Sam was going to kill me. Well, not really, but it was all I could think of as I hurried to our bedroom. He would be disappointed and hurt if he found out that I, too, had invested a fairly decent amount with Assured Estate Planners.
I hadn’t wanted any estate planning when I did it, since Binkie Enloe Bates, the young lawyer who took over Sam’s practice when he retired, was doing an excellent job for me. But a certificate of deposit had matured a few months back, and I’d made the decision to put the proceeds into Richard Stroud’s hands—as a courtesy to a friend’s husband, you know. It had been a purely personal gesture on my part, and I had paid no attention to his company or its name. More’s the pity now.
Still, I recalled that, at the time, he’d hinted heavily that he could do better with my assets than Binkie was doing, which had come close to offending me. He’d gone on to say that he could get a higher rate of return on my investments and save me on taxes as well. All I would have to do was sign on the dotted line, and he’d relieve me of any and all financial worries.
I’d ignored his sales talk, since I’d gone in for one transaction and one transaction only and had no intention of signing over my half of Wesley Lloyd Springer’s estate to anybody. If something sounds too good to be true, nine times out of ten, it is. Besides, I hadn’t liked the way he’d implied that Binkie didn’t know what she was doing.
Because Binkie did. She looked after my assets like they were her own, and if she ever needed financial advice, she consulted Sam, who most certainly knew what he was doing. Besides, Sam was the trustee for the other half of Wesley Lloyd’s estate which would come to Lloyd, my late and un-mourned first husband’s illegitimate child, so Sam had a finger in my half of the estate’s pie as well. That gave me the benefit of two financially knowledgeable heads for the price of one.
So why had I invested even a minimal amount with Richard Stroud? Well, for one thing, he’d spent most of his working life in real estate, buying and selling and seemingly coming out ahead every time. And I liked real estate. I liked it much more than pieces of fluctuating corporations in the form of stocks, when the CEOs made off with millions while the corporations failed.
They’re not making any more land, you know. Richard said he was putting together a real estate venture, and my contribution would give me a voice in how it was structured and developed. Saying what, how and where something was to be built had appealed to me, because there’d been too many architecturally challenged buildings already thrown up in our area of the state. I couldn’t help but believe that any such venture would benefit from my input.
And, as I’ve said, the other reason I’d invested with him was Helen. You couldn’t ask for a nicer, more willing person. Helen had been an officer in every civic, social and religious organization I knew of. Why, she’d been president of the garden club for three terms running, and we only elected somebody else when she broke her hip last winter and had to be in a full-body cast for weeks on end. Every once in a while, Helen had implied to me that she’d like to just attend a meeting sometime without having to chair it, but she was generally amenable to whatever anybody wanted her to do. She was the most capable and trustworthy woman I knew. I had thought it an act of friendship to put a little money into her husband’s hands and, in the doing, lend my support to a local business.
I stood in the middle of the bedroom with all these thoughts running through my mind, wondering what I should do. If Richard was really guilty of fraudulent behavior with other people’s money, and mine, it would be a scandal of monumental proportions. How would Helen bear up under it? Or had she known what he was doing all along? Was she now off somewhere on a South Sea island with him?
Lord, I couldn’t believe it. Not of her, of all people. Still, you never know.
I had a sudden pang in my breast, remembering another office that Helen held. She was the treasurer this year of the Lila Mae Harding Sunday School class and had our weekly collections in her keeping.
Giving myself a mental shake, I recalled that our Sunday school offerings couldn’t amount to enough to finance a flight from fraud, much less a trip to the South Seas.
“What you doin’ jus’ standin’ there?”
“Oh, Lillian,” I gasped, spinning around. “You scared me to death. My mind was a million miles away.”
“You ought to be settin’ down. You as white as a sheet. You want me to call Mr. Sam?”
“No. No, don’t do that. I’m all right. I’ve just had some disturbing news. Lillian, you know Helen Stroud, don’t you?”
“Yessum, she that little lady what always look so put-together. Her husband in the real estate bus’ness, I think.”
“Well, not anymore, apparently. It’s in the paper this morning. It looks like he’s absconded with all his investors’ money.”
“He what?”
“Left. Gone. They can’t find him, and his office is locked up tight. Nobody knows where their money is, if he’s lost it or stolen it or what.”
Lillian frowned. “How’d he get they money in the first place?”
“Well, they gave it to him. To invest and make more money. You know, like when you put money in a bank and it makes interest.”
She laughed. “My money don’t stay in long enough to make anything.”
I nodded. “You’re more right than you know.” The way interest rates were these days, you were more likely to lose money than gain it. I decided, then and there, to make arrangements with Binkie to look after what I’d provided for Lillian when I passed on, even though I didn’t intend to do so anytime soon.
It was just such innocent and trusting people like Lillian who got hurt in this current scandal. Well, Lord, and like me, too.
“Anyway, I’m going over to Helen’s. She’ll be prostrate with shame, if I know her. And worried, too, if Richard’s taken off without her.” I took a sweater out of the dresser drawer. “It’s still a little nippy out there, isn’t it?”
