Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (25 page)

“True.”

“Our annual budget is about a hundred and fifty thousand, give or take a bit.”

“A hundred and fifty thousand,” I said, thinking that was relatively modest by nonprofit standards. On the other hand, that was an awful lot of money to be coming from only three local business sources.

“So what are the names of these generous businesses?” I asked.

My question earned a moment of silence.

“I can’t say,” she finally replied. Though I dearly wanted that information, I thought it was prudent of her to keep it to herself. After all, though she was required to supply the names of her donors to the IRS in her agency’s annual tax filing, she was also allowed, by law, to withhold that information from anyone else who wanted to know.

“I don’t mean to pry,” I added quickly. “I just wondered what types of businesses would be willing to help out a nonprofit with that much money.”

“Well, if you want to know the truth,” she replied, “our donors are anonymous. Even we don’t know who it is that’s supporting us.”

“Any idea what kinds of businesses they are?”

“Yes,” she replied, the tone of her voice indicating that that line of questioning was over. “Very generous ones. That’s all we need to know.”

I steered the conversation back to more neutral territory, moving on to criteria number six, “has an independent board that accepts responsibility for activities.” She said her agency was small and had no real need for a board of directors other than to meet the state requirements. I bit my tongue to keep from telling her that every nonprofit, no matter how small, needs an active board and instead asked about the national board for CNA. She’d never dealt with them directly, but she knew that one of the members was an author of children’s books, and another was a popular psychologist with a call-in radio show.

That earned another note to myself:
Celebrity board members—merely figureheads?

I could tell this woman was ready to conclude our conversation, so I thanked her for her help, saying I had one final question.

“Go ahead.”

“When you were trying to decide whether to join up with CNA or not, how did you make that decision? Did you conduct an investigation of your own?”

“Didn’t have to,” she replied. “Gosh, when I saw what they had to offer, I knew it was the only logical choice. It was almost too good to be true.”

Once I hung up, I reset the machine and then went back to the bedroom, replaying the conversation in my mind.

Too good to be true? That definitely set some alarm bells off for me, though I knew I might be overreacting. My instincts were fairly honed in these matters, but sometimes the gut feeling I carried around about a particular nonprofit turned out to be wrong in the end. For Verlene’s sake, I hoped that was the case this time. Though the organization thus far was checking out okay, once I heard “too good to be true,” I knew I needed to scrutinize things twice as thoroughly.

I changed into sweatpants and crossed the hall to the office to go online, thinking it might be a good time to check out criteria number seven, “is well rated by outside reporting sources.” There were two categories there, both of which were important: independent ranking sources like the Better Business Bureau and voluntary watchdog groups like the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Because of my job, I subscribed to all of the Internet information services, so I was able to pull up the rankings for CNA on each of them. I was glad to see that they were rated fairly well with the American Institute of Philanthropy’s Charity Rating Guide, and there were no complaints against them with the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Guide. I checked the rest of my sources, noting that CNA seemed to rank well across the board.

So far so good,
I thought, moving along to criteria number eight, “has a good reputation among its peers.” This was often my least
favorite part of any investigation. Frankly, most charity directors weren’t comfortable talking about other charities, particularly if it involved criticism. Often, I had to listen to what
wasn’t
being said as well as what was.

One of my contacts worked for another peripheral support-type charity, American Charity Assistance, and I thought she might be a good one to ask about CNA because they were basically competing for the same market and were thus truly peers. I looked up Carlotta in my Rolodex and dialed her at home in Richmond, Virginia. Carlotta was a frequent resource for me, since she was always easy to talk to and very laid back about the whole nonprofit arena.

Once I got her on the phone and we did a little catching up, I told her why I was calling, saying that I just wanted to get her impression of another peripheral services agency for an investigation that I was working.

“Sure, hon,” she said, and I could picture her settling back in her chair, removing the bifocals from the end of her nose. “Who is it?”

“It’s called CNA,” I said. “Comprehensive Nonprofit Alliance. Are you familiar with them?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “We did a joint project a while back with them for some emergency relief. Flood victims in Central America or something, if I recall correctly.”

“What did you think of their organization?”

She seemed to give the question some thought before answering, and her hesitation made me sit up and take note.

“Overall,” she said finally, “I think they’re fine. Good people at the top. Well organized.”

“Do I sense a little hesitation?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Let’s just say I think the bigger clients are probably much more satisfied with CNA than the smaller ones.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, CNA provides services for a number of major charities, as I’m sure you know. The man who handles the Assocation for Cardiac Research, for example, is a great guy. A super rep. But since that’s such a large client, serving them is practically his full-time job.”

“I see.”

“The little agencies,” she continued, “obviously can’t support that kind of service. They sort of all get lumped together into one division, which is where they stay unless they grow to the point where they’re no longer considered small.”

I thought of the woman I spoke to yesterday who said she’d had a personality conflict with the rep for the Small Agencies Division.

“Who’s in charge of the Small Agencies Division?” I asked.

“A woman named Doreen, Maureen, something like that. She’s a very brash lady and not at all the type of person I would’ve put in charge of the little guys. She’s not very client-oriented. Kind of hard to work with.”

I recalled my conversation with the woman in Seattle, who had nothing but praise for CNA. That was always my biggest problem in an investigation like this. Everything was so subjective. One person’s “take-charge kind of gal” was another person’s “very brash lady.”

“If you had a small nonprofit,” I said, “would you sign up with CNA?”

“Of course not, darlin’,” she said. “I’d sign up with American Charity Assistance.”

I smiled.

“If you couldn’t go with your own agency,” I said. “Would you sign with CNA?”

She seemed to hesitate again, and I let the silence remain between us. Sometimes you get more information out of a person by letting them become uncomfortable with the void.

