Final Turn: A story of adventure, intrigue and suspense. (12 page)

Loretta had more problems with her co-workers than with her clients. During the last five years she had been more pleased with her financial success than with her acceptance into the group of cut throat realtors in her office. Still, she had one advantage over many of them, they thought she was naive. She didn't mind that, she knew the risk others were taking by underestimating her. There was a time for vanity and a time for business. When she began asking questions about transactions with Hong Kong firms, everyone showed a greater interest in trying to find out what she knew herself than they did in trying to help her. Most of them clearly knew nothing. Some were trying to hide what they did know. A few seemed very disturbed by Loretta's persistence, gave her insipid answers and were smugly pleased when they saw her ostensibly accept them. That was a mistake.

She used the best of her lascivious ways to pursue her prey, Andrew Peterson. He was the Branch Manager and Loretta had never liked him. Now he would pay for his treacherous, sexist ways of dealing with his secretary and with the female salespeople. He was a plastic man; a thin veil of politeness and formality stretched over a mass of debauchery, conceit and incompetence. He was one of those people who smiled too much and stood too close to you when he talked. He exuded a thick, intruding sense of self that he apparently thought of as an expression of friendship.
He was slimy and rich and he had never earned a cent of it. Loretta would feel nothing but elation at destroying him for her own gain.

She had him lying in her arms while the fat ignorant fool spilled his guts. His bitterness came to the surface. He complained that the regional office would not really let him into the inner circle. Branch offices were fine for getting out there and hustling the sales, but the money went to the regional office. He used words like ‘prostitute’ and ‘pimp’ in his rancorous description of his superiors. He used them like he meant them. Then he talked about how those pimps took all the money and bought up all the good deals through a network of paper companies, most of which they had set up themselves. They bought apartments, land, and businesses. They bought everything they could get as long as it was below market value. The public never saw these deals. He told Loretta all that as if every realty company did it. She began to think he was right. He laughed in his drunken state at the idea of people worrying about the Chinese owning so much property. Little did they suspect that it was probably the real estate company down the street that really owned it. The most ludicrous thing was that it never occurred to him that he was at risk by telling Loretta these things.  His only worry was having his wife find out that he had spent the evening in Loretta's bed. He was drunk, self-pitying and totally unaware of Loretta's motives. He had been a fool, now he was to become a broken fool.

It was two weeks later that Andrew Peterson was fired. He was horrified, angry and completely unable to defend himself. The regional office had received word that he had been giving out confidential information. Given the nature of the information, they could hardly give out the real reason for his dismissal. They also told him that they had information about intimate affairs with staff members. These were highly irregular and were well accepted as a reason for dismissal. It was not in keeping with the image of a prestigious, respectable firm. Peterson did not dispute the matter if they agreed not to make it public. They agreed. He cleaned out his desk under the satisfied gloating of his secretary and then he was gone. His mind was still reeling when he was out on the street, briefcase in hand with the door closed behind him.

For the next for several weeks, the regional office sought a replacement manager. During that time Loretta had graciously volunteered to fill in for the manager's duties. When her offer was accepted, it meant extra work but it gave Loretta access to all the files. She learned more during that time than she had during her five years previous. Neither vindication nor vengeance drove her to lay bare much of what had been kept from her. It was ambition. Loretta wanted to know how some people were making substantially more money than others. Success in landing sales did not explain it to her. The ease with which some agents set up and closed deals had an unnatural sense to it. Loretta knew she was good enough at her work and she had enough common sense to know that if someone were doing that much better than she was, there was something illegitimate involved.

It was during this period that Loretta discovered not only the inner workings of her office and agents but also some unusual activities of some of their clients. It became clear very quickly that real estate transactions not only made money but could also launder money from other operations. Huge sums of money were diverted through foreign companies, mostly in Hong Kong, by selling properties to those paper companies. Somehow, they had stuffed the accounts of these firms with money from another source, a source that they intended to conceal.

