Skip Trace and a Dead Man

A skip tracer working for a bank receives a particularly challenging case.

         Word Count-1589















         

Skip Trace and a Dead Man

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         The stale air in Leo's office was a permanent fixture, a mix of old paper, lukewarm coffee and the quiet desperation of people who owed money. As a bank skip tracer, his job was to find those people. Usually, it was a simple, soul-crushing routine: locate a debtor, send a letter, make a call, and move on. But the file on Thomas Eldridge was different.
         Eldridge was a ghost, a name in a ledger, and an overdue loan on a high-end luxury car. The bank's system had flagged the account after three missed payments. A preliminary search showed Eldridge had died three months prior. Heart attack. Case closed, or so it should have been. But something in the file nagged at Leo.
         The car loan was for a vintage Porsche 911, an appreciating asset that should have been sold to cover the debt. Instead, the car was missing. The bank had no record of its repossession, and the family hadn't reported it stolen. The paperwork showed the loan had been taken out just weeks before Eldridge's death, a strange move for a man in his late 60's with a history of heart trouble.
         Leo felt the familiar itch, the one that told him there was more to the story. He started digging, going beyond the bank's usual protocol. He found Eldridge's obituary. A small notice in a local paper, mentioning his wife, Jennifer, and a son, Daniel. The address listed was a sprawling estate on the outskirts of town.
         He drove out there the next day, the midday sun glinting off his beat-up sedan. The Eldridge estate was everything the obituary suggested: a grand old house with manicured lawns and a driveway lined with ancient oaks. A woman in a black dress, her face a mask of grief, answered the door. This was Jennifer.
         "I'm sorry to bother you, Mrs. Eldridge," Leo said, his voice as neutral as he could make it. "I'm with the bank. We're trying to locate a car belonging to your late husband. A silver Porsche 911."
         Jennifer's eyes flickered with a brief flash of something Leo couldn't identify.
         "The Porsche? Thomas sold it. He was always buying and selling those old cars. Said it was a waste of money."
         "Do you know who he sold it to?" Leo pressed.
         "No, I'm afraid not. He handled all that himself," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "It was all so sudden, his death
                   Leo offered his condolences and left, but their conversation only deepened his suspicions. Jennifer's story didn't add up. Why would Eldridge take out a loan for a car and then sell it? And why would Jennifer not know about the sale?
         His next stop was the local DMV. A quick, unofficial search revealed the Porsche's owner, it was the Turner group. After a few attempted calls I found the group to be a shell corporation in a neighboring state. Leo refreshed himself on what a shell corporation was by reading a Google AI Overview on his phone, "A shell corporation is a company or corporation that exists on paper but has no active business operations, significant assets, or employees. He read, well, so far so good he thought. Essentially, it's a legal entity without substantial business activity, often used for various purposes, some legitimate, some not. A dead end, he thought. But the paper trail led him to another name. References listed on the application contained the name, Dr. Alfie Khan, turns out it was Eldridge's personal physician, jackpot!
         Dr. Khan's office was sterile and quiet. The doctor, a man with a precise haircut and a condescending air, was less than helpful.
         "Thomas was a patient of mine for years," he said, adjusting his glasses. "He had a severe heart condition. A sudden cardiac event was not unexpected."
         "And the car loan?" Leo asked. "For a car he supposedly sold right away?"
         Dr. Kahn's expression hardened. "I don't discuss my patient's financial affairs."
         Leo left the office with a feeling of frustration, but he had a new lead. He found Dr. Kahn's home address and drove by later that night. A light was on in the study, and through the window, Leo saw Dr. Kahn on the phone, his face contorted in. anger.
         The pieces started to fall into place. Dr. Kahn, Eldridge's doctor, knew about his heart condition. He also knew that a loan on an appreciating asset, like the Porsche, would be a good way to hide money. The shell corporation was a perfect way to obscure the trail. But why?
         Leo went back to the bank, to the file room, and pulled every document on Eldridge. He found a recent medical form for a life insurance policy, one that had been taken out just a month before his death. The beneficiaries were his wife and son, but the policy was for a staggering amount. Much more than the car loan.
         After leaving the bank, Leo made a late-night trip to Dr. Khan's office. He placed rubber gloves on his hands and grabbed his burglary tools, and bag of pliers then carried them to the back door. Leo worked as a lock smith for a year before coming to the bank. That gave him the expertise he was now using. He was through the door in seconds and had the bridge set up on the alarm system in less than 30 seconds. Almost a personal record. Making his way to the doctor's office he was surprised to find the door could be unlocked with a credit card. Once inside he quickly gained entrance to a locked cabinet behind the doctor's desk.
         Inside the cabinet he found at least 200 Mini DV Tapes. A player inside the cabinet made it easy to check a few of them out. One tape had Thomas Eldridge written on the label. He placed it in the player and couldn't believe his eyes. He quickly ejected it and placed it in his pocket. Leo saw Jennifer written on the end of one and he didn't have to watch it for more than a minute to see that she and the doctor were more than friends. Ejecting the tape from the player he placed it in his pocket. He then closed and locked the cabinet. Unlocking the doctor's desk, he checked it for any needed files. After what he saw on that tape nothing was off limits. There were several file cabinets which he unlocked and locked back up after finding nothing with the name of Eldridge on it.
         Soon he backed out of the office by locking everything up. He reset the alarm system and was quickly out the back door. Leo walked to where he had his sedan parked, stowed his gloves and tools under his passenger seat and slowly drove away. He was confident he had enough information to have Kahn locked up for the murder of Eldridge.
         The next morning, he placed the tapes in a US Mail Over Night Envelope with a letter explaining what had happened and a copy of the insurance policy. To be safe he had made copies of the tapes. He also made sure to explain to the police that the tapes were found in a box, behind Dr. Kahn's office, near a garbage can. In this state once property is thrown away it is no longer private. With no break in reported, there shouldn't be a problem. Leo wanted Khan to go down for the murder more than the theft. He wanted to do his job and recover bank assets. More than that he wanted to see someone so conceited to think murder was something they could get away with, they had to go down.
         In two days, it was all over the local news. Dr. Alfie Khan had been arrested. He had been having an affair with Jennifer Eldridge for years, and together, they had planned to kill her husband. The Porsche was the key. They had used the car loan to siphon money from Eldridge's account, with the plan to get it back after his death. They had even faked the sale to make it look legitimate.
         The police found the car, not in a garage, but in a warehouse owned by the shell corporation. The only owner listed, Dr. Alfie Khan. The money was in a savings account with Dr. Alfie Khan's name on it, and the police found a forged will in Kahn's office, giving all the assets to Jennifer. Jennifer evidently only kept enough money to live with plans to leave when Khan let her know the car was sold and that money was now in the account. Whether or not he would ever do that wouldn't be answered now.
         The bank paid Leo a bonus for his work. He was a hero in the eyes of his colleagues, a man who had solved a murder and retrieved the banks assets.But for Leo, it wasn't about the money or the recognition. It was about the itch, the feeling that told him a ghost was trying to talk to him. He was a skip tracer, and he had found a killer. And in the quiet of his office, with the smell of old paper and lukewarm coffee, Leo knew he would be back to the routine of his job, but the ghost of Thomas Eldridge would always be there, a reminder that some cases, even when the debtor is dead, are never truly closed.

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