Chapter Nineteen
Sam rolled her eyes at Freddie and followed Tina into the house that was as nice on the inside as it was on the outside. They were shown into a cozy living room where Sam and Freddie sat together on a love seat. She’d have to make a joke about that later.
“What do you want to know?” Tina asked.
“How did you know Ginny?”
“We went to college together.”
“How did you and your husband decide to invest with her?”
“She made us an offer we thought would be stupid to refuse. She had all the answers, testimonials, financials. You name it, she had it. We were bowled over the same way everyone else was by a no-lose proposition. It was supposed to take twelve to eighteen months, and then we’d see a big return.
” She paused and glanced directly at Sam.
“I know you have to be thinking how stupid we all are, but if you’d heard what we heard, you would’ve done the same thing. ”
No, I wouldn’t have, Sam thought, but she kept that to herself. Her father, the cynical cop, had always told her and her sisters that if something seemed too good to be true, it almost always was. Usually he was referring to boys, but the lesson applied universally.
“When did you realize the investment was a scam?”
“When the twelfth month came and went without a word from her. She went completely silent on us, and later we found out she’d done the same to the other investors.”
“What did you do when you couldn’t get in touch with her?”
“At first, we panicked. She had most of our savings and wasn’t returning our calls?
How could that be? So we went to her house, and Ken said she wasn’t home.
He didn’t know where she was or when she’d be back.
” Tina swallowed hard and seemed to fight tears.
“I had to keep Jack from storming into the house. He was convinced she was in there, and Ken was covering for her.”
“What did you do then?”
“We went to the Rockville Police Department, filed a report, met with detectives and were told they were going to look into it.”
“Did they?”
“They said they did, but they weren’t able to locate Ginny either.
We asked them to get a warrant to search their house, and they said they’d try, but that never happened.
So we started calling the FBI every day until we got through to an agent who took our report and promised to look into it. We never heard from him again.”
Sam hated the way law enforcement had failed these people. “I’m sorry you had that experience.”
“I am, too, because in all the time that was wasted, Ginny had the chance to hide the money in places we’ll probably never locate. We’ll never get back all those months that could’ve been spent stopping her before one of the other victims finally got someone to take this seriously.”
“Where were you on Sunday?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“We’re asking everyone who had motive where they were when she was killed.”
“I didn’t kill her. Believe me, I wanted her alive so she could tell us what the hell she did with all that money.
The IRS and the FBI went through everything and couldn’t find where she spent more than a million of the twenty-two million she stole.
So where’s the other twenty-one million?
Only she knew that, and now…” She shrugged with a helplessness that sparked sympathy in Sam.
She could only imagine how frustrated and heartbroken Tina had to feel.
She’d lost a lot more than her life savings to Ginny.
“I was at my tennis club from eleven to two on Sunday. My club membership is the one thing I managed to hang on to after we lost the money.”
“Is there someone who can confirm that?”
“My friend Celeste was with me the whole time.”
“Can we please have her number?”
Glaring at Sam, Tina found the number on her phone and recited it.
Sam wrote it down, tore the page out of her pad and handed it to Freddie, who got up to go outside to make the call.
“Tell me about the day your husband died.”
“Do I have to?”
“I’d appreciate it if you would.”
Tina sagged into the corner of her sofa, arms crossed as she fixated on a spot behind Sam.
“He’d been so upset. So, so upset. I suggested he play golf with some friends while I visited our daughter.
She’d had a baby three weeks earlier, so I’d been spending a lot of time helping her.
I think about that now and wonder if I’d been around more, I might’ve known what he was planning.
But I had no idea. I knew he was devastated over what Ginny did, but it never occurred to me that he would… I didn’t think…”
She blinked furiously and then swiped at tears. “How could he leave me to deal with this alone?” Shaking her head, she wiped more tears.
Sam made an effort to be patient and not rush her.
“I came home and couldn’t find him. I checked upstairs and in the garage before going out to his woodshop when I noticed the door was open.
