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CHAPTER forty-six

  Jay had uncovered a squirming can of worms and when we put all of the information together it led us down a dangerous path.

  Chris Oakes hadn’t been slinging hamburgers between 1973 and 1975. He had been the treasurer of a small textile company in Hamilton, Ontario. The path that led to this revelation was quite convoluted, and after Jay spread out more papers on my kitchen table, he explained.

  Jay was standing in front of the wall in the kitchen tracing imaginary lines across his fictional whiteboard. I was glad he didn’t have a marker in his hand because I was sure he would be writing all over the wall.

  "Oakes wasn’t the only officer of the company I checked out," he was telling me. "I pulled the background dossiers on all the senior guys, and all of the directors, and discovered a few interesting things. First of all, most of the directors’ paths have crossed at some time or another in the past fifteen years. They’ve either served on the same boards, or were members of the same charitable foundations, or went to school together. All of their backgrounds as they’ve reported them checked out. Except one." He paused for effect.

  "You want me to guess?"

  He nodded his head and said, "Sure. But you’ll never get it on the first try."

  I was never one to back down from a challenge. "Can I ask one question first?"

  "Come on. Just guess," he said impatiently.

  I wanted to know if it was an officer or director of the company who didn’t check out but when Jay wasn’t amenable to the game, I guessed.

  "Larry Everly," I pronounced.

  Now it was Jay’s turned to look surprised.

  "You’re right. How did you know?"

  "Ah ha! So I was right," I rubbed it in. "But it was just a wild guess. I just don’t like the man. Most of the directors are harmless old men who are puppets. Everly on the other hand, isn’t old, and he isn’t harmless. He’s a snake. So, what didn’t check out about him?" I asked eagerly.

  He pulled out a sheaf of papers from the bottom of a pile that were paper clipped together and tossed them at me. I removed the paper clip and saw that it was a copy of each of the directors’ biographies. Stapled to each biography was a copy of each director’s entry from Who’s Who.

  "Take out Larry’s and check out what he said was his first job."

  "Bittman Brothers," I read out loud. "1973 to 1975." My face was a question mark.

  "A small, family-owned, Wall Street brokerage house," Jay told me and tossed more papers at me that were photocopies of excerpts from the Survey of Industrials, a directory that is released each year listing various industrial companies. Jay had photocopied an excerpt from the 1973 edition and highlighted a company called Weinstein Textiles. Weinstein Textiles were described as a manufacturer of industrial strength textiles located in Hamilton, Ontario. Revenues, number of employees and a list of the company’s officers followed. Chairman of the Board and President was a Mr. Robert Weinstein and on the same list I found the names of Christopher Oakes and Larry Everly. Chris Oakes was named as company Treasurer and Larry Everly was District Sales Manager.

  "Well, well, well," I said smugly. "Mr. Everly must have been carrying a big load back then, commuting daily between Hamilton and New York. It must have taken a toll. Did you check it out?"

  Jay nodded. "Of course. I called around and discovered that Bittman Brothers had been gobbled up by one of the larger brokerage houses in the mid-seventies. I managed to track down the son of one of the founders of Bittman Brothers who’s still in the business and he told me that Larry Everly never worked there. In fact, he knows Larry because Wall Street’s a small world. Told me they’d have been lucky to have Larry working there. He said if he remembered correctly, Larry was in the Toronto area during those years, working for some sort of manufacturing company. So, I searched the Survey of Industrials and found Larry Everly. And Chris Oakes."

  "Your research skills amaze me," I complimented him as I flipped the pages and saw the identical information for 1974 and 1975 directories. In the entry for 1975 Oakes still held the position of Treasurer but Larry had been promoted to Vice-President of Sales.

  "What happened after 1975?" I asked Jay.

  "I couldn’t find any more references to Weinstein Textiles. It appeared to have disappeared off the map."

  I tried to digest the information. From 1973 to 1975 Oakes had said he was at school getting his MBA, and Larry was supposedly working on Wall Street. Treasurer and Vice President of Sales were legitimate jobs, so why did they both feel it was necessary to lie about those two years?

  "Larry Everly knows damn well that Oakes is a fraud," I said.

  "And," Jay pointed out, "Oakes knows that Everly is a fraud."

  "Disgusting," I stated. I pushed my chair back and made some coffee. "Where does all this information get us?" I asked Jay as I spooned the coffee into the filter.

  Jay was silent for a moment and then he said, "It gets us nowhere. All it does is create more questions."

