Cold Betrayal (29 page)

She and Alton had lived carefully if not exactly frugally. Having seen too much of what happened during the Depression, Alton had stayed away from the stock market. He had derided it as “gambling with other people’s money.” And he hadn’t gone looking for investment schemes with high returns, either. But he did believe in banks. The tiny returns that came back on savings accounts were fine with him. He had created several and assigned a label to each—Household, New Car, Travel, Emergency, Home Improvement. Once one of them was full to the extent that it didn’t exceed FDIC limits, he went on to create the next one, and the next, and the next—five in all. When it came time to pay bills, he—and, later, Betsy—would transfer the necessary amounts from the proper account into the checking account where Social Security checks were automatically deposited.

With the farm long since paid for, most of Betsy’s day-to-day bills could be handled by that without having to resort to taking funds from one of the named accounts. When she did have added expenses, like the credit card bills for her trips to and from DC to look after Athena and also her trip to Arizona for the wedding, those were transferred over on an as-needed basis only. Since those occasional expenditures were few and far between, Betsy had zero concerns about running out of money in her lifetime, just the way she and Alton had intended.

It was only February, a month earlier than usual, but since Betsy had to visit the various banks later on in the day anyway, she decided she could just as well get the onerous bookkeeping chore over and done with. Steeling herself for the task with a first cup of coffee on the table next to her and with Princess curled up in a cozy ball at her feet, Betsy settled down to work.

She dumped the whole drawer upside down on the table, so that the earliest statements would be the ones on top. In the very first statement—in the account Alton had labeled “New Car,” Betsy saw something worrisome. There were four different $250 ATM withdrawal transactions posted to that account in a one-month period—one a week—a thousand dollars gone. The only problem was, Betsy Peterson had never made an ATM withdrawal in her life. She supposed you’d need some kind of card to make that happen, but she didn’t have one. The only plastic she carried of any kind consisted of her trusty Visa and Amex cards, where she always maintained a zero balance.

With trembling hands, she tore into the next envelope—her Home Improvement account—only to discover the same thing, one withdrawal a week, $250 a shot, four times in the course of the month. And so it went, in every account. Betsy worked in a state of rising fury until she had the whole year’s worth of statements opened and accounted for. And there were the cold hard numbers. In one year, someone had relieved her of $60,000 without her knowledge or consent.

Too late she realized that Alton had been right to do the accounting every month. Had she done that, she could possibly have limited her loss. But now? Her first instinct was to pick up the phone, dial the first bank, and go to war with the manager. She had the phone in her hand when she thought better of it and put the receiver back on the hook. The bank statements for January had not yet arrived. If she called the bank and alerted them, that might also serve to alert whoever was doing it. She wanted the guilty parties caught and punished every bit as much as she wanted them stopped.

Instead, she tracked down the phone number for Joe Friday, the guy who had installed what he had explained was something like a distant band of guardian angels there to watch over her.

“Good morning, Betsy,” he said when he answered. Obviously his caller ID was in good working order. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been going over my bank statements,” she said. “Someone has been making unauthorized withdrawals all year long in every one of my accounts. They’ve been using ATMs, which I’ve never once used. I’m mad as a wet hen about it, and I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll call Stuart,” Joe said. “Believe me, this kind of thing is right up his alley. He’ll be back in touch as soon as possible.”

When the phone call ended, Betsy reached down, lifted Princess into her lap, and held her close. “See there?” she told the squirming dog. “I wasn’t just being paranoid. Someone really is after me.”

29

A
s Ali drove out of the parking lot, she caught sight of a departing air ambulance. She was relieved to know that both Enid and her baby were flying off to Tucson, well beyond The Family’s reach.

The Crown Inn Motel just up the street from the hospital was convenient if not particularly inviting. What she needed that morning was a shower and some breakfast. The Crown Inn offered both because it came complete with an attached restaurant, the Pancake Castle.

