Randy White - Deceived

PRESERVE OUR HERITAGE

JOIN FISHERFOLK of SOUTH FLORIDA Inc.

“These things were scattered all over the floor,” I said, then looked at the back where there was a simple pledge form that solicited donations of $10, $20, $50-just check the box-and a fill-in-the-blank space for Other . If it was a swindle, at least the con men weren’t being overly greedy, which I told Joel.

“Maybe it’s legitimate, maybe it’s a soft pitch that leads to bigger money,” he replied. “That’s not unusual. I have only two people on my staff and we’ve got seventy, eighty of these so-called charities to check out. Those are just the ones we’ve flagged. There are fifty thousand charities registered in this state, did you know that?”

I looked at the pamphlet again. The fine print said that Fisherfolk of South Florida Inc. was a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations tax-deductible. The address was a P.O. box in Carnicero, a little crossroads town, inland Florida.

“Carnicero’s in Sematee County?” I asked.

“Yep-I always picture carnival people because of the name. In the envelope there’s preliminary information that’ll explain why I flagged the organization.”

“Your friend Mr. Chatham probably knows something about this,” I said. “I don’t know if his family fished, but the Chathams have been in Florida a long time.”

“Del’s never heard of it, and that’s another red flag. So’s the fact that Rosanna Helms had a whole stack of these forms. Chances are, she gave them out to her friends. Maybe they have a stack, too, which could mean it’s some kind of pyramid scheme. I need someone local, an insider, to follow up in person and do the research. By law, I can only hire an investigator licensed and bonded by the state, so you’re a perfect fit.”

“Actually, it was my Uncle Jake’s business,” I replied. “And I’ve got a lot of charters already booked, so I-”

“This isn’t high priority, so you can work around your charters. We’ll pay whatever the rate schedule allows by the state. If this Fisherfolk thing is legitimate, you’ll know soon enough-then I’ll throw more cases your way.” The man offered me a confidential smile. “For me, it’s a win-win because hiring you gives me a built-in excuse to-”

Do what? Stay in touch? Meet for dinner? Try to lure me into bed-that wasn’t going to happen. Ransler didn’t offer a hint because his cell rang again, this time with important business.

“Gotta run,” he told me, pocketing his phone. “An actual murder-they just found the body.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Can’t say. Oh”-the special prosecutor looked over his shoulder as he walked toward his car-“can we postpone our trip until this afternoon? I could be back by one, maybe two.”

I shook my head. I had a charter scheduled for the afternoon, a woman who wanted to learn fly-casting, and her son who was home from college.

“Wednesday morning, then,” Ransler pressed. “I’ve got meetings tomorrow.”

I don’t like being rushed, and was also troubled by the man’s subtle flirting, so I shook my head and lied, “The biologist I’m dating? He’s already booked me for Wednesday. All day.”

Ransler thought that was humorous. It caused him to smile as he opened the door of his Audi. “Your boyfriend has to book a date? Or do you mean you charge him to fish?”

“We’re collecting specimens ,” I responded as if that explained everything.

“Then make it tomorrow, I’ll change my calendar. Afternoon or morning?” Ransler, who should have been on his way to a murder scene, stood, loose-jointed and amused, awaiting my answer.

“Tomorrow same time,” I told him, which was safer than risking another ridiculous lie.

Loretta was napping when I got to the house, Alice Candor and the nosy little man with the camera were nowhere to be seen, so I opened my laptop, still fuming, and searched for details on a murder that had gone unsolved for twenty years. I had a dozen more important things to do but couldn’t stop myself. Joel Ransler had been evasive about how Dwight Helms had died. Why? My secret fear was that Helms, instead of being shot, had been killed with an axe, which was a wild suspicion but so unsettling I was determined to prove myself wrong.

The old newspaper stories I found, though, weren’t helpful, because accessing the archives required a paid subscription. Should I find my wallet and use a credit card? Or wait until I was at my Uncle Jake’s office where our computer was authorized to search restricted state and federal files? I decided to wait because the crime databases would offer more information than newspaper stories that were twenty years old.

No… twenty-one years old, according to the abstracts I read. Dwight Helms’s body had been found in May after a tip to police from “an unnamed informant.” Helms had also been arrested the previous month for leaving the scene of an accident and charged with DUI. A year earlier, he had been arrested but not charged after police found a bale of marijuana in his abandoned pickup truck.

Ransler had said Crystal Helms was living in a trailer park not far from Sulfur Wells, so I did a quick search on her, then on her brother, Mica. Like their father, the lives of both were summarized by a series of police reports that recorded the saddest of family traditions, but nothing so new as a phone number or address.

The Internet wastes a lot more of my time than it saves, which I remind myself about daily, yet it’s hard to tear myself away from the keyboard once I get started. I had a ton of things to do-background searches on Alice Candor and Joel, among them, which required the office computer-but I found myself checking my e-mail in hopes of a note from Ford. No luck, which wasn’t surprising because he had warned me that communication was difficult from Venezuela.

Steered by Ransler’s claim there were thousands of charitable organizations in Florida-a few of them fraudulent-I moved on to the subject of scam artists.

He had been right about elderly Americans being a favorite target. Most of them owned property, they had retirement funds and money socked away. Scammers working from the safety of foreign countries-Jamaica, most commonly-preyed on their fragility and loneliness like carrion birds.

There was a long list of gambits: Make contact by phone, Internet, or, better yet, by registered mail-pose as an IRS agent and demand back taxes. Or claim to be a mortgage company that is foreclosing unless a forgotten lien is paid. Threaten to disclose an unnamed crime-by age eighty, we’re all guilty of something, right? Deliver the good news that a million-dollar lottery prize will be shared once the “fees” are paid. If U.S. authorities expose or confront the scammers, so what? They change their cell numbers, invent a new scenario, and return to picking the bones of the innocent living. The scammers’ greatest assets, I read, were America’s inattentive adult children who confused the term professional care with family care .

These stories were so upsetting that when I heard my mother’s bedroom door open and the sound of her shuffling feet, I found myself rushing to help her into the recliner and then fetched her tea after spending several minutes searching for the TV remote, which she had stored with the dish towels, God knows why.

“Are you drunk or did you bump your head?” Loretta demanded when I offered her a pillow. Then called to Mrs. Terwilliger, who was outside picking tomatoes, “Donna, get in here! Something’s wrong with Hannah and she’s scaring me!”