Root of All Evil

by Libby Howard

  She’d been charging customer accounts for the parts, then crediting the accounts but not returning the part to inventory. They were items that I imagined would be easily resalable—brake rotors, belts and hoses, cases of synthetic oil, batteries.

  Allegedly, I mean. Because innocent until proven guilty.

  I sat riveted, until I realized I needed to get my copies from the Records Division and hustle myself back to the job that was paying my bills, so I snuck out the door and headed down the stairs, resolved to ask Judge Beck about the case later tonight.

  On the way, I ran into someone I’d not expected to see—Violet Smith. She did a double take that mirrored mine, then laughed and pulled me into a hug.

  “Mrs. Carrera! Are you here on business? It’s so good to see you!”

  “Just picking up some copies. How are things in Tax Assessments?” I’d given Violet a reference, completely impressed with the mock interview she’d done with me and had been thrilled that she’d gotten the job with the county tax office. It wasn’t her dream job, but it was one step on the pathway. This was a full-time job right out of college with a nice salary and good benefits and it would look great on her resume when she had enough experience to begin applying for jobs in financial audits either in the public or private sector.

  “Oh, I’m loving it there. Let me know when you’re going to be down here again, and we can do lunch.” She gave me another hug, then ran up the stairs.

  I watched her go, then headed down, wondering how often I would be heading to the courthouse for various tasks. J.T. spent a lot of time here, I assumed doing bail paperwork for clients and schmoozing as well as pulling records for various cases. Now that I was an actual investigator and not just doing skip tracing, maybe I’d be able to do the same. It would be fun to meet Violet for lunch occasionally, and perhaps Judge Beck as well if his schedule allowed.

  The young man in the Records Division was just sliding my copies into a manila envelope as I walked in. I took them with a smile, waved at the guys manning the metal detector at the door, and headed for work and the stack of skip traces waiting for me there.

  There was a woman sitting in J.T.’s client chair when I walked in. She looked to be in her mid-thirties with the immaculately groomed appearance and vengeful expression of someone going through a divorce. Beside her sat an enormous file box. I blinked in surprise because J.T. had been hurrying back for a consult on a drug possession bond, and this woman didn’t look at all like someone whose brother or sister might need bail for that sort of thing.

  Although I supposed even immaculately groomed, upper-middle-class middle--aged women had addicts in their family.

  “Kay, this is Ms. Marissa Thompson. Mrs. Thompson, Kay Carrera is an investigator with our firm. She specializes in the internet research such as skip trace and credit review.”

  Mrs. Thompson turned to me with a tight smile. “Here you go.” She motioned to the giant file box.

  I gave J.T. my best “What’s going on?” look.

  “Mrs. Thompson’s divorce attorney suggested she contact an investigator to dig into her husband’s finances. She has a suspicion that he has a significant source of income that he’s been hiding from her.”

  Ah. Hence the enormous box and the fact that J.T. had lobbed this case my way. I read between the lines. If the divorce attorney wasn’t taking this on and contracting the investigation themselves, it meant they thought there was nothing to Ms. Thompson’s suspicions. Better for her to go hire her own investigator that she could berate as incompetent fools when they turned up nothing then have her blame her attorney.

  Us. Berate us as incompetent fools. No, actually it was me she’d be berating. I was J.T.’s sacrificial lamb on this one, but I guess that was what happened when you had a shiny new PI license and worked for the illustrious Gator Pierson.

  “And a mistress,” the woman added. “I’m pretty sure there’s a mistress somewhere. But the urgency is to find any hidden assets, because the moment I have Spencer served with the divorce paperwork, we’ll never find it.”

  Actually, a good forensic accountant could still find the money. Closing bank accounts didn’t wipe out any history of their existence, and there would always be records of transfers and withdrawals. There were methods of laundering ill-gotten gains and making them appear legitimate but hiding large sums in this day and age wasn’t easy unless you resorted to cash-only transactions and hid it all under the mattress. Even then, actually buying anything significant with the cash would become problematic. Showing up at a real estate closing with half a million in a briefcase would get you sent to a bank for a certified check—where the cash would be traceable once more. And you’d probably receive a friendly visit from some federal agency to boot.

  But I doubted that was the case here. Gambling winnings? Siphoning earnings into a little side account for the mistress? A quick credit and social media search should point me in the right direction.

  “What caused you to be suspicious that your husband had hidden assets, Ms. Thompson?” I asked.

  “There have been little things over the last year, a bit more lavish spending than usual. We have a joint checking account, and Spencer handles the finances, so I just assumed he got a raise or a bigger bonus, but when I started looking at the statements, I saw his payroll deposits haven’t changed significantly in the last three years. If anything, they’re slightly smaller.”

  “Is there a savings account somewhere he could have been depositing to?”

  She nodded. “Yes, but I checked that. It hasn’t had more than the usual monthly deposit in five years. There’s an auto transfer of three hundred dollars a month into it from our checking account, but no withdrawals.”

  “Do you have his wage statements from his employer?” I asked, thinking that maybe Spencer had gotten a big raise, and had directed his company to deposit the extra amount in a separate, personal account. It was a common tactic for those who saw divorce looming on the horizon and shuddered at the idea of dividing their assets right down the middle.

  “No, he doesn’t get paper paycheck stubs or statements and I don’t have access to log in to his payroll site at work. There’s no way I could get that information without tipping him off that I’m about to file for divorce.”

  I grimaced, realizing she was right. Her divorce attorney could request them as part of the case, but by then the money could have vanished, allegedly spent on consumables.

  “Is there anything else that made you suspect he’d been hiding money from you?” I pressed. “Gambling? A side job? An elderly relative of his that died and you suspect might have willed him money?”

