Celebration (29 page)

Stephen looked at her closely. “Do you still love that guy?”

“I haven't loved him for a long time. Why do you ask?”

“I just like to have the whole picture. Your situation is going to be important when we find the money. Make no mistake. We will find it. However,” he said, holding up a warning hand, “finding it doesn't mean you'll be able to get to it. At that point we'll switch to Plan B. Don't ask me what that is at this moment, because I don't know.”

Danela blushed when Stephen winked at her. She couldn't remember ever blushing in her entire life. “All right, here we are. I'll show you where everything is, and I'll leave you to do whatever you have to do. It's been a long time since anyone has done anything for me. If I don't seem grateful, forgive me. I have to be honest with you. When Logan told me I had to go on safari with your group, I fought him. I didn't want to go. I think even then, in my heart, I knew he was planning this. For whatever it's worth, I just wanted you to know that.”

“You were kind of cranky the first day out,” Stephen grinned. “From here on in, it's slow and steady wins the race. How do you say that in Swahili?”

Danela laughed so hard she doubled over, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Pole pole ndio mwendo
.
”

“Pretty pricey digs you have here.”

“Don't be impressed. They aren't paid for. They'll probably repossess everything in the next week or so. Same thing goes for the house and cars. Everything was on paper.”

“And you never questioned it?”

“I did, but it didn't do me any good. I'm in a third-world country with no money. I had no choice once the money was gone.”

The next hour was spent setting up shop and rearranging furniture. Old dusty ledgers and boxes of bills and receipts were pulled from a storage closet. Yellow legal pads and sharpened pencils found their way to the center of Logan's desk. The two computers were turned on. From that point on Danela became invisible to the accountants. She backed quietly out of the office. No one noticed.

In the van she had a bad moment when she thought about the twenty-five thousand dollars and the airline ticket. Should she have confessed? Of course she should have, but she didn't, so she would live with it. What would they find, if anything? And what good would it do her? Logan was gone. Banks in Switzerland didn't give out information. She should know, she'd tried often enough. She wasn't going to get her hopes up. These men, nice as they were, were no match for Logan. In all these years, Kristine had never been able to find him. In the end she would be no different. Still, it was nice to know there were some good people in the world, people willing to help others.

Tears dripped down Danela's cheeks as she drove along. She needed to go to the airport to see about changing the plane reservations. When that was done she would go to the grocer's so she could prepare food. While it was cooking she would ransack the house to look for clues. In her heart she knew she wouldn't find any. Logan was too smart to leave clues. There wouldn't be so much as a matchstick lying around. She suddenly felt sorry for the faceless Kristine.

So many lies.

 

 

It was past sundown when Danela loaded the safari bus with all the food she'd prepared. The beer was an extravagance, but she didn't care. Her personal checking account now carried a zero balance. She didn't care. She still had the $25,010 in her savings account. Plus she had the water jug full of quarters. She'd been surprised that Logan hadn't emptied it. Silver was heavy, and Logan liked to travel light.

“He should have left me a note,” Danela muttered as she shifted gears in the bus. “What goes around comes around, Logan,” she continued to mutter.

No one paid the slightest attention to her as she set up the folding table with the food. They continued to ignore her when she said, “You need to eat this while it's warm.” She filled her own plate and walked outside with it to sit on a bench in the cool evening air. With nothing else to occupy her, she thought about her life and how she'd ended up here in this third-world country with a man who'd robbed her blind. A man she'd been a fool to trust.
Love is blind,
she told herself.
Especially one-sided love.
She'd known in her heart that Logan didn't love her the way she'd loved him. She'd been stupid and naive to think she had enough love for the both of them. Love just didn't work that way.

In the beginning it had just been sexual romps. Logan's sexual appetites were as insatiable as her own. The day he found out about her five million dollars, things changed. He'd dogged her then, buying her flowers, candy, taking her to dinner and concerts and always the lovemaking afterward. The wild lust had tamed to sweet, gentle lovemaking. He'd started to talk about marriage and going into business. Partners for life, he'd said. Togetherness twenty-four hours a day. She'd been so delirious she didn't think twice about handing over her money. The only thing she'd truly homed in on were the words, partners for life.

It was everything Logan said it would be for the first few years. It had soured gradually, so gradually, she hadn't been able to pinpoint the time or the place when she knew it was all going bad. She would have gotten out then, but they were so far in debt, according to Logan, she couldn't bail out. Third-world countries weren't fond of people who didn't live up to their promises. He'd scared the wits out of her when he spoke about African prisons and what they did to white women. He'd never said what they did to white American men, and she hadn't asked. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And yet she'd been willing to marry Logan. Of course it was a lie. Had she seen through it? Did she just want to believe it so the rest would be more palatable? It was Logan's way of getting her to go on the safari so he could pack up and leave. The twenty-five thousand dollars was the kiss-off, an expression Logan had used when he left Kristine. Now she felt even more empathy for the faceless Kristine.

The watch on Danela's wrist chirped. She looked down. Eleven o'clock. She debated about going back indoors to hand out the airline tickets and passports. She looked through the window to see the accountants working industriously. Maybe she should just curl up into a ball and go to sleep. When and if they finished, they would wake her. Or, she could sit here, smoke, and plot Logan's death a hundred different ways, each more painful than the last.

Danela fumbled in the dark for her package of cigarettes. Smoking was relatively new for her and a nasty habit at that. She'd taken up the habit when the stress Logan caused her became unbearable. She blew a luscious smoke ring. “Kiss me off with twenty-five grand, will you? Somehow, some way, I'm going to see your ass fry in hell, Logan. It might take me a while, but I'm going to do it,” she mumbled.