The room itself was marginal at best, with a shower that offered little more than a dribble of water and clean but aged towels that were see-through thin. Rinsing the shampoo out of her hair under a chin-high shower head presented a challenge, but she managed to make it work. The mirror over the sink was so short that she had to lean over the basin to see enough of her face to put makeup on. Even so, when Ali stepped out of the bathroom, she felt like a new woman.

She emerged just in time to hear the end of a phone call. “Okay,” B. was saying. “We’ll stop long enough for breakfast, then I’ll head out. I should be in Cottonwood about the same time the warrants arrive.”

“Cottonwood,” Ali echoed. “I thought you were driving over to Kingman with me.”

“Sorry, babe,” he said. “You’re on your own. Warrants issued in Phoenix should be in Cottonwood sometime within the next two hours. I need to be on hand to sign off on them.”

“That was fast,” Ali observed.

“It’s Interpol,” B. answered. “The last part of that word may be P-O-L, but in my experience it really should be P-U-L-L. The fact that any number of kids may be in jeopardy means that everybody concerned is jumping through hoops. The warrants give us authorization to dispatch Stu’s drone guy. The FBI has its own drone capability, but our guy is on-site, and theirs isn’t.”

“I was looking forward to having you along to back me up when I go talk to Alvarado.”

“Hey.” B. grinned. “Don’t forget our agreed-upon division of labor. Stu, Cami, and I handle High Noon’s geek stuff; you’re in charge of PR. You make nice with Sheriff Alvarado, and we’ll handle the drone issues.”

•   •   •

Once inside the tackily turreted Pancake Castle, B. opted for the King—a full stack—while Ali took the Queen—a short one. Both breakfasts came with crisp bacon and coffee included. The pancakes turned out to be a bit thick for Ali’s taste and not nearly up to the delectably thin ones her father, Bob Larson, used to serve at the Sugarloaf. Still, Ali downed hers with relish.

“Oh,” B. said after they ordered. “I almost forgot. Stu just received a message from Joe Friday. Betsy called Joe in a blind panic this morning because she discovered that someone has spent the last year lightening her bank accounts to the tune of some sixty thousand bucks.”

Ali whistled. “How did they do that?”

“By making unauthorized withdrawals using debit cards that Betsy somehow didn’t know she had. It started in January of last year. Stu’s in the process of tracking down the dates, times, and ATM locations that were used for the transactions. He’s hoping to locate security tapes.”

“If the withdrawals started in January,” Ali asked, “how come it went undiscovered for so long?”

“For one thing, the amounts were small enough that they didn’t raise any red flags. Betsy is one of those people who does all her accounting work once a year, just in time to meet the April 15 IRS deadline. Today was the day she tackled that job, and today is also when she noticed the problem.”

“Did she go to the cops?”

“Not yet,” B. said. “Surprisingly enough, she reached out first to Joe, who immediately put Stu on the case. Betsy evidently has issues with some of the local law enforcement folks and came to us instead.”

“I don’t blame her,” Ali said. “When she was worried that someone had tried to kill her, the local sheriff came right out and told her she was nuts. What about Athena? Has Betsy mentioned any of this to her?”

“That’s not clear at the moment,” B. answered. “If she had, I’d think Athena would have called to discuss it.”

“Betsy probably doesn’t want to worry Athena any more than she already has.”

“In that case,” B. said. “I won’t mention it, either, at least not until I get a clear reading from Stu and/or Betsy.”

“Good thinking,” Ali agreed.

Twenty minutes later, Ali hit the road, heading west on I-40. She had spent most of the previous day and all of the night inside the hospital. During that time, the weather had taken a turn for the better. For the first twenty miles or so, a tall berm of plowed snow lined the roadway although the pavement was clear and dry. As the road gradually descended in elevation, so did the snow lining the highway until eventually it disappeared altogether. Ali was thinking about her upcoming meeting with Sheriff Alvarado when her cell phone rang.

“Good morning,” Andrea Rogers said when Ali answered. “I’m slow getting started this morning. I stayed up way too late looking through boxes, and I ended up oversleeping. I turned the alarm off instead of punching snooze and went right back to sleep.”

“Did you find anything?” Ali asked.

