Chapter Twenty-Two
McGill peered intently at the street signs as his car rolled slowly down the street. He had only a vague sense of where Naylor’s Run Park was, although he was pretty sure it was off Garrett Road. Within seconds he saw to his left a large, open green area. This has got to be it, he said to himself. Now let’s hope the trip is actually worth it.
He had walked down the central main path for almost five minutes when he saw Ray Ridgway, an angular-looking man in his mid-thirties wearing a dark business suit, sitting quietly on a bench a few feet off the path.
McGill nodded toward him. “Mr. Ridgway, I assume?”
“And you must be Detective McGill,” Ridgway said, leaping to his feet and extending his hand.
McGill smiled. “Was it really necessary to meet this far off the beaten track?”
Ridgway grunted. “Let’s just say my career opportunities are likely to contract rather than expand if I’m seen in the company of the local police too frequently.”
McGill’s eyes narrowed. “And why would that be?”
“It’s probably just my personal neurosis, Detective,” he said, gesturing for McGill to take a seat next to him. “It’s just that I work for multiple clients and they’re all dreadfully afraid that I am somehow revealing their most important trade secrets to each other or to the authorities.”
“I was under the impression that you were a part-time fund raiser for the orchestra,” McGill said.
“And so I am,” Ridgway said, “but I’m also a part-time fund raiser for two other organizations.”
“Is that kosher?”
Ridgway shrugged. “The companies I work for are very different from one another and I approach a different group of donors for each of the three. Still, they all like to think that I work only for them.”
“And the reason you don’t?”
“Simple enough. They don’t pay enough. Normally I’ve got to cobble together two or three clients at any one time in order to make a decent living. Think of it as an advertising agency that handles more than one client.”
“I see. Well, you can probably guess why I got in contact with you. Samantha Gibbons told me that she overheard you and Jonathan Clemens, the orchestra’s business manager, having a pretty violent argument recently.”
“I don’t really know Samantha Gibbons, although I have run into her once or twice while in the orchestra’s business office. I believe that the music library where she works is down the hall from Clemens’ office. And of course I’m there quite a bit.”
“I see. Are you suggesting that no such confrontation took place?”
“Not at all. I think Ms. Gibbons is probably referring to a meeting I had with Clemens a little over a week ago. The only thing that surprises me is why you or anyone else might ever think that it had anything to do with the two horrible murders that recently took place in that building.”
“Mr. Ridgway, I’m not sure that it does. But I’d appreciate it if you could tell me everything you could about that meeting—what instigated it, what topics were discussed, and why there were raised voices.”
“That’s simple enough. I accused Clemens of fixing the books.”
“What?”
“Of dishonest accounting practices, if you will. Understandably, he resented my accusation.”
“You’re going to have to back up and give me a little background here.”
“It’s not really at all complicated. It’s my job to ‘close the deal’ with many of the orchestra’s biggest donors. In a few cases, I’m actually the one who makes the initial contact with the donor and I handle the whole thing. But most of the time, somebody else—often Wilfrid Carter or one of the other members of the Board of Directors—makes the original contact and then I come in to actually get the donor to sign on the dotted line.”
“Does Clemens ever do that?”
“Clemens? Not usually. I don’t know if you noticed it, but Jonathan is not known for his ‘people skills.’ Most people, especially wealthy people, find him boorish. I’m better with the wealthy donors so I do most of the closing.”
“Do you get a commission for that?”
“I work primarily on salary. Theoretically I might be able to get a commission but my revenue goals are set so high—absurdly high—that the commissions never kick in.”
“Is it Clemens who sets these goals for you?”
“Yes, but under orders from Carter. He doesn’t want the orchestra to pay out a penny more to anyone than it absolutely has to.”
“Okay, I think I understand the process now. Where does the ‘fixing of the books’ come in?”
“As you might expect, I make meticulous records of how much money I process for the orchestra, how much each of the donors actually signs off on. I know exactly how much money is donated to the orchestra in a given year from these donors and I know the terms under which the money is given.”
“And so?”
“So I recently came across the annual report to the orchestra’s Board prepared by Clemens listing the amount of the donations for the year that just concluded. Almost a third of the donations made—donations that I was directly involved in securing— were not reflected in the report.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Had you been aware of discrepancies of this sort before now?”
“I’ve been working for the orchestra for three years. I noted smaller discrepancies for the first two years as well but they didn’t amount to that much so I didn’t say anything. This year it seemed that quite a bit of money had been skimmed off.”
“So you confronted him with that fact?”
“Yes.”
“And he reacted violently?”
“At first it was more smugly than violently. He told me that I simply didn’t understand complex book-keeping methods and I shouldn’t be sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. I replied that it wasn’t necessary to know the details of his book-keeping system because the gross numbers should still have reflected the proper number and amount of donations regardless of how that money was manipulated after the fact.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“Basically he said ‘you’re fired’ and told me to leave his office. I had expected something like that and was more than prepared to terminate my relationship with the orchestra, but I wasn’t going to let that arrogant son of a bitch have the last word. So I told him what I thought of him. And then he started screaming at me.”
“Screaming what?”
“Frankly, he wasn’t terribly coherent. Something about me not understanding the arts and not being sympathetic with ‘creative temperaments’ and so forth.”
“Creative temperaments?”
“Yes, that’s a joke, isn’t it? Particularly coming from him. The guy doesn’t have a creative bone in his body.”
“And that was it? That was the gist of your conversation?”
“That was pretty much it. And, yes, it did get heated in the last few minutes and I’m sure we made a lot of noise. Ms. Gibbons may have heard it all the way from the music library.”
“Okay, so now that you’ve had some time to cool down, would you still contend that there’s been some shady bookkeeping going on here? Perhaps even something illegal?”
“Sure. I think that he—or somebody higher up for whom he’s covering—is skimming off the top. But do I think that you or anyone else is ever going to be able to prove that? Absolutely not.”
“And why is that?”
“You don’t have the expertise, even if they would allow you to see their books, which they will most definitely not do. What are you going to do…get a search warrant so you can take all their ledgers and supporting documents back to the police station and then have one of your experts look at it? You’ll never get a warrant for that…not in a million years. Maybe Clemens himself won’t be able to stop you, but Wilfrid Carter certainly will. He’s
a big man, Detective McGill, and he’s considered above reproach by most of the ‘important’ people in the Philadelphia governing hierarchy. No…neither you nor anyone else is ever going to get a chance to find out whether there’s anything fishy going on here.”