Baiting & Fishing Read online

Chapter 24

  Once he felt he could trust his voice, he put in a call to Steve Johnson's work number from his cell phone. “This is Ray Bailey. I would like to talk to you as a follow-up to the conversation we had at Walt's a few months ago. Please call me at this number as soon as possible.”

  Next he called Victoria. He had never called her in the evening before. He regretted it as soon as the phone rang, and hung up. A minute later, she called him back. “Damn caller ID!”

  He picked up the phone and said, “Hello, Victoria.”

  She said, “What's up that you should call me and then hang up?”

  He didn't know what to say. His voice cracked and he tried, for the most part unsuccessfully, not to cry as he said, “I'm sorry. I guess I just wanted to talk to someone, and you were the only person I could think of to call.”

  “Why not call Marcella?”

  “It's about Marcella.”

  She paused and then asked, “Where are you?”

  “I'm at home.”

  “What is your address? I'll come to you.”

  “No. Please don't. I don't want to be a bother.”

  She made a sound in her throat, “It is not a bother when a friend is in trouble. Where do you live?”

  He gave her directions and she hung up. He felt like such an unbelievable dork. What was the matter with him? He had a good thing for the first time in years; why did he have to go screw it up by having some kind of moral qualms about the woman?”

  He paced the floor. He wanted to call Victoria and tell her not to come over, but he knew that would do no good. He wanted to prepare himself, to steel himself so he didn't cry and go all hysterical when she arrived; that would be a waste of time because he knew he was going to go to pieces the minute she walked in the door.

  He was still pacing when he heard her car pull in the driveway. Victoria did not have a driver. She drove her own 10-year-old Cadillac. He opened the front door before she rang the bell. She came into the room, and took over. She hugged him tight and said, “Have you eaten?”

  He shook his head. She went to the kitchen and rummaged around in the fridge. In an astonishingly short time, she had prepared a plate of sandwiches and crudités. She had the plate in one hand and two beers in the other. She asked him where he wanted to sit while they talked. He motioned to the screened porch. She handed him the plate and waited politely while he ate, sipping her beer and listening to the night sounds.

  When he had finished, she said, “I didn't press you for information before, but now I think I would like for you to tell me what you know. I won't tell anyone. But, if it is a contributing factor to making you into such a basket case, I feel as though I need to know in order to give you any kind of reasonable advice.”

  Ray filled her in generally on Marcella's history as she had explained it, along with the additional details he had just learned.

  Victoria put her arm around him and tried to comfort him, but there was little comfort to be had. The woman he had fallen in love with after so many years of being alone was definitely an international jewel smuggler, possibly a participant in a massive corporate fraud that left tens of thousands of employees broke and cost stockholders millions upon millions of dollars. She was potentially even a murderer. Victoria agreed with Ray that he had to go to the authorities, but she knew him well enough to understand that would be the hardest thing he had ever done.

  Somewhat to Ray's amazement, he did not cry and fall apart. He had done that earlier with Marcella. Now he felt drained and tired. He was afraid. He was afraid that (if he was wrong about Marcella's involvement in the Techtron scandal or in Roland Wilson's death) he had just thrown away the best opportunity he might ever have for love. He was afraid that (if he was right about Marcella's involvement in all that crap) he would have to spend the next months or years watching her life collapse again in public, and he would have to deal with the quizzical looks of his friends and colleagues who, thanks to Marcella's blabbing, all knew he was involved with her. He couldn't quite decide which was worse.

  He sat with his head on Victoria's shoulder for a while. Then he leaned back in the love seat and stared at the ceiling. “First, tell me what you make of the information I gave you about Marcella.”

  She pursed her lips and studied her hands, “I guess there is a sort of spectrum of possibilities. On the one extreme, Marcella may have been in on the Techtron scam from the very beginning. She seduced Roland, helped place Collonia's people in key places at Techtron. They planted the seeds for everything that followed, then they pulled out, but the groundwork was laid. Marcella at that point was the model corporate wife, but she may also have been placed there in order to keep Roland Wilson in line. When it all started to unravel, she opened an escape hatch for herself, which she failed to use. Did she fail to use it for the reason she gave you? Did she fail to use it because Collonia found out about it and stopped her? Or, did she fail to use it because the time had not yet come for her to need it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe the escape was not to get away from the Techtron collapse as much as it was to get away from Collonia if she ever needed to do that? That's a wild guess....

