When Janise saw Marcus, she immediately started smiling. “Marcus. I wasn't expecting you in the office today.”
“I needed to look over some things. I probably won't be here long.”
“And how are you, Ms. Taylor?”
“Doing fine, Janise; what about you?”
“Great. In fact I have some great news for you, Marcus.”
“What's that, Janise?”
“Your lawyer called and said Randa sauntered into his office this morning, without her lawyer, and signed the divorce papers. He said she didn't even bother to look at them. Just signed he
r name and left.”
“Did she really?” Marcus winked at Carmen. “That is great news, Janise.” After exchanging a few more pleasantries with Janise, Marcus and Carmen went into his office and closed the door. Marcus took the envelope out and opened it.
“What's in it?”
“Three sheets of paper and a CD. Two of them have a heading which reads Frank Collins client list.” Marcus handed the client lists to Carmen, and he continued reading the other sheet. “And this one says notes to Marcus. It says observation, FC and CT appear to be friends, then next to it, she wrote, confirmed,” he continued reading. “According to this, before Frank Collins came to work at Hudson Financial, he used to work as salesman for Atlanta life, then a brief stint at Dean Witter in New York. He was fired for, in capital letters, GROSS financial mismanagement of his accounts. When he came to Hudson Financial as an account manager, he was put immediately on the merger audit team, even though he had no audit experience. She remembered a meeting between Frank and CT, who I assume is Connie Talbert, and after that the deal fell through. Then down here at the bottom it says, FC, ML HF. FC we know is Frank Collins and HF is most likely Hudson Financial. But what does ML stand for?”
“I have no clue.”
“Then it says W O N N I E M T E L =CD. Any bets on what that means?”
Carmen shrugged her shoulders and shook her head no, and continued looking at the client lists. “Marcus, these are two different lists. But on this one, she wrote official,” Carmen said handing the papers back to Marcus. “And this one, the names are obviously fake names.”
“Some of the names are in Spanish, but these others, Abe Lincoln, James Madison.”
“Dead Presidents.”
“Not just dead Presidents,” Marcus said. “Each of them are on some denomination of currency. George Washington is on the $1 note, Thomas Jefferson is on the $2, Abraham Lincoln is on the $5, Alexander Hamilton is on the $10, Andrew Jackson is on the $20, Ulysses S. Grant is on the $50, Benjamin Franklin is on the $100, William McKinley is on the $500, Grover Cleveland is on the $1000, James Madison is on the $5000, and Salmon B. Chase is on the $10,000. When one series of the $100,000 note was issued, 1934 Gold Certificates, if I'm not mistaken, Woodrow Wilson was put on them. Even though they're called “dead presidents,” three of them, Hamilton, Franklin, and Chase, weren't Presidents.” Marcus looked and saw how Carmen was looking at him. “Anyway, money, that's the pattern here.”
“I've heard of all the rest of them, but who is Chase?”
“Salmon B. Chase was an old Abolitionist lawyer and politician from the pre-Republican Liberty Party. As it happened, he was appointed by Abraham Lincoln to be Secretary of the Treasury and was responsible for the motto In God We Trust, which was introduced on the coinage at that time but it didn't appear on currency until 1957.
“How do you know all this?”
“I read a lot,” Marcus smiled.
“Okay,” Carmen said thinking how far she'd come from Denny Boo. Carmen smiled at Marcus and he smiled back. “What's on the CD?”
“Let's see.” Marcus put the CD in the drive and it opened up a Windows program which informed them that there is no application associated with it, and asked which program they wished to use. “This is useless to us. It's a safe bet that Mondrya copied it from Hudson Financials computer system.”
“So we need to be at Hudson Financial to find out what's on it?”
“Maybe not,” Marcus said and picked up the phone. “Janise, get Garrett on the phone for me, please.”
“Hold on, Marcus,” Janise said, and before too long she came back to the phone. “Marcus, I have Garrett on line three.”
“Thanks, Janise.” Marcus switched to line three and put it on speaker. “Garrett.”
“Congratulations big dog! I hear Randa signed the divorce papers. How does it feel being a free man?”
“I guess it will hit me after a while, but right now,” he smiled at Carmen, “it really hasn't fazed me. What's going on with you?”
“You know me, Marcus, work, that's what's going on with me. What's up with you? You need me to go question Porsche Temple's freaky crew again? Please say yes.”