Dog Helps Those (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (23 page)

“No worries,” I said. “Listen, I’ll type up my notes and email them to you.”

“Thanks, Steve. I mean it.”

“The name is Joe. Joe Hardy,” I said, before I hung up.

After I sent Rick the email, I brushed Rochester’s teeth, as promised, using a new chicken-flavored toothpaste he liked. Then I took him out for a long walk—or rather, he took me, since he led the way the whole time, pulling and tugging impatiently when I couldn’t keep up. I had to agree with Jerry Fujimoto—Rochester knew he was in charge.

Tuesday morning was gray and drizzly, so Rochester got a quick walk and we drove up to Leighville, where the weather wasn’t much better. I barely had time to go through my emails and answer the most pressing ones before I had to leave for a meeting of the graduation committee. “Try to stay out of trouble, all right?” I said to Rochester. He looked up from gnawing a rawhide, and I scratched him behind his ears before I walked out.

There was still a line at the Registrar’s office as I pushed and squeezed my way into the conference room. I spread out the information I had on Freezer Burn, preparing for a private confab with Dot and Jim after the meeting was over.

Once everyone was in place, Dot began by telling us that the credentialing situation was still very serious. “We got a lot of help yesterday, and that cleared some of our backlog. If we don’t get this computer situation resolved quickly, we may be faced with huge problems. Verified transcripts for graduate schools and transfer applications, financial aid audits, summer school registrations… it boggles the mind.”

Suddenly the room was filled with the theme from the
Indiana Jones
movies. “Sorry, I have to take this,” Dot said. She turned away from us, but a moment later said, “I’m afraid I have to cut this short. I’ve got an emergency.” She hurried from the room before I could tell her what I’d learned about Freezer Burn, and Jim Shelton was right behind her.

I began to put my papers together as the rest of the group scurried out. By the time I finished Phil Berry and I were left alone. He was punching some keys on his phone as I stood up.

“Now that I’m on the administration side, I have a whole different attitude toward graduation,” I said. “When I was a student, and even as an adjunct, it was a big milestone. Now it’s just another day in the calendar.” I looked over at him. “That the way you see it?”

He looked up from his phone. “Right now I’m grateful for any day that doesn’t involve me getting fired.”

I sat back down. “Fired? Why?”

“I got a heads up last night that one of our investment positions is in trouble,” he said. “You ever meet a woman from the Board of Trustees named Rita Stanville Gaines?”

“Sure. You know she was killed, right?”

“Yeah, I read her obit in the
Journal
. Rumors are going around now that at least one, maybe more, of the companies she invested in might be going under, and that’s causing shares in her high-tech fund to tank. That’s dragging down the rest of her funds.”

“What does that have to do with you getting fired?”

He sighed. “I invested some of the college’s funds with Rita.” He sat back in his chair. “StanVest laid out capital in two ways. First, as an angel—putting money into startup businesses. But Rita also ran limited partnerships for seed funds and incubators, which is essentially like being a second-tier angel investor. That’s where I put some of Eastern’s money—in those seed funds.”

“Isn’t that kind of risky?” I asked. “I mean, Eastern’s a conservative institution.”

“In the investment business, there’s a tradeoff between risk and return. If you put everything you have in very safe places, like federally insured bank savings accounts, you get a very low return on your money. If I did that for Eastern, I wouldn’t bring in enough interest income on our endowment to bridge the gap between what we earn from tuition and what it actually costs to run this place.”

“So you have to make some riskier investments to bring in higher returns.”

“Exactly. Because Rita was our alumna, and she was on our Board of Trustees, I thought that balanced some of the risk in investing with her. After all, she wouldn’t steer her alma mater wrong, would she?”

I was an English teacher, so I knew a rhetorical question when I heard one. “But now she’s dead, and her company is in trouble,” I said. “So that means Eastern is, too.”

“Because nobody knows right now which of the startups she funded are in trouble, all of them are suffering, and so is StanVest. And that means everybody who invested with StanVest is, too.”

“And because you’re the guy who put Eastern’s money with StanVest, you’re under the gun.”

“Yup. And you know what’s ironic?”

I shook my head.

“I have this stock gossip program that pops up alerts for me. It had the rumors about StanVest before anybody else. But I can’t get it to work on my college computer because Freezer Burn blocks it.”

“What’s ironic about that?” I asked. “Freezer Burn blocks everything.”

“The company that makes Freezer Burn is one of the ones StanVest invested in—using college money.” He held up his BlackBerry. “The program is meant to run on a desktop PC, so I had to run it on this. I’ve been having problems getting the BlackBerry synched to my office computer so I was using my wife’s phone for a while. She saw the alert but never mentioned it to me.”

“For want of a nail,” I said.

Phil looked confused.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s an old proverb. “For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, and so on, down to for want of a battle the kingdom was lost. Supposed to mean that one little thing can trigger a whole avalanche that can have major consequences.”

“Jeez, don’t go saying things like that,” he said, standing up. “You’re going to freak me out.”

I was already freaked out, I thought, as I walked back down the hall to my office. As I’d already figured out, if problems with faculty entering grades cascaded into financial aid and accreditation troubles, Freezer Burn could end up causing us major trouble. If you added in financial losses and damage to the college’s investment portfolio, then Eastern could really be in danger of collapse.

When I got back to my office, Rochester jumped up and yipped sharply twice. “Yes, I know, I left you,” I said. “Come on, I’ll take you out.” Fortunately the sun had come out, though the grass was still wet. As soon as he peed, I tugged him back indoors.

I had to grab a roll of paper towels and dry Rochester’s paws before he tracked mud all over my office and I had to deal with an irate cleaning staff, who were already cranky about the amount of golden hair that showed up in their vacuum cleaners.

