Don't Cry Over Killed Milk (16 page)

The fourth folder contained only two items—copies of a birth certificate and a social security card for Kenneth Randolph, the man to whom Jeremiah had transferred control of RDF Corporation and its $1.6 million. Randolph was forty-two years old and born in Macon, Georgia. The folder didn’t contain any other identification, so Damon had no idea whether he still lived in Macon or what he looked like.

Damon peeled through the fifth and final folder, which was dedicated to Trident Gaskets, Limited, Dominic Freeze’s employer. It provided some glue to the details swimming in Damon’s head. The folder contained legal paperwork transferring a twenty percent interest in Trident to Kenneth Randolph in exchange for $1.5 million. The details of the ownership agreement made clear that Randolph was to be a silent partner. Trident Gaskets could use the $1.5 million for operations and expansion. In exchange, Randolph was entitled to twenty percent of all profits of the private company. Randolph wouldn’t be known to the company’s customer base or staff other than its board of directors and executive officers. The deal went through less than a month after Jeremiah and RDF Corporation passed the money to Kenneth Randolph.

Damon’s brain itched with confusion. Jeremiah Milk had been plagued by Dominic Freeze as a child. When Jeremiah came into a fortune, he turned around and through an intermediary corporation—RDF—effectively gave Kenneth Randolph the bulk of it. Randolph took that cash and almost immediately bought half of the company that employed Dominic. Did Jeremiah know Randolph would invest in Trident Gaskets? There was no paperwork to suggest that Randolph kicked back any profits to Jeremiah. So why would Jeremiah just give that money away? Damon thought hard. It had to be tied to Dominic Freeze.

Chapter 16

By the time Damon returned to Hollydale, it was almost eleven o’clock at night. He booted up his laptop and brewed a pot of strong coffee. Damon closed his eyes and let the smell of freshly ground Columbian beans fill his nostrils.

Sitting at his kitchen table, Damon searched first for Kenneth Randolph. The name was too common to yield any significant results. Damon coupled it with “Macon, Georgia,” and came up empty. Typing in Randolph’s name with Trident Gaskets was equally fruitless. Apparently, the silent partnership had remained silent.

Damon tried Dominic Freeze’s name alongside Trident Gaskets. This time he was rewarded with a host of references to newspaper stories. Damon clicked on a link to the
Philadelphia Business Journal
. The article, titled “Scandal Shakes Trident Gaskets,” dated back one year. According to the writer, an unnamed informant notified the
Business Journal
that Trident had fired its chief accountant, Dominic Freeze, for embezzlement. When contacted by the press, a Trident spokesperson confirmed the termination, citing lack of trust and potential gross violations of the company’s fiduciary and ethics policies. According to the
informant, Freeze had worked his way up the corporate ladder at Trident and had been tapped to succeed Trident’s chief financial officer after his retirement the following year. Once company executives learned of Freeze’s theft, police searched his home, and found stacks of one hundred dollar bills hidden in his basement. Freeze claimed innocence to the press, asserting that he was the victim of a conspiracy designed to wreck his career.

The other articles Damon found had similar details. A follow-up in the
Philadelphia Business Journal
months later indicated that while Freeze maintained his innocence, he had plea bargained to avoid a trial and up to seven years in prison. By accepting the plea, Freeze relinquished the money found in his basement to Trident Gaskets and agreed to three years of probation. But the man’s reputation was ruined. He would never work again as an accountant.

Damon refilled his coffee mug. Wired with adrenaline and caffeine, he searched for Samantha Richter. Damon found several women by that name but only one who lived in Philadelphia. The sole specks of information he could glean about her from the Internet were a phone number and a home address.

* * *

When he woke the following morning, crust caked Damon’s eyelids like dried mud on tennis shoes. A full week had passed since Jeremiah’s murder the previous Sunday. Damon called Rebecca. He passed along the information he found in the fitness club locker cache and summarized the accounts from the
Philadelphia Business Journal
.

“Jeremiah Milk set up Dominic Freeze to take a fall,” Rebecca stated when Damon finished his report.

“You think so?”

“Absolutely,” Rebecca said with confidence.

“It strikes me as a harsh form of retribution for grade school teasing,” Damon said.

“True, but Dominic’s mockery could’ve traumatized Jeremiah in a way that caused psychological damage.”

