Chapter 24

Lee brought it home with her from her art class one day.

"Jackie, I need to talk to Spook about something, would you come with me?" she asked. I told her sure, of course, and we went straight in to the study.

It was a long, convoluted story, involving one of her fellow students whose husband had somehow found himself sucked into a fairly serious scam. Hubby was one of those guys with more sex appeal than sense—I knew him vaguely, his best talent (outside the bedroom) was playing the violin, actually quite nicely though not well enough to do it professionally—who'd wanted to "prove" himself to his wife by showing a business ability he in fact didn't possess.

Economically he'd married up, and the wife, Lee's friend from class, loved him dearly— a feeling that, from my few interactions with them as a couple, I sensed he reciprocated fully. It had seemed to me one of those matches actually made in heaven. But she'd unwisely given him access to everything, which he'd duly sunk into a real estate deal that even I, inexperienced as I was, could smell out as bogus.

Most scams like that sting but don't really hurt; people tend to take flyers with what they can afford to lose, not the whole wad. Lee's friend's hubby, however, had been less prudent; step by step, encouragement by encouragement, he'd been conned into dropping just about everything they had into this "housing project" that its promoter made sure wasn't ever going to get off the ground.

As a result, Lee's friend confided to her over a very teary lunch, they'd lost everything, "everything" actually amounting to something over four mil. Their house was mortgaged to its eyeteeth and headed for foreclosure, their cars were being repoed, they had credit card bills they couldn't handle, they had no health coverage, she couldn't pay for tuition any longer or even lunch (Lee took the bill), they couldn't even afford groceries.

Worse yet, neither of them had any really marketable job skills. He'd been a sometime fiddler who'd played small clubs and the odd wedding, and had lost his contacts after he married; she'd never worked at all. Oh, she had extended family with lots of resources, but they'd dropped her like a stone after her marriage; in circles like her family's the unspoken rule is that money marries money, and they'd considered him a jumped-up gigolo unworthy of their notice.

It was a truly sad story, and a little unusual as well; mostly scammers won't strip you bare, they'll at least leave you something to live on (less out of concern for your welfare than keeping the cops away from their doors). This one, though, had been both greedy and clever; there was no proof of criminal behavior. Oh, they might ultimately prevail in a civil suit—provided they could find the guy, who'd disappeared. But not only couldn't they afford the legal fees but any judgment they ultimately won would likely be against an empty pocket after he hid the money offshore.

They were, as my college buddies had been wont to say, s.o.l.—shit out of luck.

Sad as the tale was, though, I knew even before he said anything that this wasn't Spook's bailiwick. And that's pretty much what he told her.

"Lisa, I am sorry for your friend's trouble," he said—we used mostly audio when Lee was around. "This is, however, a crime against property, not against person. I do not act regarding such crimes, there are too many and they do not threaten life."

"You're wrong in this case, Spook," she contradicted him. "Mona"—her friend— "seemed to me pretty close to suicidal. And she said Ryan"—that was hubby—"felt a lot the same. This guy took everything! She told me he was still pushing Ryan for more even at the end, and blamed him for the 'failure, ' in quotes, because he couldn't come up with it. Spook, they could kill themselves!" Her voice had run up the scale pretty good by the time she got to the last.

"Is this not only speculation?" Spook asked her.

"I don't know, I guess maybe," she said miserably.

If she didn't know, I did know how to find out. "Can you access their information and run probabilities, Spook?" I put in. He'd do it, and his assessment would be better than anything either Lee or I could concoct.

Evidently he didn't like the odds. "What would you have me do, Lisa?" he asked. "Should I infuse funds into their accounts, as I have for you and Jack? It would be difficult to provide adequate provenance for such funds inasmuch as they do not share knowledge of my existence—"

"No!" she interrupted him. "Or maybe, if that's all you can do. But can't you do more? Can't you get it back from the a-hole who stole it in the first place? Spook, Mona's a really good friend and a really nice person, and so's Ryan, a nice person, I mean. I can't bear to just do nothing. I already offered her money, but she won't take it, not from me, she's proud. I want you to fix it, give her justice, not charity. Please?"

Odds or not, he wouldn't, I knew; it wasn't his metiér.

Or I thought I knew. But either I'd underestimated Lee's powers of persuasion or the strength of her independent relationship with Spook, because instead of turning her down flat he said something else.

"I will review." For any human that would have meant weeks or maybe even months; for Spook it was a matter of nanoseconds. "This project was to be known as Ashley Farms Estates?"

"That's what Mona said," Lee answered.

"The individual you have named, John Charles Robinson, had at one time an option to purchase certain property for which he initially filed a petition for zoning approval. The petition was subsequently withdrawn, the option has been relinquished, and there appears to be no possibility that this project will be revived."

"But what happened to the money Ryan gave him?" she persisted.

"Some small portion, undeterminable precisely but certainly less than two hundred thousand dollars, was employed in marketing this project. Because it is such a small sum relative to a project of the economic magnitude proposed I surmise it was intended to lend verisimilitude to the project rather than as a genuine attempt to generate sales. An additional amount, perhaps three hundred thousand dollars, has been expended by John Charles Robinson for what appear to be personal purposes. The remainder reposes in a bank account located in the Cayman Islands."