Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“Once you make that request, we can’t talk to you until your lawyer arrives.”
“You need to let me out of here.”
“Sorry, but that’s not happening anytime soon.”
Mandi broke down into gut-wrenching sobs. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
“Don’t go. I don’t want to be here.”
“I’m not allowed to talk to you until your lawyer gets here, and I’ve got other stuff to do until then.”
“Please. I’ve never been in any trouble. I didn’t do this.”
“We’ll talk about it when your lawyer gets here. It’s apt to be tomorrow, though. The public defenders are always backed up.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want a lawyer.”
“Are you officially rescinding your request for an attorney?”
Mandi nodded and used the sleeve of her jumpsuit to wipe her eyes and nose.
“Are you sure? Because that might not be the smartest idea.”
“I’m sure. I want to get out of here.”
Sam and Gigi returned to their seats.
“Detective Dominguez, please record this interview and add that Ms. McLeod has declined her right to an attorney.”
Dominguez did as requested.
When she was done, Sam said to Mandi, “We’re listening.”
“I… I wasn’t entirely truthful about Sunday.”
“We already know that. Why did you go to your parents’ house?”
“Because my brother asked me to meet him there. He wanted to talk to my mom about where the money was and what could be done to make restitution to the people she stole from.”
“But you knew where the money was, because you made the deposits in the Cayman Islands, right?”
Mandi hadn’t been expecting that. Her mouth fell open and then snapped shut. “I… I don’t know anything about that.”
“Save it, Mandi. We can put you in Georgetown, Grand Cayman, four times in the last two years.” Sam put the printouts from her social media in which she’d posted about being there.
“How did you… That account is private.”
“Funny thing about social media. Nothing is private if you know how to dig deep.” Which Sam had no idea how to do, but thankfully, she had detectives who did.
“That doesn’t prove anything other than I took some vacations.”
“In one of the most notorious tax havens in the world? Try selling that to someone who’s buying that BS. You know exactly where the money is. Does your brother know that you know? And you might want to start being truthful, because we’re talking to him next.”
“He knows I went on vacation. That’s all it was.”
“And your mom never asked you to deposit cash or a bank check in a Cayman account while you were there?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“I’m sending a detective to Georgetown tonight. I’m going to have him match up the security footage from the dates you were there with every bank on that island.”
“I used the ATM at one bank to get out cash.”
“And that was it? He’s not going to find that you made any deposits while you were there?”
“What if I said I did but had no idea why I was doing it? Would that matter?”
“Potentially. If you were to provide account numbers and other salient information that would allow for restitution to your mother’s victims, I’m quite certain there’d be room to negotiate on any other potential charges you might be facing.”
“What other charges?”
“Murder, for one.”
“I didn’t kill her!”
“But I think you know who did, and you helped clean up after that person. If you know who killed her and don’t tell us what you know, you can also be charged with hindering our investigation.”
She started crying again, sobs jolting her petite frame. “I was a college kid minding my own business. My mom offered to pay for my vacations if I did a favor for her while I was there. I’m not sure how that’s a crime.”
“It’s a crime because you’ve known all along where the money is stashed and you denied it.”
“She told me she’d kill me if I breathed a word of it to anyone. ‘They’ll never think to investigate you,’ she said. And the Feds didn’t. No one asked me anything until you came to my dorm.”
And until Cameron Green dug into the financials and social media for the entire McLeod family. Why in the world hadn’t the Feds done that, too?
“Who killed your mother?”
“Why does it matter? Didn’t she deserve it?”
“That’s not for me to decide. My job is to find out who killed her. Whether or not she deserved what she got is for a higher power to determine.” Sam leaned in. “Who killed her?”
Mandi shook her head as tears streamed down her face and sobs echoed through the room.
“Who did it, Mandi?”
“My brother! He did it. He went to the house to beg her to do the right thing and give back the money, but she told him there was no way that was happening. They got into a fight in the garage, and when she told him to stop being a whiny baby, he grabbed the closest thing and swung it at her. He didn’t mean to kill her. ”
“How did you hear about it?”
“He called me, hysterical. Told me to come quickly. He needed my help.”
“What did he need you to do?”
“He couldn’t find anything with bleach in the house, so he asked me to get some and disposable rags and garbage bags.”
Sam took notes as Mandi ran through the list. “What did you need the garbage bags for?”
“I think he was going to try to get her out of there, but there was so much blood.”
“Did he tell you what he did before he sent you to the store?”
“No, but I could tell it was something horrible, because I’d never heard him sound so freaked out.”
“When he asked for bleach and garbage bags, you still didn’t suspect murder?”
“No, I figured he’d dropped a bottle of merlot on one of my mother’s Turkish carpets or something like that.”
“What did you think when you got to the house and saw what’d happened to your mother?”
“I freaked out. Completely lost it. I hated her for what she did to our lives, but I didn’t want her to die. Not like that. And my brother… He was out of his mind. He’s not a murderer, Lieutenant. He’s a good guy. You have to understand what she did to us, what she did to everyone.”
“I’m having a hard time feeling sorry for you, Mandi, when you knew all along who killed her and where the money was and didn’t tell anyone.”
“She said she’d kill me!”
“And you believed your own mother would kill you if you did the right thing and told the authorities where she hid all that money? Or, I should say, where you hid it for her.”
“I didn’t know that’s what I was doing.”
“So you say.”
“It’s the truth!”
“Even when the shit hit the fan with the Feds, it never occurred to you to say, ‘Oh, by the way, I know where the money is stashed’?”
“Not if I valued my life. My mother was very clear about what would happen to me if I told anyone what I knew. She said if I ever breathed a word of any of this, even if she was gone, I’d pay.”
“Whose idea was it to go to the Bahamas?”
“Mine. I wanted to get my brother out of the country.”
“Why there and not the Caymans, where the money is?”
“Just because I helped her make the deposits doesn’t mean I have access to the money. Only she had that.”
Sam pushed a yellow legal pad across the table to her.
“Write it all down. I want every detail of the runs you did for your mother to the Caymans, what happened Sunday, how you and your brother decided to cover up his involvement, your plans to flee to the Bahamas. All of it. Detective Dominguez will stay with you while you do.”
“Are you going to tell my brother what I told you?”
Sam looked at her, wondering if she was for real. “Yes, I’m going to tell him.”
“You can’t! He’ll hate me.”
“What did you think I’d do with that info?”
“Get him to tell you what happened without implicating me. Please? Isn’t it enough that our lives were ruined by our mother? Don’t take him from me, too. Please.”
Sam didn’t want to be moved by her, but she was, nonetheless. “I’ll see what I can do, but if he’s not willing to admit his involvement, I’ll tell him I already know what happened. Either way, he’s going to be charged, and you will be, too.”
“For what?”
“Lying to us, obstructing our investigation, possible money laundering, embezzlement. That kind of thing.”
Mandi put her head down on her crossed arms and wailed.
Sam walked out of the room, pissed off and annoyed.
Captain Malone was waiting for her.