Relatively Dead (2 page)

I wanted to listen to the call. I stood and set a house record for running to the stairs, climbing them, and racing across the bridge to the master bedroom where there was another extension. I paused for a few seconds to control my breathing. I didn’t want the caller to know I was listening. Then I carefully picked up the receiver.

I heard a man speaking. It wasn’t Michael’s voice, but it was close enough to fool somebody who was having mental problems.

“…cost more to fix than they said. In addition, one of the passengers has a broken leg. He needs to have surgery on it.”

Grandma spoke in a firm voice. “Michael, I already sent you ten thousand dollars. That’s all I have.”

“Grandma, you’re my only hope. You’re my favorite person in the whole world. Don’t you love me? They’re threatening to keep me here.”

“Who’s ‘they,’ Michael?”

“You don’t know these people. They’re treacherous. They might…do things to me. You’ve got to help me.”

The man was a good actor. His voice had a pathetic quality to it.

“I’ll try to raise the money. Tell me the address where you’re staying.”

“I need the money
now
. I know you’ve got it. Wire five thousand to the same place. Do I need to repeat the instructions to you?”

“I’ll call you back.”

“Listen, you bitch, don’t give me the runaround. Send me the money or Cynthia is going to get it. Do you hear me? Your granddaughter will be toast. Get the goddam wax out of your ears. After you send it be sure to call me and leave the MTCN. Do you want me to repeat my number?”

“No, you listen to me, Michael, or whatever your name is. You are the lowest form of despicable bastard, cheating old ladies out of their money. If I ever catch you, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

Quite a speech for a lady with a cultured, southern accent who I’d never heard use a bad word. No answer. The man had hung up. Grandma said hello a couple of times, but he was gone. I raced back downstairs. Grandma was staring at the handset and shaking.

Audrey was at the phone base in the kitchen. She pressed a button and we heard the man speaking. We had successfully recorded the call.

“Good.” Something else had to be done quickly. I went to Grandma. “Do you have receipts for the money you sent? Maybe we can cancel the orders.”

“The man said he was going to kill you.”

I dismissed that with a wave of my hand. When people have been trying to kill you long enough you tend to be blasé about another threat. “He’s in Los Angeles. We’re in North Carolina. Right now I need the receipts.” At least his area code was Los Angeles.

The receipts were in her purse. Fortunately, she found them after rooting around in it for a minute or so. I took them upstairs to the room I was using as an office. I got on the Western Union website and clicked on “Customer Support.” I found an actual phone number. What luck. I called the number and spoke to a live person with minimal delay. The world wasn’t completely automated yet.

Things went downhill from there. The support person told me how to check the status of the transfers using the Money Transfer Control Numbers (MTCN). Both of the transfers had been completed. The money was gone.

The name of the receiver was Michael Sakai.
How could that be?
Michael was dead. I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. Grandma gave him the MTCN’s. Perhaps all the receiver had to do to receive the money was to give an MTCN and his name. Even if asked for ID, it wasn’t difficult to present a believable ID. A driver’s license would work and wasn’t that hard to obtain. I, myself, had three driver’s licenses in three different names. I’d used every one of them.

CHAPTER 3

Grandma sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair at a wooden table with initials carved on it while I paced the floor in what was probably an interrogation room. I was too agitated to sit. The thief had gotten away with ten thousand dollars of Grandma’s money, and I hadn’t been able to stop it. What kind of granddaughter was I?

A female detective walked through the open doorway wearing civilian clothes. I recognized her by her build—tall and powerful for a woman, and by her short, dark hair.

“Mrs. Horton, Miss Sakai. I’m Detective Johansson. I was part of the investigation when Michael was killed.” Her southern accent was similar to Grandma’s and easy to understand.

I nodded. “I remember you. You helped us get through it.”

I thought back to the night when Michael and Paul both tried to kill me. A hoard of people had descended on the farm, including police and firemen—firemen because Michael dumped the security guard down the well beside the old house. Detective Johansson questioned Grandma, me, and the other people who were there. She and the firemen were about the only government employees I had positive thoughts about.

“Just doing my job.” She sat across the table from Grandma and softened her voice. “Mrs. Horton, I understand you lost money to the grandparent scam.”

“It’s Michael. He was in an accident in California. He needed money.”

Johansson raised her eyes and gave me an inquiring look. I was still standing. I’d briefed Grandma on the way over to the police station and tried to make sure she was lucid. Apparently, I’d failed. I tried to mime “that’s the way she is,” using my hands and expression.

Johansson looked back at Grandma. “Why didn’t you tell Cynthia about Michael’s calls?”

“He told me not to tell. He said our lives would be in danger. Today he threatened to kill Cynthia.”

I said, “When Michael was using an assumed identity he called her several times and warned her not to tell anybody about the call.”

“Yes, I remember that. Michael was trying to get control of your parents’ estate and cut you out.”

I was impressed with Johansson’s memory. She was a good detective. She asked how much money was involved and raised her eyebrows when I told her the amount.

“Usually, they only get away with a couple of thousand at the most.”

“We got the phone number of the caller.” I handed Johansson a piece of paper with the number on it, as well as other information about the transfers.

“We’ll try to trace it.”

“We also recorded the call. I copied it on my cell phone.”

“You can email it to me, but I don’t know how much good it will do unless we come up with a suspect.”

Johansson asked more questions. I had to supply most of the answers because Grandma wasn’t very coherent. The detective excused herself and went out of the room. She returned shortly with a uniformed officer.

Johansson smiled at Grandma. “Would you like to go with Officer Jones and get a cup of coffee or tea? I’d like to chat with Cynthia for a moment.”

