coffee. She still looked hungry for conversation, so this time I decided to try a new tack.
“You know what I wonder about,” I said conspiratorially, “is how, in this day and age of bank security, a guy like Albert Lipscomb could talk his way into a big wad of cash and a compliant teller.”
Eileen glanced nervously at the conference door, blew on her coffee, and gestured with the muffin she held in her hand. “Oh, we know that part. Lipscomb went into the downtown branch of First of the Rockies Monday morning, June the seventh. He had a big check written out to himself, three and a half mil. He wanted cash. What did they teach him about banking in business school, I’d like to know? You can’t expect to get same-day service with that size transaction. So the teller ? my idiot friend Dottie ? said, ‘You have to order that kind of cash, we can’t get it for you right away.’ She alerted the officer, but the officer was drowning in this merger. So the officer told her, ‘Order the cash, and convince the guy to come back tomorrow for it.’ The officer told Dottie he’d join her in a minute to do the Large Currency Transaction Report. Required by the federal government, thank you very much, because of all the drug traffic,” she said to forestall my question. She took a big bite of muffin, spilling crumbs over the conference table. She didn’t seem to notice them. “Anytime you’re doing cash over ten thousand deposited or withdrawn, you have to fill out a Large Currency Transaction Report.”
I dumped my cold coffee and poured myself a new cup. “And what did Albert say to all this? I mean, it sounds as if he expected to leave that day with a couple of briefcases full of cash.”
“Apparently he had all the right identification for the Transaction Report.” Eileen sighed. “Albert left, then came back the next morning all smiles and charm, with a glitter in his eyes and a shine on his bald head. He loaded that three and a half mil into a large backpack, said thank you very much, and walked out. After the transaction, Dottie bubbled over telling all her co-workers how cute her rich customer was, and how nifty it was that he seemed so interested in her! She gushed about how she was going out to lunch with him. Which she did. And didn’t come back. Wednesday morning, Tony Royce called the bank about overdraft protection for some large checks to his mine exploration people. You’d better believe the salami hit the fan. There wasn’t enough money in the account to pay the exploration people, forget overdraft. Royce screamed and yelled and had a fit. He would never cosign on a withdrawal of that amount! Albert Lipscomb must have forged his signature on that check! Tony swore to decapitate the bank manager! And if one word of this got out, he said, he’d firebomb the damn bank!”
“What did the bank manager say?”
“Oh, my dear, that’s the problem. The bank manager says they need to question Dottie, but she’s drinking pina coladas in parts unknown. Now they’re saying Dottie might have been in on the deal with Albert from the beginning.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m just waiting for someone to call me in and say, ‘You trained this woman? What in heaven’s name did you teach her?’ “
I swirled my coffee, hardly able to conceal my curiosity. “I wonder what makes people think they were in on it together?”
Blithely, Eileen waved a hand, scattering still more crumbs. “Because she didn’t call Prospect that day to confirm the check was valid. Still, I do believe the conspiracy theory is a rumor perpetuated by the bank so the teller won’t look quite so stupid. People will excuse crime before they dream of acquitting imbecility. My tellers, of course, are all spooked. They’re playing Mat would you do with a rich stranger until I am sick to death of it.” She frowned. Then she finished off the muffin.
“I wonder if Tony had insurance,” I said idly.
“For that type of account? No way. I mean, he’d be insured up to a hundred thousand if the bank collapsed, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about loss of cash, period. Maybe forgery. Serves Prospect Financial right, I say.”
Once again I found myself wondering about the precise origin of Eileen’s bitterness. Was she so triumphant because Prospect had lost the private placement money? Or because Tony had jilted her? We were interrupted by the arrival of the second gaggle of excited employees. I picked up our coffee cups while Eileen chatted with her people. After a few minutes, she wandered back to me to say she had to check her messages. I asked if she’d return to clarify Friday’s upcoming assignment. Of course, I didn’t give a hoot about next week’s gig; I wanted to know what else she knew about Albert and the missing millions. But as I served coffee and delicacies to first the tellers, then the loan officers, I became intrigued with their conversations.
