Chapter Six #2
“Thank God for that. He’s one of the best detectives I’ve ever worked with. I learn from him every day.”
“Not as much as you learn from me, though, because if you say it’s more, we’re done.”
“You continue to amaze and inspire me on a daily basis, Lieutenant.”
“Are you being sarcastic? It pisses me off when I can’t tell for sure.”
That made him laugh—hard. “I like to keep you on your toes.”
It took more than an hour to get to Bethesda, by which time Sam was on the verge of full-on rage at the waste of valuable time. “I’m ready for George Jetson travel anytime now.”
“You’d be a psycho in one of those flying cars.”
“People would get the hell out of my way. I should’ve used the lights.” She tended to save them for actual emergencies, and last she checked, her time being wasted wasn’t an actual emergency to anyone but her.
Inside the First National Bank and Trust on Arlington Road, Sam was greeted by one of her favorite things—a receptionist. Even better, this one did a double take when she recognized Sam.
“Mrs. Cappuano,” she said, practically sputtering. “Welcome. What can I do for you?”
Sam flashed her badge to remind the woman what Mrs. Cappuano did for a living. “I need to see Mr. Haverson, please.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
That was one of Sam’s favorite questions. “Nope. What I do have is a dead body and a homicide investigation. Tell him I’m here, and I’d like to speak to him.”
Her eyes went wide as she got up to see to Sam’s directive.
“I like when people do what I tell them to.”
“I like when they ask the appointment question. In my head, I’m counting down. Five, four, three, two…”
Sam laughed to herself at what an absolutely perfect partner he was, not that she could ever let him know that. He was already borderline unmanageable.
The receptionist returned a minute later with a gray-haired man wearing a dark suit and a scowl on his face. “What do you need?”
“Lieutenant Holland, Detective Cruz, Metro PD. We need a minute of your time. Either here or at our place. Your choice.” No one ever chose their place, which was a crying shame.
She loved nothing more than taking smug, entitled people into custody and didn’t get to do it nearly often enough. “What’s it going to be?”
“Come in.”
Figured you’d say that.
Sam and Freddie followed him past cubicles of workers who reacted with surprise when they recognized her. Haverson’s spacious office in the back had glass walls so he could see the goings-on in all corners of his little kingdom.
Freddie closed the door, and they both sat in the visitor chairs while Haverson settled behind his desk.
Sam glanced at Freddie and lifted her chin to tell him to get things started.
“How do you know Ginny McLeod?” Freddie took the baton and ran with it the way she’d taught him.
Haverson grimaced ever so slightly at the mention of Ginny’s name. “She was my wife’s high school classmate. They were close all through school and after. She and her husband were our friends.”
“Were. Past tense.”
“Hell yes, past tense. She ruined my life.”
“How so?” Sam asked, wanting to hear the story in his words.
He stared at Sam as if he couldn’t believe she was asking that question. “She stole more than two hundred thousand dollars from us.”
“How did she do that?” Sam asked.
Continuing with the stare, he said, “Surely you’ve taken the time to review the details of her scam before you came to my place of business to interrogate me. It’s all in the FBI reports.”
“Mr. Haverson, I’m not appreciating your tone. We have a murder victim, which gives us the right to ask any questions we see fit.”
“Good luck finding anyone who cares that she’s dead. You’ll have a long line of people celebrating her demise.”
“Including you?”
“Fuck, yes. I’m glad she’s dead. Did I kill her? No, but I’m glad someone else did. She had it coming.”
“No one has murder coming,” Sam said.
“They do when they steal someone’s life savings so they’ll never be able to retire or help their kids through college. People like her deserve anything and everything they get.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on whether anyone deserves to be murdered. Tell me how the money was transferred. I can read the reports, but I’d prefer to hear it from you.”
Seeming to realize he was going to have to tell her what she wanted to know, he began to speak in a tightly controlled tone that seemed almost practiced, as if it was something he’d taught himself to get through the retelling of this story.
“She came to my wife, Clarissa, with an ‘opportunity’ that she felt we’d be interested in.
She was putting together a group of investors to purchase an abandoned building in Gaithersburg and turn it into high-end condos, shops and restaurants.
She had prospectuses, charts, graphs, everything you’d need to believe it was legit.
We toured the building with a Realtor, who gave us even more information about how the place would be a gold mine once the renovation was finished.
They were looking for two hundred highly motivated investors who would each own a piece of the pie and reap the benefits, which were touted to be sizable. ”
He took a deep breath and released it, sagging a bit as his tale unfolded.
“My wife and I were intrigued. Ginny and Ken had done well. Really well. They had the fancy house and the fancy cars and the fancy vacations, while we were slogging away at well-paying jobs without getting ahead. We wanted what they had, and we felt like she was showing us how to make that happen. So I cashed in a chunk of my 401(k), took a huge hit on taxes and early-withdrawal penalties and sent her a check.”
“What happened then?”
“Nothing for a while. We kept hearing she was still working out the purchase details. These things are highly complex, she’d say when Clarissa asked for updates.
I tried to stay chill about it, because investing is always about patience.
When six months went by without anything happening, I started getting worried, especially when I saw on Facebook that Ginny and Ken were on a trip to Greece while I was waiting to hear that our investment was moving forward. ”
Sam took notes as he talked, processing the details and turning them over in her mind. “When did you start to fear you’d been scammed?”
“When the building we were supposedly buying sold to someone other than Ginny.”
“How did you find that out?”
“I keep an eye on real estate transactions in our area, out of curiosity about what’s selling and for how much. The building we were supposedly investing in sold for two point two million about eight months after we gave Ginny the money.”
“What did you do when you saw that?”
“At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I went online to confirm the building was the same one.
After I confirmed that it was, Clarissa and I went to their house.