He hadn’t been out there in months, since before we realized Ginny had stolen our money, so I took it as a good sign.
I vividly remember walking out there, feeling hopeful that maybe we were going to get back on track, that we would be okay. ”
Tina dropped her head. “But when I went in there, he… He was hanging from the rafters. I screamed and went to him and tried to get him down, but he was gone. Later, I found out he’d been there more than three hours by the time I found him.
He waited until he knew I’d be gone awhile.
” Wiping away more tears, she looked up at Sam.
“That’s what she did to us, Lieutenant. She took our money, stole my husband’s will to live, denied our daughter and grandson their father and grandfather.
She took everything we had, and I blame myself.
She was my friend, and I was excited to invest in her business.
I talked Jack into it, and now he’s dead. ”
“Do you know of anyone who might’ve specifically threatened her or said they wanted her dead?”
“Everyone involved joked about wanting to have her killed. No one meant it, of course. It was a coping mechanism.”
“Did anyone seem to take it more seriously?”
She thought about that for a second. “Not that I ever saw. It was all talk that came from devastation and despair. If there’s any silver lining to this nightmare, it’s that I’ve made a lot of new friends.”
“Including Mark Townsend?” Sam felt like a complete asshole for kicking Tina when she was already down, but she had to know if there was anything more to their association than two people seeking comfort from each other.
She blinked several times, clearly shocked. “What about him?”
“I understand the two of you are romantically involved.”
“We… I… He’s been a very good friend to me since Jack died.”
“I’m going to be honest with you, Tina. We’ve already talked to him. We know it’s more than friends.”
“He… He told you that?”
“He did, because he understands we’re running a homicide investigation here, and the details matter. I’m honestly not looking to make anything worse for you. I promise. I only want to understand your relationship with Mark and figure out if it has any relevance to the murder of Ginny McLeod.”
“It doesn’t. We had nothing to do with that, but neither of us was sorry to hear she was dead. When you treat people the way Ginny did…”
“No one deserves to be murdered, Tina. Not even Ginny.”
“Some people do,” she said, her eyes flashing with fury. “Some people don’t deserve to walk among the rest of us because they’re so indecent, so morally bankrupt that the world is a better place without them.”
“Maybe so, but murder is still illegal, and as such, it’s our job to figure out who killed her. Tell me the details of how you became involved with Mark Townsend.”
“I don’t see how it’s relevant.”
“You don’t have to. It’s relevant to me, thus you have to answer the question.”
“And if I don’t?”
“We’ll arrest you, take you downtown to be processed and hold you overnight to be arraigned.”
She blanched. “On what charges?”
“Obstructing a homicide investigation.”
“Because I don’t want to answer personal questions that have nothing to do with Ginny McLeod?”
“Your relationship with Mark Townsend does have to do with her. Without her, you never would’ve met him. And as of right now, you’re officially wasting my time, which is a secondary offense. So what’s it going to be? Are we going to talk here or downtown?”
While Tina visibly fumed for a full minute, Sam counted down in her mind, giving her ten more seconds before she was going to be taken into custody.
“Fine. I’ll tell you, but for the record, I still say it’s none of your business.”
“Noted.”
Freddie came back in, handed Sam the paper she’d given him with the tennis partner’s phone number that now had a big checkmark on it. He sat next to her.
“Tina is going to tell us about her relationship with Mark Townsend,” Sam said.
“Ah, gotcha,” Freddie said.
Tina glared at both of them as the words came out through a clenched jaw and tight lips.
“Jack and I met Mark around the time we figured out Ginny had scammed us. We commiserated, spent time with Mark and his wife until she basically stopped speaking to him because she was so angry about him insisting they invest with Ginny.”
Sam took notes as Tina spoke. She was now interested in speaking to Mark’s wife, whereas she hadn’t been before.
This was why she forced people to talk about things they’d prefer not to discuss, because you never knew what additional tidbit would surface in the retelling from a different individual.