Evil and Good in a Campus Town: A Fight to the Finish

By Charles E. Kozoll

She got up from her couch and walked gingerly to her desk to open up her laptop computer. With practiced strokes, she brought up the balances in her four offshore accounts and smiled. The combined total was nine digits long, and the first two numbers were two and three. “Time to celebrate.”

Charlotte Silver was once a professor until the lack of money points her in a different direction. Greed and anger motivate her to start and run a criminal organization. Its mission is to kill healthy and wealthy older women in hospitals for large sums of money. Charlotte and her team have become incredibly rich working their dastardly deeds with seemingly no repercussions.

The killings continue at a convalescent facility known as The Residence near the local university, but it is here where Charlotte’s organization hits a snag. When a resident dies of a supposed heart attack, snoopers get curious, and Charlotte is forced to use violence to quiet them. But these snoopers are not easily deterred, and five adventurous seniors now seek to uncover and destroy her evil organization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Dec 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781489720566

Charles E. Kozoll

Charles Kozoll has been studying public and private organizations since 1970 to learn what leads to success and what is the path to failure. One portion of his research focuses on leadership and the pivotal role leaders in creating a climate that leads to productivity and then overall success.

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Copyright © 2019 Charles E. Kozoll.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-2058-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2057-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2056-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968006

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 12/17/2018

DEDICATION

For Ethan James and Parker Andrew and all those that love and support them

CONTENTS

Preface

Prologue

Chapter 1     Concern and Confrontation

Chapter 2     Rebellion and Resignation

Chapter 3     Surrender

Chapter 4     Ups And Downs

Chapter 5     A Team Emerges and Max Finds a Friend

Chapter 6     Slow Progress and An Ally in the Making

Chapter 7     Biting The Bullet

Chapter 8     Snooping In Plain Sight

Chapter 9     Better Sleuthing and Similar Stories

Chapter 10   T-Boned and Sidetracked

Chapter 11   Progress and Unwinding

Chapter 12   More Pieces

Chapter 13   More Pieces and the Prize

Chapter 14   Yet More Pieces

Chapter 15   Pieces Form a Picture

Chapter 16   Complications

Chapter 17   The Trials

Epilogue

Discussion Questions

Eleven Tips for Writing a Novel

About the Author

PREFACE

Now that time is not a problem, my attention has turned to writing fiction. However, as an administrator and faculty member at the University of Illinois, some of my work has been characterized as follows: my budgets were a comedy, my proposals were a mystery, and my reports were a tragedy.

On a more serious note, writing this novel has been a journey of discovery. I learned that fact and fiction have to be joined. The book’s characters assumed lives of their own and often guided me on what to write. Finally it became clear that Winston Churchill was correct: a novel begins as an interest, and then becomes a passion, then a mistress, and then a jailor.

I am very happy to have been let out of this literary prison, even temporarily!

Although I have written numerous articles and over twenty nonfiction books, the experience of this first novel underlined some important points about writing a novel. Those points are in the epilogue section of this book.

Retired neurosurgeon Dr. Carl Belber and retired judge Arnold Blockman provided much appreciated technical help with the medical and legal material. I appreciate their willingness to provide this assistance.

Let me add a fourth important point: locate and rely on a proven editor. Katie Flynn is an outstanding one that checks all aspects of a manuscript. Especially valuable were her comments related to what additional material should be added or where verbosity needed trimming.

Charles E. Kozoll

Champaign, Illinois

November 2018

PROLOGUE

Dressed in a baggy T-shirt and jeans, Charlotte Silver drank another glass of wine to ease her pain and went over her organization’s books for the last six months. It was very dark outside her house, which stood on a secluded lake an hour’s drive from the university where she had been a professor of biology.

Not enough income, she said out loud, before shifting her position and her back pillow to get more comfortable. Too much silence and we could lose the key players.

The wine helped ease the pain in her left leg, caused by a botched surgery some years before. Charlotte knew she would need at least one pain pill to help her sleep.

For the next hour, she went through her records a second time and then decided to call her partner, Zachary Johnson, the New York stockbroker she had worked with for the past fifteen years. It was after 11:00 p.m. in the Midwest when she placed the call.

Why the hell did you call me so late, Charlotte? Johnson yelled into his cell phone. Couldn’t have waited until the morning? What is so damn important?

Sorry, Zach, I got worked up looking at our books for the past six months. We have a positive balance in our two local checking accounts, but income has been all but absent. We have to get working again or our best people will drift off.

I’ve been meaning to call you about our other business activities, but the stock markets hiccups have taken all my time. Johnson flipped off his covers, stretched, and then picked up his cell phone. We have been doing well with the accounts from previous clients, but I agree, we need to enlarge our pool. What do you have in mind? And how is your leg?

My friends have identified three prospects in different parts of the state. All of them have the resources to participate and support from family to do so, Silver said. She moved her leg onto the couch, hoping it would lessen the pain. There is always pain, she added. OxyContin and I have become great friends. I’ll take one before I go to bed. Thanks for asking and taking my call so late.

Don’t rush. I worry that some of your staff may decide to act on their own. Choose your people carefully. Johnson stopped for a moment, as he saw his landline blinking. Pace yourself on the meds and with the next assignments. Some of your people could decide to act alone. Your head has to be clear for us to continue.

Without another word, he hung up.

Charlotte moved her left leg again and drank some of her chilled white wine.

He is not very pleasant, Charlotte thought about Johnson, or Z. J., but he sure knows how to make money. She got up from her couch and walked gingerly to her desk to open up her laptop computer. With practiced strokes, she brought up the balances in her four offshore accounts and smiled. The combined total was nine digits long, and the first two numbers were two and three.

Time to celebrate.

