“Yes,” I said.
Ellington nodded. “I assumed so. So what Harvey really wanted was to take a little money and turn it into a lot of money.”
“And so he came to you for that?” I asked.
Ellington nodded again. “Yes. I have a financial background and help some folks out on the side around town. Harvey knew that and he came to me to see if I could help. I told him I'd be happy to try.”
A ceiling fan high above our heads buzzed.
“You said try,” I said. “So you tried, but...?”
Ellington shifted his weight in the chair and the vinyl squeaked. “I told him it wasn't a get rich quick scheme. That, as with any investing, there was risk involved. A return wasn't guaranteed.” He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I did what he asked with the money he wanted to invest. It did not...go well.”
Which would explain Harvey's anger and frustration.
“He wanted me to be aggressive because he was hoping for a quick return,” Ellington continued. “So I was. Unfortunately, being aggressive in the market also means that you can aggressively lose what you've invested. You see where I'm headed here?”
Both Jake and I nodded.
“So when Harvey came to see me, he'd apparently just taken a look at the accounts,” he explained. “The stocks we'd put his money into took a large hit.” He held up his hands. “It was all gone. He was angry, which I understood. But it was out of my control. He was disappointed.” He shook his head sadly. “But there was nothing for me to do.”
I could imagine Harvey's frustration. It was a desperate move and he'd pinned all of his hopes to it, no matter how unrealistic it was that the move would pay off. I was sad for a man I'd never gotten to meet, that he'd felt that strongly about a place that he'd put everything he owned into one shot at saving it. I thought everyone should feel that much love for something in their life, even it meant meeting with disappointment.
“What kind of stocks did you dump the money into?” Jake asked.
Ellington shifted again in his chair. “You familiar with the markets?”
“Eh, not really. Just asking more out of curiosity.”
Ellington reached up and tugged on his earlobe. “Sure, sure. Well, we, uh, looked at a variety of different options and, like I said, Harvey wanted to be aggressive, so we moved the money into some stocks that had a better chance of taking off. We did some research and those were the ones Harvey was most interested in.”
“So, like, tech stocks? Start-up stuff?”
Ellington nodded. “Yeah, like that.” Then he frowned. “But, as I said, there's always a risk. In order to make money, you've got to take some risks.”
“Right,” Jake said.
I could tell by the way he said it that he wasn't completely satisfied with the answer he'd gotten. But I wasn't sure there was anything else to ask. It all made sense. Harvey made a last ditch attempt and it failed. He blamed Ellington, fairly or unfairly.
I stood up and swung my purse over my shoulder. “Thanks for your time.”
Ellington sat there for a moment, his expression expectant. “Well maybe now we can talk about finding you two that property you were hoping to find?”
Jake got to his feet. “I think we're going to wait on that.”
Ellington reluctantly stood up and hitched up his pants. “Now's a good time to be looking. I'm sure I could find you a pretty good deal up here.”
“I'm sure you could,” I said, smiling. “We'll be in touch.”
We left before he could keep us there any longer.
THIRTY THREE
“So what do you think happened to the money?” I asked.
It was the next morning and we were up early, tooling around Windy Vista in the golf cart. We'd returned to the campground after meeting with Ellington and Jake had waved off any conversation about him or Harvey or Delilah or anyone else connected to the events of the past week. Instead, he'd thrown steaks on the grill, opened a couple of beers and we'd Skyped with the kids because we missed them. We couldn't use the iPad because the router was still in police custody so we used Jake's phone instead. They told us all about their week—there'd been no more sprained ankles, my Dad hadn't ruined any more electrical equipment and the Bonfire with Boys had gotten rained out—and it made me miss them even more. Jake seemed intent on wrapping up our trip sooner than planned because of the uncertainty and, after chatting with the kids and seeing them on our computer screen, I was just fine with that. So we'd gone to bed early and gotten up early so we could make arrangements to head home. We weren't sure if we could reschedule our flight or drive the rental car home but they were both options we could consider.
The morning was crisp and cool and, even with all of the drama that had surrounded our trip to Windy Vista, I was still feeling a little nostalgic about leaving.
And, of course, my mind was still working over Harvey and the money.
“Didn't we decide to drop this?” Jake asked, guiding the cart with a single hand, his other arm draped lazily over the seat and behind me.
“You decided to drop it last night because you were tired of it,” I pointed out. “I merely agreed to table it.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. Ah.”
He coasted to a stop sign, paused and then pressed the accelerator again. “I don't know what happened to the money. I think Harvey was hoping for too much and I'm not sure Ellington was much of a help.”
“Why?”
“His answers about the stocks,” he said. “He didn't give me a direct answer about where they parked the money. And you know I'm not some financial wizard, but I'd like to think I know a little bit about where you'd invest money if you hoped to turn it around fast. But Ellington didn't answer me specifically about where he'd put it and that makes me think he didn't know what he was doing with it.” He shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe not. I just thought his answer was kind of evasive, something you might get from a guy who pretends to be a finance guy, but is really just an amateur.”
I nodded. I did, too. I wondered if Ellington was just that guy in a small town who everyone turned to simply because there was no one else to turn to. Maybe he'd somehow become the default expert on all things.
Jake guided the cart past the clubhouse and we drove through the parking lot and onto the dirt trail that led to the lower campground.
“So you think he was just pissed that it was all gone?” I asked. “That he went to Ellington just to confirm?”
“Probably,” Jake said. “And vent a little. He probably was mad and probably initially blamed Ellington. That's not unusual when guys lose their shirts in the markets—they tend to blame their brokers first before realizing that they hired the broker to do something they didn't want to do themselves.” He slowed as the dirt road got bumpy. “But all brokers are just educated guessers. They're like weathermen. And it's not their fault when something happens to a company suddenly and the bottom drops out of their stocks.”
“So then why didn't Delilah know about it?”
The trail narrowed and Jake put his other hand on the wheel as we cut through the dense thicket of trees and bushes, dust kicking up all around us.
“Good question,” he said. “But my guess is that she didn't know he'd handed the money over to Ellington. I think that might be why he didn't want those goofball twins to know where he was going because they'd start asking questions or blabbing to anyone with ears. But he and Delilah opened the account together and then she seemed to leave it in his hands. So maybe he pulled the money out to give to Ellington and didn't tell her. She stayed away from it, then decided she needed the money to pay the bills and it was empty.”
I leaned toward the middle of the cart as some of the longer branches from the bushes that lined the trail reached toward us.
“I think Harvey was trying to do a good thing and Delilah was hoping he could come through,” Jake said. “But neither of them were being realistic. They were both hoping for miracles that didn't happen.”