The Crisp Poleward Sky Read online

  Chapter 13

  He watched the woman enter the hotel restaurant and look around. Then she saw him and smiled and walked briskly to his table.

  He stood as she approached, pulling out a chair and holding it for her. She paused a moment and looked in his eyes before giving a short nod, as if to herself. Then she sat, and he eased her chair back in.

  “You’re Susan. Your picture doesn’t do you justice,” he said.

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “You can’t catch some things in a photo,” he said.

  She inclined her head slightly, a signal for him to continue.

  “Attitude. Posture. Bearing. Directness. Like that.”

  “Ah,” she said. “You appear to be different than I pictured, also.” She had a slight continental accent.

  He waited.

  “Things you can’t see in a photo, Jonathan. Manners. Stature. Confidence. Good eye contact.”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind,” he said.

  “And the Boston Harbor Hotel. Very nice.”

  Although they had never met, they had been in secret communication for several days. They’d both said they were married, but not to each other.

  “Is it always Jonathan, never Jon?” she asked.

  “I was Jon until I graduated Prep School,” he said. “But never since then.”

  His pedigree included Phillip Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, followed by a graduate education at Yale University. On a recent phone call, he’d told her that he held a government job, something inside the beltway, and she had made a small, sexy joke of things “inside the beltway,” and they’d laughed together.

  “I must say, Madison Ashley certainly delivers on her promises,” he continued. “You seem to be ‘as advertised,’ maybe better.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. I appreciate it.” She smiled at the table for a moment. Then she looked at him and said, “Are you hungry?”

  “Well, no, but a cocktail might be nice,” Jonathan responded. “What would you like?”

  “Well, I think I’d like a Blanton’s Single Barrel,” she said. “Neat.”

  “Carmel and citrus, from Kentucky,” he said. “That does sound good. Nice choice.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  “Oh, perhaps a dram of Writers Tears.”

  “You prefer Irish Whiskey?” she asked.

  “No, but I do like Writers Tears.” He smiled easily at her.

  The waiter approached and Jonathan ordered their drinks.

  When he’d left with a “Very good,” Jonathan said, “What drew you to Madison Ashley? Why a dating service?”

  Susan paused for a moment, thinking. “I think it’s the adventure,” she said simply. “And meeting new people. I’m very social.”

  The waiter arrived with their glasses and carefully set them on the table. Jonathan nodded to him, and he withdrew. An instrumental version of “Masquerade” was playing in the background.

  “Social,” he said. “Yes, I can see that.”

  “I don’t have much opportunity to meet new people,” she lied. “My husband works constantly, and then we have to attend the company dinners and such. But it’s mostly the same crowd. And I’m the boss’s wife.”

  “Sure,” said Jonathan. He sipped some whiskey.

  “So from there, it’s tough to form real relationships,” she said. “Too many strings attached.”

  Jonathan nodded.

  “But let’s not talk about that right now,” she continued.

  “All right. What do you prefer?”

  “I prefer that we finish these drinks and go to your room,” she said. “We can continue to get acquainted there.”

  Jonathan nodded slightly, looked at his drink and took another sip.

  “What color are your underwear?” he asked politely, with a gentle smile.

  She raised an eyebrow. Then she said, “You’ll see.”

  * * *

  The heavy, wooden door closed slowly and with almost no sound. Susan looked around the room for a moment, and then walked to the King-sized bed and set her purse on the bedside table.

  Jonathan smiled.

  Susan looked at him for a moment, and then reached back over her shoulders with both hands and pulled the black dress up over her head. She then laid it over the winged back chair near the window. She was dressed in high heels, seamed hose, a garter belt, and a bra and matching Brazilian-cut panties. “They’re red,” she said.

  He admired her taut body and her firm stomach. “Are you claiming that side of the bed?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I’m claiming the whole thing,” she said.

  * * *

  Susan Del Gato leaned forward, hunching slightly, and dropped her small breasts into the red bra she was holding, then she hooked it with the clasp. She sat on the edge of the bed, her back to Jonathan. She smiled to herself.

  “That was delightful,” he said.

  Susan said nothing, but began to slip the short black dress over her head, her back to him.

  Jonathan shrugged to himself and sat up, looking around for his suit. It was folded neatly on a chair near the bed. He stood and went over to it.

  “Are you interested in meeting again?” she asked, still facing away from him, toward the window.

  “Yes, I think so,” he said. He was nodding.

  She fitted and smoothed her dress, and ran her fingers through her hair. Then she took her jewelry from the bedside table and began to put it back on. She turned and looked toward him.

  “There was a certain fit to it,” she started. “A good experience for all, I hope.” She said it as if they had been test driving a new car, possibly a Lamborghini.

  He nodded, buttoning his shirt.

  She slipped on her shoes. “I’ll be going, now,” she said, unnecessarily.

  “Let’s stay in touch,” he said, absently.

  * * *

  Zeke knocked on the door of the apartment and heard a scampering from inside.

  “Who’s there?” A male voice, raspy and young sounding, came from inside.

  “I’m here to talk with Judith Henderson. I called ahead, and she’s expecting me,” he said through the door.