Nobody ever thinks a caterer is listening. And you don’t mean to be eavesdropping, you’re just the invisible servant who hears people talk.
-Well, I’d go out to lunch with a stranger if he’d picked up three and a half million in cash. Even if he did go to the Citadel.
-Not me! Don’t forget, she refused to give him the cash the first day, and you know they keep lots more than that in the downtown branch.
-Maybe he was pissed off
-Maybe he was asking her how he could get his three and a half million without his partner knowing.
While I was cleaning up, Eileen came back in. She looked even more harried than she had when I arrived. “They’re going to have a big meeting in an hour about this missing-Lipscomb-and-Dottie predicament. Big meeting means long meeting, and I’m starving just thinking about it. Would you fix me a plate?” When I nodded, she went on: “The regional managers from all over are getting antsy for an internal investigation. And damage control is out of the question now. So many people know how much money was taken, it’s just a matter of time before investors start trying to bail out of Prospect, and the whole enterprise goes belly-up.” I expected her to frown again, but she snickered.
I handed her the covered plate. “Sounds as if you’re not too brokenhearted.”
Her reply was defiant. “Well, I’m not.” She paused, wormed her fingers under the wrapping of the plate, and pulled out a piece of cherry cake. She bit into it and made mm-mm noises.
I said, “You’re not brokenhearted because Tony had already broken your heart, maybe?”
She shrugged “Tony and I dated, yes. Off and on. He always acted as if he owned three-fourths of Denver. Plus, he seemed to know everybody. And 1 wanted to get to know everybody.” She finished her cake, licked her fingers, and put down the dish. Then she pulled a mirror out of her handbag, looked at herself; grimaced, and pulled out a silver lipstick container.
“You do know everybody,” I observed.
“Not in the Denver business community I don’t. Albert and Tony and I were in a network, very professional, called WorkNet. Costs a mint, as in a thousand a year to belong. But it’s for business leads. You scratch my back, et cetera. Very well organized. Very productive. You should join.”
“A thousand a year for business leads? They’d have to be pretty incredible leads.”
“But Goldy, they are. Say one guy in WorkNet does commercial leases. He knows months before anybody else that a company is coming into town. Now, the company coming in needs everything from telecommunications to decorating to a two-million-dollar pad for their CEO. So in WorkNet, we’ll have, of course, decorators, telecommunications executives, real estate agents, even caterers. The deal is that we all help each other. Say the real estate agent who sells the CEO the mansion finds out that the CEO’s daughter is getting married next summer. Our agent comments, ‘I know this great caterer, absolutely the perfect person to do your daughter’s reception.’ And of course, it’s going to be a twenty-five-thousand-dollar gig.”
“Tony and Albert were in WorkNet?”
“Oh, Tony and Albert were in it to the max, darling. This was about five years ago,” she said dreamily. “I simply loved going to those meetings with those guys. They were looking for rich investors right and left, and 1 basked in all that power, I must say. They wanted me to find wealthy people for them. You’re Marla’s friend. Doesn’t Tony do that with you?”
I nodded. “He does, all the time. He used to ask if I catered for any rich widows. Last month he wanted to know if I knew any rich doctors.”
Eileen reached back under the plastic wrapping to pull out another muffin. “Oh, jeez. Does he know your history? I mean, about your ex? I hope you told him off.?
“No,” I replied matter-of-factly, “I told him I tried to stay away from rich doctors as much as possible. So he asked me if I knew any rich dentists. I said no. Lawyers? Pilots? Plumbers? He said rich folks needed him.”
“Did you help him?” I smiled broadly. “I gave him a few names, but I’m not sure anybody had the kind of net worth he was looking for.”
Eileen took another bite of muffin and nodded appreciatively. “I didn’t bring Albert or Tony anybody, either. And no alarm bells went off when they wanted to invest my entire divorce settlement of two hundred thousand
