A is for Alibi

hill toward West L.A. I had one more stop and then I could drive back to Santa Teresa and clean it up. I thought I knew now who it was.

Chapter 26
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    I caught sight of my reflection in one of the mirrored walls across from the entrance to Haycraft and McNiece. I looked like I was ready for the last round-up: seedy, disheveled, mouth grim. Even Allison, in her buckskin shirt with the fringes on the sleeves, seemed alarmed by the sight of me, and her prerehearsed receptionist's smile dropped from sixty watts to twenty-five.
    "I have to talk to Garry Steinberg," I said, my tone apparently indicating that I wouldn't take much shit.
    "He's back in his office," she said timidly. "Do you know which one it is?"
    I nodded and pushed through the swinging doors. I caught sight of Garry walking down the narrow interior corridor toward his office, slapping a batch of unopened mail against his thigh.
    "Garry?"
    He turned, his face lighting up at the sight of me and then turning hesitant. "Where'd you come from? You look exhausted."
    "I drove down last night. Can we talk?"
    "Sure. Come on in."
    He turned left into his office, gathering up a stack of files on the chair in front of his desk. "You want some coffee? Can I get you anything?" He tossed the mail on the file cabinet.
    "No I'm fine but I need to check out a hunch."
    "Fire away," he said, sitting down.
    "Didn't you tell me once upon a time –"
    "Last week," he inserted.
    "Yeah, I guess it was. You mentioned that Fife's accounts were being put on computer."
    "Sure, we were converting everything. Makes it a hell of a lot easier on us and it's better for the client too. Especially at tax time."
    "Well what if the books had been fiddled with?"
    "You mean embezzlement?"
    "In a word," I said with irony. "Wouldn't that have shown up pretty quickly?"
    "Absolutely. You think Fife was milking his own accounts?"
    "No," I said slowly, "I think Charlie Scorsoni was. That's part of what I need to ask you about. Could he have skimmed money out of the estates he was representing back then?"
    "Sure. It can be done and it's not that hard," Garry said appreciatively, "but it might be a bitch to track. It really depends on how he did it. " He thought for a moment, apparently warming to the idea. He shrugged. "For instance, he could have set up some kind of special account or an escrow account for all his estates – maybe two or three phony accounts within this overall account. A large dividend check comes in, he diverts a percentage of the check from the estate it's supposed to be credited to, and he credits it to a phony account instead."
    "Could Libby have realized something was wrong?"
    "She might have. She had a head for that kind of thing. She'd have had to trace the dividends through Moody's Dividend Book, which gives the amount of each dividend by company. Then if there was some kind of discrepancy, she might have asked for records or documentation – bank statements, canceled checks, stuff like that."
    "Yeah, well Lyle told me last week that there were lots of phone calls back and forth, some attorney driving down for dinner. It finally occurred to me that Charlie might have engineered an affair with her in the hopes that she'd cover for him."
    "Or maybe he offered her a cut," Garry said.
    "Oh God, would she have done that?"
    Garry shrugged. "Hey, who knows? Would he?"
    I stared down at his desk top. "Yeah, I think so," I said. "You know, everybody kept saying that she was involved with some Santa Teresa attorney and we all assumed it was Fife because, both died the same way. But if I'm right about this embezzlement business then I need proof. Are the files still at your place?"
    "No, I've got 'em right here as a matter of fact. I thought I'd take a look at 'em during my lunch hour. I've been having cottage cheese but I don't think that counts as food so I thought I'd do without. I brought 'em in yesterday and then I got tied up. Now that you mention it, I do think she was working on that account when she died, because the cops found her briefcase at her place," he said. He gave me a curious look. "How'd you fix on him?"
    I shook my head. "I don't know. It just popped into my brain and it fit. Charlie told me that Fife made a trip to Los Angeles sometime in the week before he died, but I don't think that's true. I think probably Charlie made the trip himself and it would have been within a day or two after Laurence died. Libby had a bottle of tranqs and I think he doctored some,