Nineteen

The Hackettstown No-Kill Shelter (HNKS) turned out to be someone’s house, with a huge L-shaped wing built onto its side and extending back into the property for about a hundred yards. That, I assumed as I drove up, was where the animals were being kept. I looked at the digital clock in the van: it had taken me an hour and twenty-one minutes to drive this distance. Two minutes less than MapQuest had allowed. I must have been speeding.

The front door was locked, but there was a bell, which I pushed. A little window in the door opened. A pair of eyes filled it from the other side, and they had to look down to find me.

“Yeah?” the voice, of indeterminate gender, growled at me. It’s nice to deal with humanitarians.

“Swordfish,” I said, but there was no response as the eyes looked me up and down, which, alas, didn’t take long. “I’m here to see Warren,” I added. The door opened, and in I went.

Inside, there was the usual office with dog food, dog toys, dog accessories, and a huge donation box, which bore a sign that said, “Help us keep these animals alive!” But hey, no pressure.

The voice turned out to belong to a woman of about five-feet-and-eleven inches, which, with help from her Jersey hair, made her just a fraction shorter than Michael Jordan. She examined me again and said, “You the one who called about Warren before?”

“My wife,” I said in the deepest voice I could muster. I’m a manly man, dammit. I would have spat, but there was no receptacle in sight.

“He’s in the back, number thirty-six,” she said, handing me a key and pointing to a door. I used the key on the door, and miraculously, it worked. I walked into the animal shelter.

It was dark, and I hit a light switch on my left side. As soon as the lights came on, about two million dogs began barking their brains out all around me. The room was a long, long hallway, with what amounted to cells on either side going all the way back. From the look, the sound, and the smell of the place, it was full up.

Luckily, the stalls were numbered, and it didn’t take long to find thirty-six, on the right side and about halfway back. There, sitting and looking hopeful, was the only dog not barking to beat the band.

He was, as advertised, an attractive animal. Big, basset eyes, long basset ears, but otherwise beagle-like, Warren was the poster puppy for dogs. “Take me home,” his gaze, from a head tilted to one side, said. “I’m a good dog. See, I’m not barking like those other demented animals. I’ll be a fine companion for your children.”

The woman in the office had given me a short green leash, and I opened Warren’s stall and attached it to his collar. He promptly stood up and walked out just at my left heel. He probably would have shined my shoes for me, too, but I was wearing sneakers.

“How gentle is this dog in real life?” I asked the woman.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I have a twelve-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter, and they have to be able to walk him,” I said. I wanted a clear picture for me and for the dog.

“Well, my son has been walking him every morning for the past two months,” she said.

“How old is he?”

“He’s five.”

“Okay, the dog’s gentle. But do I have to call him Warren?”

She scratched her head. “Nah, that’s just the name we gave him here. He was a stray from the Bronx, and they were going to euthanize him, so we brought him here. You can change his name to anything you like.”

“How much to adopt him?” I sighed. If you’re going to have a dog, you might as well have one a five-year-old can walk, I always say.

It cost about $120 to adopt Warren, what with the fee from the shelter (“it keeps us going,” said the woman), the leash, the collar, the food bowl, the water bowl, the bag of dog food, the dog treats, the dog toy, the dog pillow, and the dog tag. So I’d go a week without eating—Lord knows, it would probably do me good.

The dog and I got into the van and started home. He didn’t want to get into the van, as he was quite happy walking around the parking lot and sniffing every blade of grass individually. But I managed to force Warren into the back seat (I’d had practice with two toddlers at various stages of my parental career) and close the door behind him. He didn’t relieve himself as he climbed up onto the seat, which I took to be a positive sign.

On the way home, since Warren was not an especially talkative dog, I made a mental list of phone calls to make as soon as we arrived. They included one to Lucille Purell Watkins, one to Mason Abrams, one to Alan McGregor, and one to Barry Dutton about my latest vaguely threatening phone call.

It took slightly less time to navigate the distance this time, because I knew the way from highway to highway now. New Jersey is the kind of state where you can do really well if you never have to drive on a local street.

Two blocks from our house, Warren lost his lunch on the back seat. Luckily, I had put a blanket out to cover the seat under him, so cleanup was somewhat easier, but I was already noticing how much caring for this dog (for which I took no responsibility) was eating into my day.

Warren trotted out of the van as if he hadn’t just made a deposit on its back seat, and set out exploring his new neighborhood. It was a good thing I had the leash to hold him, or he’d have explored all of New Jersey and I’d have been out $120.

Preston Burke was finishing work on the door when he saw us approach. “Watch his tail by the wet paint,” Burke said. “I did-n’t know you had a dog.”

“I didn’t,” I told him. “Now, I do. It’s been that kind of morning.”