While digging through some property registration documents Loretta came upon Jack Fischer's old farm property. She saw the title change resulting from the sale and noted that it was now registered to Ming Sing Estates in Hong Kong. She took a note of that name with the intent to contact the company. If they had purchased Jack's property that easily, they would be a good buyer for her to know. Loretta intended to do some cross checking on the company name to get an idea of what other properties they had purchased locally.

The pain had not come back, neither had the cold. It was neither thirst nor hunger that had brought him out of his sleep. His head no longer ached and even his forearms were no longer sore. He couldn't see much though, but that was because it was dark. Yet, his arms were constrained, as was his chest. He could breathe well enough but he could not raise his arms. There was a strange smell, but it was different than the last time. It was not blood or dirt. He was trapped again, trapped by the instrument panel. He remembered getting into the airplane seat to rest and he wondered if the seat had slipped forward again and brought him up against the panel with his arms caught beneath. When he opened his eyes he didn't really see anything. He knew it was night and there were forms in front of him; ghostly forms, white and vertical. It was very dark and he could only see vague outlines that didn't really look like the instrument panel.

He heard someone calling. A woman's voice was calling his name. It came from very far away. For a while he just thought about that. A search party. They would be down in the gully calling up to him. It would have been an arduous trek into the area. How long had he been sleeping? He tried to call out, but it came out as little more than a weak bleat. They were still too far away for him to answer. He would have to get up and go out to find them. He tried again to pull himself up, at least to pull his arms free. He couldn't. The voice became clearer and closer. He knew it was Sam calling to him. How had she come out here looking for him? He felt something on his head, something moving. Gradually the light got brighter and the ghostly images began to merge into solid forms. They hung all around him. He was lying flat on his back, surrounded by sheets, the sheets of a hospital bed. He felt something soft and warm on his forehead. He let his head fall to the side. Then he saw Sam sitting beside him, stroking his forehead and calling his name. He was struck by how beautiful she looked in the weak light. Had she found him and brought him here? Behind her, he could see one of those metal stands with intravenous bottles and tubing that lead to his arm. He tried again to sit up but couldn't. She was telling him to lay still.

"Be careful now. Lie still. Everything is alright." She sounded like she was going to be his nurse. Her face was warm and kind, her hand gentle on his head. He looked at her pearly smile and felt it bring life back into his body, life which had weakened and begun to steal away earlier. Now she was there again and everything must be all right. He was sure of that.

Sam began telling him how his radio call to the gliding club ground station had gone through. The club had called her, organized a search team and found him from the air using the other tow plane. When they could see no movement, they had trekked into the bush to retrieve him. Suddenly Roger remembered what had happened and why he was here. He pushed himself up in the bed and wanted to take that stupid needle out of his arm. He pressed the button for the nurse and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He hated hospitals, especially the smell of the places. Sam tried to get him to lie down again. When the nurse came in she lectured him blatantly. He was not 'allowed' to get up or remove the needle. He would be there for some days yet, doctor's 'orders'. Her voice revealed concern and urgency.

He decided he was leaving. There were things he needed to do. When the nurse saw that he was determined to remove the needle himself she did it for him. Amid protests from the nurse and bewildered looks from Sam, Roger found his clothes in the closet and put them on. The nurse hurried off and returned with release forms for him to sign. That seemed very important to her. With that done, she acted more relieved and suddenly her advice and admonishment sounded more like quotations out of the hospital policy manual. All of the feigned personal concern was gone from her voice.

Sam said little to Roger as she drove him home. He knew she was not pleased with his behavior. She did listen as he told her about what had happened. She was especially attentive when he explained about the fuel gauges and how the engine had stopped due to a lack of fuel; that was the only time that she took her eyes off the road to look at him. Still, he knew she was upset because she dropped him off at his own place. Wished him 'good luck'. Then she told him to very careful before jumping to conclusions about what might have happened and who might be involved. She said that while looking directly in his eyes. That was all she said. Then Sam drove off with determination. To hell with it Roger thought, he would look after himself. He did have a plan.

