Several minutes later Steve was still stunned at the realization that Uncle Homer was prepared to pay him $140,000 for his effort in the deal. Oh, he could see Uncle Homer’s point, but it was a lot more than he could have ever expected. “I never dreamed of that kind of money,” he protested, although a little weakly.

“You’d better learn to dream, Steve, because this probably isn’t the last deal like this you’ll be involved with. I can see we’re going to have to have a few lessons on how to use your money to make money with it, and also in keeping the IRS’s nose out of the trough as much as possible.”

“I know fiddling with taxes is important in larger businesses,” Steve agreed. “I mean, we spent a lot of time on that in my MBA classes. But it’s all theory to me.”

“It’s best that you pick up on the practice, Steve,” Uncle Homer said. “Have you ever looked at the IRS code?”

“I know there’s a lot of it.”

“That’s an understatement. Let’s just say that everything printed in fine print would overload your average pickup truck. There are all sorts of nice little loopholes, deductions, exclusions, and other such minutiae that it’s positively un-American to not take advantage of them. To take full advantage of them takes an army of lawyers and accountants with loyalty to their employers and larceny in their hearts. A large corporation may have hundreds, and sometimes it’s enough that those very profitable corporations pay little or nothing in taxes.”

“You hear stories about that.”

“They are more than stories, Steve. However, a small independent businessman such as I have been all my life can’t afford those sorts of luxuries. While I try to do business out of sight of the Internal Revenue Service when I can, on some deals like this it isn’t possible, so the next goal is to minimize the tax bite. I just have to settle for a couple of accountants and lawyers who meet the same qualifications.”

“Loyalty to their employers and larceny in their hearts?”

“Yes, and they are paid well to make sure they stay that way. They were not easy to find and need to continually be cultivated. Face it, Steve, you’re going to have a tax issue, but even if you do nothing about it you ought to walk away with a hundred thousand after taxes. However, if we get started now we may be able to reduce that tax bite. In the next few days we’ll have to get a little creative about what we can do to ease your tax burden, and mine, of course.”

“You’re still going to be making over a million dollars on the deal,” Steve pointed out. “That has to be a significant tax burden for you.”

“Yes it is, but there are ways I can mitigate it that you don’t have available to you just yet. For example, paying you and Ann is a business expense, so therefore is deductible. If the IRS is willing to give it to me then I would be the fool for not taking advantage of it. The trick, as I see it, is to win big by losing small.”

The next couple of hours were spent in discussions of ways to deal with taxes using methods Steve had never quite managed to understand in his business classes – possibly because he’d never had to think in that kind of terms about real money. With taxes involved, the meaning of the words “risk” and “reward” seemed to take on new meanings.

“It would be easy to pay you offshore,” Uncle Homer said at one point, “but there are two downsides, one from mine, one from yours. Mine is the fact that it would be very difficult to claim your services as a business expense. From your viewpoint, once money is offshore it’s difficult to get back onshore without serious shenanigans. A few days ago I mentioned to you how hard it was to move cash around the Pacific in World War II. Thanks to measures aimed more at drug money being laundered than they are at tax cheats, it’s no less difficult to move cash in and out of the country in significant amounts today. There are ways, but they are expensive and not worth it unless it’s really needed. So I think it’s best to pay you onshore and look for other ways to deal with your windfall.”

“I think I can go along with that,” Steve replied. “I would imagine you have a couple dozen places you can hide it from the IRS.”

“At least that many,” Uncle Homer grinned. “Some small, some large, and some that you can’t use. But I think at this juncture that you would be best off to start developing your own structure that will be of use to you in years when I may not be around. For instance, venture capital is a very nice way to shuffle profit and loss. You wouldn’t happen to know of some small company in need of money for expansion, especially if it’s a little risky, would you?”

Steve thought for a moment. “It so happens I might have a prospect. How much do you know about RELI Manufacturing, where I used to work?”

“Not much at all, except that they had to go out of business. I was investigating you at the time, not your employer.” He turned to Ann and asked, “Do you know anything more about it? I know you did some of the spade work.”

“Not a great deal, sir,” she replied – she’d been sitting quietly in the chair across from Steve and Uncle Homer, although Steve had seen her take notes from time to time. “As you said, at your request I was investigating Steve, not his employer, and he had little or nothing to do with the collapse of RELI Manufacturing.”

