Chapter Thirty-Seven Margo Angelhart
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Margo Angelhart
Gabriel had ordered several pizzas that were delivered minutes after I arrived. I thanked him profusely. I had a headache.
Too much caffeine, not enough food.
Everyone was here, except Mom and Quincy, who were still in Colorado and planning to return tomorrow. For a while I thought
Mom was going to move to Colorado until Dad was released, but when they talked, he convinced her to return to Phoenix.
The bell rang and Nate said, “It’s your boyfriend, Margo.”
“How do you know?”
He held up his phone. “I improved Gabe’s security.”
I saw Gabriel wince at the nickname Nate gave him and had to bite back a smile. Gabriel did need to loosen up just a bit,
but I thought he’d been very gracious to let the Angelharts take over his house this week.
I went to let Cal in, following all Nate’s security rules about disarming and resetting the alarm. I thought it would be rather
foolhardy for anyone to try anything with five Angelharts, a security expert, and a fed inside, but desperate people and all
that.
“I smell pizza,” Cal said and gave me a kiss.
“There might be some left for you,” I teased and led him to the kitchen where we were eating.
Jack and I had already filled everyone in on our conversation with Tim Miller, and Jack had called Quincy to tell him there
was a fifty-fifty chance Miller would ask for him at FBI headquarters. I wasn’t giving it fifty-fifty—I thought Miller would
talk himself out of it and assume that we weren’t serious or couldn’t prove anything. Jack also sent Quincy the recording.
Arizona was a one-party consent state, so it was legal, but I wasn’t certain Quincy would be able to use it to launch an investigation.
But that was out of my hands.
Once everyone was satiated, we moved to the den where Tess gave a brief rundown of where we were and what we still needed
to learn.
The information from Tim Miller was the most damning—we played the recording for everyone—while the information from Stockman’s
ex-wife gave us motive. He was a gambler, he needed money, and the Neurovantix drug—if he had invested in it—would give him
more than enough to pay for his lifestyle, or pay off his bookie.
Because apparently, according to Nico, even though gambling was now legal in Arizona, there were many illegal betting operations
throughout the area for people who wanted to gamble without paying Uncle Sam. Or high stakes tables unregulated by the state.
I never understood the allure of throwing my money away, other than maybe a friendly game of poker with the family where we
all put in twenty dollars and received twenty-five-cent chips. I didn’t even play the lottery, though my mom had been known
to buy tickets when the jackpot was big.
Tess had made the connections between people we suspected were involved, and she went through them quickly.
“Fifteen years ago, Mildred Maddox owned a small pharmaceutical company called Hollander and Christopher Hernandez, RN.
“Chris is a registered nurse, but he works in the IT department and primarily trains staff on how to use the electronic health
records system. Regina is in the lab. Both are in positions to be helpful to any conspiracy—Chris because he knows the EHR
system better than most people, and Regina because she has access to not only samples, but results.”
“Five people potentially involved?” Cal said. “That’s a good-sized conspiracy. And keeping quiet for all this time?”
“Stockman was paying Tim Miller three thousand a month for computer consulting,” I said with an eye roll. “They could have
been paid off-book and used only when necessary. Or they are convenient scapegoats.”
“This isn’t to say that Mildred and Peter didn’t recruit others on staff, like the VA director himself,” Tess said. “We don’t
know how many people are involved.”
I glanced at Jack and he knew what I was thinking. He said, “When Margo and I talked to Mildred, she seemed both helpful and
a little . . . well, I don’t want to say forgetful, but she had a vibe of being a bit clueless.”
“How can someone clueless have orchestrated a conspiracy like this?” Luisa asked.
“I think,” I said, “that either she really has Alzheimer’s, or that she was trying to play us. Because a woman as accomplished
as she is couldn’t have been clueless her entire career.”
“You think she knew what Stockman was doing?” Jack asked, surprised. “Do you think that she was involved?”
I didn’t know for certain, but I was leaning that way. “Don’t be easy on her just because she’s older and polite.”
“I’m not,” Jack said. “I just didn’t get the feeling that she was a killer.”
“That’s jumping ten steps ahead,” I said. “Maybe she knew, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she really is forgetting things. But do
you remember the whole conversation? She didn’t ask any questions about Dad.”
“Which suggests that she doesn’t remember that he confessed to murder.”
That was a good point. “I don’t have a good read on the woman,” I admitted. “We should definitely talk to her again. Tomorrow?
It’s a little late right now.”
“I’m good with that,” Jack said.
Tess said, “Mildred is a very successful businesswoman. She and her husband have bought and sold many small companies and
are worth tens of millions of dollars. Obviously, I don’t have all her financials, but what I can get publicly supports this.”
“So, you think she’s involved,” I said, flipping back from a woman going senile to a woman being deliberately deceptive.
“I don’t know,” Tess said.
Gabriel spoke up. “Perhaps she knew, but now doesn’t remember all the details. Alzheimer’s doesn’t have a set timeline. Some
people, it comes on quickly, but others can take years before it becomes debilitating.”
“So,” I said, “she could have been party to murder and now doesn’t remember any of it? I didn’t get the sense that she was
that senile.”
“Just putting it out there,” Gabriel said.
Tess said, “I’m following the money like Nico suggested. Mildred is worth a small fortune.”
Nico grinned, and Cal high-fived him. “That’s my motto too,” Cal said.
“When innocent people start dying, I don’t see how so many people will go along with it,” Jack said.
Nate grunted. “People suck.”
“Hey, that’s my line,” I said.
“Zachary Ames has an unblemished record,” Tess said. “I lean that he was completely uninvolved.”
“I agree,” I said.
“You think everyone is guilty,” Tess countered.
“Yeah and while I think Tim was holding back on us this afternoon, he was scared, and he seemed genuine when he said his uncle
didn’t know anything.”
Jack nodded. “The guy lied, but I think he knew who we were. He was hedging.”
“Probably to make himself seem more innocent,” I muttered.
Jack nodded. “I think Tim knew that Stockman was at least partly responsible for Klein’s murder, or he was willfully ignorant
of the fact. When we told him that Liz Swanson had been murdered, I don’t think he immediately made the connection that his
actions—telling Stockman who requested Novak’s files—resulted in her death.”
“He knows it now,” I muttered.
“There must have been something specific in that file that freaked them out,” Luisa said. “They couldn’t risk it getting out,
but even if Liz had found it, getting that information up the chain of command, investigated, whatever, would have taken weeks.
Neurovantix is set to be approved next week. I don’t know that she could have stopped it even if she made that connection.”
“It was an unknown,” I said. “And they might have been thinking, why now? Why when there’s only a week left before we get
all this money?”
Nico asked, “Who’s on the board of Neurovantix?”
“It’s a small division of a huge company,” Tess said.
“But the division would have a director,” Nico said. “And often when there’s a new drug developed and going to market, a company
will sell off the division for a good amount, using the success as indicators of future earnings. For example, if this drug
makes Neurovantix 200 million a year, they can sell the division for a billion dollars, which is five years of earnings. They
get the influx in cash, and the new buyer gets the future profits of a drug that has already gone through the expensive research
and approval process.”
“It also helps shield both companies from liability,” Gabriel said.
“How the hell does that happen?” I asked.