The initial thrill of a murder investigation soon dissipated back into the methodical drudgery of forensic accounting. From Doyle’s, McBain and Boston stopped at their office for a few things and then went directly to the workroom at the Baker house. Christina returned to the bookstore to catch up on her own business before meeting her husband for dinner. When she arrived at the house that night, the whiteboards looked as if they had been commandeered by chemists or software engineers, Boston’s elegant block lettering interlaced with a barely discernible cursive scrawl.
The main table was still organized like a toy village, but there was a difference in the ways the piles of paper had been rearranged. Now they provided a tangible reflection of the names and boxes on the whiteboard. Sarah Baker’s original letters occupied a central position on the table, alongside an empty black plastic inbox labeled The Doctor. The stacks of bills and telephone records stood to one side in orderly fashion, while new columns had appeared with titles such as Questionable Items, Further Research, and Cash Flows. There were also several black binders on a side table standing alongside a copy machine and duplicate stacks of the love letters, all on different-colored stationary.
“You’ve had a busy day,” Christina said. “What’s this?”
Boston finished writing on the board with a blue marker. “Yes, we’ve had to reorganize a little, but we think we’ve scrubbed it down to a new plan of attack.” She pointed to the center of the dining table with her marker. “We’re going to follow two main threads for now and see where they lead: Sarah’s affair with the unknown man and Doctor Lehmann’s involvement with your parents.”
“What about Mr. Roche?”
“We’re keeping him as another party of interest at this point,” McBain replied. “Mainly because he was in charge of the missing money in the picture, and also since we still have to determine how well he knew Lehmann. But right now we have two other crucial mysteries to go along with the money—the affair and the murder of the man who was personal physician for Phillip and Sarah, both of whom died prematurely.”
“Before, we just had to find a money trail,” Boston said. “Now we not only have to do that, but discover if and how these things are interconnected with one another. So we’ll start with the assumption that they are and start looking for clues. By the way, we were just about to have dinner. Are you hungry?”
Christina shook her head. “No, I had dinner with David, thank you. But I’ll be happy to open a bottle of wine with you.”
McBain led the way into the kitchen. “Not necessary. I took the liberty of doing a little food pairing from your cellar. We’re having Italian. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Why no, not at all,” Christina said as they walked. “You’re welcome to explore the cellar as long as you’re here. I only ask that you not finish the…oh goodness.”
As they sat down at the kitchen table, she was appalled to see two boxes labeled Pino’s Pizza at Cleveland Circle stacked next to a dust-covered, thirty-year-old Bordeaux.
“Interesting pairing choice,” she whispered. “You were saying?”
In between slices, they brainstormed ideas.
“Isn’t pizza the greatest?” McBain said. “We have to start digging on the doctor and stay out of the way of the police while doing it. Monday morning, I’ll contact the school in Saint Louis to see what they can tell us. We also have some contacts in Miami who can do some investigating to see if we can track down the family or any trace of Lehmann there. I’m not optimistic either one of those will turn up anything.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve been thinking about it all afternoon,” Boston said. “At this point, it wouldn’t surprise us if this guy’s background was fraudulent. Everything you’ve told us suggests no one knows anything about his life before he showed up here in Boston. We’ll check with your parents’ friends again, but I doubt they’ll have anything to add. While we’re doing that, we can construct a partial list of any of them who were patients of his, and that may lead us to more. Who knows what kind of people he was involved with, and what he was into?”
McBain swirled his glass with one hand while he contemplated another slice of pepperoni with the other.
“I want to quiz Roche again too. I’m sure he’s heard the news by now. I want to ask him about his relationship with the doc. Give me a chance to read him a little more. Who knows? If by some chance he’s involved with the same people and really did rip off your parents, he could be rattled by seeing the doctor end up dead. You never know what a little pressure can bring to the surface. Speaking of which, there’s something else we’d like you to consider.”
His partner shot him an eyebrow. “I thought that could wait until we found out more. We don’t have to discuss this tonight.”
“What is it?” Christina looked back and forth at the two investigators.
“It’s rather delicate,” Boston answered. “And it has to do with your parents, so let’s wait and tackle it next week.”
“You want them exhumed, don’t you?” Christina asked. “You want a new autopsy for my parents.”
McBain cocked his glass at his partner. “Like I said, she’s pretty smart.”
“We’d like you to think about it,” Boston said. “I’m going to speak to the coroner’s office on Monday, but from what we’ve learned and seen so far, I think we have to question the original conclusions of the autopsy. The doctor’s involvement taints everything, and his murder suggests the worst. No matter what we find out about Sarah’s affair, that alone means he was killed to prevent anyone finding out more about him, and them. His position as their physician gave him unlimited access to their healthcare. Not to mention knowledge of any medication that might have triggered a fatal overdose. We also need you to get all of their medical records as soon as you can.”
