Dear Sir:
You do not know me, but a mutual acquaintance has assured me that you are a man of superior integrity and utmost discretion. It is because of this that I approach you in my hour of most desperate need.
My name is Kent Ketchum, and I am a resident of Grantville. I was brought here to this time and place by the hand of God in the event now known as the Ring of Fire. It was to my great misfortune that both of my parents were left behind. I am left with a terrible dilemma. My father, the Honorable Will Ketchum had a substantial contract to build roads for the state of West Virginia. The work had been completed already, and the funds were deposited in the Bank of Grantville two weeks before the tragedy struck us. Without my father here to claim these funds, they were held in an escrow account until the legal system here decided whom they belonged to. As I was under eighteen years of age, I could not yet legally inherit it. And I have no relatives available to help with me with my predicament. I have been living like a beggar on the pittance of money allowed to me by the Bank Manager. Within the last month I have discovered that the Bank Manager and the Judge in charge of my case have been conspiring to steal my father's money out from under me. They had my father declared officially dead, but did so in such a way that prevented me from hearing about it until it was almost too late. Had it not been for a most Christian woman who works at the bank, I would not have found out what had happened until after the money was gone. The evil men that seek my father's hard earned fortune do not know that I have learned of their nefarious plans, so I must make my moves quietly and discretely if I intend to recover the money. I must raise one tenth of the total amount in the account in order to pay the taxes and free the money from the escrow account. If I fail to do so by my eighteenth birthday next month, it will all be declared forfeit, and be given to the Bank and the Government.
This brings me to why I am secretly contacting you. There is no possible way that I could earn that much money on my own in so little time. So I am willing to offer you a quarter of the 2500 guilder equivalent account if you would be able to help me pay the required taxes before the account expires. In addition, I would fully refund your two hundred fifty guilder investment as soon as the money in the account has the legal hold removed from it. Because both the Bank Manager and the Judge are involved, I would ask that you speak to no one of my dilemma and offer, lest they hear about it and realize that I know what they are doing. If they do, they will surely do everything in their power to thwart me and keep the money for themselves.
I thank you in advance for your assistance, and for taking the time to read of my plight. If you are unable to assist me, I do understand. But if you are willing, then I look forward to a highly profitable future for both of us.
Sincerely,
Kent Ketchum
Officer Ralph Onofrio put the letter down and massaged the bridge of his nose. It was going to be one of those days. He found it almost impossible to believe that anybody would be gullible enough to fall for so obvious a scam. But he had long ago learned never to underestimate the power of greed. People were more than willing to talk themselves into doing anything if they thought that there was easy money to be made.
A clear case in point was the indignant nobleman in front of him. He stood there in front of the desk at the police station shouting at his poor interpreter and gesticulating wildly. From what the interpreter had said, the Ritter had sent the requested funds to a post office box here in Grantville. And then never heard back from the young mister Ketchum about getting his reward for helping him.
He sighed and turned to the man's interpreter. "Can you ask him if he has any other information about this Mr. Ketchum other than the address?"
The interpreter, a young man named Wenzel, spoke in rapid-fire German to his employer. The nobleman spat answers back even faster. Between the speed and dialect, Ralph barely caught a fraction of what was said. He was forced to wait until the tirade wound down.
"He said that he never actually met Herr Ketchum, but they have had a written correspondence for several months now. He has brought all of the letters with him to prove it." Wenzel handed a thick sheaf of papers to Officer Onofrio.
"And is there any particular reason that he sent two hundred fifty guilders worth of gold coins to person neither of you had ever seen? Wouldn't a bank draft or letter of credit have been safer?"
"As I told you before. We were planning to do so. Herr Ketchum insisted on it for our mutual assurance. But in his last letter he expressed his concern that the manager of your bank was becoming suspicious. It would not do to have all of our careful planning undone at the last moment. Herr Ketchum said that we might have to, I believe the term he used was 'call the whole thing off.'"
"So why didn't you?"