“I’d love a cup of tea.” Mrs. Horton rose slowly from the chair and, using her cane, went with Officer Jones. She still had the dignified manner I remembered from our first meeting when I was searching for my identity.

Johansson shut the door behind them and turned to me. “Does Mrs. Horton have dementia?”

I winced. “I wouldn’t have thought so two weeks ago, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. I’m going to take her to the doctor.”

The detective got out a phone of her own and punched in the number of the scammer. She listened for a while and then disconnected.

“The recorded message is what the phone company supplies, not that of the perp. And he’s obviously not about to answer the phone, himself.”

I nodded. “I tried the number too, with the same result. I called from Grandma’s phone so he’d think she was giving him information about a new transfer. I didn’t leave a message. He didn’t answer or call back. He knows we’re on to him.”

“This doesn’t fit the pattern of any of the other scams we’ve seen lately. We haven’t had any callers from California. They’re more likely to come from the United Kingdom. Also, the amount he got away with is a lot more than any we’ve seen. The caller obviously knew Michael’s name, since he pretended to be him. He may have found out about him because you and he were national news a few months ago, and Mrs. Horton was part of the story. He knows Michael is dead. It’s interesting he thought he could convince her he’s alive.”

“The whole thing doesn’t make any sense to me. She certainly wouldn’t have fallen for this if she were in her right mind. There have been signs. I didn’t want to see them because she’s the only close relative I have.” I was on the verge of tears.

Johansson put her hand around my shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself. You’ve gone through a difficult time. But I agree you should take her to a doctor. How do you feel about his death threat?”

I shrugged. “As long as he’s in California and I’m here, I can’t get too excited about it. Remember, the real Michael tried to kill me four times. I doubt that this guy is suddenly going to show up and invade the farm.”

***

“I’m sorry. We can’t give out information about our customers’ accounts.”

The man wearing the white shirt and tie and the holier-than-thou expression was too glib, too smooth. He’d probably said the same thing a thousand times—nay, ten thousand times. I could see his desk from the counter where we were speaking. His nameplate said John Fernandez and his title was Assistant Vice President. I suspected, partly from his graying hair, he’d been with the bank since Grandma started banking there thirty-five years ago. He’d worked his way all the way up from teller to Assistant Vice President in that time.
Whew.
Since banks distributed titles like planting machines distributed grain seeds on a farm, he should be an executive VP by now.

I resolved to keep my temper. “You don’t have to tell me anything about Elizabeth Horton’s account. I’m going to tell
you
what happened. She came in here—twice—within the past few days and cashed checks for over ten thousand dollars. Your teller—Amanda, I believe it was—gave her the money both times. She lost all of the money in a scam. All ten thousand dollars.
I want to know what your policy is in regard to these situations to protect the customer and make sure she isn’t being taken advantage of.”

From the look on his face, I was sure I’d penetrated his armor, at least slightly. I would bet he remembered the transactions. He must have approved them. I doubted that a single teller had custody of so much cash. He glided—moving as if he didn’t actually have to use his legs—over to the teller named Amanda and spoke in her ear. Then he returned to me and motioned toward a cubicle.

“Have a seat. Amanda will join us in a minute.”

Amanda finished with her customer and came into the cubicle. She was young, younger than I was, probably, and somewhat overweight. She wore her brown hair shoulder-length and her red fingernails longer than I would have thought practical for operating her computer.

John Fernandez asked Amanda if she remembered serving Elizabeth Horton.

“Mrs. Horton? Sure. She’s a very nice lady. She comes in here all the time.”

Her face clouded. Was she remembering?

Fernandez cut in before she could say any more. “She made two large cash withdrawals recently. What did she say they were for?”

“She said they were for her grandson. He was in trouble—in California, I believe. Something about an auto accident.”

My turn. “Were you suspicious at all? Did you question her?”

“I asked if anybody was waiting for her outside the bank, but she said no and she didn’t look nervous or anything.”

Fernandez said, “While we were getting the money together, I had the guard check. There weren’t any suspicious people outside or in the parking lot.”

Aha. So he
was
involved in the transactions. Guilty by his own testimony.

Amanda continued, speaking by rote. “We’ve had training in scams. There’s the one where they get a person to withdraw money by promising her more and have her put it in a bag and then switch the bags—”

“This wasn’t that kind of a scam.” I had difficulty keeping my voice down. As if Grandma would participate in something like that. “But it was a scam, nevertheless.” Amanda’s face registered shock. I pressed my advantage. “Do you remember a few months ago in the newspapers and on TV, the story about Mrs. Horton’s only grandson? That he was killed?”

“I…oh my God. You’re the granddaughter, aren’t you? You’re the girl who had amnesia. I saw your picture.

”I nodded. I was a local celebrity in Chapel Hill. “I am. But that doesn’t answer the question as to why you believed Mrs. Horton’s grandson was in trouble when you knew he was in fact dead.” Now I was sounding like a prosecuting attorney.

“I forgot.” She looked miserable.

Fernandez came to her rescue, mostly, I suspected because he wanted to cover his own ass. “None of this is relevant. We took proper precautions. You have no right to berate the poor girl.”

“Maybe I should be berating you.” I turned to face him. “You’re her boss. You knew what was going on. Why didn’t you question it?”

“We followed bank procedure. We have no further responsibility in the matter.”

“No further customer, either. Because Elizabeth Horton will be closing her account with you.”

***

After three rings the phone was answered by a woman whose voice I recognized as that of the cook and housekeeper. “Good morning. Ault residence.”