Their cars were in the driveway, but no one answered the door.
That’s when I first started calling my friend with the FBI.
It took my friend four weeks to get others at the FBI to take it seriously and another four weeks after that before they started to actively investigate.
“Her scheme began to unravel when the FBI brought in the IRS. With the two agencies on the case, we quickly learned the whole thing was probably a scam. She never intended to buy or renovate that building, and apparently, she’s been doing this shit for years and getting away with it by robbing Peter to pay Paul.
At least I get now how she swings the house, the cars, the vacations. ”
“What I don’t understand is how it took years for her investors to get suspicious.”
“She was giving others small dividends on the investments, which pacified them. Those dividends came from new investors like us.”
“But she didn’t do that for you?”
He shook his head. “We never saw a dime or a report on our investment or anything after we gave her the money. In fact, with hindsight, Clarissa realized she barely heard from Ginny at all after we gave her the check. Everyone’s busy, so it wasn’t unusual for a few months to go by between get-togethers, but it was unusual for Clarissa to not hear from Ginny at all.
Later, when we put the pieces together, we realized that Ginny’s mother, to whom she was always exceptionally close, fell ill shortly after we invested, which probably meant she had less time to bring in new people to provide enough dividends to keep us from raising the red flag. ”
“Where were you on Sunday afternoon?”
He gave her a blank look, as if he couldn’t believe she was asking him that.
“I told you I didn’t kill her.”
“I heard you, but you see, it’s like this.
People tell us all the time they didn’t kill someone, and then we later find out they did.
That’s why we ask people to tell us where they were at the time of the murder and make them prove it.
Saves us a lot of time in the end. So where were you on Sunday afternoon? ”
Through gritted teeth, he said, “With my son in College Park. He’s a freshman at Maryland. My wife and I took him to lunch. He can confirm it, and I can provide a receipt from the restaurant.”
“If you could give us his phone number and a copy of that receipt, that’s all we need.”
He glared at her before reaching for his phone, getting the number from his contacts and reciting it. From his wallet, he produced a receipt that Freddie took a picture of with his phone.
“Don’t tell your son to expect a call from us,” Sam said. “We check those things, too.”
“I didn’t kill her, but good luck finding anyone on her list of investors who didn’t want her dead once they found out she’d been scamming us. I mean, who does that to people they’ve known all their lives? She and my wife had been friends for years.”
“It had to be extremely shocking.”
“You have no idea. Sometimes, I still can’t believe it, and I’ve known the truth of what happened for months now. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that she stole from us.”
“Besides yourself, who else was instrumental in helping the FBI and IRS to make a case against her?”
“There were two of us who did the heavy lifting. The other was Ginny’s cousin, Alison Enders, who lives in Germantown.”
“Do you have an address and phone number for Alison?”
“Yeah.” Again using his phone, he wrote down the requested information.
“What was your sense of Ken’s involvement in the scheme?”
“He was broadsided the same way the rest of us were, or so he said. Some people think he knew, others believe he didn’t. It depends on who you talk to.”
“How would she have explained to him where the money was coming from if he didn’t know?” Freddie asked.
“That was my question, too. But from what he told investigators, he assumed it was proceeds from her various investments.”
“And he was believed?”
“Ken passed a polygraph.” He handed over the paper with the name, address and phone number of Ginny’s cousin Alison.
“Did you ever have contact with someone involved in the scheme who talked about wanting to kill Ginny?”
“Everyone wanted to kill her. People said if she was dead, we might benefit from her life insurance, if she had it. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who was defrauded by her who didn’t want her dead.”
He leaned in, expression intense, eyes full of fury and maybe hurt, too.
“You have to understand, Lieutenant. She ruined our lives. She destroyed our faith in humanity. I mean, if a friend can do this to you… My wife and I had a solid relationship before this. And now…” He blew out a deep breath.
“I made the mistake of blaming her for what Ginny did. She was Ginny’s friend, after all.
But it wasn’t Clarissa’s fault. We decided together to invest, and it was wrong of me to blame Clarissa.
I never should’ve done that, and now I’m left to wonder if she’ll ever forgive me. ”
“Where would we find your wife?” Sam asked.
His expression went completely blank. “Why do you need to talk to her?”
“For the same reason we wanted to talk to you. She was a victim of Ginny’s scheme, and I’d like to gain her perspective.”
“Her story would be very similar to mine.”
“Good to know. Where can we find her?”
Seeming to realize he couldn’t talk her out of speaking to Clarissa, he said, “She’s a yoga instructor and teaches classes at night. During the day, she’s at home.”
Sam handed the paper he’d given her back to him. “Please write down your home address and your wife’s phone number.”
He did as she asked and gave the paper back to her. “Are you going there to see her?”
“We are, and we’d rather you not tell her we’re coming.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked you not to.”
Oh, he didn’t like that, but wisely refrained from saying so.
Sam stood, and Freddie did the same. “If you think of anything else that might be relevant to our investigation, please let me know.” She handed him her business card. “I understand you have no incentive to help us figure out who killed her, but we’d appreciate your cooperation anyway.”
“I’ve told you what I know. The rest of the details are in the court filings.”
“Thank you for your time.”
Sam led the way through the bank lobby. Every set of eyes in the place landed on her as she headed for the exit.
Once outside, she took a deep breath of fresh, cold air that settled her.
Being recognized everywhere she went was unnerving, especially in light of her job locking up criminals.
She never knew when she might encounter someone she’d arrested years ago who’d recognize her due to her increased notoriety and love nothing more than to make something of her newfound role as second lady.
That was a thought she was better off not entertaining.
“Where to?” Freddie asked when they were back in her car.
She handed over the paper Haverson had given them. “Let’s go see Clarissa.”