Once he reached the balcony behind the trees there was at last some protection from the neighbors' windows. The climb over the fence and up the drainpipe had robbed his breath. He paused to regain what little composure he was entitled to while doing this sort of thing. He could feel an occasional pain run through his chest wherever he strained it. His forearms still hurt when he touched them. Kneeling in front of the sliding door, he went to work on the lock, careful not to leave any markings. Inside the track on the other side of the glass he could see a thin iron bar. Beyond that, everything was black. The lock was identical to one on his own door and it opened with the same ease. The practice had paid off. Once the lock was open, Roger took a weighty metal object from his jacket pocket and unwrapped it. It nearly slipped from his hands against the glass. He held one end against the glass where the iron bar came up to the sliding door. Slowly he moved the heavy magnet upward, end of the bar followed. He kept sliding the magnet upward with the bar following until the end of the bar was about four feet above the track. Then he slid the door to the side until it came up against the end of the bar and held it in place. Warm air from inside the house brushed his face. He could smell the new wood and carpeting. He placed the magnet on the decking just outside the door. The space at the open end of the door was just large enough to squeeze through. Once inside, he closed the door and placed the bar on the floor beside the track.

Inside everything was pitch dark. He eased up to the arched doorway trying to remember where objects were placed in the room. He had his hands in front of himself at waist level feeling for chairs. The floor was solid, no creaks. When he came up to the door, he surveyed the balcony that overlooked the foyer. Both bedroom doors on the balcony were closed with no light showing underneath. The foyer below was a black void expect for a frail light that struggled in from the street through the tiny stained glass window of the outer door. It felt very weird to stand there, an uninvited guest in his friend's home. They would be sleeping in the master bedroom downstairs. The only way to the study was up the curved staircase. To get to the stairs one would have to cross the foyer first, probably after turning the light on. That would give Roger just enough time to get back outside through the balcony door. 

He found the switch to the computer monitor and turned it on. As it came to life he searched for the controls to dim the screen. With the screen set so dim he could just see the writing, he turned on the computer itself. He grimaced at the hum of the fan as it whirred up to speed. In the weak light he sat in a chair facing the computer and began to search through the file directories. The clicking of the keyboard was not preventable, yet more annoying than dangerous. There were hundreds of files but Jack's work habits were familiar enough to Roger that he could guess at the contents of many files and directories by the names. Yet, if Jack had stored on the computer what Roger was looking for, he would not put it in an obvious place
.
After five minutes of nervous scouring through directories Roger found nothing of interest. He kept glancing towards the doorway, wary of any light coming on.  From shirt pocket he took a magnetic disc. On it was a special program that could be used to read all the disk space on Jack's computer and look for special bits of data. He started the program and typed in the characters that formed a record created by the magnetic card readers at eStorage's compound. He typed it exactly as it had appeared on the listing in Bill's office. It was the record for the truck usage of June 14. The program went off on its mission to look for that same information somewhere on Jack's disk drive. It would find it wherever it was on the disk. If it found a match, it would copy the file containing the data from Jack's disk onto the one Roger had put into the machine. This was going to take a few minutes. Roger went to the doorway and looked down into the foyer. All was still dark. The bedroom doors on the balcony remained dormant.

While the program was running, Roger leafed through some papers on the desk. Finding nothing of interest he looked in the desk drawers. He came across a business size envelope containing several bankbooks and a passport. The last entry in the passport was a stamp entitled "Hong Kong: Temporary Visitor Visa." The date was June 16, the current year. June 16, Hong Kong time. Calculating the flight time as 15 hours from Vancouver, including a stopover in Honolulu and allowing for crossing the international date line, that mean Jack could easily still have been in the city on the day of the robbery. The date of the exit stamp indicated a stay of five days. One of the bankbooks was from a Hong Kong bank, The Continental Chinese Bank. With an almost detached mind, Roger looked through it. The last line indicated a balance of $320,000. The first entry was $600,000. That had come in one deposit
.