"The Ritter insisted. We had come so far. He didn't want the boy's inheritance to be stolen."
"Mmmm hmmm . . . And lose his share of the money?"
"Well, he was going to be making a substantial investment. Besides, the boy said that he was happy to pay some of the money not to lose it all. So the Ritter sent the gold by courier."
The Ritter spun Wenzel around by his shoulder and began shouting at him again, pointing first at the letters and then at Officer Onofrio. Wenzel nodded when he was done and turned back to the police officer. "The Ritter von Dingelberg demands that Herr Ketchum be brought here immediately, and be forced to pay the money he promised. The total was agreed to in the last letter."
Ralph took a deep breath and rubbed his face wearily with his hands. Definitely one of those days. "I would truly love to get my hands on your Mr. Ketchum. But I'm afraid that it would be next to impossible."
The young man blanched and relayed this information to the Ritter. The nobleman turned purple as he listened to his translator, and began shouting and pounding on the desk. As he sputtered to a stop, Wenzel turned to Officer Onofrio.
"The Ritter would like to know why you will not bring this boy in. He owes a substantial sum of money. The Ritter was under the impression that no one was above the law here. Not even someone who now has a large fortune at their disposal. Part of which, I must add, does not belong to him."
"He's correct. Nobody is above the law here. And I'm sure that there is money due to your employer. The problem is that the boy doesn't exist."
If Wenzel had gone pale before, he went positively ashen when he heard that. "W-w-what?" he stammered.
"This isn't the first complaint that we've had about this." He opened a file from his desk. "We have had several other people show up here looking for Mr. Kent Ketchum. Or Ms. Ida Ketchum. Or Ms. May B. Ketchum. Or any of about a dozen other names. The post office box that your employer sent the money to is a mail drop. It gets forwarded to a house in Jena. We talked to the old couple that lives there. They gave it to a wandering tinker twice a week. From there, we lost the trail. Nobody knows where the tinker went. He hasn't been seen in a couple of weeks." he paused. "I hate to tell you this, but it was a scam. Any money he sent is long gone."
"A scam? What do you mean?"
"I mean that your boss there was taken for a ride. He was duped. There is no Mr. Ketchum. There is no money being held by the government. There is no evil bank manager or judge. Our laws don't work like that. Anything that belonged to the people who were left behind was given to their next of kin within a few months of the Ring of Fire. The only money in this whole deal is whatever your boss put in. We caught a couple of junior high school students trying this out for fun about six months ago. They were all busted, and forced to give the money back. But it looks like somebody else has gotten into the same racket since then. It was an old scam up-time."
Wenzel translated all of this to his employer. The man's mouth worked open and closed like a fish out of water. After Wenzel was finished, the Ritter shook his head and started to walk out of the station.
"Hey, wait!" Ralph called after him. "You need to make a statement."
Wenzel translated, but the Ritter didn't even slow down. He muttered something in German and waved over his imperiously shoulder to his man. And with that he was gone.
"What did he say?" Ralph asked.
"He has empowered me to handle it," Wenzel replied glumly.
"Isn't he going to make a statement?"
"No. He will not be making a statement. Or pursuing this matter any further."
"Why not? He has more information than anybody else has come forward with."
"The Ritter told me to make this whole thing disappear. It never happened."
"I don't understand. What do you mean? He came all this way. Why can't he help us catch these guys?"
"I would not presume to speak for the Ritter on this matter," Wenzel replied somewhat lamely. "But if I found out that I had been tricked out of a substantial amount of money by what was nothing more than a childish hoax, I would not want that fact widely known."
"So he's just going to walk away from all that money? And let them get away with it?"
"If he leaves a statement, it will eventually become a matter of public record, no?"
"If we ever catch the guys, yeah. It'll come out in the trial."
"I think he would like to, how do you say it? Cut his losses now."
"Okay. If that's the way he wants to do it. You might suggest to him that the next time something seems too good to be true, it probably is."