“Yessum, you’ll need that, but it s’posed to warm up later on.” Lillian’s face was knotted with concern. “I might know some people what give they money to Mr. Stroud. I hope I don’t, but I maybe do. What you think he do with it, if he not in bus’ness no more?”
“I don’t know, Lillian. I can’t imagine that he started out deliberately to steal from his investors. He is a Presbyterian after all. More likely, he made some poor investments and then couldn’t meet his obligations.” I thought about the frantic efforts Richard Stroud must’ve made to prevent exactly what had apparently happened. “On the other hand,” I went on, “there’s such a thing as a pyramid scheme, where you pay your first investor with money from your second one and on and on down the line. The problem comes when you stop getting new investors.”
“Law, that sound like robbin’ Peter to pay Paul.”
“Exactly. Maybe that’s what happened, but anyway, I’ve got to go see Helen and reassure her that whatever Richard did, or is still doing, won’t reflect on her.” Of course it would, but I’d pretend otherwise.
After slipping on my sweater and finding my purse and car keys, I went through the dining room to let Sam know that I’d be back soon.
Finding the room empty, I called to Lillian, “Has Sam already gone?”
“Yessum, he make a telephone call, then say he got to make steps.”
“Well, that’s odd,” I said, but it was more than that. As far as I could remember, this was the first time that Sam had left the house without a by-your-leave, much less a good-bye kiss. Since my first husband had held in contempt any demonstrations of fondness, I had thought I’d never get used to being married to a man of Sam’s affectionate nature. But the bereft feeling that swept over me made me realize that I was not only well accustomed to it by now, I missed it when it wasn’t there.
“He say to tell you,” Lillian went on, “to tell Miz Stroud if she need help to let him know.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, picking up my pocketbook and heading for the door. I left, wondering what had been so important that Sam would leave without saying a word to me.
Driving the few blocks to Helen’s neatly landscaped Cape Cod house, I commiserated with her situation by reflecting on my own fairly recent past. If anybody knew what it was like to bear the brunt of a husband’s missteps, errors in judgment or actual crimes, I did. Whatever Richard had done would indeed reflect on Helen, her longtime reputation for good deeds notwithstanding. They would all be for naught if he’d actually defrauded his clients. She would be linked to his misdeeds from now on, regardless of her innocence. Unfortunately, that’s what for better or for worse meant, although none of us thought of that when we made our marital vows.
Well, I thought as I eased through a four-way stop, I could certainly speak from experience, which might be of some help to Helen. I still carried some of the scars left over from my first marriage. So, if Helen listened to anyone, she would do well to listen to me. My advice would be to hold her head up and plow right on, leading her life as she’d always done, in spite of what people might say. One thing was for certain, I didn’t intend to urge her to stand by her man without regard for whatever mischief he was up to.
I smiled grimly, remembering Hazel Marie humming that tune while she straightened her closet just the other day. She’d stopped in the middle of the chorus and looked at me as if a light had suddenly turned on.
“That’s Tammy Wynette’s signature song, Miss Julia, but I just thought of something. That woman had five husbands in all and didn’t stand by a one of them. Where does she get off, telling other people to do what she didn’t do herself?”
At the time, I hadn’t been interested in the romantic antics of the country singers who entranced Hazel Marie. But as I pulled into the Strouds’ driveway, I realized that Miss Wynette’s advice would surely be urged on Helen. Presbyterians believe in standing by your man, too. Except not this Presbyterian, for it was to my everlasting regret that Wesley Lloyd Springer had passed before I’d known enough to cut my losses for all and sundry to see. Every time I thought of what he’d done, which wasn’t all that often these days, I had to deliberately remind myself of how all things work together for good—the good, in this case, being Hazel Marie and Lloyd in my life, and Sam in my bed.
I stepped out of the car and started toward the brick walk to Helen’s door. The grass in the neatly mown lawn and the azalea bushes on each side of the entrance looked fresh and new from the showers we’d had during the night. Except for some birds flitting around in an oak tree, nothing stirred. The garage doors were closed, and the curtains in every window were drawn tight. That wasn’t like Helen. Ordinarily, her house would be open and immaculate, which was the way she kept it. By this time of the morning, she would have been planning her next meeting or making calls or checking her calendar. But everything was still and quiet.
I sidestepped a puddle on the brick walkway, admiring the herringbone pattern as I walked up onto the front stoop. I rang the doorbell, not once but three times. Then I used the lion’s head knocker, which I usually hesitate to do at any house because the thundering noise it makes shatters my nerves. But there was no movement or sound from inside. So I removed a calling card from my purse and jotted a note to Helen on the back. Then I slipped it into the mail slot, hoping it wouldn’t slide across her highly polished floor and lie hidden under her Williamsburg block-front chest.
Feeling more concerned than ever after my futile attempt to comfort a friend, I walked back to the car. Just as I opened the door and started to slide in, I felt the presence of someone right behind me.
Whirling around, I almost bumped into a slender man who was hanging onto my door, looking avidly at me.
“Who are you?” I demanded, clutching my pocketbook.
“Andy Jordan, ma’am. Abbotsville Times. Would you care to make a statement?”