Christina was calm as she listened. McBain watched her and saw the toughness again. Sipping at his wine, he felt the stir of something he vaguely recognized as affection mingled with respect. He knew she was going to agree even before Boston finished explaining their logic. The woman had been a rock in the face of the apparent suicides of the two people she most loved in life. She was very cool and controlled for someone who was beginning to come to grips with the reality that her parents might have been murdered. And while she was as irritating as she was beautiful, she was a damn good client. He liked her a lot.
“Of course,” Christina said. “Whatever you think is best. I’ll speak to my attorney and see what steps we have to take to get it started.”
McBain noticed her eyes roam around the kitchen where she had grown up, eaten, and learned to cook, and linger on the things her parents had known and loved. The parties they had thrown had been hosted here, holidays planned and celebrated. Surely the countless late-night conversations they had shared together echoed in her thoughts at this very table.
“I just cannot imagine why Doctor Lehmann would have wanted to hurt my parents. Or why he would have stolen from them. He had a good business and reputation in this neighborhood. I still feel there must be some kind of mistake. I’m hoping his killing has nothing to do with us. But we have to know for certain. If a new examination is the only way, so be it.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Boston and I know it’s a difficult thing to think about. If we can in any way avoid it, we won’t ask. Let’s see what the police come up with first. Until then, we’ll just lay the groundwork.”
“By the way,” she said, “I’m curious as to why you made so many copies of my mother’s letters.”
Boston smiled as she wiped her hands on a cloth napkin. “As we said, in the meantime we’re going to do our best to track down the affair under the assumption it’s connected to all this. So while McBain is focusing his efforts on the doctor and the financial records, we’re going to try to match up any information we can decipher from Sarah’s letters with any records we might have from receipts and such. Then I get to take a few road trips to see if I can find any of the places in New England she refers to and locate someone who recognizes her picture. Maybe we’ll get lucky and come up with a description of her Romeo. Sorry.”
“Right,” McBain said. “And we’ll be going through another set of copies to build a profile of the stranger to help Boston out. It’s long shot, but if I give you some material, it just might jog your memory. You never know. We’ll continue to dig for clues in that mountain of paper in the other room.”
McBain and Boston operated from a simple premise. There were any number of ways to cheat someone in the world of finance, but in general, there is always one key element involved: trust. Sometimes that trust is tied to credibility or reputation. Other times trust is extended based on references from others. Sometimes it relies on a system that is in place, like paperwork or faith in the law and regulators doing their job. But in every case, the fox gets in to the hen house because he is able to win the trust of the victim. Then, when they least suspect it, comes the betrayal.
Without the help of the Bakers themselves, Boston and McBain were on their own for the first time in their four-year business as financial sleuths. It was a strange feeling sifting through the paper history of someone else’s life. At any given time, people hated the drudgery involved with facing their taxes, paying bills, or filling out forms. Now the two partners were forcing themselves to do the same tedious work multiplied exponentially, working backward without the aid of memory or help from the victims. It was an odd way to learn about people. They had done some strange things and burrowed their way into private lives and secrets before without the slightest scruple or hesitation. But there was something eerily discomforting about reconstructing the lives of two dead people.
Computer algorithms profiled lives every day in seconds, and better. But that was a luxury they did not have. And because the Bakers had been so traditional in their way of life, in a way it would have desecrated their memory. In defiance of technology and treasuring a way of life that was almost archaic, they had kept their thoughts and secrets on paper, and not in a digital safe.
As brutal as it was, McBain and Boston had to resurrect the Bakers with the help of their daughter in order to find a path to the truth. The letters and knowledge of the affair had been a painful beginning. There would be more pain to come, of that they were certain. As McBain had said, there were secrets. Once they started to come out, people were going to get hurt. They already were.
The partners explained to Christina Baker that the key was somewhere in the records of their financial transactions. Money always told the tale of a life. So beginning on Sunday, they went over them—all of them. Then they went through them again. Page by page, month by month, McBain and Boston rebuilt the history of the Bakers’ financial lives, finding paperwork that followed and confirmed every bank deposit and payment, every bill charged and paid, every cash withdrawal and every investment statement that they had received going back ten years.
The fact that Phillip and Sarah maintained separate bank accounts and credit cards complicated matters. Boston was also flummoxed that there were statements from a number of bank accounts that seemed redundant. Christina explained that her parents often failed to close out unused accounts or credit cards out of sheer absent-mindedness, getting around to them after months or years of delinquency notices from the companies. She recalled at least twice when a bank itself had closed them out after several attempts.
The records had been a mess, but, guided by Boston’s discipline for detail and organizational mania, over three days they brought order and coherence to the map. Damn academics, she kept repeating under her breath. As the paper mountain gradually became less chaotic, most of what they needed emerged.
