Too Close
Chapter 80
At the insistence of the sunlight forcing its way through the bedroom window, Castle reluctantly opens his eyes. He props himself up on his elbow as Kate stirs beside him. "Good morning."
Kate blinks at the intrusive rays. "I feel like we just fell asleep. Trimming our list was more work than some of the murders we've solved."
"True," Rick agrees, "but at least we got it done. I'll get the coffee started if you want a couple more minutes in bed."
"I'd like more than a couple, but we don't have time. I want to look into the background of some of the people at Vaughn's table before we talk to them. If I order financials early enough in the day, we'll get them faster."
Castle taps his finger against the financial statement of David Anderson, chief financial officer of Vaughn Enterprises. "For a CFO, this guy isn't very financially savvy. His investments are losing money. It leads one to question what he's been doing with Vaughn's funds. Felder was looking to invest an extra $20 million in Mexi Solar. I wonder if it was worth it."
Kate chews on her lip. "Vaughn said it was making money."
"Sure, but he has subsidiaries all over the world. Would he have known what was going on in every single one of them, or would he have depended on Anderson to monitor their financial situations for him? From what Vaughn tried to pull on you, he doesn't keep his eyes exclusively glued to his ledgers."
"No, he doesn't," Kate agrees. "Anderson would have known about Cindy Paralti and Cyclen, too. Let's get more on Mexi Solar and Vaughn Enterprises before we talk to Anderson."
"There's an environmental site that Alexis keeps urging me to follow. It has information about a lot of renewable energy companies. I can start there," Rick volunteers.
"Good. I'll finish checking out the rest of Vaughn's guests, but Anderson seems our most likely suspect."
David Anderson pulls at his signature bow tie. Once the poison was identified, he'd expected all the suspicion to fall on Cindy Paralti. She's the only one who can point the finger at him, and he made sure she had sufficient funds to disappear for a while.
Kate lays a file on the table in front of her as she and Castle take seats opposite their suspect in Interrogation. "Mr. Anderson, you are in charge of investments at Vaughn Enterprises, are you not?"
"I have accounting and investigative staff, but I oversee those matters," Anderson agrees.
"What can you tell us about Mexi Solar?" Kate queries.
"It's a solid company in the growing solar energy field. It fabricates units for use in Southern California and Arizona as well as in Mexico," Anderson claims.
"I'd be interested in how they do that," Castle inserts as Kate hands him a photograph from her file. He lays the image of an empty factory in front of Anderson. "Mexi Solar has no equipment and no employees."
"That's an old picture," Anderson claims as sweat dampens his previously crisp white collar. "It was taken before production began."
"Look at the timestamp," Kate instructs. "That picture was taken by a very disappointed group of environmental activists two weeks ago, at the time Vaughn Enterprises claimed that Mexi Solar was shipping thousands of solar panels. In fact, the paperwork you submitted to Eric Vaughn featured those numbers. But Mexi Solar closed down for lack of funding, didn't it?"
"You made a series of unsuccessful investments for Vaughn," Castle continues. "To cover your failures, you set up your own little Ponzi scheme, replacing old losses with new investment, and you phonied up paperwork for Vaughn to sign off on, knowing that he wouldn't check."
"But Arthur Felder was planning to check," Kate picks up the narrative. "He wanted Vaughn to accompany him on a trip to Mexico to inspect Mexi Solar. We talked to Vaughn's pilot. The trip was already planned. But you couldn't let that happen, could you? So you conspired with Cindy Paralti to pressure Corey Harrison to poison Eric. When it was Felder who died, you knew you wouldn't be safe for long. The trip to Mexi Solar would be off temporarily, but if Vaughn took another investor down there or went by himself, he'd discover what you'd done."
"You can't prove I had anything to do with Arthur Felder's death," Anderson insists. "And as for shifting money around at Vaughn Enterprises, that is within my portfolio as CFO. Making a few bad decisions isn't a crime."
On cue, Esposito sticks his head in the door of interrogation. "The state troopers in Massachusetts just picked up Cindy Paralti at the cabin we tracked her to on Cape Cod. The troopers said she's already spilling her guts, and Ryan and I will be going up to get her."
"Care to revise your statement, Mr. Anderson?" Kate asks.
"I want a lawyer," Anderson demands.
"You're going to need a good one," Castle remarks.
Castle high fives Esposito as L.T. hustles Anderson to Holding. "Good performance."
"The troopers are still on their way to get Paralti," Esposito admits. "Ryan flagged her debit and credit cards. She must have run out of cash. When she charged a bottle of insect repellent and filled a prescription for an antihistamine at a pharmacy on Cape Cod this morning, we had her."
Castle scratches an imaginary itch. "The mosquitoes up there can be brutal, especially under the trees."
Kate grins. "We'll put another kind of bite on her. She'll have no choice but to give up Anderson. We'll probably find a money trail from Anderson to the hitter who shot at Vaughn. The guy who gave the toxin to Corey Harrison at the bus stop has to be connected to Anderson, too. I believe that a former CFO will be spending his time trying to figure out how to invest whatever he earns in the prison laundry."
Castle picks up an envelope with a double helix logo from his desk and throws it down again for the third time. Kate wraps her arm around his waist. "Babe, I thought you wanted to know your DNA results and start tracing your family."
"I did. I do. But now that they're here, the idea scares the hell out of me. What if I am related to a serial killer, or I'm carrying genes for some terrible degenerative disease?"
"Then you'll cope with it. We'll cope with it. But you're going to think the worst until you open the envelope."
"You're right," Castle admits picking up the missive again. His fumbling fingers lift the flap and pull out a report.
Kate leans her head on his shoulder. "What does it say?"
"That my ancestry is mostly French — with a little bit of Finnish. I would never have figured that. God, I hope I'm not related to Jacque Henri. They also list a recessive gene for red hair."
"No surprise there," Kate comments.
"No serious genetic diseases and nothing about serial killers, but they said this is just an overview. There's a code I'm supposed to use to sign on to their site to get more details of the report and search for family. They're also going to send me updates as they expand their tests for more markers. Anything is possible in the future."
"Babe, it always is. We left room to fill a few more seats at the wedding. Are you going to sign on?"
"Will you sit with me while I do?"
"I'm not going anywhere."