“Yes and no. Seeing some of the names made me realize we need to computerize those old files. It turns out in some cases, we’re dealing with second- or even third-generation abusers, as in violence begets violence. There’s one family where both the grandmother and her grandson’s spouse have come through the shelter. Unfortunately some files we dismissed as being ancient history are all too current.”

“Did you find anything leading back to Colorado City?”

“No, but I did run into Reenie’s ancient computer. It’s a tiny little thing—a Toshiba laptop, one that used those little floppy disks—the hard plastic ones. Why they called them floppies, I have no idea.”

Ali recalled the long-ago era of floppy floppy disks, but now was no time to go off into a discussion of the history of computer science.

“So?” she asked.

“When Irene was starting the shelter, it was a one-woman outfit that operated out of a cubbyhole office down in the basement. She had no clerical help until the YWCA was able to give her a part-time assistant for a few hours a week. Up to then, that computer was all she had. It’s dead as a doornail now, of course, but I found a small file box—a gray plastic container—that’s loaded with floppy disks. There might be something on one of those, but I have no idea how you’d go about accessing the information.”

“Maybe Stu can figure something out,” Ali suggested. “Where are the floppies now?”

“I brought them home with me. Are you still in town?”

“I’m on my way to Kingman right now. I’ll probably come back through town on my way home to Sedona. I’ll stop by to pick them up then if that’s all right.”

“Sure,” Andrea said. “Call me when you know your ETA. What about that other thing we talked about last night? My plan was to spend today alerting the folks in my network that our shelter may need overflow help at some time in the near future. Do you have any better idea how many women and children we’re talking about and do you know what the time frame is?”

“No to both,” Ali answered. “If we do need help, it may be sooner than later, but please, don’t give out any details. Something big is about to happen in Colorado City, but the fewer people who know about it in advance, the better.”

“Understood,” Andrea agreed.

When that call ended, Ali wasted no time in dialing Stu. “Hey,” he said. “Good to hear from you. I’ve got some news that will interest you. I’ve got a line on one of the ATMs used in many of those debit-card transactions. It’s located in the lobby of the Setting Sun Casino northwest of Bemidji. I’d say that one or both of Athena’s parental units has a serious gambling problem. I suspect they may be using Betsy’s money to stay afloat or at least to hide the losses.”

“Will you be able to prove it?”

“I’m requesting security-camera feeds,” Stu said. “Those have to go through official channels. Without any personal connections, that may take time.”

Ali laughed. “I didn’t know there was anywhere on earth that you didn’t have personal connections. But now I have another problem for you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m on the trail of a box of nineties vintage computer disks from a long-dead Toshiba laptop that may have some bearing on the Colorado City situation. Is there any way you can retrieve data from those and turn it into currently searchable files?”

“No problemo,” Stu answered. “You’ve never seen my storage unit, have you? It’s chock-full of ancient computers, starting with my dad’s first Commodore 600. I’ve got an Eagle or two, a few Epsons, a whole flock of Toshibas, an HP or two, and any number of Dells among others. They all work, too. At least, they were working when I put them in storage. We could use a simple USB-compatible external drive for the floppies, but I’d love a chance to play with the old beauties. You give me the floppies, and I’ll give you the info.”

“Will do,” Ali agreed. “I’ll pick them up tonight and have them to you first thing in the morning.”

The remainder of the two-hour trip Ali spent plotting strategy. She decided her best bet was to approach the problem obliquely. By starting with the Deputy Sellers issue and assessing Alvarado’s reaction to that, she hoped to gain some insight into how much more, if anything, she should tell him.

The responsibility Sean Fergus had laid on her shoulders was a heavy one. Lives were at stake. She was gratified that the Interpol agent had placed so much trust in her but puzzled about it, too. Eventually she figured it out. It was only because of her involvement, along with Sister Anselm’s, that any of this had come to light. Sean needed to trust someone to make the right call, and she was it.

Squaring her shoulders, Ali paid attention as the GPS directed her off the freeway in Kingman. Within minutes she pulled up outside a long one-story building that bristled with antennas. Once inside the lobby, she told the desk clerk who she was and why she was there.