“Well,” she answered finally, “in general, no, I would not. Maybe for payroll services and little things like that, but I
wouldn’t sign on for the full package they’re offering. It’s not cost-effective unless you’re one of those rare agencies that gets one of their sweetheart local-donor deals. Those are almost too good to be true.”

There it was, that statement again. The problem with things that were too good to be true was that they usually weren’t true at all.

“Can you elaborate?” I asked.

“I probably shouldn’t say,” she told me, “but in the past I’ve approached small agencies about using our services, and they all told me the same thing. They’d like to work with me, but only if I could meet or beat the deal they were getting from CNA.”

“And could you?”

“In some cases, yes. In other cases, I couldn’t even come close.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Connections, I guess? Local business contacts that CNA has that I don’t? One friend of mine at an agency in Miami showed me her contract with CNA, and their quarter-of-a-million-dollar budget was entirely supported by a handful of local businesses that CNA had rounded up for them. It was most impressive.”

“But not every place that CNA serves has that kind of deal?”

“No. I’ve seen it in Miami, like I said, and there’s one in Norfolk. I think the rest are out on the West Coast. Oh, maybe Boston. Seems like they had a real sweet thing going, too. Always with direct corporate support. We don’t get much of that for our small agencies, I’m afraid. Well, maybe some, but only in the hundreds. They’re getting donations by the thousands. In some cases, by the tens of thousands, from what I’ve heard.”

I thought about that, wondering if Verlene would be one of the lucky few with heavy local corporate support, or if she would find CNA to be not so cost-effective, as Carlotta had said. I thanked her for her help and then hung up the phone, thinking that I definitely had more work to do, though for now I would put the investigation aside until tomorrow.

Before turning my attention to my database, I decided to take a minute and check e-mail, mainly to see if Tom had written. As I typed in my password, I wondered how his mother was doing and if he planned to call me tonight. We hadn’t prearranged a time, and I felt suddenly excluded and bereft. Maybe he didn’t understand that I wanted to know how she was doing, how he was doing. Maybe he didn’t understand how much I cared.

Looking at my in-box, I saw that Tom had, indeed, sent me a short e-mail. He was fine. His mother was still in intensive care, but she was stable. He would call me tomorrow. I sent him a quick reply, feeling much better.

There was also an e-mail from my mother, a chatty note about how she had run into an old high school pal of mine at the grocery store.

“She looks as though she’s gained a few pounds,” the letter said, “but she had two adorable kids with her, both very well behaved.”

This was the nature of my current relationship with both of my parents. Though we traded newsy bits of info online, we rarely spoke in person and never, ever touched on anything but the most trivial of events. It had been this way since I had moved to Maryland, and it was a shame.

In those awful, early days following Bryan’s death, my parents had been as solid as a rock for me. They had cried with me and supported me and tried to keep me from going out of my mind with grief. But once I moved out here, our relationship had changed. It was my fault, I knew. Essentially, I had cut them off—almost as if I thought I could distance myself from the pain if I distanced myself from them.

One day soon I would have to take steps to repair that relationship. One day soon, but not now.

Agitated, I closed up my e-mail and exited the Internet. I had questions about Shayna’s investigation, and that was where my mind should be. I opened up my database and loaded in the information about my treasure hunt with Kirby this afternoon.
Once that was done, I scanned the whole file, looking for clues, looking for ideas. Finally, I reached for the phone and dialed Eli, my mentor and old friend, who was now retired and living in Florida.

“Callie, you picked a perfect time to call!” he exclaimed as soon as he realized it was me. “Stella’s off playing Bunco with the girls, and I’m sitting here flipping between two TV shows, both of which are boring as anything.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad you’re free. I need some help.”

“Fire away, sweetheart. The TV’s off. What’s on your mind?”

I told him about Shayna’s case, starting at the very beginning and working my way through, trying not to leave out a single detail. This wasn’t the quick version I had spelled out for Kirby. This was one investigator to another, looking for clarification and illumination on details that may or may not be significant. When I had finished with my tale, Eli exhaled loudly, and I could hear him pause to light up one of his signature cigars.

“Okay,” he said finally. “I’m thinking whatever this guy was cooking up, it had to be of an illegal nature. Otherwise, why all the secrecy? Didn’t you say the last time he was in town, when he went through his inheritance like wildfire, that the girlfriend was privy to every detail of his various businesses?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “She said he loved to come home and talk about all of his big plans, item by item. At first she had thought it was exciting, but by the end, when the money was nearly all gone and he had nothing to show for it, she really couldn’t stand to listen to him. So, you’re right. He did used to talk about all of it. This time, he kept it a complete mystery.”

“Not to mention that this time there was no start-up cash. The guy was flat broke going in.”

“Correct.”

“Okay. So we have this guy, obviously up to no good, all worked up over something he found when he went on a treasure hunt for one of these capsules. But nothing was missing from the capsule. You’re positive you went to the right one?”

“The next closest capsule is somewhere in South Carolina,” I said. “He wouldn’t have had time to get there and back in one night, not to mention that I doubt the car would’ve made it that far anyway.”

“Okay, so we know we’ve got the right capsule. I’m thinking maybe blackmail? Didn’t you say the guys in this club were rich?”

“Yeah, but what’s to blackmail? There was nothing significant in the capsule, and I doubt there would have been unless someone had been using it as some sort of drop-off or pick-up point for something else.”

“Which you’ve already said is unlikely considering the large size of the club and the chances of it being found by the wrong person.”

“Exactly.”

“All right,” Eli said, puffing loudly on his cigar. “Consider the murder scene. You think the killer came there by boat, right? So at least we can narrow things down to someone with access to a boat.”