Born In Death

16

EVE SHIFTED TANDY ASIDE WHILE ROARKE INPUT data into her unit, and ordered it on-screen. It seemed like a lot of numbers to her, in a lot of columns in a complicated and overly detailed spread sheet.

He, apparently, saw a great deal more.

“Two accounts were questionable for me,” he began. “The first, McNab and I agree, has gaps, little voids. A precise, methodical accountant such as Copperfield wouldn’t have these voids in one of her files.”

“Tampered with?”

“Again, McNab and I agree.”

“Yeah.” McNab nodded. “I might not get the financial mumbo, but I know when a file’s been diddled with. At least some of that diddling corresponds with the dates you gave me when Copperfield first talked to Byson about finding something, when her assistant claimed she’d logged on after hours. Some of it goes back farther.”

“Someone very carefully removed and/or doctored her work,” Roarke continued. “Someone, in my opinion, with a good working knowledge of accounting.”

“Inside job. What’s the file number?”

When he gave it to her, Eve looked up the corresponding file name. “Well, well, well, it’s our old friends Stubens, Robbins, Cavendish, and Mull.”

“Interesting.”

“You said it was a law firm.” Gri

“Billable hours.” Roarke used a laser pointer to highlight columns from his blind copy still displayed on-screen. “Retainers, partners’ percentages. Odds were.”

“But do we have them on anything?” Eve asked. “Illegal practices, finances, taxes?”

Roarke shook his head. “You have the gaps, and when they’re filled in you may. But the numbers jibe, and nothing on the surface appears off.”

“But it is,” Eve complained. “It is off.”

“On the second account I’ve brought up, something certainly is.” He switched displays. “The bottom lines add up precisely,” he continued. “And the account would, I believe, hold up under most standard audits. But what I found, and what I suspect your victim found, were areas of income and outlay that were carefully manipulated in order to add up. On their own, they simply don’t. There are fees – here.”

He used the laser pointer to highlight a section. “These fees repeat – not in amounts, but in precise percentages of coordinating areas of income – and simply don’t jibe. Always forty-five percent of the take, if you will, and with the corresponding amounts, that same percentage appears first under an area of nonprofit contributions, making it exempt from taxes. Which, in the way this is manipulated, makes that fee exempt.”

“Tax fraud,” Eve said.

“Certainly, but that’s only one piece of the pie. The income itself is split into parts, juggled into subaccounts, with expenses attached to, and deducted from it. The income, minus this, is then tumbled back into the main. It’s then disbursed – the sum of it – in a way that, since I have to guess, I assume is through some sort of charitable trust. The client received a hefty write-off, straight from the top, which you see here. A

“The amounts vary, year to year, but the setup remains constant.”

“How much are they washing?”

“Between six and eight million a year, for the time frame I’ve been working with. But it’s more than that. There are simpler ways to evade tax, and to launder money. I’d have to say this particular client has income that is perhaps not strictly legal. It’s an operation,” he told Eve. “Slickly run and profitable, and with these fees and expenses, I’d say a number of people have a piece of it.”

“Copperfield would have found this?”

“If she was looking. Or if she had a question and dug back to find the answer to it before she took over the account. Once you start to peel at the layers, they lift off systematically, simply because the setup is very systematic.”

“I don’t get it.” She shook her head. “I don’t mean the numbers, it’s a given I don’t get them. But I don’t get why. If this is an operation like you say, why didn’t they just keep a second set of books?”

“Greed’s a powerful incentive. There are hefty tax breaks under this system not only for the questionable income, but for all of it. But you have to report the income, the outlay, to get them.”

She nodded. “What’s the blind number on this file?”

“024- 93.”

She went back to her desk, called it up. “Sisters Three. A restaurant chain. London, Paris, Rome, New York, Chicago.”

“A restaurant?” Roarke frowned. “No, that’s not right. These aren’t the accounts of a restaurant.”

She rechecked. “That’s how it comes out.”

“That may be, but these aren’t the files and accounts for a restaurant.”

“Roarke, I’m looking at the file, the file Copperfield marked ‘Sisters Three’…And none of the names in the account are listed anywhere but on the label.”

“She switched files.”

“Labels. Discs. Now why would she do that? And who did she switch it with?”

Eve began to scroll down the file, sca

“Cavendish, etc., was,” Roarke recalled. “And they represent the Bullock Foundation.”

“She accessed the foundation’s files,” Eve murmured. “Labeled it under another account. Nobody would bother going into that file on her unit if they were looking for what she had on the law firm, and through them the foundation. Kraus, Robert Kraus. He headed this account, and was – allegedly – entertaining Bullock and her son the night Copperfield and Byson were killed. If you need an alibi, why not pick the client whose books you’re cooking?”

She paced around her desk. “Copperfield sees something in the law firm’s accounts that doesn’t balance for her. Something that co

“Makes a copy.” He nodded. “She couldn’t be sure she could go back to Kraus, because she’d asked herself why he hadn’t seen what she’d seen. Who can she talk to about this?”

“Her fiancé. But since she’s come in with questions, Kraus is careful. And he’s going to see she’s accessed, made copies. Time to panic a little. So you threaten, you bribe.”

“And set up a double murder, alibied by two people with a vested interest. Two people who are the face of one of the most prestigious and philanthropic charitable foundations in the world.”

“And who are now accessories to murder, times two. I think I want to have a chat with Bob. Peabody, with me.”

“Ah, Dallas, always happy to be with you, but I think in this case, you should take your number cruncher. No way I can talk the talk.”

Eve pursed her lips, studied Roarke. “She’s got a point. You up for it?”

“Should be fun.”

“And a big sigh of relief from the math-impaired,” Peabody stated. “McNab and I can work the Tandy Willowby case while you’re talking to Kraus.”

“Good. You’re on Mavis duty. Let’s move,” she said to Roarke.

They didn’t find Kraus at home, but his wife interrupted her Sunday bridge game to tell them he was playing golf at The I