“If you’re looking for financial information,” Stella said, “you’ll find it there, at the bottom of the second bookcase. I only know this because he had me fetch him notes and documents of all kinds.”
“Would you allow us to look through them?” Pawlowski asked.
“Yes, anything you need. Help yourself.”
Ava made her way over to the bookshelf Stella had mentioned and found a simple box tucked away alongside a fewbooks as if it had been made to hide perfectly in that exact spot. She removed it and set it on Alfred Perkins’s desk. Removing the lid, they found a few folders, the same size and style of the ones they’d seen at his office back at 40 Wall Street. They removed the folders, finding only four. Beneath them was a checkbook, which Stella found very interesting once they took it out.
“I’ve never seen that before,” she said. “He’d had me go into this box a few times in the past, but there’s never been a checkbook in there.”
Stella then seemed to realize that staying in the office might not be the best idea in terms of trying to process everything or to stay out of the way of the detectives. She moved slowly back out into the hallway, looking like she was lost in her own home.
Pawlowski opened one of the folders. It had roughly thirty sheets of paper inside, all of which had numbers and dates typed on them. Ava opened the next folder and found more of the same.
“Any idea what we’re looking at here?” Pawlowski asked.
“Not at all. But if the checkbook is in the same stashed-away box as these folders, they have to be related, right?”
“I’d say that’s a safe bet.”
Ava looked through the checkbook as Pawlowski continued looking through the financial records, both women trying to make sense of what they were seeing. Ava had always hated anything to do with numbers, so she found it frustrating. She did her best to switch her mentality, viewing the numbers as a puzzle to be solved rather than just a series of random numbers and figures.
She noticed right away that Perkins had done an exceptional job of keeping his records and finances straight. Everything in the checkbook’s register was well-organized and recorded. And that’s exactly what helped her to pinpoint the first oddity amongit all. She double-checked the numbers to make sure she was correct before sharing it with Pawlowski.
“Here’s something odd,” Ava said. “I’ve got four different transactions in the leger that aren’t accounted for. The amounts are listed, but there’s no designation.” She pointed to the first of the four entries as she explained it. “He’s sort of hiding transactions of money spent in other listed transactions. Right here, for example…when he subtracts this thirteen dollars for an exchange at the tailor’s shop, there’s an additional one hundred and fifty dollars missing in the checking account’s total after he does the math. And then here’s another example: the total in the account should be fourteen thousand and two dollars after this eight-hundred-dollar real estate payment, but instead, it’s a little under thirteen thousand nine hundred. He’s buried some other expense in that listing…unless he’s justreallybad at math.”
“Based on all of these figures I’m seeing, I don’t think that’s the case,” Pawlowski said.
Stella’s voice spoke up quietly from behind them. “No…Alfred was very good with numbers. He wouldn’t make mistakes like those.”
Ava turned to Stella and saw the confusion in her tired eyes. She hated to drag this out for the poor woman, but she felt that they were on the brink of a considerable discovery. “Mrs. Perkins, do you know where the primary checkbook is? The one he would use for home-and-family business?”
“He kept it in that box as well…though I had to move it yesterday to have my sister write a check to the funeral home. One moment…I’ll get it.”
As Stella made her way back through the house, Pawlowski spoke up. “Hold on…Gold? What was that first listing you pointed out? The one at the tailor? How much was missing?”
“One hundred and fifty.”
“Is there a date?”
“The date he listed for the tailor was September third.”
“Look at this,” she said, slipping a sheet of paper from the second folder over towards her. “There’s a listing right here of one hundred and fifty dollars, given a date of just a few months ago.”
Ava still wasn’t exactly sure what it might mean. But based on the scant information they had, it seemed that Perkins had been removing money from this checking account and keeping up with the money somewhere other than the check register.
“And look at this,” Pawlowski said. She’d lowered her voice, likely so Stella wouldn’t hear her.
But as she started to show Ava what she’d found, Stella came walking back into the office. Pawlowski went quiet and started focusing on the papers once again as Stella handed over a nicer, much larger checkbook.
“You’re welcome to look it over,” Stella said. “But Iwouldlike to know what you think you’ve found.”
Ava wasn’t sure if she wanted to share what she was suspecting because she didn’t want to cause Stella any more pain; she certainly didn’t want to provide her with a reason to think ill of her husband or to suspect him of any foul play.
“It’s okay,” Stella said. “I loved my husband and while he was a kind and loyal man, I have no illusions that he wasn’t a little shady and shifty when it came to money. Let me remind you again…Alfred liked to go big on all things.”
Pawlowski looked at Ava and shrugged. “Well,” Pawlowski said, “this is only speculation right now, but I just discovered this.” She showed both Ava and Stella the last item she’d found, the one she’d nearly mentioned before Stella had come into the room. “The listings on some of these pages seem to line up with totals taken out of the smaller checkbook that he didn’t list in the register. More than that, though, there are a few instances in these papers where it appears he lists a few different accounts.”She stopped and pointed to the series of numbers that could very well be bank accounts.
Absently, Stella opened the larger checkbook she’d just brought back into the room. She looked at the top of the first check in the book and pointed to the account number in the bottom left-hand corner. Ava was not at all surprised to see that it was different from the one Pawlowski had pointed out.