“Maybe,” Damon conceded. “But even if you’re right, we’re missing a link in the chain. Jeremiah didn’t have a tie to Trident—Kenneth Randolph did.”

“So the question is: What was Kenneth Randolph’s role?” Rebecca asked.

“Exactly. If Jeremiah was out for vengeance, why wouldn’t
he
become the silent partner?”

Through the phone’s receiver, Damon could hear Rebecca tapping her fingers. After a moment, she said, “Probably because Dominic Freeze would’ve known if Jeremiah bought the twenty percent stake in Trident instead of Kenneth Randolph. Think about it, Damon. Randolph was silent. He may not have been known publicly or even to a majority of the staff. But surely the chief accountant for Trident would know who owned half of the company. Dominic probably wrote profit checks to Randolph every month.”

“Well, if that’s the case, Kenneth Randolph must have been a pretty good friend of Jeremiah’s,” Damon said.

“Or maybe Jeremiah was blackmailing him,” Rebecca proffered.

“Possibly,” Damon replied. He thought about the money trail: Two million dollars from Alistair Atwater to Jeremiah Milk, $1.6 million from Jeremiah—through RDF as a corporate shell that had all but disappeared—to Randolph, $1.5 million from Randolph to Trident for an ownership share in the company, and the $100,000 difference went to Samantha Richter. Four hundred thousand dollars remained in Jeremiah’s True Capital account.

“What about Samantha Richter. Could she be Randolph’s wife?” Damon asked. “And the $100,000 was payment for Randolph to act on Jeremiah’s behalf?”

“I like that,” Rebecca said, “except for the steamy messages she sent to Dominic.” After a pause, she added, “Randolph’s position as a principal investor in the company must have had something to do with Dominic’s embezzlement. Do you know how much money was taken from Trident?”

“No. I was wondering whether it was the $1.5 million Randolph invested.”

“I doubt it,” Rebecca said. “If Randolph paid $1.5 million for twenty percent of the company, no one with half a brain could have embezzled that much and expected to get away with it. We’re still missing some pieces, Damon.”

“I know. Hopefully, I can fill in some blanks this morning. I’m going to see if I can talk to Dominic Freeze and Samantha Richter.”

“Be careful, Damon,” Rebecca warned. “And what about Clementine Snead?” she asked. Damon had recounted his clandestine efforts to Rebecca while they were at Jeremiah’s funeral.

“That will have to wait. I’ll be spending the day in Philadelphia.”

* * *

Damon cleaned up and dressed neatly, then started the journey north to Philadelphia. He opted not to call Gerry. The detective would forbid Damon from speaking with Dominic and Samantha, just as he had barred Damon and Rebecca from having further contact with the park workers.

Damon knew he was crossing a line but his interest was insatiable. Besides, Damon reasoned, it was a Sunday and Gerry deserved a day of rest with his wife Trina. And if a detective started asking questions, Freeze and Richter might hire lawyers who would advise them not to answer. Damon would try to wriggle out some information first. He resolved to call Gerry on his way home and let him know about the stash of information he found in Jeremiah’s fitness club locker.

Traffic was light. Damon arrived in Havertown, Pennsylvania, a middle-class suburb just west of Philadelphia, in two hours flat.

Dominic Freeze’s address matched a 1920s stone Colonial-style home on a cul-de-sac. Children’s bicycles, Razor scooters, and remote control cars littered the lawns on either side of the patch of yellowing, overgrown grass in front of Dominic’s house. A black Ford Taurus with a dented rear bumper sat in the disgraced accountant’s driveway in front of a closed one-car garage. An abundance of bird droppings covered the front porch railing.

Damon had spent the overnight hours and the greater portion of his drive to Havertown devising a plan to approach Dominic Freeze. He didn’t want the man to know that he was investigating Jeremiah Milk’s death. If Damon let slip that someone Dominic verbally tortured in his youth had been murdered, Dominic would infer that he was a suspect and clam up.

Damon had also seriously considered whether Dominic Freeze could be the murderer. If Jeremiah used Kenneth Randolph to frame Dominic for embezzlement, the loss of a career made for an ample motive. But, Damon countered to himself, Dominic Freeze wouldn’t know that Randolph’s investment money came from Jeremiah. And even though Freeze had grown up in Hollydale near the Milk family, it was doubtful that he would know the intimate details of Tripping Falls, like the location of Emmanuel’s hedge trimmer and pressure washer or the park rangers’ nighttime inspection schedule. Unless, of course, he had scoped out the park with a mind to murder.

