None of which seemed at all unusual to Blake.
“According to James, your father threatened to call someone he knew at the IRS unless James turned over his records to him, so that he could see for himself what was and wasn’t there, with the understanding that if he found anything that even hinted at tampering, he’d call the IRS anyway.”
With a hand to his chin, Blake nodded. Sitting still was excruciating. Almost as painful as listening to what should be a fantastic story, but was, in fact, quite believable, about his deceased father. He could too easily see Walter Ramsden giving James a fair chance to prove himself before turning him in, and then considering himself judge and jury of that proof. After all, Walter Ramsden firmly believed that he always knew what was best.
The damnable thing was, he pretty much always had.
Except, of course, in his decision to invest with Eaton James.
“Threatening to call the IRS on a firm whose bad investment has just lost you a huge chunk of money is hardly a crime, and nowhere near the vicinity of blackmail.”
Unless someone like Juliet McNeil, who colored the truth to match any decor, was painting the picture?
Running a hand through his graying hair, Schuster picked up his glass. “Mind if I have another?”
“Help yourself.” Blake motioned to the bar. He should get up and do it, and get one for himself, as well. Except that he hadn’t finished the one he had.
The back of the man’s slacks looked as though he’d slept in them more than once. Apparently sometime during the afternoon, the prosecutor—whose attention to his appearance was normally obsessive enough to be noticeable—had lost track of the crease in his pants.
With a glass that was twice as full as the one Blake had poured originally, Schuster took his seat.
“James testified that after your father looked over his books, Walter claimed the legitimate start-up companies under Terracotta’s umbrella were fraudulent. Apparently a couple of the new ventures had well-known San Diego businessmen at the helm as the principal signers. Because the auditors knew the reputations of the businessmen in question, they didn’t audit their books, but rather accepted as fact the invoices and receipts going to and coming from them.”
Just like the well-known national firm that had been in the news at least twice in the past two years. Blake frowned. “My father thought the companies were nonexistent fronts to hide Terracotta Foundation losses or gains.”
“Apparently.”
“And these principal signers, how would James have convinced them to act as principals for businesses that were not legitimate?”
“McNeil asked James that very question,” Schuster said, shaking his head. “I swear, the woman had no idea what her client had up his sleeve, but she sure rolled with the punches.”
Blake couldn’t tell if the older man was repulsed, or reluctantly in awe. He suspected a combination of both.
“And what was James’s reply?”
“That your father was obsessed and, he suspected, not quite as mentally alert as he’d once been…”
Blake burned. His old man had had many faults, but a lack of mental sharpness had not been one of them. That was something his mother absolutely would have told him about.
“He said that your father found the fact that all of the principals held seats on the Semaphor board suspect. He accused James of playing on the trust of his philanthropic associates—”
“Something my father had fallen prey to.”
“Exactly.”
Sitting forward, Blake picked up his glass. Sipped slowly. This wasn’t sounding so bad, after all.
“If my father had been wrong, if the companies weren’t fraudulent, what did James have to be afraid of? I think that the fact that the state found the same evidence is pretty telling, don’t you?”
Schuster swirled the liquid in his glass, took a drink, then frowned at Blake. “Not so fast,” he said, his eyes deadly serious. “In the first place, if your father didn’t have something on James, the blackmail attempt would not have been successful.”
He’d actually forgotten, for a moment, that that was where they were headed. James’s ridiculous attempt to buy his freedom.
“And secondly, your father is the one who turned evidence over to the state.”
Goddammit. He hadn’t been told that.
So Schuster’s entire case was hinging on the validity of his father’s claims?
“Obviously you found ample evidence to corroborate the charges.” The case would never have grown to this magnitude, would never have attracted attorneys like Schuster and Juliet McNeil, if there wasn’t substantial proof.
Schuster sighed, dropped his head. “Much of the paper trail I’ve spent the past five years unwinding was created at the direction of your father. In a private meeting, of which no one knows, he told me where to look. And what I’d find.”
“And he was right.”
“Of course he was right, or we wouldn’t be here,” Schuster said impatiently, looking up. “James maintains that your father planted the evidence.”
Glass in hand, Blake sat back. Hard. The moment had gone from incredible to absurd.
“If my father turned everything over to you, what did he supposedly have to use to blackmail James?”
“I met with your father just days before he died. Twenty-four hours after James had met with him, giving him a particular piece of information that he believed would not only get him out from underneath your father’s control, but would turn the tables on him. He had information with which he could blackmail your father, instead.”
“He admitted to blackmailing my father?”
Schuster shook his head. “No, he claims he only used the information to get your father to leave him alone. He had no intention of doing anything illegal.”
Taking another sip of whiskey, although he knew he needed his mind completely clear, Blake set the glass down.
“But he claims that, until he came up with whatever hold he had on my father, my father used the evidence of fraudulent companies to blackmail him.”
“Yes.”
“So again, I ask, if there was nothing fraudulent in those books, why give in to blackmail?”
Not that he believed, for one second, there’d ever been any blackmail. Blake might have gone three years without speaking with his father, but there were some things he just knew.
“James had made some very stupid mistakes. Namely some bad investments—not unlike the Eaton Estates deal—that, had they become known, would have lost the Terracotta Foundation all of its investors. Think of it, a nonprofit organization losing money instead of gaining it to benefit third world countries. He’d made other investments that were keeping him afloat, but who’s going to give money to a man they can’t trust? He’d have been bankrupt with no possible way of recouping his losses, his reputation ruined.”
“So why didn’t the original audit of Terracotta show those losses?”
“Because James started up a couple of other small companies that he used to hide the losses.”
“The companies my father questioned.”
“Correct.”
“So were they legitimate, or weren’t they?”
Shrugging, Schuster finished off his whiskey. “That’s the six-million-dollar question that only the jury will be able to decide at this point. The companies themselves