  “Anyway, then somebody killed Wilson. I think it was suicide, with or without assistance. I think Roland Wilson would never have gone to jail. Did Marcella have a hand in his death? Somehow I don't think she did, although I feel certain that if she suspected what he intended to do when he left for Miami, she did nothing to stop him. She certainly benefited from his death. That's motive enough for murder and I could imagine a prosecutor scoring some points with that information. I'd also bet that if Collonia killed Wilson he also planted some evidence against Marcella.”

  She got up and went into the kitchen, returning with a pitcher of tea and two glasses. She poured them each a glass and continued, “Somewhere in the middle is the point Marcella would have you believe she occupied. She was a more or less unwitting recruit into Collonia's smuggling operation, but she continued to work for him until now. She knew about Collonia's operations, but closed her eyes to the parts that did not involve her. She was not involved with the Techtron scam but she suspected something was wrong; again, she did not look too closely. If we are to believe her, she is a sort of tool who was manipulated by Collonia for his purposes. I think that if she was more or less in the dark about most of the bad stuff, it was more due to her failure to look than due to anyone actively trying to hide things from her. That's certainly a possibility. People do that all the time.”

  She sipped her tea and closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead, and pinching her brow. “There is one other possibility. You have alluded to it. There is the possibility she could be working with the authorities to get to Collonia.” She smiled, “One could go crazy thinking up opportunities at which point that could have happened. Looking at the time line, there are a whole lot of places where the FBI could have recruited her. It sounds crazy, but it's the only thing that really explains why she wasn't arrested or at least investigated more closely. If that is true, then she is in terrible danger from Collonia.”

  He put his face in his hands, “If that is true, then I just threw her away for no reason.”

  She shook her head, “I wouldn't say it is for no reason. Even if you were willing to blink at the smuggling -- which I am not sure I think you should do because who's to say what she was really smuggling -- if there is any possibility she was involved with the Techtron business or, God forbid, murder, you have to go to the cops. She's right it is your civic duty to report crimes you know to have been committed. As a law-abiding citizen, I think you have to do it. I know you've turned people in before when you ran across evidence during your research on stories.”

  He nodded. “What do you think?”

  “I think whoever planted all that evidence for us to find did a great job of muddying the waters.”

  “What?”

  “Whether it was Collonia, the feds or Marcella herself, somebody h
as laid down a trail of evidence that is pretty amazing. It is damning enough to make me think Collonia did it in order to keep her from bailing out on his operations. It is ambiguous enough to allow for the possibility she is working both sides of the street. Most of all, it is impossible to draw any real conclusions from it.”

  “God, I've got a headache.”

  She stood up. “You need to go to bed. I am going home. When are you meeting with your FBI friend?”

  “I left a message on his work machine. I assume he'll call me tomorrow.”

  “Come to my house when you are finished. I'll only need fifteen minutes notice.”

  He stood up and walked her to the door. She patted his arm and stood on her tip toes to kiss his cheek. He said, “Thank you for being here.”

  She smiled and said, “It's what friends do.”

  He glanced at his watch. It was still early enough to call Karen. He wanted to let her know what was happening. He also hoped against all hope that she had uncovered something new which would clarify the situation. When she answered, he blurted out an abbreviated version of his conversation with Marcella and told her he had contacted the FBI. There was a long pause. She said softly, “Ray, I can only imagine how hard this must be for you. I want you to know I am really sorry for you. If I can help in any way, please, you have only to ask.”

  He smiled into the phone and answered, “You know, I think the one good thing about this whole situation is that I am finding out who my real friends are. It's good to know who's got your back, and I have to tell you I feel good knowing that I have you and Victoria in my corner.” He laughed, perhaps a little hysterically, “Lord knows I'd be scared as hell to have the two of you on my bad side.”

  She laughed too, but not with any real amusement. She told him she had come up with nothing else. He told her to stop looking. The FBI could take over. They would just have to read about it in the newspapers. He said, “One thing for sure, you won't see my byline on any of those articles.”

  She said, “Let me know how your conversation goes with the agent.” Then she added with a slight catch in her voice, “Call me if you need me.”