A Dime a Dozen (29 page)

“I’ve only got one guess, and you’re not gonna like it.”

“Try me.”

“Well, usually when you see something like this, it’s a sign of potential money laundering.”

Twenty-Nine

Harriet and I worked straight through lunch, finally asking one of the secretaries to order something in for us so we wouldn’t have to take the time to go out and eat.

Our process of elimination was simple. Since Su Casa had only been in business for two years, we went back and looked at every single donation of more than a few thousand dollars that they had received. Then we called each donor to verify the amount that had actually been given. In two years’ worth of records, we found six bogus donations, with the overstated amounts totaling nearly three hundred thousand dollars. I began to agree with Harriet’s theory that there was some money laundering going on.

“I wonder where the extra cash is coming from,” I said. “What on earth could they be collecting money for in the boonies of North Carolina?”

To my mind, money laundering was usually associated with drugs or prostitution or—as in a case I had worked last fall—human smuggling. But I doubted anything like that could be going on here, and I wondered aloud how we could find out more about the principals involved.

I then buzzed Dean and asked him to come to the conference room. When he got there, I said that we were a little concerned about some things we had found in the records from Hooper Construction and Su Casa, and we wondered if he could tell us a bit about Zeb and Butch Hooper.

“What would you like to know?” he asked, pulling out a chair to sit at the table. “They’re both friends of mine. Good men. Butch in particular. He’s a deacon in our church and a real stand-up kind of guy.”

“What about Zeb?”

“Well…” Dean said, his voice trailing off. “Let’s see. I don’t know Zeb as well. He kind of keeps to himself. I do know he was born and raised here in Greenbriar. His family was poor—very poor, from what I’ve heard. I think he grew up in an old shack on top of the mountain, sort of back behind Tinsdale Orchards.”

“Above the high block?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess. From what I understand, it’s not much more than a crude cabin. I think it’s still there, though it’s probably abandoned now.”

I tried to imagine Zeb as a young man, living above the orchard, always looking down the mountain at the Tinsdale spread in front of him. That had to have been difficult.

“Zeb Hooper and Lowell Tinsdale are about the same age, aren’t they?” I asked. “I would imagine there’s some animosity there.”

“Oh, on the contrary. They were always the best of friends. Still are, far as I know.”

“If Zeb was so poor,” I said now, “how’d he get the money to start Hooper Construction? He’s certainly not poor anymore.”

“Gosh, no. He’s done very well for himself. He’s got a successful business, and between him and Butch, I think they own more property than anyone in this town.”

“So where did the money come from to start the business?”

Dean was silent for a moment, and I sensed an undercurrent in his hesitation.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t want to gossip, Callie.”

“I’m doing an investigation, Dean. It’s not called gossip. It’s called digging out the truth.”

“I only know what I’ve heard. And it’s just rumors.”

“Every little bit helps,” I said. “I promise you, it won’t leave my lips unless it turns out to be true.”

He exhaled slowly.

“Rumor has it that Zeb Hooper had one great love of his life. No one around here ever met her, but her name was Tatiana, or something fancy like that.”

“Tatiana?”

“More importantly, she was a princess or something.”

“A
princess?
”

“Yep. When he was a young man, he supposedly ran away to be with this Princess Tatiana. He came back a few months later with a hundred thousand dollars in his pocket and no mention of her ever again.”

“Dean, that’s the strangest story I ever heard.”

“Yeah, I know. The rumor was that the princess’ father must’ve paid Zeb off. Gave him money to go away and leave his daughter alone.”

I sat back, wondering how on earth I could ever get more information about this. That just sounded too strange to be true.

“Was Zeb sad about it?” I asked. “Did he seem to grieve?”

“No, he came back to town a happy man. This was years ago, before we moved here, but a lot of people know the story about Zeb Hooper leaving town poor and returning rich. He never gave any explanation, just came home, bought the little construction company he’d been working for since high school, and changed the name to Hooper Construction. He obviously had a good head for business, because the place has done nothing but thrive ever since.”

“When did Butch come along?”

“Zeb married a local girl a few years later, and they started having kids. The wife has since passed and both daughters got married and moved away. Butch was the only son and the middle child, I believe. Now he seems as successful at running the business as his daddy was. Maybe even more so.”

I stood and began pacing while Harriet remained silent, taking everything in.

“Dean,” I said finally, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but there’s something funny going on with Su Casa’s books. Financially, I’m afraid they’re not going to pass our screening process.”

“Well, if Zeb Hooper is operating his nonprofit in a way that’s less than ethical, then we don’t want to be affiliated with them anyway.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

Though I didn’t want to allege money laundering out loud to Dean, I needed to know that MORE would be willing to remove Su Casa from their list of supported charities if we indicated there was a violation. Beyond that, there wasn’t much for me to do except turn the information over to the necessary authorities.