  Silence. Then, from inside in a louder voice, “Judy. There’s someone here to see you.”

  The door remained closed for about twenty seconds, and then it was pulled open by a young girl with short brown hair and a green and red tattoo on her neck.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “I’m Zeke. I called you earlier,” he said with a big smile. “About the student loan thing.” Discounting it as if it were a small matter.

  “Yeah. I’m Judy. Come on in, I’m cooking bacon. We can talk in the kitchen.”

  Zeke followed her through the small living area and into the galley-style kitchen. He noticed two prescription drug bottles on an end table and an ashtray full of cigarette butts and a few smoked joints on the coffee table. The owner of the male voice was nowhere to be seen.

  “Who’re you with, again?”

  “I’m an auditor,” he said. “Independent.”

  “But Dr. Richardson said there wouldn’t be any trouble. That I wouldn’t have to pay it back.” She sort of whined when she talked.

  “Paul Richardson, at the college?” asked Zeke.

  “Yeah. They sent me to talk to him when I dropped out of my classes. He’s in charge of the money,” she explained.

  Zeke nodded.

  The smell of hot bacon grease and hemp was strong in the small kitchen. Judy started turning the bacon. There was bacon grease splattered on the stovetop and on a burning joint resting on the edge of the plate that held the cooked bacon.

  “Why’d you decide to drop out?” Zeke asked, pleasantly.

  She paused and looked at him. “You don’t look like an auditor,” she said.

  “I’m just helping out with this one,” said Zeke disarmingly.

  Judy thought for a moment and then nodded to herself. “So what do you
want to know?” she asked.

  “Why you dropped out this semester.”

  “Oh, school’s a drag,” she said.

  “How did you find out about the student loan money?” Zeke asked with a sincere expression.

  “Um, I think someone at the school brought it up.” She thought. “Yeah, it was Eddie George. We call him ‘Fast Eddie’ because he’s always got an angle going. You know?”

  “You buy your weed from him?” Zeke asked.

  “Sure,” said Judy. “Everybody does. Well, things slowed down a little when Peter was shot.”

  “So Eddie approached you about this?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and took a drag on the joint. “I got hungry from the weed, so I thought I’d cook up some bacon.” Then she shouted, “Hey, Hank, you ready for some breakfast?”

  She took the bacon out of the pan and turned and blotted it on a paper towel and set it on the plate. Then she put the last of the raw bacon in the pan.

  “A cast iron pan works best,” she said. “My grandma gave me this one.”

  “What did Eddie tell you about the student loan thing?” asked Zeke, again.

  “Well, he was at my dorm and we got to talking about how my Dad really wants me to go to Raleigh College. It’s where he went. He calls it his ‘alma mater,’ really sappy-like.”

  Zeke nodded.

  “But I’m not really into it. Maybe in a few years, I guess.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I was saying, you know, that I wasn’t really into my classes this year, and that I was probably going to drop one or two, or even withdraw,” she said. “Eddie said that I could do that and make some money, too. That sounded good.”

  “How did it work out?” asked Zeke.

  “Well, I was already enrolled for this semester, and I had my Student Loan papers in to the school. But you have a couple weeks at the beginning of the semester where you can add or drop classes, you know,” she continued. “So as soon as I got the loan approved, Eddie told me to drop all my classes, all but one. So I did.”

  “Was there much money in it?” Zeke asked.

  “Well, it’s a private school, so my tuition was something like fifty thousand dollars a year. That’s crazy, right?”

  Zeke nodded. So the loan was probably about $18,000 a semester, he thought.

  “So Eddie helped me with the timing of everything, and he gave me a thousand dollars, cash.”

  “Was Eddie alone?” asked Zeke.

  “Well, sometimes Peter Vartis came with him. He’s the one who was murdered in his car,” she explained. She shook her head.

  “Did you have to talk with Dr. Richardson?” asked Zeke, reminding the girl.

  “Oh, yeah, Eddie coached me for that, too. And Dr. Richardson explained how it all works, how the debt will go away.”

  “Did he say that it would ‘go away?’”

  Judy bit her lip. “He said, uh, it will be ‘forgiven’. That was the term he used.”

  “Don’t you think you’ll have to pay the loan back?” asked Zeke.

  “No, they don’t care about that. The government just writes it off or something. Nobody really loses money or anything,” Judy said. “I saw how it works on the Internet.”

  Hank walked into the kitchen wearing a large football jersey and boxer shorts. He had a scraggly brown beard that refused to fill in and brown eyes, and he wasn’t much taller than Judy Henderson. He reached across Zeke proprietarily and took a piece of bacon from the plate on the counter.

  “Sorry,” said Zeke. “I’ll get out of your way. Judy, I’ll call your cell phone if we need anything else, OK?”

  The girl nodded, still watching the cooking meat.

  Zeke let himself out.

  * * *

  There was a warm breeze blowing lightly across the campus as Zeke entered the University of Raleigh Administration Building. The audit project had been extended a few days and Zeke nodded to Cheryl, who was sitting behind an administrative desk outside of Dr. Richardson’s office.

  He hasn’t been around for the past four days, thought Zeke. He’s ducking me.

