Chapter Seven
The Haversons lived in a brick-front colonial with black shutters and fancy iron work around a balcony on the second floor.
“How many brick-fronted homes do you think there are in the capital region?” Sam asked.
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“No, I’m wondering how many you think there are.”
“Tens of thousands?”
“Probably a good estimate.”
“Is there a reason you’re counting bricks?”
“Just curious.” She pressed the doorbell and listened to the loud chiming that echoed inside the big house.
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“I don’t get it with the nuclear-bomb doorbells. Wouldn’t that scare the shit out of you every time it goes off?”
“I imagine it’d be rather startling.”
“Rather.” Sam looked in the window on the right side of the black front door. “If Haverson tipped her off that we were coming, I’m going to arrest his ass.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you can do the paperwork.”
Sam cupped her hands around her eyes for a better view inside. “I don’t do paperwork. That’s why I have you.” She rang the bell again. “Wake up, Clarissa.” Movement on the second floor had Sam looking up in time to see a blonde woman coming down the stairs with… a fucking gun pointed at the door.
Sam grabbed Freddie and pulled him back while simultaneously drawing her own weapon. At least they could say with reasonable confidence that her husband hadn’t tipped her off. If he had, she was insane for greeting cops with a gun.
“What’re you doing?” Freddie asked as he shook her off.
“She’s got a gun, and it’s pointed at us.”
“Who is it?” Clarissa asked from inside.
While remaining out of sight of the window, Sam held up her badge. “Lieutenant Holland, Metro Police Department. We want to talk to you about Ginny McLeod.” She spoke as loud as she could so the woman could hear her.
A series of locks disengaged before the door swung open.
Sam held her weapon in front of her so Clarissa could see it. “Put down your weapon and step back from it, hands up.”
“This is my house. You don’t get to tell me what to do in my own house.”
“Detective Cruz, would you please inform Mrs. Haverson of her rights in this matter?”
“You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney—”
“Wait a minute. You’re arresting me?”
“We aren’t talking to you while you’re armed,” Sam said, “so if you’re unwilling to put down your weapon and step away from it, then yes, we’re arresting you and taking you to MPD Headquarters to have the conversation we wish to have with you. Any other questions?”
She glared at Sam. “I’ll put down the weapon.”
“Excellent.” Sam continued to train her weapon on the woman until she had placed the gun on a front hall table and returned to the doorway with her hands up.
Sam stashed her gun in the holster she wore on her hip. “I assume I’d find that gun is registered if I happened to check?”
“It’s registered. There were a series of B&Es in this neighborhood a few years back, which is when I got it. No one ever comes here without texting first. I’m here alone during the day. A woman can’t be too careful in this world.”
“May we come in?”
“I guess. I’m not sure what you want with me. I didn’t kill Ginny, even though I’m glad she got what she deserved.”
That, Sam realized, was going to be a common refrain in this investigation.
Sam picked up Clarissa’s gun, made sure the safety was on, removed the bullets and handed the weapon and ammunition to Freddie to safeguard while they were in the house. “We’ve come from speaking to your husband.”
Clarissa appeared surprised to hear that.
“We told him not to tell you we were coming.”
She led them to a seating area off the dining room. “Oh. If you’ve talked to him, what do you need with me?”
“Talk to me about how Ginny first approached you with the investment idea.”
Clarissa’s expression hardened as she thought about that.
“It was at a cookout at the home of mutual friends two summers ago. We were talking about vacations we’d taken or had planned, and as always, Ginny’s vacations were way better than anyone else’s.
She and Ken had been to Bora Bora and stayed in one of those over-the-water huts they’re famous for. Do you know what I mean?”
Sam held back a smile at the reference to the place where she and Nick had spent their honeymoon and celebrated their first anniversary earlier in the year. “I do.”
Freddie coughed, as if hiding a laugh.
“I went to Bermuda, and she went to Bora Bora. The year before, it was Tahiti, and before that was Bali. I’ll admit I was jealous of her and how well she and Ken were doing in their careers.
I was driving a ten-year-old Honda Accord, while she was tooling around in a new Mercedes SUV.