In the envelope, Roger also found a torn piece of paper with the name 'Ming Sing Estates' written in a scrawled hand. Underneath that there was a Fax number and a telephone number. Roger interrupted his search program on the computer and added ‘Ming Sing Estates’ to the list of phrases and characters for which to search. He re-started the program and it continued its search. He returned the items to the envelope, replaced it in the drawer. He stared at the screen mentally willing the program to run faster. The little light on the hard drive blinked frantically as the program read the information looking for a match. Perhaps the program would find emails Jack had sent to Ming Sing Estates.

From the corner of his eye he caught a faint light on the floor of the balcony outside the doorway. He came explosively to his feet. The foyer was still dark. The light had to be coming out from under one of the bedroom doors on the balcony. Roger felt more a sense of quilt than fear. If he were caught in his friend's house, it would be horribly embarrassing. How would he explain it? He turned off the computer monitor. As his hand reached for the main switch on the computer, the light on the balcony brightened. Someone had opened one of the bedroom doors and let the rooms light out. It was the bedroom adjacent to the open archway leading into the study. In two steps Roger stood flat against the wall beside the archway. The computer was still running. The hallway light went dimmer again, probably as a result of the door closing. Someone scuffled down the balcony and stopped at the open archway. Roger breathed slowly through his open mouth; he could feel a pulse pounding in his throat. He pressed himself back, his head leaning against the wall to steady him. A prickling sensation began in his nose threatening to bring on a sneeze. The person entered the room and went straight for the computer. It was Trudy
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She must have chosen to sleep in one of the upper bedrooms. Trudy was dressed in splashy nightgown thrown loosely about her. Her perfume filtered into Roger's nose aggravating the itch. Trudy turned off the computer and looked over the desk. She was sure to see him on her way out. There was just enough light. She turned toward the sliding glass door and stepped up to it looking out into the darkness beyond. She pulled her nightgown tightly about herself as if the scene outside chilled her. Roger's muscles flexed ready to catapult his body through the doorway and down the stairs. He would be heard but he might get out the front door before being seen. Just as his head and shoulders came forward to go, he heard a voice calling from the balcony hallway.

"Trudy?" It was a man's voice. Jack's voice. Jack! He was supposed to be out of town!

"I'm in the study. You left the computer running. I'll go down and get us a drink in a minute."

He heard Jack walk down the balcony. He stepped into the doorway and stopped. Roger could just see his profile in the weak light from the hallway. Roger pressed himself harder into the wall. He readied himself to push himself out from the wall and knock Jack down, duck behind him out the door and down the stairs. Just then Trudy stooped down towards the iron rod. That would give him away.

"Look at that. You left the computer running and didn't even secure the door." She bent down to replace the bar. Jack took another step into the room. Roger's mind began a search for explanations. He couldn't imagine what he would say when they saw him. He'd have to tell them both about his suspicions of Jack. It would be terrible. Jack was unpredictable when cornered. He could easily become violent. Roger began to feel panic take hold. He had to get out, now. As Trudy came up from replacing the bar and turned towards the door, Jack blocked her view of Roger. He stood broad shouldered directly between them. As she came up to him he slid his arm around her waist under her nightgown. They walked out arm in arm, neither looked towards Roger. A light wisp of disturbed air carried the scent of their bodies into Roger's nostrils as they passed within a foot of him.

"Let's go down and make a drink." Trudy spoke in a soft, intimate voice.

"I don't remember the computer being on and I was sure that door was barred. That's why I never checked it."

"Only the computer was on. The screen had been turned off. I really don't understand about the door. I know you're always so careful about….."

Roger could hear them descending the stairs and cross the planking of the foyer into the hallway to the kitchen. He felt a tightness leave his chest and realized he hadn't been breathing for a while. He gulped his first breath. The rough surface of the wall had left impressions in his back as he stepped from it. Through the doorway he could see the foyer bathed in a low light escaping down the hallway from the kitchen. He stepped across the study to the glass door, lifted the iron bar, slid the door open and placed the bar at an angle against the door. As he squeezed through the opening, he remembered. He had better slow down and be careful. A mistake could still catch him. He ducked back inside and took his thumb drive from the computer and placed it inside his pocket. He went back out the door. The bar lowered neatly into place as the door slid shut. He picked the lock to latch it again, retrieved his magnet and was over the side of the balcony and down the drainpipe.

