Page 86 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“Ali Cross!” I yelled.

My youngest child sprang up, lost his balance, and almost fell into the big sandbox behind him. He managed to save himself but was shaken when he walked toward me.

“Dad, I —”

“You nothing,” I said. “You are in an active crime scene.”

“No, I —”

“No nothing, young man. I want you out of there and on a full march back home. I will deal with you later.”

“Dad,” he protested. “C’mon, I’m —”

“Marching straight home, or I will take that camera away and your laptop. And you are grounded until high-school graduation!”

CHAPTER 75

BREE SAT IN HERoffice at the Bluestone Group headquarters in Arlington, studying faxed documents that Elena Martin had received the night before from the board member who’d alerted her to the FBI probe of Amalgam.

While Bree wasn’t a wizard at this sort of thing, she had participated in enough investigations that involved financial chicanery to recognize some of the warning signs that might have attracted the Bureau’s attention: Cash investments had come into Amalgam from offshore accounts in the Bahamas, the Caymans, and the New Hebrides, known money-laundering centers. The accounts were controlled by shell corporations registered in Lichtenstein and Panama, a method wealthy people and criminals used if they wanted to conceal their identities.

As she read further, Bree noticed that most of the sign-offs on the shady-looking investments carried the signatures of both Leigh Anne Asher and Craig Warren, Amalgam’s chieffinancial officer. She found her boss’s detailed notes from her conversation with the disgruntled board member.

Feels betrayed by Leigh Anne even if she is dead,Martin wrote.Believes Leigh Anne and Warren walked a razor-thin line allowing some of the investments to occur. Believes the FBI saw it another way.

Some of the shell companies may be connected to known organized-crime figures in Israel and Bulgaria? That’s the sense he has.

Bree didn’t understand that last bit and went to Elena Martin’s office carrying the case file. She knocked on her boss’s door. Martin, who was there even though it was a weekend, turned from her computer, looking like she hadn’t slept in days.

“Pretty damning stuff, if I’m understanding it all,” Bree said.

Martin raised both hands. “You think you know someone, especially after decades of friendship. How can I help?”

“There’s something I don’t get. In your notes about the possible offshore connection, there’s a question mark. Then you wrote, ‘That’s the sense he has.’ Who’she?”

“My source on the board.”

“Okay. Was he interviewed by the FBI?”

“Briefly,” she said. “It’s there at the bottom of the page. He was approached about two weeks ago by an FBI agent. When my source saw the direction that the agent was taking with his questions, he said he’d feel more comfortable answering with an attorney present. They had a formal interview scheduled. It’s there at the bottom.”

Bree ran her eyes down the page and saw that her source had a meeting scheduled next week with FBI agent Charles Stimson. “Stimson,” Bree said. “Do you know him?”

Martin shook her head. “I looked him up. Found very little other than he works out of offices in Reston. Residence in Groveton.”

“I know a few people over at the Bureau,” Bree said. “I’ll make some calls and let you know what I find out.”

She returned to her office and called Ned Mahoney, who answered on the third ring sounding groggy.

“I’m sorry, Ned, did I wake you?”

“Just getting up anyway,” Mahoney said. “What’s going on, Bree?”

“I told you that Leigh Anne Asher of Amalgam was on the downed jet, flying under a fake Irish passport.”

“Seat two A. I remember.”

“Seems that you guys had already been interested in Asher and Amalgam.”

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