“It came on us out of midair,” Steve explained. “From what I understand, an outfit called Shawtex Industries held some RELI stock and managed to buy up some more of it from a former part-owner, just enough to give them control. They fired Phil Crocker, the guy who thought he’d owned it, and gutted the place. The jobs we had got sent to China and Mexico, the machinery went god knows where, and everyone was out of work when we showed up to work one morning.”

“I’ve seen that done,” Uncle Homer nodded. “In fact there have been times I’ve bought up companies that were cash heavy but undervalued in the market and made out by dismantling the company. That isn’t unknown, Steve. I hate putting people out of work but sometimes the circumstances made it necessary.”

“Yeah, but they sure gave Phil the shaft. What’s worse, Shawtex has a reputation for pulling that kind of stuff fairly often. It sure would be nice to do something like that back at them.”

Uncle Homer frowned for a moment. “Well, what they did was legal, at least to hear you tell the story. Ethically, they sort of leave the door open, don’t they?” He stared at nothing much for a moment, then turned to Ann. “Take a quick look at them sometime, would you Ann? I don’t know if there might be a handle there or what it might be worth, but I’ve always enjoyed watching fleecers get fleeced.”

“Yes, Mr. Taylor,” she said. “It would seem to me they run a little fast and loose, so there might be something there for them to trip over.”

“It won’t hurt to give them the once-over. Quietly, of course, Ann.”

“Yes, Mr. Taylor. They’ll have no idea they’re being investigated. I’ll pull some raw figures together and get back with you on it.”

“Very good, Ann, but get back to both Steve and me. Steve needs to learn how to handle some of these things. If it turns into a possibility, maybe we’ll just put him in the driver’s seat and advise him where we can.”

“That sounds like a very good idea, sir.”

“Steve,” Uncle Homer continued. “The odds are very good that we won’t turn up enough of a handle on these guys to pull something off, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a look where we can. You never know when you’re going to parachute out of the sky and strike gold.”

“You’d know that if anyone would,” Steve laughed. “But we got a little sidetracked there. What I was starting to say is that I hear from a friend that Phil Crocker thinks he can get back a couple of the contracts Shawtex stole from him. The contracts are about to expire, and he has good relations with the buyer, who isn’t exactly thrilled with Shawtex. The problem is that Phil is going to need start-up money.”

“Hmmm,” Uncle Homer said. “That sounds like it has excellent possibilities as a venture capital arrangement. If it’s a success, well, it’s a success. If it fails, then you’ve got some nice write-offs to balance against earnings. Do you have any idea how much this Crocker thinks he needs?”

“No idea. Like I said, I heard about this secondhand, if that. But RELI was a small company, so I knew Phil pretty well.”

“Again, it can’t hurt to look. Sometimes you have to look at a lot of leads to find one that’s even remotely promising. Give this Crocker fellow a call tomorrow, sound him out a little bit but don’t make any commitments. We need to study this a little more thoroughly and explore our options. We might be able to shortcut a few things since you know the guy already.”

“Sure, I can do that. Are you going to have anything else you need me to do tomorrow?”

“Nothing important,” Uncle Homer replied. “I’m afraid the timing on this Hardin business could have been better. There are several chickens fattening up out there, but none of them are quite ready to be plucked yet. We have some minor chores that need to be done, like assisting with getting the minivan back from the shop. There are some things that need research, but then there are always those. You’re not really up to speed yet on all that Ann and I do here, so I suppose we’d better get to work on doing that.”

“Mr. Taylor,” Ann spoke up. “It would be useful if young Mr. Taylor were to have an office here. A day or two of working on his laptop at the kitchen table is all right, but he’ll get in the way if it becomes a regular thing, sir.”

“An excellent idea, Ann. How about one of the rooms on the second floor? God knows there are enough of them with nothing much in them.”

“I think that would work, sir.”

“It strikes me there’s a desk up there somewhere. At least there was at one time. There might be enough around to make an adequate office.”

“I remember a very nice roll-top desk on the third floor, sir, at least if I can find it in the dust and the cobwebs. It will need cleaning and polishing. That probably won’t work for a computer desk, but there should be something else suitable up there. Unless you want him to continue using his laptop, you will probably need a computer for him, sir.”