  "Yeah. Like what happened to Weinstein Textiles? Why would it just disappear like that from the reference books?"

  "Because you stop paying to have your company listed. From what I understand the Survey of Industrials sends out a renewal form each year to the companies that are listed in it asking for updated information and a fee to have their company listed again. So," he said slowly, "I called them. Asked them what had happened in 1976 and why Weinstein hadn’t re-listed."

  "And?" I asked hopefully, leaning against the counter.

  "They told me I was out of luck. Their records weren’t computerized back then and there wasn’t any way they could check back."

  "Oh," I said disappointedly.

  "But," Jay said brightly. "All those research skills I honed in university paid off. I did the next best thing."

  This was like pulling teeth.

  "You’ve had the answer all along haven’t you?"

  Jay smirked. "I got the answer but then I hit a dead-end. I started checking out obituaries. I started with this year and worked my way back." Once again, Jay paused for effect.

  I shifted my weight to the other foot and crossed my arms against my chest. My body language said, you better tell me, and tell me fast.

  "Okay, okay. Robert Weinstein died around Christmas in 1975." He dug around in his papers and came up with a microfiche copy of a small obituary. He handed it to me.

  Robert Weinstein, Chairman and President of Weinstein Textiles Inc. passed away suddenly on December 17, 1975. Survived by his loving wife Sadie and son Robert Jr.

  I handed it back to Jay who was holding yet another goodie. This time he read it out loud: Robert Weinstein, Chairman of Weinstein Textiles died of an apparent suicide on Thursday night. Mr. Weinstein will be fondly remembered by the many people who had been employed for decades at the textile plant. It was reported that Mr. Weinstein had been despondent recently over the bankruptcy of Weinstein Textiles. He is survived by his wife Sadie and their ten year old son, Robert Jr.

  Something was bothering me and I thought about it as I poured coffee. The name Sadie Weinstein was very familiar to me and I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it before.

  "Have you ever heard the name Sadie Weinstein before?" I asked Jay as I handed him a cup. He shook his head.

  Jay sat down at the table and started rearranging his piles of photocopies. I wandered through the living room and back into the kitchen all the time trying to remember. I played some mind games and envisioned lists of names. Names of friends and family. Names of friends of friends and friends of family. When that didn’t get me anywhere I switched to work. Names of people at the office, people outside the office at law firms and accounting firms. I was impressed with the number of people I knew but still didn’t come up with any Sadie Weinsteins. And then I remembered typing the name so I knew she was related to something I had done at work.

  "Jay," I said, trying to get his
attention. He was reading something intently and had ignored my wandering around.

  When he looked up at me, I said, "I know her name. And it’s an odd enough name that I doubt I’m mistaken here. I’ve typed her name on my computer and for the life of me, I can’t remember why."

  His eyebrows went up slowly. "You’ve typed her name? On the computer at work?"

  "Do you see a computer here at home? Yes, at work."

  "I’ll be right back," he said over his shoulder as he exited the kitchen quickly and I heard the front door close.

  When he came back he yelled for me from the front door. I found him on his hands and knees in the front hall plugging his laptop computer into the wall jack for the phone. I watched him in silence as he typed a few commands into the computer.

  The modem inside the computer emitted the scratchy sounds of a phone dialling and Jay looked up at me from where he was kneeling on the floor and asked, "You know Kate, it'd be nice if you joined the twentieth century and got a high speed connection and maybe a computer at home!"

  He passed me the computer and I logged on to my system at work.

  I clicked the mouse a few times to get to my file manager, clicked on the search button and typed in Sadie Weinstein. We waited while the computer searched the hundreds of subdirectories and documents on my computer.

  The computer finished its search and told us there were three occurrences of the name and that they were in the directory acquisitions, subdirectory marshton. I had a directory, or file, on my computer containing all the documents we created for all the companies we purchased. Subdirectories were created with the name of each company we acquired. All relevant, computer-generated documents were filed there. Marshton was the name of the company we had just acquired.

  I reached up to the small telephone table beside me and grabbed the pen and pad of paper I kept there for taking messages. I stared at the screen and wrote down the three documents where her name appeared. I clicked the mouse a few more times and a document appeared on the screen. I knew by now what the document contained and wasn’t surprised when the screen showed her name in third place on the list. All shareholders of that company were listed in order of their holdings.

  "There it is," I pointed to the screen. "Sadie Weinstein. She owned twenty-one percent of the shares of Marshton Systems."