41. Iris Overeager
Iris Overeager
I grabbed my backpack out of Merit’s back seat. “Thanks, buddy!” I said, flashing a grin at him. “Now go back to school so you can practice, and we can beat West!”
“You know, you could come back with me. Potentially save yourself from in-school suspension?”
Nervous butterflies invaded my stomach. I’d never even gotten detention before, much less ISS. But I needed my phone; I needed to call Oliver. If ISS was the trade-off for saving my dad, well then, I would get it a million times over. I waved Merit off and turned toward the house.
The garage door was open, so instead of going up the outside steps, I walked inside and in the back door of the bottom floor, which had a little half bath and a full mudroom. I was in a huge hurry, sure. But I also had to pee.
But voices from upstairs distracted me. I walked quietly up the first leg of the zigzag stairway and stopped on the landing where I could see Alice, at the head of the table, sitting with a man. They both had their backs to me.
I heard Alice say, “And how does all that relate to Bill Sitterly?”
My eyes popped open wide, and I barely managed to stifle my gasp. I crouched down on the landing, where I knew from lots of hide-and-seek with the girls that they wouldn’t be able to see me from the table.
“Well, because they were mostly his clients who I was, well…”
“Stealing from?” Alice asked.
“No, no, no. Not at all,” the man said.
Shit. Shit. Shit. My phone was up there. I didn’t know what this was, but I needed to be recording it. Who was this man? And was Alice in on whatever this was? I could try to write down what he was saying. That would be better than nothing. As I stuck my finger between the two zippers in the top of my backpack and started easing one down silently, it hit me: my burner phone! I had a burner phone! I could record this!
I dug around as quietly as possible. The man was saying, “My intention was never to steal from them. And that was the beauty of the situation.”
I grabbed the phone and hit record just as he said, “See, they would invest in a share of Capstone. I would move nine-tenths into the actual fund and one-tenth into my shadow account.” He paused. “I was buying options to mirror the return of the Capstone Fund, but actually making more than the fund. So the clients were getting their fair share, and I was pocketing the difference.”
I scrunched my nose. What, now? I was glad I wasn’t taking notes because this sounded complicated, and I wasn’t sure I would get it right.
“Okay,” Alice said. “So the clients were actually making what they were supposed to make, but you were kind of skimming off the top?”
“Exactly,” he said. “So it wasn’t stealing.”
“Sure,” she said. “Definitely not stealing.”
I rolled my eyes and shifted just a little. Squatting on the landing behind the stair post wasn’t exactly comfortable.
“I created an algorithm to mirror the returns, and it worked ninety-eight percent of the time. And who was going to notice the two percent? As it turns out, no one. Not for, like, ten years.”
“So you were making a lot of money off of this?” Alice asked.
My thoughts exactly. I realized that we were in the middle of an all-out confession here. Yeah, my phone was recording, but this might be a good time to get the police involved. I opened a message over the recorder and typed in my mom’s number. She had messaged Merit that she didn’t have her phone, but I knew her iMessage was probably up. At least, I hoped. Mom!!! Call 911 to the mommune right now!!
Then I clicked back to the voice recorder. Still on. We were good.
“Over the ten years, I was saving every single month in the hopes that one day I’d have enough to come here, sweep you off your feet, and get you to run away with me.”
Um. Plot twist. What? My heart started beating really fast. This was someone who loved Alice? And if so, what did that mean about her involvement?
She put her hand on his. “That is so sweet.”
Um. No. Framing my dad is not sweet at all.
“Wait,” Alice said, “so are you the one who recommended Bill call me to invest with him?”
“Yes!” This man, whoever he was, sounded so enthusiastic. “Then that way I could make us extra money off of our money.”
Our money . Huh.
“Everything was going great with the plan, but I got a little overeager because, well, I was getting really good at beating the fund’s return, so I started taking a little more and a little more. Twelve percent, fifteen percent.”
I thought back to my math. I didn’t have the full picture yet, but that was what was happening in my account!
“Then these strange economic conditions exposed my algorithms and, well, I lost a lot. A whole lot. Enough that I couldn’t fake it anymore.”
Alice leaned in and said, so sweetly, “So what did you do then, sweetheart?”
He smiled at her in a way that turned my stomach. Who was this man? And what about Elliott? A very uncomfortable feeling washed over me.
“I had always forged the client statements, obviously. So when the accounts lost money, it wasn’t like the clients were going to call my dad or someone at Capstone. They were going to call the broker.”
“Like Bill Sitterly?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, right. But wouldn’t it be easy to figure out that all this led to you?”
“Eventually,” he said. “But I was the whistleblower. I called the SEC about Bill Sitterly, and, for the moment, they have enough evidence that it at least looks like he was the one who stole the money.” He cleared his throat. “Which is why we need to go now, Al. We have to leave the country before they start digging deeper and realize it wasn’t Bill after all.”
She nodded sincerely. “But, why, sweetheart? It seems to me that you covered your tracks. Let’s just stay here and let Bill pay for your crimes.”
My jaw dropped. Who was this woman? I didn’t know Alice Bailey at all. The man turned his head toward her fully, and I realized something: I might not have known Alice but I knew that man. I tapped over to my photos to compare. Sure, I couldn’t see his whole face. But that wavy hair, those green eyes, the crease in his forehead—that was the man in my house. I was sure of it.
He sighed deeply. “I had been doing this for so long that I got a little sloppy. I forgot to forge a few of the broker’s statements and put the real number of shares the clients were purchasing on there.” He paused. “It wasn’t a huge deal. Dad and Bill have worked together for so long, no one ever checked—or, well, the time or two Bill noticed, it was easy to shrug it off. Although I accidentally did it to his daughter’s account a few times. I guess he didn’t notice those.”
“Iris!” Alice said.
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess. After the raid at his office, I broke into his home office to find the broker statements, go through and figure out which ones I needed to fix. But his computer was already gone. I don’t know what made me even look in the girl’s room, but jackpot!” He paused. “Even so, if the SEC has copies of those statements, they’ll figure it out. Probably, anyway. So that’s why we have to go.”
I wished I could text Oliver, but I didn’t have his number saved in my burner phone, and I didn’t have it memorized.
I was getting really uncomfortable from all this squatting, and I still had to pee, but I was so afraid if I made a sound, I would give myself away. Plus, I was furious at Alice. Just let my dad rot in jail? For something he didn’t do?
My heart was beating wildly because I had a recorded confession. This would save my dad. I knew it would. So now I had to figure out how to get out of here as quietly as possible. Before I could, the door beside Alice flew open. My mom appeared, screaming “Iris!” And all my worries about a discreet getaway suddenly disappeared. Mom had arrived. She would take it from here.