Venice thought aloud. She turned to her keyboard and started typing.
Over the course of the past year, Jackie Mitchell had spent more time as a punch line than a preacher, following some Internet videos that showed her providing extra-special counseling to a young male member of her flock in one of Scottsdale’s finest hotels. Over and over again. The righteously aggrieved Mr. Mitchell-the pastor’s husband-had not only left her, but had recently started taking to the airwaves to pronounce her a fraud.
Pastor Mitchell had many defenders among her congregation, of whom more than a few had written op-ed pieces for the newspapers. But as far too many celebrities had learned the hard way, once you earn a slot in Jay Leno’s nightly monologue, your future is more or less sealed in poo.
“Uh-oh,” Venice said. “Oh, my God, this can’t be true.”
“What?” Dom and Gail asked together.
Venice scowled and shook her head. “Is this even possible?” She looked at the others and typed some more. “Check the screen,” she said. As she spoke, she pushed a button on the master control panel that she alone knew how to operate, and the lights dimmed. Not all the way, but enough to make the screen more prominent. Given the technology of the room, Dom imagined that she could make it snow in here, too, if she’d wanted. Or maybe not.
She tapped a few more keys. The map of Mexico dissolved to a screen full of numbers arranged in neat columns. “These are the bank records for the Crystal Palace.”
Dom’s jaw dropped. “How did you get those?”
Venice raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Me either,” Gail said. “When the feds finally figure out what we do, I want to have some shred of plausible deniability.”
“According to Google, the Crystal Palace scandal first broke about fourteen months ago, just after they’d committed to a multimillion-dollar building project, and contracted for three more years of television time.” She looked to the others. “I guess you know that unlike commercial television, where the networks pay for the programs they broadcast, these religious shows have to pay for their own time.”
Dom hadn’t realized it because he’d never given it any thought. Now that he did, it made sense.
As Venice went on, she used the cursor as a pointer. “If I’m doing the math right, for the two years previous to that time, they averaged an income of four-point-three million dollars a month, with expenses of just about four- point-three million a month. They were just breaking even. I haven’t had time to find out where all that money went, but it’s probably not important for our purposes. At least not yet. Now look at this.”
She clicked, and the records scrolled at a dizzying speed, stopping on another set of numbers. “Here are the records for the first month after the scandal broke. Expenses stayed at four-point-three million, but revenues dropped to three-point-six million.” She clicked again. “The month after that, they brought in two point seven. Fast forward a few more months, and they’re getting only eight hundred twenty thousand dollars. The month after that, two-eighty. They’re hemorrhaging cash.”
Gail made a face. “I don’t understand-”
“I’m not done yet,” Venice said. She scrolled month by month. “Look here. That trend continued month after month, not a single deposit over three hundred thousand. Until three months ago, when they started making four million again, and then five. Last month it was five-point-nine million dollars.”
“Now, give me a minute or two,” she said before disappearing into thought while her fingers pounded the keyboard.
Confident that the results would be impressive, Dom waited quietly with Gail while Venice worked her magic.
“Oh, now this is interesting,” Venice declared when she was done. A new image appeared on the screen, this one showing two lists of names. “The list on the left shows the various contributors from twenty months ago, back when Crystal Palace was in its heyday. On the right is the list of donors from five months ago, during the darkest of their dark days. You can see there are way, way fewer donors.” She stroked the keys, and after only a few seconds, the computer spit out the number 0.992.
“Okay,” she explained. “Of those remaining die-hard faithful, ninety-nine-point-two percent of them were on the original list of donors.”
“Isn’t that to be expected?” Dom asked. “I can’t imagine that accusations of statutory rape are going to bring in a lot of new donors.”
Venice pointed to the priest as if to indicate that he was her brightest pupil. “You just made my point,” she said. “Because look here.” More clacking and another screen change. “This is a list of the donors over the past three months, when they were making money again. If we match them against the original faithful, we get…”
More tapping and a new number on the screen. “Zero-point-four-six-four. That means that of the one hundred twelve recent donors, only forty-six-point-four percent gave money before the scandal.” She looked up. “Put another way, fifty-three-point-six percent of the newly inspired donors never gave to the Crystal Palace before.”
“You tell us that with such grave emphasis,” Gail said. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
Venice looked like she didn’t want to speak the thoughts aloud. “I think someone paid the church to allow the kidnappings to happen.”
Gail’s jaw dropped. “
“I’ve heard Dig say it a thousand times,” Venice pressed. “There are no coincidences. How convenient to receive unique donations just before such a huge outlay. That money was given for a
More furious typing. “Here it is. Those sixty new donors represent nearly ninety percent of the donations received, and wouldn’t you know it? While the individual amounts are all over the board, those sixty, isolated out and taken together, come to just north of six million dollars-almost exactly twice what the ransom was.”
Dom squinted at the numbers. “It’s six-point-two,” he said. “I think you’re stretching.”
“You have to correct for random givers,” Gail said. “Not all of them are going to be a part of whatever plot this is.” She turned to Venice. “What can you get us about those sixty donors? Almost all of them appear to be corporations.”
Venice turned back to her friend the keyboard. “Give me a few minutes. Talk quietly among yourselves.”
Dom watched, fascinated by the speed of Venice’s fingers, and by the variety of expressions on her face as she plowed through whatever databases she was invading. Her big brown eyes cycled among frustration, amazement, surprise, and awe.
Ten minutes later, she was done.
“Sorry that took so long,” she said. “Especially since I didn’t come up with anything useful. I’ve got All American Industries, CEO Dennis Hainsley, no record of either beyond individual white pages listings. I’ve also got a Global Transformations Inc., with an equally invisible CEO named Harold Scolari. Interestingly, it appears that Global Transformations is a subsidiary of All American Industries. I’ve got Tiger Creek Industries, also invisible, and Big Daddy Carpet Cleaning, run by an apparently nonexistent person named-wait for it-Nancy Drew. Every one of these companies has Federal Employee ID numbers, and every one of them pays taxes. All this, despite the fact that no one has ever praised them, blogged about them, or filed a DUNS request. Does this pattern remind you of any companies you know?”
Gail and Dom looked at each other, and then they both got it at the same time. “The Family Defense Foundation,” they said in unison.
Venice’s eyebrows danced. “Bingo.” Jonathan Grave was the king of the cutout corporation. He’d funneled millions of dollars to Resurrection House through the Family Defense Foundation.
Dom decided to test-drive the theory. “Maybe these companies believe in the mission of the church but don’t want to be associated with the scandal.”
It was obvious that Venice had already considered this, and had rejected it out of hand. “Where were they before the Pastor Mitchell was accused of boffing a child?”
“They saw that the Crystal Palace was being run out of business, and they thought it was a witch hunt.” Dom realized that he was taking the role of devil’s advocate, but the stakes here were very high.
“I don’t buy it, Dom,” Gail said. “That feels completely wrong to me. This feels more like government