When they had finished with the medical bills, there was no evidence of any suspicious billing or unnecessary activity. Without access to the doctor’s files, that closed out that route. The insurance company might be able to tell them if any questionable payments had been made, but that would take time, even with Christina Baker’s authorization. The medical records arrived on Monday, but they would need to rely on an outside expert to determine how to proceed, especially if a new autopsy was involved.
It was late Tuesday morning when McBain found the first thread and put together a mismatch in cash flows involving transfers between the investment and bank accounts. With an eye to large withdrawals, he noted that cash movements out of the accounts sometimes spiked during times when the market was moving up in years past. In most cases, money had shifted directly to a bank account. But as he began trying to match up all the withdrawals and deposits, it became clear that a number just disappeared. While none was sizeable enough to attract attention given the scale of the assets, when he totaled up the individual payments, his eyes sparkled with the first signs of discovery. The numbers were the beginning of a path.
“Just over a hundred grand,” he told Boston. “It’s not the missing millions, but it’s a start.”
“And you don’t know where it went,” she said.
“Down the rabbit hole.”
“Do you know who and when?”
“The withdrawals are from the investment account over time. Some of them are accounted for in the bank statements. But quite a few of them aren’t. They just disappear. None of the amounts is particularly large, so it looks like the intention was to keep it steady and low profile enough that it wasn’t noticeable or could be explained easily. Looks like both of them, but mostly Sarah. The last one was a few months before their death.”
Her green eyes lit up as she sipped at a cup of coffee.
“Know what I think?” Boston asked.
“Usually.”
“Where are they?”
He handed her a stack of withdrawal authorization forms. “Let’s take a look.”
Their bloodshot eyes and sore backs were rewarded that afternoon, when Boston was finally certain of what she was looking at.
“You see it?” she asked.
“I do now. I didn’t catch it the first three times around. Damn.”
“It’s good.” There was admiration in her voice. “I’m no expert, but if I’m right, it’s the best I’ve ever seen. In fact it’s so good we should have Dee Dee check it with her guy just to make sure we aren’t wrong.”
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “You can see it with the small r’s in the names. Your eyes are younger than mine, but I see it too. It’s frequent enough that whoever did it must have gotten lazy. Maybe things were going so well that he or she got sloppy with overconfidence. When you compared the stream of signatures with some of the handwriting from the letters, it became a little more obvious. But you’re right. Check it out with Dee.”
“I’ll see her on Thursday just before I hit the road for Vermont.”
McBain rifled through a stack of notes on the table in front of him. They had made progress and could call it quits for the day and head back to the office.
“OK,” he said. “By the way, here is the list of hotels in the region that fit the profile and some of their credit card receipts over the last three years. You can use them as a starting point for your road trips. Along with Sarah’s picture, the few descriptions we have from the letters might help find someone who recognized her and any guests.”
“Fine. I’ll match up what I’ve gleaned from the letters with the hotels and restaurants and start setting up a patterned search. You have a profile of him yet?”
“Almost. Damn, Sarah took a lot of trouble to make sure she didn’t identify him. There are some things in here about him, but no description and not much detail. I still wonder if it wasn’t one of their friends. She writes like she is afraid they might be discovered. Maybe she was worried about her letters falling into the wrong hands, like the guy’s wife. I’m sure a divorce lawyer would kill for these. The woman should have worked for the CIA.”
“That would be a pattern, wouldn’t it?” Boston said as she shrugged. “You couldn’t get much closer than Abbott. Maybe that’s how affairs evolve. Isn’t that how it worked with Melissa?”
“Quite the opposite. I only wish she had cared enough about my feelings to be this discreet. Mel pretty much shoved it in my face in the end, like she was spiking the ball or something. And hard as it may be for you to believe, I have no experience from the other side, so I have no idea whether there is a common pattern.”
Boston leafed through the stack. “So why do I have receipts for both of them? That’s a lot of extra ground to cover, even for me.”
“Because they were lumped together in a mess, and I didn’t want us to miss anything by accident. And considering Ms. Baker’s newsflash about how flighty her parents could be about accounting, I figured they might use each other’s credit cards once in a while too. I separated them by hotel, date, and geographic category, not person. When I could, I marked them with a P or an S so you can skip over the ones that aren’t relevant. Besides, sometimes there are matches, which means they had both used their credit cards at the place at different times. You can ignore those for now. I may not know much, but if she was that concerned, I doubt she’d go to a place nearby that knew Phillip. You’ll just have to pick out Sarah’s in context and keep them in order as you go.”
She paged through the pile, shaking her head.
“For a college professor, she sure seemed to get plenty of time off to take extended trips. Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Nantucket, the Cape, the Berkshires. You’d think she was already retired. Nice work if you can get it. This could take a while.”
McBain grinned at his partner as he packed up his briefcase. “Well, you’ve been talking about taking a trip all winter. And how I’ve been getting on your nerves.…Bon voyage.”
Boston grabbed her own leather bag and patted her partner on the cheek with her free hand.
“What will you do without me when I retire?”
“Probably start drinking.”
****