“What does it…?”
Apparently, Stella didn’t see the point in finishing the question. Her face contorted a bit, and Ava was sure she was going to start crying rather soon. The widow shook her head and slowly backed away.
“Mrs. Perkins?”
She smiled faintly and made a shooing gesture. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just tired. And I don’t have the strength to deal with something new right now. You ladies just…you do what you need to do.”
“Will you be alright?” Pawlowski asked.
“Yes, I think I’ll call my sister again…have her come sit with me. Thank you for all you’re trying to do.”
Ava and Pawlowski exchanged a tense look as Stella’s footfalls disappeared down the hallway. They then looked back down to the two checkbooks and the listing of transactions that were apparently nowhere to be found in either book.
“This is a lot of paper to go through,” Pawlowski pointed out.
“It is. And fortunately, we won’t have to go through it all. Both checkbooks are from the same bank. The only difference is the account number.”
“And there’s no name on this second account.”
“No worries there,” Ava said, picking up the checkbooks and the folders. She placed them all back in the box and picked it up from the desk. “The bank can sort all of that out for us.”
Pawlowski nodded enthusiastically as they started out of the room. Ava couldn’t help but feel slightly encouraged, too. Shady financial deals in tandem with the note from Albrecht continued to paint a suspicious picture. And as they neared the sound of Stella Perkins weeping from her parlor, Ava felt that they owed it to this poor woman at the very least, to find out what truly happened to her husband.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Ava and Pawlowski entered the Second National Bank, another detail of the case occurred to Ava. It was quite obvious and in realizing it, she was ashamed for nearly missing it completely while they’d been back at the Perkins’ residence. By Perkins listing each of his hidden transactions separately and then referencing another checking account, she assumed it meant that his hidden money wasn’t being directed towards investment; from the way it looked, based on what they knew, it was being funneled into a secondary account. An account he’d been keeping up with in the secondary checkbook.
This did put a dent in the investment angle of the case, but Ava also knew it would be a mistake to rule anything out before speaking with the bank.
In her hurry to get to the counter and ask to speak with a manager, Ava nearly overlooked the quiet and morose atmosphere in the bank. It was a grand building, well-decorated, giving off the feeling of wealth and comfort. But at the same time, there was a pallor in the air that was unsettling. It was more like walking into a funeral parlor than a bank. Ava wondered if it was the same in all banks across the city as a result of the crash.
The detectives approached the first available teller, a woman that smiled widely but looked as if this might be the last place on the planet she wanted to be. “Can I help you ladies?”
“We’d like to speak with a manager, please.”
The teller nodded politely, probably relieved that she could pass them on to someone else. “Give me just one moment, please.” She stepped around the counter and marched out of the lobby, down a hall to their right. After disappearing into a door roughly halfway down the hall, she entered a room. Severalseconds later, she came back out, that same smile on her face, and waved them on to follow her.
Ava and Pawlowski headed in that direction, passing by the teller as she headed back for the counter in the lobby. When they came to the door, they found it open and with a rotund, short man sitting at a large, cluttered desk. His office was decorated almost like a living room, comfortable and stylish. He beamed up at them, adjusting a pair of bifocals that sat slightly crooked on his nose. A small placard on the side of his desk read:Donald Whetley.
“Can I help you ladies?” he asked.
“I hope so,” Ava said, slightly lifting the box she’d been carrying the entire time. As she sat it on the edge of Whetley’s desk, Pawlowski took the opportunity to show her badge.
“I’m Officer Pawlowski, and this is Detective Gold,” she said. “We’re looking into a murder that we believe has been set up to look like a suicide. We believe we may have found enough evidence in the victim’s financial records and work correspondence to further the case. But we need some help in terms of the financial records and checking accounts we’ve come across.”
“Okay…” Whetley said, clearly confused and a bit alarmed. “What is the name of the deceased?”
“Alfred Perkins.”
“Oh,” he said, the name instantly registering with him. “Oh, my. I’m so sorry to hear this.”
“Did you know him personally?” Ava asked.
“Not, not well. Just as a loyal client to the bank. And if you’re here because you’ve been looking into his financial life, I assume you know he was relatively wealthy. So he was in and out of here quite a lot.”
“Then it seems you would be in a good position to help us out,” Ava said. As she started removing the papers and foldersfrom the box, she did her best to catch him up, explaining what she and Pawlowski had found in Perkins’s home office. When she was done, Whetley looked at the women with a perplexed expression.
“In other words,” Pawlowski said, “we need to know where the hidden amounts are going. Based on what we see here in these folders, there’s an entirely different account, but we don’t know who owns it.”