“Do what you have to do, Ann. Steve, work with her as much as you can. We might as well get some of these housekeeping chores out of the way as soon as we can and then get down to the business of teaching you what you have to know.”

“That works for me,” Steve agreed. “One other question. Do you want me to shift around to sleeping days and working nights, or what?”

“Good question,” Uncle Homer said. “Right at the moment I can’t see much need for you to be up all night with us, and it would be easier on Ann if you were to do what you can of the daylight running around that needs to be done. Why don’t you become sort of half-and-half? Say, go to bed around two AM or so, and get up about ten AM? For the time being that might be the best of both worlds.”

“That sounds good to me, especially considering that it’s after two now and I’m bushed. It’s been a long day, Uncle Homer.”

“Then why don’t you go up and hit the hay, while Ann and I see what we can do to fatten a couple of chickens? Ann and I will work out what daytime errands we’ll need you to do during the day tomorrow.”

Despite the long day he’d had, Steve found it difficult to sleep much later than nine o’clock the next morning. Might as well get up and get at it, he thought. Uncle Homer is probably asleep by now but there’s a good chance Ann will be waiting up for me.

He’d taken a shower the night before – it helped him get to sleep, not that he’d needed much help, but he still had to use the bathroom, which of course involved plumbing that could wake the dead. He shaved, then got dressed in “business-casual” clothes, then went down the stairs to find Ann waiting for him in the kitchen. “Good morning, sir!” she said brightly. “What would you like for breakfast?”

“Have you been waiting up for me, Ann?”

“Yes, sir, just doing some needed odds and ends while I waited.”

“Then how about nothing?” he suggested. “Any time you spend making me breakfast would probably cut into your sleep time. Just fill me in on what you need me to do and go get some shut-eye.”

“Thank you sir, I would appreciate that. Mr. Taylor and I were able to come up with a fairly long list for you. I don’t know if you can get it all done today, but they are things that are necessary to one degree or another.”

“Good deal, I might as well make use of my time. What have you got for me?”

“The most important thing, sir, is that there are two e-mails we need to have sent covertly.” She handed him a flash drive and went on. “In the folders marked ‘1’ and ‘2’ are the account name and password for one of them, along with the e-mail address, a subject line, some body text and an attachment.” She handed him a list of libraries with public computers, and went on. “Go to one of these libraries at random, log onto Zapmail, send everything in one folder, as appropriate. Then copy any incoming e-mails to that folder on the flash drive, even spam. Once in a while a spam subject line is a cover for a real message. Drive to another library on the list, and do the same thing with the other folder.”

“Wow, secrecy is the name of the game, isn’t it?”

“Only rarely, sir, but sometimes it is necessary. The vast majority of our traffic is not particularly confidential, but sometimes it is. For example, we are very circumspect with our contacts with Chipperdude, and I’m sure you understand why.”

“I get the picture.”

“All right, sir. Mr. Taylor and I expected you would understand the need for security in some matters. There are some other errands.” She handed him a couple of manila envelopes. “These should be mailed from somewhere not close to here, and not from the towns where you use the library computers. Mailing them from the same public mailbox should be all right.” She handed him a handful of small envelopes, which seemed to have something stiff in them like cardboard, and went on, “These should be mailed somewhere. It isn’t important where but it would be best if they didn’t have a Wychbold postmark.”

“Do you have to do this sort of thing often?”

“Not often, but sometimes things accumulate, and they have in the past couple of days. Sometimes it’s a week or more between times we have to do this.”

“All right. Anything else?”

She handed him another sheet of paper. “Other than contacting this Mr. Crocker, sir, the other big issue is to get you a computer. Here is a list of stores that stock good discount computers. Select one that won’t take you far out of the way. You will not need the most expensive thing on the market with huge memories and high-end graphics cards. A normal Windows machine will do just fine, but do not get the cheapest thing you can, either. You need not buy any extra software. What we don’t have here can be downloaded. You will need a monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse, and any other attachments you may find useful. You can use the debit card I gave you the other day for that purchase and anything else you need, which includes gas and meals. Finally, I have a list of groceries you should buy anyplace you happen to find convenient. There is not a great deal on it, since I usually do the major shopping.”

“How about picking up the minivan?”

