“Who would ever guess that such . . . such Gothic splendor would be found in the backwoods of upstate?” he asked, his trembling voice echoing off the ceiling. He turned and clasped my hands in his. “Darling, you must keep this magnificent absurdity!”
“I can’t afford to, Pish, dear. I really can’t!”
He looked thoughtful. “All right. I’ll accept that . . . for now. But we’ll talk some more.”
We finally returned to the kitchen, and Virgil Grace joined us ten minutes later, with a deputy accompanying him.
“Merry, Shilo, McGill, Mr. Lincoln,” Virgil said, gathering us all in his gaze. “I understand you have information to give us concerning Ms. Hooper’s criminal financial activities in Autumn Vale.”
“I do Sheriff, but I’m going to let my dear friend start,” Pish said, deferring to me.
The deputy sat down behind Virgil to take notes.
“I was suspicious of the dealings of Turner Construction and my uncle’s venture with the Turners, known as Turner Wynter,” I said, to preface Pish’s information. “None of it made sense. Binny Turner let me in to the Turner Construction offices and we looked around. I have some knowledge of development planning, and it was all wrong, everything I saw. Binny and Shilo found stuff in the accounts that didn’t add up. I can now tell you that Dinah Hooper was clearly using Turner and Turner Wynter to spin off shell companies, and using those shell companies to run some kind of financial scam. I told Pish, who is not only a financial adviser, but also has been used as an expert witness in court cases involving financial malfeasance, and he snooped around for me. He came here to tell me what he found out, but he wanted to wait for you, Sheriff, before he spoke, so I’m hearing this for the first time, too.”
Pish gathered us all in his gaze, and said, “I didn’t realize when I set out this morning that I would be giving this information to the police. Let me work my way through it from the start. Merry called me with troubling questions about Turner Wynter Construction, Dinah Hooper, the Turners, and all of their dealings with Autumn Vale Community Bank. Here is what I think has been happening, and what we ought to do about it.”
While dramatic in his day-to-day life, Pish eschews the use of italics in his speech while giving evidence or talking about his profession. He can be succinct, and gets to the point rapidly and clearly. The tale he told was riveting, and introduced me to the new word smurfing as it pertained to financial crimes.
His take had a lot of facts, but involved some conjecture, too, relating to people other than Dinah Hooper. It took some convincing, but Virgil finally agreed to let Pish and me run a scam of our own on the bank employees, namely Isadore Openshaw and Simon Grover. We set it up to happen the very next morning, getting the confirmation late that night that federal investigators would be involved as well, since it looked like this was going to be part of a federal investigation of a con group that extended farther afield than just Autumn Vale.
None of it would be possible without Pish’s help, but after a few phone calls, the feds knew that Pish was a reliable and competent aide who had done this kind of thing before.
Virgil took me aside before he left. “I think I owe you an explanation about your uncle’s death.”
“Dinah Hooper did it.”
“Yes, but not with her own car,” he said. “I’ve known for some time that Isadore Openshaw’s car was the one that ran Mel off the road, but I knew she wasn’t the one who did it. I had a reliable eyewitness account that placed her at home that morning. Ms. Openshaw swore up and down that she didn’t know who could have stolen her car and brought it back.”
“It was Dinah who had the car, then,” I filled in. “And Isadore was . . . maybe scared to tell the truth?”
“That’s what we think. Tomorrow we’ll know more. I’m glad you’re okay, but I’m mad as hell at the chances you took,” he said gruffly, his hand on my shoulder. “Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
*
IT WAS ABOUT A HALF HOUR AFTER THE BANK OPENED the next morning. Pish, Shilo, and I drove into town and parked on Abenaki. Dinah’s apartment door had a crime seal on it. I had heard (during a second, late-night call from a gruff and very sexy-sounding Virgil Grace, thanking me for our information and giving me confidential updates) that she had several impressive computer systems set up, ones that had been confiscated by the federal agents who were now swarming the town. What was on the computers would likely give forensic accountants many months of work to untangle. Dinah Hooper was a grifter extraordinaire, I had a feeling, and she had not been working alone.