Rochester considered any kind of canine maintenance a game. One that included paper was his favorite, so half my effort went into keeping him from chewing the towels.

Once that ordeal was over, he relaxed on the floor for a nap and I turned to my computer to look for the article Phil had mentioned. I could only read the first paragraph, because the rest was behind a paywall—you had to have a subscription to read it. But I could see the byline was Van Dryver, which meant I already knew what it said.

I dug around until I found the business card Van had given me on Sunday. I’d assumed he’d be the one calling me for information, not the other way around. I hoped he might know which of the companies Rita had invested in was in trouble, and if it was one of the ones Phil had put some of the College’s money into as well. I wasn’t sure what I would do with that information, but I always believed that knowledge was power. I dialed Van’s number and left a message.

Then I called Rick. This was information he ought to have, too. Perhaps the motive for Rita’s murder was in her investment business, not among her neighbors or her dog-training clients. I had to leave him a message, too.

Frustrated, I considered what other sources I had for information.

I looked at my dog, who was staring up at me from the floor. “Why didn’t I go to business school, Rochester? If I had an MBA maybe I’d be able to make sense of this.”

He woofed once, and then I knew what I had to do. I called my old graduate school friend Tor.

Tor was probably the busiest guy I knew, yet he answered his cell phone as soon as I called. “Hello, Steve! You are well, I hope?”

“Yeah, doing pretty good. Do you have a minute for some questions?”

“Of course. The market is slow today.”

Tor was a Swedish exchange student in business school when I was in studying for my MA in English at Columbia, and we were roommates there, and then for a few years after, until we both married and our lives diverged. He was a successful investment banker, married to a former model, with two kids in expensive private schools.

“You know anything about a company called StanVest?” I asked.

“Ah, you are up on the latest news, even though you are far from Wall Street. Yes, I knew Rita Gaines. She was a savvy investor, but she took many risks.”

“Can you tell me why her company is in trouble, in layman’s terms?”

“That may take more than a few minutes, my friend.” Though his English was almost perfect, he still had the slightest hint of a Swedish accent. “Perhaps you will come up to New York this weekend?”

It was Tuesday, and I had a feeling things might break out faster than that. “Any chance you might be free for dinner tonight?” It was an hour up to the city, and I thought it would be worth making the midweek trip, if Tor could meet me.

“Your timing is excellent! Bjorn and Lucia are away this week, on a trip to Washington, DC with their school. I will see if Sherry can join us. You must get yourself a wife again, Steve!”

“Well, I have been dating someone,” I said. “I might be able to convince her to come with me.”

“Good, good. Can you make a seven-thirty reservation?”

“Lili’s favorite restaurant in the city is Donatello’s on West 45
^th
. If we go there I think I can persuade her to join us. You feel like Italian?”

“No, I feel like I am Swedish. But I can eat Italian food. I will call them.”

I agreed to meet him and Sherry at Donatello’s when I got to the city, confident that Tor could secure the table, and then called Lili. “Think I can tear you away for dinner in New York tonight? At Donatello’s?” I gave her a quick rundown on StanVest and Tor.

“I have two more portfolios to grade, then I’m free, at least for now,” she said. “Car or train?”

Even two round-trip train tickets would be cheaper than bridge and tunnel tolls and an evening’s parking in Manhattan. I pulled up the schedule online. “There’s a six o’clock from Trenton. Can I pick you up about four, and we’ll make a pit stop at my house to drop off Rochester?”

“Sounds great. It’ll be fun.”

“By the way, I called your friend Van to ask if he knew anything more about Rita Gaines than he put in the article. I’m hoping he’ll call me back.”

“He doesn’t take calls unless he wants something,” she said. “But he’ll take mine.” I didn’t love the sound of that, but it was what it was. Like I’d told Lili on Sunday, we both had pasts.

I hung up and began considering lunch options. Mike MacCormac stuck his head in my office door. “You free for a powwow with Babson about this Rita Gaines situation? He’s paying for La Sandwicherie.”

“Sounds good to me.” I stood up, gave Rochester a treat and promised him some leftovers. Then I locked the door behind me and hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble.

Mike and I drove into downtown Leighville, where we met Babson and Phil Berry at La Sandwicherie, a quasi-French storefront café, a step up from the usual student-oriented food in town. I was the only one at the table not wearing a tie and I felt a bit out of place. Babson and Phil looked like they were ready for a power lunch, and even Mike, whose neck always looked constricted by his collars, could have passed for a corporate type. If I’d had advance notice of the lunch I’d have worn a button-down shirt, though I’d have waited to put the tie on until we were ready to leave the office.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Babson said, when we had put in our orders for soups, salads and sandwiches. “This Rita Gaines business is turning into a nightmare.”

“So far Eastern hasn’t come into the press reports,” I said. “I spoke with the reporter from the
Wall Street Journal
on Sunday. He was fishing around for information but I didn’t have anything to give him. I have a follow up call into him to see what I can find out.”

I neglected to mention that he was my girlfriend’s ex; it didn’t seem relevant to the conversation.

“Good.” Babson turned to Phil. “What’s our financial exposure?”

“It’s still fuzzy,” he said. “No one I’ve spoken to knows exactly what’s going on with StanVest. Just that trading has been suspended in the master fund.”

“What does that mean, the master fund?” Mike asked, as the server brought us a basket of french bread and butter, and tall glasses of ice water.

“StanVest is a complicated entity,” Phil said, when she had gone. “It’s a general partner as well as the main entity that disburses funds to individual projects. Take MDC, for example. It’s a small business startup, created by an Eastern alum named Matthew Durkheim. Rita created a limited partnership to act as a second-tier angel investor for his company.”