Clawback (16 page)

She replaced her bookmark and closed the book

“You don't seem to be making much progress.”

Ali held up the book and studied the position of the bookmark. She'd barely made a dent in the pages. “If somebody could bottle all these words, they'd make a terrific over-the-counter sleep aid.”

B. smiled and raised his glass in a toast. “Then here's to James Joyce,” he said. “On nights like tonight, sleep is a good thing.”

“How are the folks?” Ali asked, setting the book aside.

“Your mother was in a state of high dudgeon by the time I left to come home. From what I could see, the cops executing the warrant were leaving quite a mess.”

“Cops in general or one cop in particular?”

B. nodded. “That would be Detective Drinkwater. There didn't seem to be much love lost between him and your mother.”

“You called that shot. He's the kind of guy Mom absolutely despises. You know the type—ones who come into a restaurant with a group but who don't bother asking for separate checks until after the food has been served. If the group ends up dividing the bill so each one pays cash, those guys always manage to short the waitress's tip on his part of the bill. Drinkwater pulled that stunt over and over, and Mom finally called him out about it.”

“You're thinking Drinkwater is coming after your dad because he has a major chip on his shoulder.”

Ali shrugged. “It could be,” she said. “Not only that, I wonder how much homicide experience he has. Probably not much, and this one is a double to boot. If he's looking to clear it in a hurry, Dad might seem like an easy target.”

“Yes,” B. said, “but from what your father said, there must have been bloody footprints all over that house. If the killer went out the front door while Bob was in the garage and kitchen with Dan and Millie, those footprints will tell the tale plain as day.”

“Let's hope that's true,” Ali said.

“And just to be on the safe side, Dash showed up at Sedona Shadows not long before I left to come home. He brought along all the paperwork needed authorizing us to handle the costs of whatever legal fees your father's case entails.”

“Did he sign?”

B. nodded. “On the dotted line.”

“I don't believe it.”

“We must have caught him at a weak moment. Your mother disapproved, of course, but as Dash reminded her, Bob's the one with his life on the line here, and he has to have the final say.”

“Good,” Ali breathed.

“On the way out,” B. added, “I let Dash know that High Noon stands ready to undertake any investigative work he deems necessary and that we'll do so on a pro bono basis.”

They fell quiet then, both of them sipping their wine. “Do you think they're actually going to arrest him?” Ali asked finally.

“I'm not sure. If the CSIs do a decent job, it won't come to that, but the local CSIs are probably pretty green in the homicide department, too.”

“Probably,” Ali agreed.

“With Dash looking after the case, our next big hurdle is going to be your folks' housing situation. With their lives totally upended at the moment, the last thing either one of them needs to be worrying about is moving away from Sedona Shadows, a place where they're already settled in and comfortable.”

“But you heard what Mom said,” Ali objected. “They want to pay their own way.”

“It doesn't matter,” B. said. “Here's what we're going to do. Tomorrow morning, first thing, you're going to show up at Sedona Shadows with a cashier's check in hand that will cover their rent for a year in advance. With an additional year plus their first and last month deposit, that gives them fourteen months to get through whatever legal process has to be handled before they even consider making a move.”

“They'll never agree to that.”

“We're not going to give them a choice,” B. explained. “Rather than asking permission, we'll present them with a fait accompli. It's always better to ask forgiveness after the fact than it is to ask permission in advance.”

“What kind of income tax ramifications would a gift like that have?”

“Believe me, your parents are going to be in such a low income tax bracket from now on that it won't even cause a bump. Not only will they not be receiving whatever income they were previously receiving from Ocotillo, most likely whatever funds they received previously will have to be paid back.”

“Paid back?” Al echoed. “Are you kidding?”

“I wish I were,” B. said. “Have you ever heard the term ‘clawback'?”

“What's that?”

“In the aftermath of a Ponzi scheme like this, anyone who has received payments before everything went south is required by the bankruptcy court to pay back those previous distributions so the resulting funds can be distributed equally among all of the scheme's victims.”

“The bankruptcy court confiscates the funds? Is that even legal?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“So my parents get hit twice, first by the Ponzi scheme itself and then by the bankruptcy trustees—insult to injury.”

“That's about the size of it.”

“And when the bankruptcy proceedings come to an end? What happens then?”

“Most likely those won't conclude until years from now,” B. said. “When they do, Bob and Edie will be lucky to get pennies on the dollar.”

“What about Jason McKinzie, the guy who started Ocotillo Fund Management? What does he get?”

“If they catch him—
when
they catch him—he'll serve a few years in a federal prison for security violations and/or fraud, and then he'll walk away and pick up where he left off, probably living off money he's been squirreling away for himself all along.”

“You think he has money stashed somewhere where the authorities can't touch it?”

B. nodded. “That's what those guys usually do.”

“Will the bankruptcy trustees make any effort to find his stash?”

“Probably not. They'll be more focused on the low-hanging fruit—the assets that are easy to find and liquidate.”

“Maybe
we
should.”

“Should what?”

“Go after McKinzie's money,” Ali said. “Maybe we should initiate a little clawback maneuver of our own. After all, you've achieved some pretty good results in finding the monies Richard Lowell hid away.”

“If we were to do that and managed to find anything, remember that whatever funds we retrieved would have to be turned over to the trustees.”

“Of course,” Ali said. “That's only fair. After all, if there's enough of it, maybe all McKinzie's victims can get a few more pennies back on their lost dollars. If we were to attempt this, where would we start?”

B. thought about that for a minute. “Let me talk this over with Dash tomorrow morning. If we're working on the case and take the position that the Frazier murders are connected to the OFM mess, that gives High Noon a reason to go poking around into all kinds of things.”

“The Fraziers' murders are connected,” Ali asserted. “And if we can link them back to McKinzie, he'll be doing hard time for murder rather than hanging out in Club Fed.”

