Page 102 of Sting
“You don’t have to answer.”
She turned to the lawyer. “I want to answer, Adrian.” Then to Hickam, “I didn’t know Billy Panella’s plans regarding anything. We rarely even spoke.”
“But you spent a long weekend with him.”
She divided a look between the two federal agents, but didn’t say anything because her lawyer was whispering in her ear not to.
Hickam said, “You still claim to have no knowledge of funds in that bank?”
“Correct. I have no knowledge of them.”
Wiley sat forward, clasping his hands on the table and looking at her like the regretful bearer of bad news. “They remember you down there, Ms. Bennett.”
“Who? Where? What are you talking about?”
“The bank employees in San Jose. You paid a visit to it with Panella.”
“Oh. That.” Her shoulders sagged forward. Adrian Dover cautioned her not to say anything, but she held up a hand to silence her. “I want this cleared up, Adrian.”
She glanced at handsome, stoic Hickam, then met Wiley’s sad-looking eyes. “Panella ordered a chauffeur-driven limousine to take us to lunch, a place on the mountainside overlooking the city. On the way there, he asked the driver to stop at a bank, where he said he had some quick business to attend to.
“I told him that I would wait in the car, but he insisted that I go into the bank with him.” She took a deep breath. “He made a spectacle of us. Flirted with the tellers, glad-handed the officers, and cashed a check. I was embarrassed by his grandstanding and couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
She raised her hands. “That was it. I’m not surprised that the bank employees remember us, because it was a disgusting display of affluence. Him with his Armani suit and Patik Philippe watch. But that’s all I know about a bank in San Jose. If Josh made a deposit—”
“He did.” Hickam stepped forward and opened up an e-mail attachment, holding it where she could see it. “One week before Josh agreed to cooperate with us, he opened an account for Billy Panella with half a million dollars.”
She looked at him, but didn’t say anything, unsure of what he expected from her. Wiley said, “The thing is, Ms. Bennett… Show her, Hick.”
He scrolled to another page.
“That’s the amount in the account as of this morning. Half a million and change, the change being the interest that’s accrued in the past six months.” He leaned farther forward. “Panella hasn’t touched it. No withdrawals.”
Both he and Hickam were still looking at her expectantly. She raised her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “He must’ve changed his mind about San Jose. He went someplace else.”
“And left this money there? Does that sound like him to you? Doesn’t sound like him to me. To us. To Josh, who told us while sitting in that chair you’re sitting in now that, although Panella made a show of spending to enhance his reputation as a brilliant moneyman, he kept track of every single cent. Squeezed the copper off every penny. He’d made a science of having his money multiply while he slept. Why would he leave five hundred thou in an account that earns less than one percent interest?”
They waited. She felt the walls closing in and was powerless to stop them. “I have no idea.”
Wiley said, “Only thing we can guess? He plans on keeping it there till he can retrieve it or move it, and the timing just hasn’t been right.”
“I don’t know what he plans,” she said. “I never did.”
“Who called you to that honky tonk last Friday night?”
Again, the switch in tone and subjects momentarily threw her. “I’ve told you repeatedly that I didn’t recognize the voice.”
Wiley leaned toward her. “And all he said was—”
“I quoted it to you exactly. You wrote it down.” She gestured to the iPad now lying on the table.
Hickam picked up. “You’re an intelligent woman, Ms. Bennett. You’ve got common sense. You’re rational. A savvy businesswoman. Yet you expect us to believe that when a man you can’t identify called and told you to rush to a seedy bar out in the sticks, you dropped everything and went tearing out there?”
Adrian Dover intervened. “This is becoming harassment, gentlemen. My client has affirmed several times that she doesn’t know who that caller was.”
“Was it Panella?” Wiley asked.
“No.”
