CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
I was dead tired. My watch told me it was five o’clock, but it seemed much later. I had been pushing myself all day on less than four hours of sleep, and we were no closer to finding J.D. Jock did not seem to be affected by the lack of sleep.
I put a pot of coffee on and sat at my computer to check e-mail. Among the usual spam and mundane notes were e-mails from two addresses I didn’t recognize. I opened the first one. The time stamp said it had been delivered at 2:12 that afternoon. It said, “Trust me. J.D.”
I hit the reply button and typed, “Where are you?” I waited for a minute, two, hoping that I’d get a response. Any response. I did. It was from something called mail delivery subsystem with the message “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently” with the address J.D. had e-mailed from. Dead end.
I opened the next message that had arrived at 4:17. It said, “Look at Marsh LLC, a Florida limited liability company.” That was all. Again I hit reply and wrote, “Who are you?” I got the same message from the mail delivery subsystem. No such address.
I got a cup of coffee and sat thinking about the messages. I knew that you could set up an e-mail account through one of the free service providers without much hassle. You’d get an e-mail address and the right to use the account. You didn’t have to give a real name or address. However, the service that set up the account would have the electronic address of the computer from which the account originated. With the cooperation of the service provider you could find out where the message came from.
If you set up an e-mail account, sent one message, and then closed the account, a person replying to you would get the same message I got from the mail delivery subsystem. I didn’t know what the Marsh LLC message was all about, but either J.D. was trying to reach me or somebody was playing a stupid game. I didn’t think it was the latter.
Jock came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of the Houston Astros. He poured himself a cup of coffee and joined me in the living room. I showed him the messages and the replies.
“I’ll get my techies on this. They should be able to run down the locations of the computers that sent the e-mails without much trouble.”
“Let me call Bill Lester. See if he’s had any developments.”
“You ready to tell him about the bank accounts?”
“Not yet.”
Within the hour we had some information that didn’t make a lot of sense. Lester hadn’t heard anything. All their lines of inquiries into J.D.’s disappearance had hit dead ends. She had no family since her mother had died the year before, so there was no one to call with bad news.
Jock’s people had quickly run down the electronic addresses of the computers that sent the two e-mails. The one about Marsh LLC was sent from a computer in a public library in Decatur, Georgia. The one from J.D. could not be found. The message had bounced around the ether through a number of servers, some in Eastern Europe. It was just impossible to track it.
I called Debbie’s cell phone. “You at work?”
“No. My night off.”
“You alone?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but what if I am?”
“You are alone.”
“Sadly, yes.”
“Good. I need a little favor.”
“Here we go again.”
“I need you to take a look at the Florida Secretary of State’s online records and see if you can find out anything on a limited liability company named Marsh LLC. I’d be surprised if the names on the paperwork are real, but see if you can follow it back to its source. I’d like to know who’s behind it.”
“You need this when?”
“Now.”
“Geez. I’ll see what I can do.” She hung up.
“You think Marsh is connected to this in some way?” Jock asked.
“Don’t know, but I can’t think of another reason why anyone would be sending me that message from a library computer.”
Jock had checked his e-mail on his laptop while we sipped coffee. There had been nothing, but he’d left the computer open on the dinette table. It pinged to let him know he had an e-mail coming in. He went to the computer and opened the e-mail. “The director came through. Nigella Morrissey is alive and well and living in Tampa. I’ve got her address and phone number and a whole lot more information. She’s a lawyer. The ten thousand bucks that was going to her account at the Macon bank was being sent on to an account in Nigella’s name in a Tampa bank.”
“I think we need to pay her a visit. Tonight.”
He was peering at his computer screen. “I agree. Listen to this. They’ve tracked a lot of the money from the Otto Foundation bank account that went to other corporations and foundations. Those accounts are in banks all over the country, but they have one thing in common. The money that comes in is almost immediately transferred out to a single account.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “It goes to Nigella’s account in Tampa.”
“Right. And that account is her law firm trust account.”
“So that’s money that is not going to be reported on tax returns because it’s theoretically not her money. It belongs to her clients.”
“Right. And those clients are all corporations that have never filed a tax return.”
“That’s slick,” I said. “The Otto Foundation simply files its tax returns showing expenses paid out to other foundations and businesses. I’ll bet that none of those entities really exist or if they do they’re just shells.”
“Right.”
“And the money is transferred from the corporate accounts into a lawyer’s trust account and then to other corporations that are probably just shells.”
“Okay.”
“Nigella doesn’t file any kind of a tax return on the trust account, because she’s not required to, and if the Florida Bar ever audits the trust account, it’ll balance perfectly.”
“So what about the corporations that get the money from Nigella’s trust account?”
“Those accounts are probably controlled by Bud Stanley, or more likely, his alter ego, Robert Charles Bracewell.”
“I love the way your mind works. You’re either a hell of a lawyer or a crook at heart.”
“Logan would say they’re one and the same,” I said. “Can you get your geeks to see what they can find out about the corporations that Nigella is sending the money to?”
“Sure.” He typed for a bit and then waited, watching his monitor, and then peering more closely. “Done. They’ll have the data for us by this time tomorrow. Logan needs to see this stuff. You’re sure he’s due in tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but he may not be at his best. A week on the cruise with all that food and booze would be way too much temptation for Logan.”
“Let’s go find out what makes our girl Nigella tick,” Jock said.
That turned out to be easier said than done.