Burke knelt down and started to stroke Warren. “Nice dog,” he said. “He doesn’t mind strangers, does he?” Then he looked into the dog’s eyes. “No you don’t, do you? Do you?” he said. People ask dogs questions like that all the time, as if they’re expecting an answer. “No, I don’t mind strangers,” the dog would say. “I just like it when they give me some bacon.”

Warren relieved some pressure on his bladder out in the front yard, which was my plan. So I closed the screen door, preventing him from running out, and put down his food and water bowls, filled both, then showed him where they were. He seemed unconcerned, and went to explore the house. Finally, he settled on the rug in my office, four feet from where I was working, and went to sleep.

I was about to call Abby when the phone rang. It was Margot the Agent, informing me that four production companies out of the seventy-five or so that I’d faxed had requested a copy of the script. It was better than nothing, but not much. In the middle of the conversation, the call waiting beep sounded, and I blew off Margot for, as it turned out, McGregor, who sounded excited.

“I’ve been looking over the books for People for American Values,” he said. “I found the thirteen million.”

It took me a few seconds to absorb that. “That fast?” I gasped.

“I told you it wouldn’t take long, especially if it was Legs who hid the money.”

“Was it Legs?”

“No,” McGregor said. “It was done much too cleverly for it to be him. Maybe someone who worked for him, because it certainly looks like it was done at his bidding.”

“Why?”

“The money came out of separate, private accounts Legs and his vice presidents had established to use for fund-raising, entertaining pols and donors, paying for travel, that sort of thing,” McGregor explained. “This has been going on for years, which is why nobody noticed. They never took more than five or six thousand at a time, but eventually, it added up.”

“I’ll say. To me, the five or six thousand sounds good.” Doing mental arithmetic (which was never my best subject, it should be noted), I estimated that it would take. . . uh. . .

“How many of these five thousand dollar skims would it take to amass thirteen million, Alan?” I asked him.

“Two thousand, six hundred,” he said.

“So if they did it every week for fifty years, they’d have enough?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” McGregor said. “It was five thousand, but five thousand from each of ten accounts at a time. So it would only take five years if they did it every week, which they didn’t. They took more like ten years, and did different accounts at different times. No pattern, no huge withdrawals, no noticeable crime, for a long time. If Legs hadn’t gotten killed, it’s possible this could have gone on longer, and made whoever did it even more money.”

“Wow. So maybe whoever killed Legs is pissed off now, because the attention from the murder cut off the gravy train.”

“Maybe. Or maybe whoever killed Legs decided to do it because they had enough money to do whatever they wanted now, and they didn’t need him anymore.” McGregor has a devious side you rarely get to see in certified public accountants outside an IRS audit.

“You care to take a guess at who was skimming, Alan?” I asked. “Any style to the crime that could point to one person or another?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “It could be any one of those ten vice presidents, or it could be Legs.”

“I think we can disqualify Legs as a suspect,” I said.

“Yeah,” McGregor chuckled, “that’s just what they want you to think.” I thanked him and hung up.

I was starting to formulate a theory, and the best way to confirm it was to call Lucille Watkins. She answered on the third ring, and appeared to be sober. She even remembered who I was.

“I don’t know there’s anything more I can tell you, Mr. Tucker,” Lucille said. “My brother’s been dead seven years, and he couldn’t possibly have been in Washington last month. That’s all there is to it.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I’m wondering about something. You said there was a time when things got so bad that Branford sold his blood to make some money.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Drank it all up, fifteen minutes after he got the money.”

“Did he ever sell anything else?” I wasn’t sure exactly how to broach the subject.

“Anything else?” Lucille asked. “Like what, a kidney or something?” She laughed rudely, having been surprised by the question, and by her response to it.

“I was thinking more of his hair.” She stopped laughing, and came back after a few seconds, sounding mystified. “You know, Mr. Tucker, I’d forgotten about it, but there was this one time he had a bunch of hair cut off—you know, Bran wore a long pony tail for a while—and sold it to one of those ‘real human hair’ wig places. He got a good price for the hair, too. How did you figure that out?”

“The hair was where the DNA came from,” I told her. “Whoever was in the room was wearing the wig that the company made from your brother’s hair.”

“Eight years later?” she asked in wonder.

“Some people wear those things for thirty years,” I said. “Do you think Tony Bennett’s fooling anybody?”

She was aghast. “Tony Bennett?” she asked.

Lucille gave me the name of the company in Odessa, TX that bought Branford Purell’s hair. It had gone out of business, but the records it left were still available to local authorities, so I’d call Abrams later and fill him in, but I was willing to bet I knew what they would say.

One person who wore a toupee was involved in this affair. One person who had sabotaged every attempt I’d made to find out more in his presence. One person who might have had Legs’ confidence, and could easily have been helping him skim money away from his own foundation.

Branford Purell’s hair had ridden in on Lester Gibson’s head.