The door behind her opened. “Danela, could you come inside for a minute? By the way, thanks for all the food. It was delicious. We need to ask you some questions.”

“I need to talk to you, too. Logan left me twenty-five thousand dollars. I guess it was my kiss-off present. I should have told you that earlier. I guess I was so rattled with what went on it slipped my mind. I suppose it's Logan's contribution to my old-age fund.” There, she'd confessed, and she felt better already.

“I know about that. In this day and age it won't take you very far. Who set up all these ledgers?”

“I did. I didn't know anything about computers back then, and Logan didn't want to teach me. I tried to be as accurate as possible. I even set up folders with receipts and filed them by date.”

“The safari business is very lucrative, according to your files.”

“It's a five-million-dollar-a-year business. But it's only as good as the people you have working for you. You also need to pay your bills. Your reputation is paramount. It was really good in the beginning. Money came in faster than we could count it.”

“Where is it? Do you have any idea?”

“Switzerland at the moment. The only monies are from your safari. Logan didn't trust the banks here. He was banking in Zurich when I met him. He could wire money in and out in minutes. He had everthing set up on his computer. As far as I know he never called the banks directly from the offices or the house. I handled the phone bills and would have seen the toll calls. He did everything by computer. He was a wizard when it came to things like that.”

“If he didn't want you to know your true financial situation, why did he allow you to keep books?”

“To give me something to do. I liked seeing how well we were doing. We made back our investment at the end of the second year. As you said, the safari business was very lucrative.”

“It started to go sour in the fourth year. What happened?”

“Logan got cocky. He started acting like a drill sergeant and a five-star general. He wanted longer hours from our workers with no extra compensation. He was neither kind nor gentle. We lost all our good people. He started cutting corners, shortchanging the clients. Word of mouth was half our business. Twice he canceled tours at the eleventh hour. Our safari cruisers started breaking down. It was everything all at once. Logan didn't seem to care. He was fed up with Africa. He used to talk a lot about how this had always been his dream to live here and run a lucrative business. Then he started calling it a nightmare. We managed to hang on for a while and keep our heads above water, but we owed everybody. Logan didn't care. He left it to me to make all the empty promises. When your travel agent called, Logan was beside himself. He kept saying it was our chance to get back on top. I was so stupid, I went along with it. He just wasn't the man I thought he was,” she said sadly.

“Do you mind me asking where your five million dollars came from?”

“A friend. Actually, Maurice was the only true friend I ever had. He was much older than me. He treated me like a daughter at first, then over the years it became a more intimate relationship. I was very fond of him, and he was fond of me. We had a very good life together. He passed away shortly before I met Logan. I lost a wonderful friend when Maurice died. I was trying to decide what to do with my life when a lawyer sought me out and said the family wanted to give me some money so that I would never cause a scandal. I never would have done something like that. I accepted the money. I banked it, got a job as a hostess in an upscale restaurant. That's where I met Logan. He swept me off my feet. It was a rebound kind of thing. It's my own stupid fault. I thought he loved me. I thought we were building a life together. I really don't want to talk about this anymore, Stephen. Tell me what it is you need to know.”

“Well, Brian is a hair away from retrieving all the records that Logan deleted. If he's successful, we're going to need his password. Do you have any idea what it might be?”

“None. I'm the last person he would tell something like that to.”

“Am I right that Logan put eight million dollars into the business?”

“Yes. I put in five, and we borrowed another six or seven from the banks.”

“So, we're literally talking twenty-one million dollars.”

“More or less,” Danela said, an edge in her voice. “If you're trying to find some nice way to tell me it's gone, I know that.”

“It's not gone. It's sitting in a bank somewhere. My guess would be a numbered account in Switzerland. That's if your books are accurate.”

“They are painstakingly accurate. I made sure of that. I even listed a postage stamp if I bought it. I might be a fool when it comes to men, but I'm not stupid. Dumb yes, but not stupid. Okay, okay, so I was stupid, too. I told you, I believed in him, loved him back then.”

“You realize you're liable for the bank loans, don't you?”

“Logan pointed that out to me on a monthly basis. Are you saying I have to give the banks the twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“No, I'm not saying that at all. What I need from you is anything at all you can remember about Logan. Any small detail, no matter how insignificant you might think it is. Brian is one of the best computer hackers I've ever come across. If there's a way to find your partner, he's the man who can do it. You've got two state-of-the-art computer systems, so that will make his work easier. Let's sit down and talk. You talk and I'll listen.”

Danela poured herself a cup of cold coffee before she settled herself in Logan's chair. When the sun could be seen creeping over the horizon, she got up, stretched and looked down at Stephen Douglas to see what impact her words had on him. “I don't think I left anything out. Did any of it help?”

“I wish I was a private detective. I'm sure there are things you said that are definite clues, but I don't know what they are. Probably everything he told you was a direct lie. It's the little things along the way that give a person away. We know he was married with children. It's iffy if he's divorced. He was a career military man. A full bird colonel. He has a very noticeable scar on his lower abdomen that he says was an appendectomy but is suspect in your opinion. He never spoke about his wife or children. He kept no personal papers or files either at the office or at home. We have to assume he had a safety deposit box somewhere. You say nothing of any importance ever came in the mail for him. His explanation for the eight million dollars was an inheritance from his family. We know he's American but where he actually lived and grew up is uncertain. You believe the name Kilpatrick is an alias but that Logan is his real first name. Does that about cover it?”

Danela felt like crying. She nodded. “Sad, isn't it?”

“Did he ever talk about his parents or siblings? Did you ever have a sense of him living on the East Coast as opposed to the Midwest?”