  To Cheryl, he said, “Is Dr. Richardson in today?”

  “He had a meeting off campus,” the girl replied, checking a calendar page on her desk. “A lunch thing and then something with some donors, I think.”

  “I’ll just help myself to the coffee, if that’s OK,” said Zeke.

  Zeke set his backpack in the conference room and went in search of the coffee. The break room, down the hall from Dr. Richardson’s office, was well equipped. A fresh pot of coffee from the smell of it was warming on a burner.

  Back in the conference room, Zeke pulled the stack of files toward him and sat. He retrieved a pad and pen from his backpack and began making notes from the files.

  Two hours and fifteen minutes later, the coffee was gone and Zeke stood and stretched, aware that the secretarial pool had full visibility of the conference room through the glass walls. He rolled his shoulders and walked across the hallway toward the area that housed the men’s room, not far from Dr. Richardson’s office.

  Once out of site of the administrative area, Zeke detoured slightly to the Vice President of Finance’s office door. It was shut and locked tight, and there was no sign of anyone nearby. Zeke had noted that the staff generally disappeared during the noon hour, and particularly when Richardson was away.

  Ten seconds with a lock pick released the door lock. Almost as fast as it takes with the key, Zeke thought. He shut the door behind him and pulled the slatted blinds the rest of the way closed.

  Zeke started up the desktop computer on Richardson’s desk and inserted a thumb drive in the USB port. He copied a file onto the computer desktop and ejected the thumb drive. It went back into his pocket.

  A few keystrokes later, the computer’s microphone and monitor-based camera were available for outside control. The software deactivated the LED light indicator located near the camera and allowed it to be controlled remotely, via its Internet connection.

  Zeke made a mental note, confirming the computer’s IP address, deleted the thumb drive file from the desktop and powered down the computer. He wiped the keyboard with a small micro cloth and exited the office, locking the door behind him.

  * * *

  “I’m looking for Edward George,” said Zeke with an ingratiating smile. The girl at the information desk returned it warmly.

  “Sure, let me see if he’s listed here,” she said, tapping some keys on her computer keyboard. “Just a sec.”

  Zeke was at the information desk in the main Administration Building of Raleigh University. The sign over the desk read, “Student Services.”

  “Here we go,” said the girl. She was rather plain looking and young, maybe a sophomore, certainly an undergraduate. Her blonde hair was clipped back on each side and she wore a print blouse with a bow at the neck. She wore no makeup.

  She gave Zeke the requested information and a campus map to help him find Eddie George’s current classroom.

  Zeke looked at the computer monitor and saw a profile picture of the boy.

  The girl added, casually, “We’re not supposed to give this information out, really.”

  Zeke said, “It’s OK, I’m an auditor.” Which seemed to give her some level of comfort.

  “You are?” she asked. “What’s your name?”

  That was clever, thought Zeke, revising his opinion of the girl. “I’m Zeke Traynor. What’s your name?”

  “Tina Silverson,” she said. “I’m usually here working in the afternoons. So, let me know if I can help you with anything.”

  Zeke smiled, and said, “Thanks.”

  She looked as if she’d just thought of something. “Here, take a card. That’s my number here, if you need me.”

  * * *

  Eddie George, it turned out, was not in his classroom. Instead, he was in the hallway outside of the classroom, exchanging something with two other students. Zeke recognized him from
his picture on the Student Services computer.

  When Zeke approached the group, one of the boys immediately drifted away, and the other said to Eddie, “OK, see you around, then.” He turned and walked away, leaving Eddie and Zeke alone in the hall.

  “Are you selling?” asked Zeke with an innocent smile.

  “No, man. No, we were just talking. Who’re you?”

  “Actually, I’m the guy who’s looking into the student loan scam you’re involved with,” said Zeke.

  “Don’t know what you’re saying,” said Eddie, still acting cool under pressure, but starting to touch his face, often a sign of lying.

  Zeke looked at him for a long moment. “Judy Henderson said you helped her with her student loans. And that you paid her to drop out this semester,” Zeke said.

  “No, man, it wasn’t like that. I lent her some cash after she dropped out, you know, until she could find a place to stay and some work. Just helping a friend out.”

  “How many other friends did you help out this semester?” Zeke asked.

  “Look, man, I don’t have to listen to this,” said Eddie. He turned and started to walk away.

  “What about Peter. Peter Vartis?” asked Zeke.

  Eddie George stopped walking. He turned around. “Yeah, I knew him,” he said, now sounding shaken.

  “Judy said that you guys were close. That you both helped her with her loan situation.”

  “Well, maybe so. She was working against a deadline and asked us for assistance, you know?” It was a question, but he wasn’t asking.

  “The way this goes, Eddie, is that you end up jammed up for student loan fraud and a few other Federal charges. Repayment plus jail time, I’d expect. Unless whoever killed Peter starts thinking you’ll roll over on them, make a deal. Then they’ll kill you first,” said Zeke.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” said the student, now visibly shaken.

  “Think about it,” said Zeke. “You can reach me at this number.” He handed Eddie a card with a phone number on the back.

  * * *

  The voice was smooth and soothing.