I thanked Dean for his help and asked him not to say anything to anyone until we had more facts. Once he left the room, I made a phone call that would initiate asset inquiries for Zeb Hooper, Butch Hooper, Trinksie Atkins, and—since there was an irregularity with one of her expenditures—Karen Weatherby. If any of them had any excessive income or bank accounts or properties or stocks or whatever, I wanted to know about it. I thought about adding Danny Stanford to the list, but then I remembered that he had only been living here for a few months.

“This may be another case,” I said to Harriet as I hung up the phone, “where someone has forgotten the ‘non’ in ‘nonprofit.’”

Thirty

Harriet and I decided to table the problems we had uncovered for now. The asset reports would come back within 24 hours, and they would probably shed much more light on the subject. In the meantime, she still had work to do, and so did I.

There were a few criteria on my list that I thought I might be able to clear off fairly easily, so I set about doing that, starting with the principle that MORE should “pay salaries and benefits on a par with nonprofit industry standards.” Harriet had already calculated the true salary breakdowns, including pay and benefits, for everyone who worked at MORE. All I had to do, then, was compare them with the amounts that people earned at similar agencies in the region. Fortunately, as expected, MORE was right in line for every single category, which meant that they had passed the criterion.

Next, I looked at the edict that MORE should “have an independent board that accepts responsibility for activities.” I wouldn’t be able to get to a board meeting while I was in town, but at least I could review previous meetings’ minutes to see if the board handled matters in a tough, decisive manner or if they were simply “rubber stamps” for management. That I did, though I nearly fell asleep twice while reviewing the tedious notes. Once I had given the board my seal of approval for their procedures, I turned the information over to Harriet, who would make sure that no one on the board was financially profiting from their affiliation with MORE in any way.

Finally, to get a look at MORE’s fund-raising practices, I called in their director of development and talked with him extensively about every fund-raiser they had done in the last two years. Though he would still need to go over some of the financials with Harriet, I felt that MORE would pass this criterion, “follows standards of responsible and ethical fund-raising,” as well.

By 4:00 I was going stir crazy. I really wanted nothing more than to run down to the police station and find out everything that was happening with the Enrique Morales investigation—not to mention the related case of the stranger I had watched die a few nights before. Though I hoped the police had been able to trace out the man’s expensive shoes and his watch, I felt that we would’ve heard something by now if, indeed, the John Doe had been given a real identity.

Thinking that there was one thing I
could
do, I shut down my computer and told Harriet I had some errands to run and would meet her back at the cabin later. She gave me a dirty look, but before she could speak, I said that if she waited until dark to drive up the hill, she wouldn’t have to worry about the heights since she wouldn’t be able to see the view anyway.

Once I left, and against my better judgment, I drove straight to Su Casa. My intention was to have a friendly little chat with Zeb Hooper. I wanted to see if I could get a bead on who he really was and what he could possibly be laundering money from. I stopped and bought a crumb cake on the way and decided to say I was just stopping by on my way home and thought I would drop off a friendly snack.

Unfortunately, Trinksie seemed to be the only one in at the moment. She was delighted with the crumb cake, however, and I watched as she helped herself to a large piece and gobbled it down right in front of me. When I asked where the others were, she said that Snake had run to town to get some lightbulbs, and that Mr. Zeb would probably be coming in anytime. Danny had stopped by for a visit earlier, but he had gone back to work in the orchard nearby.

Trinksie seemed eager to gossip and I let her talk, knowing that anything she said might lead to a break in my case. I could tell that the mummy in the apples had gotten her quite worked up, and it interested me to listen to her conjecture. Apparently, rumor had spread that the mummy was probably the body of Enrique Morales, the missing migrant man.

“He was such a nice fellow too,” Trinksie said. “I’d hate to think he ended up that way.”

“Did you have many dealings with him?” I asked.

“Not really,” she replied. “I got six kids, but Snake’s the only one who’s still around to keep me company. I’d say that counts for something in this crazy world.”

Trinksie talked about Snake, about his physical and mental condition. He had a very low IQ, she said, which meant he could do odd jobs and read and even get a driver’s license, though he would probably never live on his own and had trouble handling money and making important decisions.

“Oxygen deprivation,” Trinksie pronounced matter-of-factly. “The cord was wrapped around his neck when he was born.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That must’ve been very difficult for you.”

“Not really,” she replied. “Heck, I got six kids. Snake’s the youngest and the only one who’s still around to keep me company. I’d say that counts for something in this crazy world.”

“It sure does.”

“And he’s a good boy. Everyone sorta treats him like their little brother.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“He’s got a good life. He cleans the parking lot over at Ingles on Thursdays and Fridays, he goes to Sunday school on Sundays, and he’s even in a bowling league every Wednesday night.”

“That’s great, Trinksie.”

When it became apparent to me that Zeb wasn’t coming into the office after all, I finally extricated myself from the office and told Trinksie I would see her around.

I pulled the door shut behind me and gave a little start to see Snake in the parking lot, leaning against his blue Impala, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing a dark shirt and a baseball cap, and instantly I thought of the person I had seen running through the woods on Sunday night. Certainly, he was the right height and weight. But was he capable of stabbing someone? He seemed so sweet and innocent.