Dearly Departed
By John Wolf

It was an uneasy feeling standing at the graveside of a friend and colleague of some forty years, but there I was watching a young man shoveling dirt onto a plain box coffin. I was accompanied by the owner's son and front office clerk for Peaceful Gardens cemetery. No one else was in attendance, and now I knew why.

Harry had become a recluse after his wife died five years ago. They lived in a lake shore home of quiet glamour in Madison, an estate that would have been envied in West Palm Beach or Beverly Hills, but was hidden by vegetation of many sorts with an uninviting drive that curved out of sight toward the house.

Harry sold the place and moved into a condo and began working out of his back bedroom office. He said he needed to be away from our downtown office for awhile. Harry and I ran a booking agency and publishing company that had placed many a star both on Broadway and in major movie projects. The advances to our celebrity authors were legendary. More legend than true, I now sadly know.

The day after the funeral a lawyer called me. It seems Harry was the last entry on his genealogy and I was appointed his executor. It was something we had discussed a few years ago that I had put out of my mind, so I wasn't surprised by the call.

The lawyer had secured Harry's possessions from the police to include a rent-car Harry had obtained three days before the fateful stoke in his gym, while working out on the paddleball court. He died before he hit the floor, as I understood the incident.

Not that we had a falling out or that business was slow, quite the contrary. We were busy with press releases and bookings for East Coast clients all the time. Our business had slowed as we got older and didn't seem all that urgent any longer. We had both made enough to retire comfortable. Harry more comfortable than I would have ever guessed.

While standing at his graveside, gnashing my teeth, I'm sure the people around me were convinced of my grief. Not so. It was anger grinding my jaw. Certain events of the last five years were starting to gel. My job was to book the talent and see the publishing projects through. Harry did the books. Boy, did he do the books.

When I looked at his condo, it was nearly empty. The only thing of any value was his computer, so I took the whole thing and put it the car. I had returned Harry's rent-car, which still had me puzzled. Why? I thought maybe his old Packard that he had spent a fortune to have restored might have been in for repairs. No, he had sold it. His condo would close out at the end of the month. Harry was going to book himself out of the country. Not a good sign.

My life had imploded recently when my wife passed away a year ago. I was about to ask Harry how to sell the house and find a place just like he had done. He laughed. Why didn't I see the signs?

I compared my contracts with his books to discover the huge advances our clients received actually amounted to industry standards. The big chunk that was above what the author got went into an account in the Bahamas that Harry had quietly set up. He hyped the advances in the press as a PR gimmick. No one would have questioned the buzz and exaggerations were fake. The clients never said anything.

Now I know why Harry's wife was on tranquillizers for several years. She must have known what he was doing and was afraid he would get caught. She had wasted away to a skeleton and died of fatigue, black patches under her eyes, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of brandy in the other.

I figured Harry made off with about twenty million dollars, but where was it? The account in the Bahamas was closeout the week before he died. It was a cash transfer and the bank wouldn't say where such a transaction took place. Company policy. What I did find out when I went to New Providence in the Bahamas is Harry had bought a boat, a big one. Seems the boat was moored at Coral Harbor on the other side of the island.

It was a gorgeous 65 foot Cris-Craft with a young lady wearing a white tennis outfit sitting on the back deck sipping an ice tea and reading a paper.

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"Permission to come aboard?" I asked.

She pulled her sunglasses down and looked me over from head to toe. "You must be William Brady."

"Call me Bill." I step onto the deck as she waved a hand toward the chair facing her.

"You seem to be expecting me," I said. My skepticism that this was going to be more than an explanation that she would need to depart company property began to rise.

"Harry said you were the younger partner, not by much."

"You seem disappointed."

"No, it's okay. What brings you to the Bahamas?"

"You do know about Harry..."

"Dropping dead on at his gym. Yes, I just found out." She pointed to the paper. "Funny who shows up in the obituaries."

"And you are related to Harry, how?"

"We were very close friends." She smile and shifted in her seat to punctuate her statement with cleavage.

"So what's the arrangement, here? I've come to lay claim to this boat since it was purchased with embezzled funds from my company."

"Ooh, such harsh words." She shifted again to pour me a glass of what turned out to be mimosas, not tea.

"Thanks." She leaned in to let me have a good look at her perfect curves. I continued, "I have all the records to show this property was lifted. I have a lawyer waiting to close out this ugly chapter in our history."

"Interesting. I have a set of books in Harry's hand that says you 'lifted' these assets." She leaned back with some confidence. I was thrown a bit.

"Er...what are you driving at, miss...?"

"Call me Janet. Not to belabor the point, Harry told me everything about how he became rather wealthy at your expense. He felt real bad about it, honestly. I convinced him that he better protect himself if it was ever found out. After all, he didn't hide the fact he was rich."

"He hid it pretty well from me. No one caught wind of it until I went over my records and bounced them against his financial statements. I'm sure I can refute any false claims you come up with. So you are here to defend a dead man. Do you know where he stashed his loot?"

"You are in pirate waters, Bill. We have booty. Do you become a pirate like me, or do you go down with your ship like a good captain?"

I sat there stunned, trying not to show it. I had to size this lady up in the next thirty seconds or risk a bluff that might turn sour. I was trying to visualize her with a patch over one eye. If she was telling the truth, Harry's second set of books could make me look rather bad.

It was about two weeks later that Janet and I got married and opened a joint account with the Central Bank of the Bahamas. All said and done, Harry wasn't such a bad guy after all. He had great taste in women. We named the boat the Bounty.

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