Judgment

35

Juliana slept badly most of the night. It was the unfamiliar bed, as comfortable as it was, with high-thread-count sheets; it was the strange room, the heavy sweet smell of the potpourri on the nightstand. She found herself reliving her conversation with the homicide investigators, the lies she’d had to tell, their suspicious expressions. She mulled over Jake’s anger. She thought about what would happen to her if the hotel had surveillance tape and the State Police detective saw her enter the hotel not once but twice. How would she explain that? Before going to sleep she’d e-mailed Philip Hersh and asked him to meet her at the courthouse in the morning. She thought about Hersh, wondering how good he really was, whether he’d be able to find out more about Mayfair Paragon or — what was the name of the British firm that was the lead investor in Wheelz? Right, Harrogate Capital Partners.

Then something popped into her head, a free-floating phrase: accredited investor form. Whatever the hell that meant. She’d come across that phrase in the Wheelz chats, and she remembered jotting it down. Accredited investor form. Rachel Meyers was trying to get access to them and was shut down. Her boss didn’t want her to see this form, these forms, for some reason.

By the time she got back to sleep there were pale orange brushstrokes in the sky. The alarm on her phone jolted her awake after what seemed like only minutes.

Hersh, dressed in a gray suit and loafers and looking like a shabby courthouse lawyer with not a lot of clients, was waiting outside her office door when she arrived. He handed her a cup of coffee from the gourmet coffee truck out front. Which she didn’t expect but appreciated. She always accepted coffee. Then, when they were sitting inside her lobby, he gave her a file folder.

“The dossier on Greaves, old-school style. I can also e-mail it to you if you want. Using WhatsApp.”

“Who?” She’d momentarily blanked on the name.

“Donald Greaves. The muscle. The enforcer. The guy who threatened you.”

“Right. Do you know who he’s working for, who his client is?”

“I don’t have that yet. But I have a bit more on Harrogate Capital Partners.”

“Okay?”

“It’s not much. Let’s see, it’s based in the town of Harrogate, up north in England, in Yorkshire. Sort of a posh town. One member of their board of directors is an earl. The Earl of Wenfield. He’s vice chairman.”

“Okay.”

“I poked around some, and I found out that the Earl of Wenfield went bankrupt a few years ago. Guy’s name is Charles Arthur Bertram Hogg, known as Cab. Next thing you know, Cab becomes vice chair of Harrogate Capital Partners.”

“Huh.”

“What a lot of these British firms do is, they name someone fancy and titled to their board of directors. It bestows cachet. My guess is that the earl doesn’t actually have to do anything. Lend his name, go to cocktail parties, maybe give a party for the company at his grand house once in a while. Vice chairman is probably a title without responsibility.”

“So what do they invest in?”

“Not clear. It’s a private company; they don’t have to reveal their portfolio to the world. Here and there you find mentions of Harrogate investing in European high-tech companies.”

“But whose money is behind it?”

“No idea. All I know is that it wasn’t so long ago that Wheelz was burning through their cash like crazy, they were desperate for money, and all of a sudden this English venture capital firm swoops in and saves their ass.”

“Okay. What about Mayfair Paragon? Any more on that, who’s behind it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have any more leads. But I found an article in a pretty obscure newspaper called the British Virgin Islands Advertiser about the Wheelz deal. It talked about some local BVI bank getting involved with this financing arrangement along with a much bigger bank in Cyprus.”

“I don’t understand — what can I do with that? What does that mean?”

“You gather facts until you have enough facts to recognize a pattern.”

“And what does this tell you?”

“I don’t know.”

Frustrated, she sighed. “What about the ‘accredited investor forms’ that the plaintiff was trying to get and kept getting blown off? Any idea how we find these?”

“Nothing on that either. I’m sorry to disappoint. I found out what they are, though. When you make a private investment in a company, the government makes you fill out a form. You’ve got to put down your name and the names of all investors. There are no anonymous investors. Everyone has to list their name. It would be huge if we could find these forms. They probably contain all the information you’re looking for.”

“What about the surveillance video at the hotel?”

“I checked with hotel security. The investigator from the Attorney General’s office asked for the tapes, and they found something kinda screwy when they tried to make a copy for the police.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s no video for the entire past week. Some kind of freak malfunction. All of the hotel’s cameras, down the whole week.”

“Meaning someone got to them.”

“What I assume. But it’s good news for you.”

“Yes.” Without videotape, it would be that much harder for the investigators to prove she’d been there. Though not impossible. They could interview people who might have seen her. They might talk to the housekeeper who’d let her into the room. It would be easy to connect her, if the police pursued it.

“Why does it not feel like good news?” she said.