“Mr. Taylor suggested that we put it off until tomorrow, sir. With you and your vehicle here, it’s not quite as important. This should take you most of the day. Take your time. I probably will be getting up about five and it would be appreciated if you didn’t wake me early.”

“How about the gate?”

“Oh, yes. I was getting to that, sir.” She handed him a couple of small remotes with buttons and clips. “The black one will open and close the gate. The white one will open the far door in the garage. You might as well leave your car parked there as outside. That should be about all for now.”

“All right, that ought to do it. I won’t keep you up any longer. Sleep tight, Ms. Rutledge.”

“Sir, I thought I told you to call me ‘Ann.’”

“I thought I told you to call me ‘Steve’, at least once in a while.”

“All right, Steve,” she said in evident exasperation. “It’s very hard for me to do that, sir.”

“Then you’ll have to practice,” he smiled. “See you later, Ann.”

“Take care, sir. I’ll see you this evening.”

Steve gathered up the things she had given him, put them in his briefcase, and went out to get in his car, feeling good that he’d tweaked Ann’s irritating formality a little. That could get on a man’s nerves after a while, he thought. There were some things that he really liked about Ann, especially her competence, attention to detail, and most of all her evident loyalty to Uncle Homer, but she was still very much a mystery to him.

Until the afternoon before, it had been years since he’d been in Wychbold, and he hadn’t stopped there yesterday, either. He thought it would be a good idea to get some breakfast, and as he went through downtown he saw a sign for “Becky’s Café,” which looked like a good possibility. It was a small place, nearly empty except for a white-clad woman who served as both waitress and cook, and a fiftyish couple who were talking about some of the places they planned to go in their motor home in the near future.

Steve ordered a big breakfast – sausage patties, scrambled eggs, home fries, and toast – and was served within minutes. It was a good breakfast, if not quite up to the quality of what Ann put together out at Uncle Homer’s. He had plenty of time, so he took his time eating, listening to the couple talk about their motor-home plans, and it set his mind to wandering. Right now, he had – or would soon have – a hundred thousand dollars after taxes or thereabouts. It sure would be tempting to get a small motor home and just hit the road to see what there was to be seen. A hundred big ones could carry him for a while, but if he held off just a little bit it seemed there could be more where that came from. Still, it was tempting to think about. Ann probably wouldn’t care for it, he thought; there would be too much prospect of being out in the daylight . . .

Waitafuckinminute! he thought as two random thoughts collided and fused into something he wasn’t expecting. Last night Uncle Homer had said that Ann would also get ten percent of the take of the little caper that had been pulled on that Hardin joker – a hundred and forty thousand before taxes, just like he did. But Ann hadn’t even raised an eyebrow at the announcement that she’d be getting ten percent of the take . . . it had to be so routine that the news didn’t surprise her in the slightest. But Ann had worked for Uncle Homer for a long time . . . so it was pretty obvious that this wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, maybe even by a long ways! How the fuck much could she be worth? Obviously enough that a hundred and forty grand was chump change . . .

. . . then what the fuck was she doing acting like an oh-so-humble servant? Calling me ‘sir’ every few words, reluctant to use my first name? Cooking, cleaning, waiting on Uncle Homer hand and foot? If she was worth so damn much money, then why was she doing the dirty work? Hell, she could afford to hire someone to do it! She was extremely formal and polite to both Uncle Homer and him, so deferential that it was irritating to him . . . something does not compute.

Of course, Uncle Homer was just about older than God, Steve thought. Even in the most optimum of circumstances he can’t be expected to hang on that much longer, a few years at the most. Few people live to be over a century old, and while Uncle Homer had a quick mind, his body was obviously failing him. It could well be that Ann saw a big payoff in the near future, worth the trouble of going to the effort of acting like he wanted . . . but somehow, Steve couldn’t buy that, either. She’d been with him a hell of a long time, ten years at least, almost certainly more . . . and had come to him under unknown but clearly painful circumstances. In fact, Steve remembered her saying something to the effect that Uncle Homer had rescued her.

Somehow, down deep in his gut, he felt like there was something more than money involved. Much more. What it was, he couldn’t tell, but . . . there were pieces of the puzzle missing, of course. Maybe he had some of them and just hadn’t been able to make them fit.

Strange, he thought, very strange. He might just have peeled back one of the layers of the mystery of Ann, but in doing so he’d revealed several others just as incomprehensible.

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