** ** **

It was not until Roger had settled into an easy chair in Sam's living room with a drink in his hand that his normal mental prowess began to show a glimmer of recovery. Pillaging other people's houses in the dark was not for him. He'd had enough of that already. What was even more disturbing with was that he had discovered something he didn't want to know.

"You can get yourself into a lot of trouble, if not killed doing stunts like that." Roger wasn't sure if he should take that as an expression of concern. Sam hadn't really finished with him yet about leaving the hospital in the way he had. Now he had done another seemingly foolish thing. Still Sam looked at him with a curious tenderness. She had answered his late night call wearing a light blue housecoat, well wrapped about her and floor length. Still, she looked inviting as she sat bundled into a large stuffed chair with her legs folded underneath her. She watched him quaff a large rum and coke.

"Are you sure she didn't see you? Maybe she only pretended not to notice because she was afraid. Maybe she didn’t recognize you. She might have thought you would attack." She almost spat the words out with a laugh. "You know Roger, you'd make a fine spy." Sam grinned at him with a spirit of healthy mockery tempting him to disagree.

"If she would have seen me, you’re probably right, I'd either be in a lot of trouble or dead. Mostly because she wasn't alone."

"Not alone. What do you mean? Jack was home after all?" She eyed him for an explanation.

"Yes he was home." Roger said sheepishly. "He is supposed to be on a trip but it looks like he didn't go yet. I didn't expect him to be home."

"You're kidding. So you almost got yourself caught snooping around Jack's house in the middle of the night. Was it worth it? What did you find?" Sam sat up giving her full attention to the conversation. Roger emptied his glass and as he mixed himself another, he told Sam the rest of it, including the part about bankbooks. She sat open mouthed. "That must have been exciting." Apparently, she had forgotten the dangerous situation she had been concerned about earlier.

"I set up a search program on the computer in Jack's study while I was looking through that other stuff. It might have found something on those missing records from the storage compound. It was running all the damned time that they were in the room. Trudy actually turned the computer off and gave Jack hell for having left it running. Nobody noticed my thumb drive stuck in the computer. It was hilarious." That seemed funny to Roger now that he was out of there. Sam looked at him knowing he certainly had not been laughing at the time. Then Roger told Sam about the note on Ming Sing Estates.

"I wonder if that is the company Jack sold his farm to." He said as Sam got up and headed for the cabinet to get herself a drink. "I would sure like to know how Jack got $600,000 to put into a Hong Kong bank and why a bank in Hong Kong."

Sam had settled into the chair cradling her drink in her hands and looking into the glass as if it were a crystal ball.

"I'm sure Jack has some connection with that robbery. There are just too many things lining up. I wish I had more time on that computer. I almost forgot to retrieve my disk when I left. That would have been great. Jack would have taken all of two minutes to figure out whose it was." It occurred to Roger that he was confirming Sam's assessment of his spying abilities. Then something else occurred to him that didn't enhance his self-image as a master sleuth.

"I've told Jack a lot about what I found out about that truck and the robbery. He has plenty of reason to think that I am tracking him down, purposefully or otherwise. The more I think about it the more it seems that Jack is trying to get rid of me. I know he had plenty of opportunity to rig those fuel gauges on the tow plane before I took off. He also set Lindquist up for that long, low tow out over the hills with all that water ballast in the glider. I told him about those records from eStorage's computer system and everything. He must have thought I was an idiot. He sure as hell didn't seem too interested. He seemed evasive. I've told him too damned much already." Roger wanted to try his theory out on Sam. She looked perplexed but not convinced. She had already warned him once about jumping to conclusions. He couldn't draw her into a discussion. Perhaps she was still upset that he had stormed out of the hospital.