She added ice and white wine to her glass and took a pain medication. Then she settled back on her couch, under a blanket, resting her head on a cushion.

Slowly Charlotte felt the pain med taking hold like warm water in a bath, and the pain in her left leg eased. Her dreams were the same ones about the family she had left so long ago.

chapter one

CONCERN AND CONFRONTATION

This place is a dangerous mess! Sandy Bach yelled at her father, Max Miller. She marched around the small apartment, lifting up piles of mail, opening cabinets, checking the pantry shelves, and critically observing the contents of the small, old refrigerator.

Max’s apartment was in what had once been a five-bedroom, one-family home near the campus. A smart rental property owner bought the building from an older man and woman who went to live with their children in another city.

The house was transformed into three small apartments, each on a different floor. Max was on the top floor and enjoyed the view of campus from his three and one-half rooms, not counting the bathroom and small kitchen.

The kitchen and the bathroom smell. How do you find anything in your so-called office? And those stacks of books!

Sandy stared at her father, her arms folded and a grim look on her face. Short and thin, she stamped her high heels to show anger.

I’ll start cleaning up as soon as you leave, Max promised. And throwing out too. He heaved himself up from the sagging couch and remembered to stand straight to reach his full five-foot-ten-inch height. When he did, his small potbelly receded behind his belt. His longish white hair had only a small bald spot. His face had few wrinkles.

Sandy’s eyebrows were raised as she left.

God bless Sandy, Max thought. She’s the image of her mother in looks and talent. After three children, she was a little softer, but she was always focused and dressed in first-class clothes. With her height, Sandy could have been a model if she smiled more. Ethan and Ellen have Mommy’s looks but a different temperament—the laid-back attitude so common in my family.

Max was a third-generation townie born and raised in this college community with memories of a quieter town and campus. His grandfather had left Russia before the First World War began. The immigration officer at Ellis Island didn’t understand Mylofski, so he put down Miller but kept his first name, Schmuel, or Samuel. Some years before, three families from his small town left Russia and settled in the small college town south of Chicago. Schmuel worked in a dry goods store one of the families owned and married the boss’s daughter, and they had five children, one of them Max’s father, Benny.

One store became three in two communities. Benny soon managed the three stores. Growing up, Max worked in all of them. Having a mind for figures, Max helped with the bookkeeping and studied accounting in college.

For over forty years, Max had been with the business side of the campus-housing complex; he had served as its director for the last fifteen years before he retired. This is where I was born and will stay, he told friends. It’s so easy to live here, and all my children and grandchildren are close by. If I want sun, I can sit in my backyard in the summer, or maybe a few weeks in Arizona or Florida.

What he did not often mention was that they filled the void after Rachel, his wife of over forty years, died from a short illness four years ago. I remember the first time we met at temple. She was so pretty with that dark black hair and those eyes! It took me months to gather enough courage to speak to her. I had decided she was going to be my wife.

Usually Sandy made her comments every couple of weeks. But since Max’s afternoon and evening at the local emergency room, she made contact almost every day. At sixty-five, Max had some health problems. He had recently undergone brain surgery and suffered from occasional dizziness and asthma. And his chest pains scared the whole family. They scared Max too.

His small apartment had been his home since Rachel died of stomach cancer. Max sold the only home they had lived in because the memories were just too sad. Living in a small apartment on campus was his way of holding back the memories of their long and very happy marriage. There wasn’t room for many pictures, and Max could look out on the campus to forget his old neighborhood.

His children mentioned names of older single women to him, but he waved them away. It was much too soon to even think about a relationship.

Still, Sandy is right about cleanliness, Max admitted. He knew he should do more. Maybe someone should come in and clean every couple of weeks?

Sandy’s message remained with Max for the rest of the week. He brought up the subject at the family’s Shabbat dinner on Friday evening. His children were there with their spouses and the grandchildren.

Max thought Sandy’s home was too big now that her children were away at college. It was the picture of spacious living and had dining rooms and a very modern kitchen that was not used a great deal.

Sandy talked first, as was her custom as the oldest child, and she spoke for what seemed like an hour. "It’s time for Daddy to move from that terrible apartment on campus. That place is a hazard for him, with two steep flights of stairs and a building filled with noisy foreign graduate students. Not to mention the condition of the kitchen and the bathroom. We can’t forget that Daddy has had some health problems, and I worry all the time about something happening. It is time for Daddy to move to a safer place where he—and we—won’t have to worry all the time.

There are so many senior residences that offer very comfortable living, according to my many friends whose parents live in them, she went on. Given Daddy’s last health scare, we need to be looking at local and Chicago options. I will get started with a list.

Seth and Ellen nodded. We really can’t wait, Max’s son, Seth, added quietly. Ellen squeezed her hands. As the youngest, she was the quietest.

You worry more about me than I do, Max responded, keeping his growing anger under control. I’m not in a wheelchair, he wanted to say, but he kept quiet.

Max paused for a moment and then thought of a different tack. Granted, the apartment needs some cleaning, and that will be done. Ed Levy told me to call the woman who cleans his place, and I have contacted her. She will be at the apartment on Tuesdays, every two weeks. The stairs are not a problem, and the foreign students are not that noisy. I really love the neighborhood and being around the university and all those young people.

Max looked around and saw the others were unconvinced. I love you all dearly and especially thank Sandy for her concern. But I am not ready for any change. No woman in my life. Friends are close by. There is a clinic on campus. The discount market is in walking distance, and my car is in good condition. But that is just me thinking, and I want to hear what you think.

I think Sandy’s concern is my concern, Ellen said in a soft voice. Ellen and Seth were quite tall and thick boned. They had the habit of wringing their hands when they talked. "You have been very self-sufficient