Damon held a leather-bound notebook in his hand. He knocked sharply on Dominic’s front door.

The man who answered looked physically ill. Loose bags under bloodshot eyes contrasted with his otherwise skeletal face. His complexion was the color of a weathered dollar bill. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any,” he said with annoyance.

Damon held up a hand. “Are you Dominic Freeze?”

The man didn’t answer.

Damon pressed on. “I’m with the Gasket Fabricators Association, and I’m doing a follow-up story on Trident Gaskets for our newsletter.” Damon had found the association’s website earlier that morning and confirmed that the trade group did, indeed, publish a newsletter.

“I am Dominic Freeze, but I’m sure as hell not talking to a reporter about Trident Gaskets,” he replied brusquely.

Damon wedged a foot in the doorway. “I’m not a newspaper reporter. I just want to tell your side of the story.”

“And why would you want to do that?” Freeze asked skeptically.

“Because the trade association has a duty to make the truth known.”

Dominic Freeze thought for a moment, then asked, “Why are you doing this story now? I was fired a year ago. It’s been almost ten months since my plea bargain.”

Damon had anticipated the question. “Because I just started with the Association a few weeks ago,” he lied. “But I’ve been doing this type of work for a while—first with a bottling association and then with a group that represents silicone manufacturers. When I read the back issues of the Association’s newsletter on Trident, I realized that there must be more to the story.”

 
“Who’s your boss?” Dominic asked.

Damon said a silent blessing that he had researched the Gasket Fabricators Association thoroughly. He rattled off the name of the trade group’s executive director.

Dominic Freeze grunted and swept Damon inside with a flap of his hand. The gesture stirred a wave of dust in the foyer’s yellow light. Damon sat on a navy blue fabric sofa that smelled of rose-scented air freshener. Arms crossed, Dominic leaned against a wall next to a stone fireplace.

“Can you start by telling me your side of the story?” Damon asked.

“I’ll tell you exactly what I told the police a year ago,” Dominic said. “Not that they believed me.” He huffed in irritation at the memory. “The finance department at Trident is small. There was just the chief financial officer, me, and a few people who reported to me. The CFO handled all of the big items—financing new projects, working with the company’s auditors, and preparing reports for the top brass, mainly the CEO and the Board. But he was never one for minutiae. I oversaw all of the day-to-day financial operations. So I was aware of every dime that came in and out of Trident. That’s how I know someone set me up.”

Damon took detailed notes. “Do you know what evidence the police found?”

“Of course I know,” Dominic blustered. His face looked cadaverous. “It was a Monday morning. I had a dentist appointment so I didn’t get into the office until about ten o’clock. The minute I walked in the door I knew something was wrong. Before I could even sit down, one of the administrative assistants told me that my boss—the chief financial officer—and Trident’s CEO wanted to see me immediately. So I went to the CEO’s office. They were both in there, waiting, along with the company’s General Counsel. I was scared shitless. The CEO told me to sit down. Until that day, he had always been nice to me. But he was all business.”

Dominic tugged at uncombed hair. “The CEO said they had a source who informed them that I made a series of withdrawals from the company’s account two days earlier, on the Saturday. My boss handed me a stack of computer printouts. When I read through them, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Someone used my corporate account to make three large cash withdrawals—one from each of Trident’s three banks.”

“I assume that as the go-to operations guy at Trident, you had access to the cash accounts?” Damon asked.

“Yes. Only two people could authorize a cash withdrawal—myself and my boss. But Trident has a strict policy that limits cash withdrawals to $25,000 per bank once a week. If anyone tried to take out more, it would trigger the bank’s computerized security system and lock the account.”

“So how were cash withdrawals made?”

“It’s pretty straightforward. I’d access my corporate account online and make an authorization electronically. Once I did that, anyone could go to the bank and pick up the money as long as they had an authorization slip that I signed. Usually the administrative assistant did the gophering for our group.”

“Did the banks do anything to verify the accuracy of the slips?”

“Of course,” Dominic said with frustration, “A bank manager would take the slip and look up Trident’s account on its data tracking system. The system would show that I had just authorized a withdrawal electronically. And each bank had a screenshot of my signature saved under Trident’s account. The bank just had to verify my electronic authorization and match the signature on the slip to the screenshot in their files.”