“And he didn’t listen,” Bea said.
“Henry was like a dog with a bone once he had something set in his mind.”There was only fondness in James’s tone.“So in the late eighties he came to me with a full-out business proposition, which was smart on his part.Henry was the people person.I was the numbers person.And numbers are facts you can’t refute.He wanted to set up a proper foundation.A board, donors, the tax man’s blessing.Something that would outlast both of us, but continue the mission of healing others.”
He set the glass down and turned it a slow quarter, not drinking.
“We never dreamed what it would grow into.It started as a nonprofit that reached across the globe, with a few hundred doctors and private donors.The Wainwright-Everett Foundation.And now it’s one of the largest international medical relief agencies in the world, next to Doctors Without Borders.Before Henry died we had more than ten thousand staff and volunteers worldwide, and we’d just formed a global medical oversight committee.Honestly, it had outgrown the both of us and the board.Now it’s known as World Relief Healers.”He said the name carefully, like something he hadn’t handled in a while.“I retired a few years back from day-to-day operations, but I still take at least four missions to different countries a year.But Henry was the driving force.There are people walking around alive on four continents because Henry Wainwright couldn’t say no to a sick child.And not one of them ever heard his name.”
“I had no idea of the depth and scope,” Hank said, shaking his head.“I would have donated more money.”
“We all would have,” Dottie said.“But that was the thing about Henry.Always very humble.”
Bea rattled the ice in her sidecar.“I covered every charity gala on this island for thirty years, James.I never knew the half of it.He’d stand in the corner at those things looking like he wanted to go home, and all the while he was running a multimillion-dollar foundation.”
“We had some very generous, private donors,” James said.“Henry felt like that was enough.He was always focused on the mission.But I knew if we wanted to stay focused and do the things he wanted to do it was going to cost money, and we’d need to think of other things besides staying on Grimm Island.”
“How big was your board?”
“We’d been running at twelve.They all had three-year terms, but many of them had been with us since our inception.”His thumb moved along the table’s edge.“A lot of good people, the kind you put on a letterhead so the donors sleep easy.”Something passed over his face and was gone.“Many of them are gone now.I’m not sure who’s left you could talk to.”
“All right.”Dottie tapped her pen against her pad.“Let’s think this through logically.Based on the evidence of Henry being killed with the gun in the wrong hand, we are working under the theory that he was murdered.And for murder you need a motive.We’ve theoretically got the potential for two.”
“The mysterious woman,” Deidre said.“Obviously.”
“Yes, she’s the most obvious choice,” Bea said.“Sex has made many a man do things they wouldn’t do if they were thinking with the brain in their head instead of the one in their shorts.Any luck on getting a name, Mabel?”
“Still just initials,” I said.“But I’m working through his appointment book.I’m hoping something will click.What’s the other obvious motive?”
“Money,” Dottie said.“Specifically the foundation.A nonprofit of that magnitude would funnel millions of dollars in and out every year.Who held the purse, back when Henry was living?Who could touch it?”
“Henry chaired the board.I sat on it.”James lifted a shoulder.“But the money itself, the running of it, that was Winston.Winston Malone.Our chief financial officer.When the thing got big, we needed a real money man.Somebody who could account for a clinic in Guatemala and a shipment of insulin to Africa and make it all balance come year’s end.That was Winston.Sharp as a tack, he was.What the kids today would call a nerd.”
“I don’t suppose he’s still alive?”I asked.
“As a matter of fact, he is,” James said.“I get a Christmas card from him every year.He’s retired now.Once Henry died and we moved to an international board, there wasn’t really a place for Winston anymore.The board brought in some bigwig from London with a lot of letters behind his name.But Winston found a job with another company pretty quickly.He was very gifted.”
“What about the clinic staff?”I asked.“Anyone at the practice who might remember something from those last months?”
“Jackie Henshaw was his nurse.Good woman.Very devoted to Henry.”He swirled his bourbon.“And there was Noreen Goble at the front desk.Though I wouldn’t put too much stock in anything Noreen tells you.”He almost smiled.“We used to call her Nosy Noreen.She had a gift for being in the middle of things.Knew everyone’s business, or thought she did.Half the time what she knew was a rumor she’d started herself.Henry used to say she could take a simple good morning and turn it into a three-act play.”
“How long did she work for the two of you?”Dottie asked.
“Twenty-some years,” he said.“She was there before the foundation got big, practically ran the front desk single-handed.Henry kept her on out of loyalty more than anything else.She wasn’t especially efficient, but she was devoted to him.Cried for a week after he died, from what I heard.”
“She still around?”Dash asked.
“Last I knew she was somewhere in the Charleston area,” James said.“We lost touch after the practice closed.She wasn’t the type to sit still— Noreen always needed somewhere to be.”He picked up his bourbon.“If you do track her down, just take whatever she tells you with a grain of salt.”He paused.“A large grain.”
I wrote Jackie Henshaw and Noreen Goble on my legal pad and drew a line under both of them.
The others set about the task of finding an address for Winston, and I went back to the appointment book.
It was slow going, but it wasn’t empty going.Patterns turned up the longer I looked, once my eye had learned his hand.Every second Tuesday, deacons.Every third Thursday, a T.M.that the Rolodex told me was a Theodore Mabry, a heart patient by the look of Henry’s notes who he did house calls to.
He had monthly board meetings with the foundation, and a couple of two-week-long trips he’d taken in the last six months of his life.One to Kosovo and the other to Sudan.There were a couple of initials that I couldn’t find matches for in the Rolodex, but they only appeared once, so I put them on a list to track down later.
Then there was S.J.
The first one turned up in early August.Just the initials, S.J., and a time, with nothing around it to say what it meant.After that they came faster, and the shape of them was what told the story.