Her house was amazing. Her life was amazing.
I made a joke about wanting to be her when I grew up, and then later, when no one else was around, she said something to me about an investment opportunity she was working on that might get me to Tahiti. ”
“You were intrigued?”
“Hell yes, I was intrigued. I felt like she was giving me the insider edge on the secret to her lifestyle. Brett and I work all the time, but with three kids to put through college and a big mortgage, we don’t have a lot of extra money lying around.
So when she told me about the investment group she was heading up, I was all in from the get-go.
” She looked down at the floor, her shoulders sagging.
“I remember driving home that night and telling Brett about it and how we had to do it because it might be the thing that changed the game for us.”
Bitterness crept into her every word, and when she looked up at them again, Sam saw the hurt, too.
“She knew how hard we work for everything we have, how proud we are to put our kids through good schools without saddling them with debt. But she also knew how much having three kids in college at the same time hurt us financially. She knew that.” Clarissa blinked back tears.
“That’s the part I can’t get over. I told her how strapped we were after paying tuition for years, and she screwed us anyway.
I thought it might be a way to jumpstart an early retirement.
Instead, she’s made it so we’ll be working for the rest of our lives. ”
Sam waited to see if she would say more.
“The money she took… It was most of what we had left after we finish paying for college for our kids. It was our nest egg. And now it’s gone, and the FBI told us from the outset that it would be a huge longshot to ever recover the money.”
The woman’s heartbreak was palpable.
“It never occurred to me that someone I’ve known most of my life would steal from me.”
“Why would it?” Sam asked. “No one would expect that from a lifelong friend. That’s the part I’m having trouble wrapping my head around. What did she think would happen when people found out there was no development? That the money was gone? What do you suppose her end game was?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had that same conversation with other people she stole from, who were also close to her or Ken or both of them. No one knows how she expected this to end, but in the meantime, she appeared to have the time of her life spending other people’s money.”
“And none of you thought to question where she was getting the money to fund her lifestyle?”
“No.” She bristled at the question. “She always lived large, so it wasn’t like this was something new.
And she was my lifelong friend. Why in the world would I think she was using my money to pay for her lifestyle?
” She looked down, her shoulders rounded with defeat.
“I blame myself, and Brett blames me, too. I was so caught up in the idea of having what Ginny had that I talked him into gambling our security, our future. It’s my fault. ”
“Of course you know it was the fault of the person who scammed you.”
“I was the one who wanted to invest. I wanted what she had, and now… Not only are our finances in a shambles, so is our marriage.”
“In all your communication with other people who were defrauded by Ginny, did you ever hear anyone say they wanted to harm her?”
“Everyone has said it at one point or another. Remember, we were not only dealing with the shock of losing our money, but also grappling with the realization that our sibling, friend, cousin, neighbor, colleague had stolen from us. It was a double whammy for everyone involved.” She glanced directly at Sam.
“Have you talked to her cousin Alison yet? She got a second mortgage on her house to go in on the investment. She’s in danger of losing her house. You should talk to her.”
“Where will we find her during the day?”
“She works for an interior design firm in Germantown. Let me grab my phone to get it.”
While she left the room to do that, Sam looked to Freddie. “Impressions.”
“Motive everywhere we look.”
“Finding this killer will be like locating a needle in the proverbial haystack.”
“Unless we get lucky with prints that are already in the system.”
“I don’t think we will. I think this might’ve been a first-timer in the heat of the moment.
Maybe the person who did this didn’t go there intending to kill her.
Maybe they wanted their money back, and when Ginny told them that wasn’t possible, they snapped and reached for the first thing they could find and went for her.
This was months of impossible stress boiling over into a single moment.
It’s possible our killer has no record, maybe has never had so much as a speeding ticket. ”
“You’re good at this. You should consider a career in law enforcement.”
He was too funny—and he knew it. “So you like my theory?”
“I do, and I agree it was most likely heat of the moment after a long buildup once the scheme came to light.”
Clarissa returned with a piece of paper that she handed to Sam. “That’s the name of the company Alison works for.”