DANIEL SIPPED HIS COFFEE and watched the faint morning sun creaking over the sleepy, snowy town. Breaking his contemplation, there was a knock on the door. MacKinnon, right on time.
“How are you two getting along?”
Touesnard grunted from the stupor of another restless night on the sofa.
“Glad to hear it.” MacKinnon turned to Daniel. “Does the name Sharon mean anything to you?”
Daniel shook his head. “No. Why?”
MacKinnon held up a plastic bag holding an iPod. “This was Forrestal’s. It was the password. Must mean something important to him.”
“Wife’s name?”
“Nope. That was Gabrielle.”
“Daughter’s name?”
“No children.”
“New girlfriend?”
“Nobody we could find.”
“Boyfriend?”
MacKinnon threw him a look of surprise. “It would be an odd name for a man.”
Daniel rubbed his nose. “There’s something important that we’re missing about Mr. Forrestal.”
“I agree,” said Touesnard.
“What did you find on his iPod?” said Daniel.
“Music of someone in his late fifties. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Buffett …”
“Jimmy Buffett?” Touesnard tilted his head.
“‘Margaritaville.’ It was a big hit in the seventies, re-member?”
Touesnard shrugged.
“It looks like a pretty generic hit list to me,” Daniel said.
“Except it’s not.” MacKinnon’s face tensed.
“He could have downloaded it from dozens of music sites.”
“No, this list is unique. It’s Denise Michael’s Sunday Night Rock Royalty Top 100. Says so right here.” He showed Daniel and Touesnard the image on the iPod display.
“So?”
“This show is from Cay Rock 96.5 FM. Cayman Islands. We’ve already confirmed with the radio station. This was their list from two weeks ago.”
Daniel and Touesnard looked at each other in surprise.
MacKinnon continued. “I think he spent a lot of time down there. He wanted something to remember it by.”
“So. Forrestal had a connection with the place where someone set up an account with my name on it. It could be a coincidence,” said Daniel without any conviction.
MacKinnon cradled the iPod. “You don’t believe that, and I don’t believe in coincidences either.”
Daniel’s cellphone buzzed. He answered right away and put his phone face up on the table.
“Hi, Xiao Ping. I’m putting you on speaker. The police are here.”
“Back in the thick of it, Daniel?”
MacKinnon looked surprised. “Is that your friend from China, again?”
“Detectives, this is Xiao Ping Lu. She’s the one I called before. She’s in Beijing. Xiao Ping, I’m working with Detectives MacKinnon and Touesnard on this end. Trying to get to the bottom of things. It’s been a busy few days —”
Xiao Ping interrupted. “What happened?”
“Just like old times. Almost run off the road, among other things.”
“How is your driving holding up?”
“A bit rusty.”
The two detectives looked puzzled.
Daniel explained. “I took a high-performance driving course. All senior managers in our Beijing office had to take it.”
Touesnard said, “Didn’t you have taxis or a driver?”
“Sure. But we were all potentially high-worth targets. Kidnapping was common, and bodyguards couldn’t protect us all the time. The company had insurance policies on us, and the insurance company insisted that we knew how to defend ourselves in case something bad happened. Remember, it was the Wild West out there.”
Xiao Ping said, “He was a crazy driver.”
“The training was good. But it was a few years ago.” Daniel took a deep breath. “Glad you’re enjoying yourself, Xiao Ping. What did you find out about our mysterious businessman?”
“He’s an interesting person, Daniel. Competent.”
“That’s the good news. I’m after the bad news.”
“As I said, he’s interesting. Regular transactions.”
“Shell company?”
“No surprise there. On paper, it looks like a real company, but it exists only as a post office box number to hide the real owner and his money from prying eyes like ours.”
“Where is it located?”
“Cayman Islands. They have strict secrecy laws to prevent disclosure of the owner of any shell company.”
Daniel and MacKinnon nodded at each other. Daniel said, “Did your contact cough up the details?”
“Of course. Looks like the company hid a series of bridge loans.”
“So he had big bills to pay and came up short on cash to pay them?”
“Yep.”
“What did he have to pay?”
“Loans. And lots of them. They cascaded, one loan to pay the prior loan.”
“Diversified sources of revenue? Clients?”
“Not really. He seems to have only one income source.”
“What about investments? What does he have in his portfolio? Oil? Natural resources? Banks? High-tech?”
“It started with real estate. Then nothing. It’s more like a big savings account. One with a regular infusion of cash. The most recent deposit came in last July: 2.7 million dollars.”
Daniel tried to recall which acquisition happened last summer. “I remember that he bought Transcon Securitech, a Virginia-based online data management and security company. It was another big success, with more happy investors and more fawning headlines.” He checked Google Finance on his laptop to verify the price. “He paid three million and change. With fees, it could easily have netted him a couple of million. So 2.7 million is possible.” No surprises there, he concluded.
But the lack of a diversified portfolio got his spidey senses tingling.
“So no investments at all? Where did the money go then?”
“There were regular withdrawals. Usually to another shell account, also linked to him.”
“And they went where?”
“I’ve got the pattern breakdown. There were many places, and each time the list of destinations grew. He got around. Canada, of course, then Eastern Europe, Central Asia, then back to Canada and the States.”
A growing list of clients. That made sense. He was paying back dividends to his customers. But he wasn’t investing any money.
“Can you check to see if any destinations have been there since the beginning? Can you trace back a few years?”
“Only seven years back.” Daniel heard keys clicking in the background, then Xiao Ping said, “Yes, there’s one account that’s been there since the start. The SWIFT code is based in the Cayman Islands, but the company is headquartered in Panama City. And it’s not under his name. It’s owned by another shell company, LJF Global Investments.”
“And who is that?”
“That’s another reason we were such a great team, Daniel. You know, people still talk about our bust in Hong Kong. Just a second …”
Daniel felt a twinge of regret. It was so much more than just a bust. At least three people lost their lives because of his decisions that week. And for one man in particular, Daniel was the one who pulled the trigger.
“Got it,” Xiao Ping continued. “The only one listed on the proxy form as owner and founder is someone named Lloyd Fanshawe.”