father’s death.”

I thought of Alan Bennet, feeling fairly certain he would incriminate his own mother if it made things easier for him.

“We did manage to turn up a few priors on him,” Keegan continued. “So we’ll see what happens.”

“Keegan!” Sollie called, putting his hand over the mouthpiece on the phone. “The bank manager said that that particular account is set up with what they call a ‘repetitive wire.’ That means Bennet doesn’t have to go to the bank in person. He can wire money out of it remotely, just by using a secret code and a telephone.”

“On the internet?”

“No. He can move the money around on the internet, but if he wants to wire it to an outside account, he has to do that with a regular phone call.”

“What do you mean, a regular phone call?”

“On a Touch-Tone phone. The right code, and the money’s outta there.”

“You mean you’re telling me that with the push of a few buttons, Bennet can wipe out that account right under our noses?”

“That’s what they’re saying. What do we want to do?”

We all froze, looking at each other. I knew exactly what the two men were thinking: If they stopped what Alan was doing and put a hold on the account, Alan would know they were onto him, and he would take off. But if they didn’t put a hold on the account, he
might snatch the money out at any minute, and then it would be too late anyway.

“Put on a freeze, and he’ll know we know,” Keegan said softly.

“Don’t put on a freeze,” Sollie replied, “and he’ll strip those accounts bare.”

After a moment, we all spoke in unison. Everyone had a different idea, but my voice was the loudest, and finally they all shut up and looked at me.

“You can trace the phone call,” I said, but Sollie shook his head.

“Not if he’s on a modem through an internet provider. We had to do that once before, and it took too long.”

“No,” I insisted, shaking my head. “Right now, he’s on the internet, moving money from lots of accounts into one single account. He can move that money around all he wants as long as he’s online. But when he’s finally ready to wire the money out of that bank and into some other private account, he’s got to get off of the internet and call in on the telephone. If the bank can intercept
that
call, and you can get a trace on it, then you’ll know where he is.”

“Risky,” said Keegan.

“Riskier than a ribeye in a pen full of Dobermans,” Harriet added, “especially if the police can’t move fast enough. Then he gets the money
and
he gets out of town.”

Sollie and Keegan looked at each other and then at me.

“It’s worth a try,” Sollie said finally. “Hate to gamble with the money, but I don’t want to risk losing our man.”

The decision made, they all sprang into action, making phone calls, barking commands into the radio. Meanwhile, Yolanda, Gwen, Harriet, and I continued to tensely watch the computer screen. The balance in that one account had reached nearly 1.5 million dollars.

Finally, the number stopped changing. It just sat there while we watched it quietly. One million, five hundred twenty-three thousand dollars. A nice chunk of change for a morning’s work.

“We think activity has ceased,” Sollie said into the phone softly, still connected with the bank. “Are we set? Are we ready?”

Keegan was on his radio, saying essentially the same thing. We all held our breath as we watched the number on the screen. Then, suddenly, after nearly a full two minutes of waiting, it disappeared. In an instant, the amount $1,523,000 flicked away.

All that was left was one dollar.

Everyone exploded into noise. Sollie was shouting to all of us to calm down as he listened to the phone.

“Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up, I can’t hear!”

Finally, everyone quieted down and waited as he spoke.

“Yes,” he said, listening, “go ahead.” He waved for a pen and paper, and Yolanda handed him hers. “Got it. Yes. Okay.”

Then he hung up.

“Well?” Keegan asked as we were all waiting, holding our breath.

“They got the number,” Sollie replied. “The call to transfer the funds came from a pay phone in Pike Ridge.”

“Pike Ridge?” Keegan asked. From what I could recall, Pike Ridge was a small suburb west of the city, not too far from the Smythes’ house, about half an hour from where we were. “Have they got somebody on it?”

“Units have already been dispatched to the scene.”

“What’s in Pike Ridge?” another cop asked. “Besides some expensive houses and a few shopping centers?”

Sollie shook his head.

“I’ll tell you what’s in Pike Ridge,” I said suddenly, thinking of Tom and his trip to the funeral via helicopter. “An airport. There’s a small airport in Pike Ridge.”

Forty-One

The cops drove westward through the city, sirens blaring as they wove in and out of traffic. The detectives had, of course, called ahead to the Pike Ridge police and told them to seize Alan Bennet, probably at the airport. But Keegan and Sollie still wanted to get there as soon as possible themselves to question Alan once he had been arrested. I followed along behind the last cop car, matching their speed in my fancy Lincoln as we flew through the city.

Harriet had opted to take a cab from the Smythe offices to her cousin’s house where she would wait for further word from me. I was glad she had some place to pass the time; I knew she had a real aversion for things like high-speed pursuits and apprehending suspects.

As I drove, I thought about Alan, and I wondered if Judith was with him. Despite all the illegal things Judith had done thus far—from diverting funds out of Feed the Need to vandalizing her brother and his wife—I had a feeling that maybe Alan was acting alone in the murder with Monty Redburn as his accomplice. Smythe Incorporated was partly
Judith’s
company now, her inheritance. It didn’t make sense that she would rob herself—especially not for a paltry 1.5 million dollars. Her stake in the company had to be worth at least ten times as much.

Once I reached the airport, I pulled to a stop in the gravel parking lot, got out of the car, and sprinted closer to the action. There were about seven police cars there now, and most of the cops were braced against them, guns drawn. The guns were all pointed toward a small, private airplane that was parked out in front of the hangar. A man I didn’t recognize stood in front of the plane with his hands up in the air. Detective Sollie was pointing a gun at him from several feet away as Detective Keegan headed for the plane itself. As we all watched, he opened the passenger-side door of the plane and then held out the gun, shouting. Slowly, Alan Bennet stepped from the plane, hands clasped behind his head.

I didn’t believe it. We had done it! We had caught the murdering thief before he skipped town! I did feel a rush of
disappointment that Monty Redburn wasn’t also there. The plane had held only two people—Alan and the pilot. That meant Redburn was still at large. And Judith Smythe was nowhere to be found.