In February I joined a writing group sponsored by the Roxbury Library. There are six other people in the group. Rosemary the leader is the coordinator and is most experienced in writing. The others seem to range in experience and style, which makes it very interesting to attend.
I have written three pieces for the group so far the Valentine’s message that I wrote about around Valentine’s Day https://the-encore.blog/valentines-day-2021/.
We meet monthly via zoom on the first Monday of the month. One of the things they do something called Pop Topic – someone presents a topic and then everyone goes off and writes what they can based on that topic. This time one of the members put out a topic based on the movie Its a Wonderful Life, you are supposed to write as if the world did not have you like George in the movie. I am not sure if I will do that one, but will try it.
I am thankful for my son Paul who so willingly served as my editor for these pieces.
The two pieces I have written are shown below:
The first piece I wrote was about How the Coronavirus affected Me.
It was a warm May afternoon. I carried a bag of cookies up a driveway and I saw my neighbors Mike and Kate, but with the bright sun in my eyes I did not see their two young girls, Hailey (6) and Norah (3) initially. When I saw them all, Mike was saying to his girls, “Go ahead and give it to him!” They had a colorfully-decorated poster with a rainbow made out of little pieces of construction paper and along the top it said “Thank You for Bringing Joy to Our Neighborhood.”I had been delivering small packages of homemade cookies to the neighbors every Sunday since the early days of the pandemic, which I have continued to do every week.
When the pandemic hit I contacted the local food pantry, where I volunteer, and asked if there were any people in the community that could not get out to do grocery shopping. They gave me contact information for a woman who wasn’t able to take the town bus due to the pandemic. I did her food shopping weekly through July, which is when the bus returned. The word was passed and I ended up doing weekly shopping for three other women in town during that period.
I work with a support group in town for people with depression and bipolar disorder; when that group discontinued weekly meetings, for which I baked cookies weekly, I decided to continue to bake on Sunday and deliver them to the four ladies I got to know through the food pantry and the neighbors on my street.
I feel thankful that I was able to bring some joy to people that were adapting to the restrictions that the Coronavirus dealt to us.
The Coronavirus has been hard. We were able to take our vacation in the Outer Banks ofCarolina but had to delay a planned trip to Hawaii, and we were not able to have any summer gatherings of family and friends. I am thankful that we are healthy and thankful I got to know the neighbors and these ladies in town. A true silver lining getting to know these people.
We anxiously wait for the vaccine and the ability to get back to some degree of normalcy.
The second piece I wrote was a piece of fiction which I called “Trouble on the West Coast”
After finishing an article about a successful international operation to arrest the leaders of a drug cartel, John turned the page of the newspaper and saw something that caught his eye: a photograph of a man who looked exactly like himself. It had the caption, Thomas Applebee shown as he was arraigned on embezzlement charges in San Francisco Superior Court. He read the article below the photo and it appears that there was $10 Million discrepancy in the endowment fund at Pepperdine University and a mysterious $10 Million in the New York Amalgamated Bank account of this Thomas Applebee, the man who looked just like John – and for good reason, for Thomas was better known to John as his twin brother Tommy.
John began to think of his brother in a prison. How could that happen? John had been busy with his life in New York, working as CFO of Northern Suburban Bank, a major competitor of New York Amalgamated, and living in Chappaqua, NY. His mind flashed back to the times surfing on the Malibu coast while in school at Pepperdine University with his brother. How many years ago was that?
John thought something did not sound right, and he called Tommy, who told him immediately that he knew nothing about what he was being accused of, nothing about the account the money was found in.
“I don’t even have an account at that bank. Why would I? Aren’t they your biggest competitor?” He went on, “I contacted a private investigator but he has not reached any conclusion.”
John said he would reach out to a few contacts to see what he could find out. He called Steve Smith, the long-serving head of security at Northern Suburban Bank.
Steve said, “I can put you in touch with a firm we use for tracking money laundering and missing funds.”
The next thing John knew, he was on a plane with Alex Hart, a senior analyst at the firm of Peach and Company, after giving a $25,000 retainer the day before.
After landing in San Francisco they met Tommy at a hotel near the airport. Alex explained that he had put the wheels of investigation in motion and already received some relevant information.
“I need you to sit down for this,” Alex said, gesturing to three wicker chairs surrounding a table.
“All of the funds were withdrawn from the college endowment three weeks ago by Sigma Corporation, a shell organization connected to a Central American drug cartel. The money was moved to a fictitious account, created in Tommy’s name, but with someone else’s Social Security Number and address. I’m not sure how the authorities missed that, but they did.”
Alex continued. “This was done by hacking into Pepperdine’s computer system, including the payroll system. They got deep enough to determine that Tommy was an alumnus in a senior position with access to the endowment. They pulled your personal information, searched online to figure out your connection to the endowment, and then they hit the endowment fund using your credentials and depositing the funds in Tommy’s fictitious account that they created using stolen information.”
“Based on similar cases, I can easily prove that anyone who was actually laundering the money would have moved it out of the account by now. Plus, that shell corporation is affiliated with the cartel whose leaders were arrested recently. They probably were going to blackmail you, Thomas, but had to abandon their scheme.”
Alex said he had alerted the New York Amalgamated Bank of this scam, and so the account was frozen and any activity to withdraw funds would be traced by the FBI field office.
“After we finish here, I’ll be calling Pepperdine. They might have to name buildings after both of you for all of this trouble,” Alex half-joked.
The next day Tommy appeared in court, and his attorney called Alex to the stand. He presented the information on the events around the movement of these funds.
After a few questions, the judge dismissed the case. John hugged his brother and decided to stay with him in California for a few weeks.
I enjoy writing and look forward to more challenging pieces and learning different techniques.