B. smiled. “Sounds like you want to turn this into a crusade.”

“I do.”

“Okay, then. Tomorrow morning I'll put Cami and Stu to work data-mining everything there is to know about Jason McKinzie and Dan Frazier, too. Combing through a mountain of material, looking for some helpful nugget is going to be a massive job.”

“Right,” Ali said. “And I know just the person to do it. We're not going to coerce my parents into accepting rent money from us. That would kill them both, but nobody said we can't give one or the other of them a job.”

“As in, turn your parents into our in-house researchers?”

“I can't think of anything my mother would rather do just now than get the goods on the guy who stole their money, especially if there's a chance of getting some of it back.”

“Maybe you're right,” B. said, after a pause. “Whether they turned up something or not, it would at least give them something to focus on besides sitting around worrying. It also gives us a way of putting cash in their pockets without getting their noses out of joint.” He put down his glass, then glanced at his watch.

“Okay, Bella,” he said. “Let's go. Time to get busy and go to bed.”

I
mmediately after dinner, Jessica took her leave, launching off on her two-hour drive back to her apartment in Phoenix. Once she was gone, while Haley put the kitchen to rights, she and Gram talked together in a way that hadn't been possible earlier with a third party present. On a day when the unthinkable had happened, Haley needed a safe place to unburden herself, and she did so, sparing nothing. Carol listened, saying little until Haley finally ran out of steam.

“What happened to Dan and Millie is appalling,” Gram said when Haley finished, “but your real responsibility now is to the girls who work for you. If you want them to be able to keep their jobs and be able to support their families, it's up to you to make sure the business doesn't go down the tubes.”

Haley nodded. “You're right.”

“You said earlier that Carmen spent the whole day fielding a barrage of angry voice mails. No doubt some of those came from disgruntled clients—especially the ones who got burned by the OFM scam. Many of those will go away forever, no matter what you say or do, but in order to keep the business afloat, you're going to have to find a way to hang on to as many of your customers as possible. You need to keep that trickle of outgoing clients from becoming a flood.”

“How do I do that?” Haley asked. “The girls and I do the work, but it was always Dan's name on the door and his face and voice on the commercials.”

“From now on you have to be that face and voice, starting tomorrow when you personally return all those calls. Now, tell me about the business continuation plan,” Carol went on. “Is it a formal arrangement, presumably with insurance to fund it?”

Haley nodded.

“Then as soon as a death certificate is issued, you'll need to initiate the death claim process.”

“At this point I can't even think about filing a claim. It's way too soon.”

“No it's not,” Carol told her granddaughter. “This is business, Haley. You have to set your emotions aside.”

“How can I?” Haley asked. “Right this minute the whole thing seems utterly overwhelming, but you're right. All the paperwork for the business continuation plan, including the policy itself, is in Dan's and Millie's safe-deposit box, along with their wills. I have a key. I'll stop by the bank tomorrow.”

“Even with a key, you may still need a death certificate.”

“I didn't know that,” Haley said.

“I didn't spend all those years as a secretary in a law office for nothing, you know,” Carol told her. “Now let's get to bed. It's way past my bedtime, and I know you're exhausted.”

“Yes,” Haley said. “This was probably the worst day of my life.”

“I have a feeling your days may get a lot worse before they get better.”

S
edona's Crystal Inn was at the far low end of Sedona's upscale tourist industry. This was summertime in Sedona—a peak travel season. Most of the upper-crust places in town had their
NO VACANCY
signs visibly posted. The Crystal Inn still had rooms—and for good reason. It was a grim throwback to first-generation motels, complete with a drive-up window in the office.

Jessica paid cash for her room, using a phony driver's license in the name of Barbara Toomey as photo ID. The place was old enough to have tiny garages next to each room. The one allocated to room 108 was big enough for Jessica's VW, but just barely. After checking to be sure there were no nearby security cameras, she ducked inside carrying only a backpack, her purse, and a box of cold pizza she'd picked up from another drive-up window on her way north from Peoria.

Switching on the light, Jessica surveyed the stifling room. It was exactly what she'd expected—a sagging queen-sized bed covered with a faded floral bedspread; a stained orange-and-brown plaid sofa; two Formica-topped bedside tables, as well as a tiny round wooden table and two rickety wooden chairs. She deposited the briefcase and pizza on the tables. When she switched on the under-window AC unit, it immediately filled the room with the unmistakable odor of mildew.

Shaking her head, Jessica opened the briefcase and went about setting up her equipment. Depressing as the place might be, it came with one huge advantage: it was less than a mile away from Haley Jackson's house on Art Barn Road. Once Jessica's listening station equipment came on line, the droning voices of Haley Jackson and her grandmother filled the room.

Listening to them talk, Jessica couldn't help blaming herself for the fix she was in. The listening devices she had planted in Dan's homes and cars had given her plenty of advance warning that Dan was in the process of reaching out to the feds. Had she passed that information along to Jason? No, she had not. Jason was intent on stealing other people's money, and Jessica was intent on stealing his. She had assumed, correctly, that once Jason was under the pressure of closing up shop at OFM and bailing, he would be at his most vulnerable. By then he'd have no one else to rely on but her. What she hadn't anticipated was that Jason would be stupid enough to leave his computer in a place where Dan could access it.

As for Dan? Nothing she had overheard on the listening devices she had planted in his cars and homes had alerted her to the fact that he intended to target Jason's supposedly secure computer. Who had given him that idea? She doubted Dan was computer savvy enough to have come up with that one on his own, to say nothing of pulling it off. On Friday morning when a frantic Jason had called to tell her what had happened, Jessica had realized at once that the stolen files spelled disaster for her plans every bit as much as they did for Jason's.