  “I’ve never seen him gamble, and with the long hours he works, I’d never know if there was a side job or a mistress, but either of those is possible. The inheritance thing is unlikely. Spencer’s family isn’t particularly well off, and no one has died in the last five years that I know of.” Again, she motioned to that intimidatingly large box. “Oh, there is one other thing. Back in August, we went out to Stella’s for a dinner with two other couples. Spence had overindulged a bit on the scotch and paid the entire check.” She grimaced with the painful memory. “I about had a heart attack, because six people at Stella’s…you can imagine what that check was.”

  Yes, I could. Eli and I had been there once twelve years ago for an anniversary dinner. I’d joked that we would need to take out a second mortgage just to pay for our meal.

  “But it’s not there.” She paused for effect, waving a hand at the box. “Spence put it on a card, and I remember thinking it didn’t look like our usual one, but at the time, I didn’t worry about it. But the charge didn’t show up on either our bank statement or our credit card statement. Two thousand dollars, Ms. Carrera. That transaction would stand out, and I can’t find it.”

  “A company credit card?” I suggested. She gave me a look that made it clear she was doubting my competence.

  “He would have been fired. Spencer works for Fullbri
ght and Mason. Investment firms aren’t exactly loose in their accounting practices, and his expense account is tightly audited—as are all the consultants’. I think he may be moonlighting, that he’s got some lucrative business on the side and has been hiding it from both me and his employer.”

  Which would violate both his non-compete and the trust of his soon-to-be-ex-wife. I eyed the box and straightened my shoulders, foreseeing a lot of long nights ahead of me.

  “Is there anything else that made you suspect he had hidden assets?” I asked.

  “No, just a wife’s intuition. But it’s not just the finances I want you to look into.” She squirmed. “I think…I mean, I know divorce is no-fault in this state, and it wouldn’t matter if he was having an affair, but I’m pretty sure he is. But I can’t find any proof of it.”

  I was completely confused. “So, you think he’s having an affair, but there’s no proof? No receipts for flowers or hotel charges on your credit card, or shirts smelling like someone else’s perfume?”

  “No.” Mrs. Thompson looked downright embarrassed. “But he was talking to someone named Tracy last year, and when I came in he looked uncomfortable and ended the phone call with some awkward excuses about calling her later. I looked up the number on our cell phone bill and did a search. He’d been calling her a few times a week. Then, six months ago, I walked in on him having a heated argument over the phone with someone. When I checked the phone record, it was the same number.”

  Wow. Paranoid much? I was a bit aghast at how suspicious she’d been and how much investigative work she’d already done over the course of a year or more. Wasn’t a marriage supposed to be based on trust? Although with Eli, I’d always had a reason to trust. Who knew what sort of person Spencer Thompson was that his wife was diligently checking phone records and bank accounts, building a case for her divorce for at least a year in advance?

  “Did you ever call that number?” I asked, because someone that meticulous surely would have phoned the alleged mistress and confronted her.

  “Yes, but it went to voice mail, and it was one of those generic ‘please leave a message’ robotic voices. No one ever called me back, and I was worried that if I kept calling her, she’d tell Spencer and he’d run off to Jamaica with her and our entire bank account or something.”

  “Was your relationship always this…uneasy?” I didn’t want to insult the woman, but clearly there was something fundamentally wrong in their marriage.

  A muscle twitched in her jaw and for a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. “Spencer was always a businessman first. When I met him, we were in our early twenties, and I knew then that he was going places. The man was sharp. He could spot an opportunity from a mile away and be ready to take advantage of it. I loved that about him. Being with him was exciting and exhilarating. I loved his brilliance. Then about five years ago, I realized that we weren’t partners, that any opportunity he spotted, he’d take advantage of regardless of whether it benefitted me or not. I realized that he’d happily leave me in the dust if he could score big money on his own.”

  “So, for five years you were okay living with that?”

  Her face hardened and she took a deep breath before responding. “Yes. I kept a wary eye on things but staying with Spencer was still a better deal than going forward alone, and I still loved him. But this Tracy thing…I can’t tolerate him cheating on me. I mean, cheating on me financially is bad enough, but for him to have another woman on the side? I read the writing on the wall and figured I better divorce him before he managed to drain our accounts and run off with this floozy.”

  I nodded. “Thank you for your honesty. It makes my job a lot easier.”

  She nudged the box toward me. “Please let me know if you have any questions. My lawyer is already poised to begin the divorce process, but I’m holding off, worried about Spence having significant assets elsewhere, so time is of the essence here.”

  I gave her a sympathetic smile. “I completely understand. I’ll go through this tonight as well as search my usual online resources. Questions or not, I’ll contact you tomorrow morning to update you on my progress.” After running it all by J.T., of course. I might be the one who knew skip-tracing and internet research, but he was the experienced investigator while I was still very much wet behind my ears.

  Marissa Thompson pulled a card from her purse and handed it to me with a flourish of manicured nails. Then she stood and shook my hand. J.T. escorted her to the door, bowing and scraping like the woman was the Queen of England.

  I waved the little card at him once Mrs. Thompson had left. “So, she’s either Locust Point Royalty, or paying us an insane hourly rate for this.”

  He grinned. “The latter. Now get to work.”

  I hauled the box over to my desk and started to go through the contents, happy to see that whoever made the copies had sorted them and clipped them into neat stacks. Bank statements. Credit card statements. A whole bunch of receipts. Some handwritten notes. A sheet of paper with logins and passwords. Cell phone numbers. I gave it all a quick look, then sat down at my computer, figuring I’d do what I did best and check this guy out online before diving into the paperwork. Mrs. Thompson had included a sheet in the box with personal information on her husband—date of birth, college attended and date of graduation, a resume, addresses for the last three houses they’d lived in, names and ages of living family members, and Social Security number.

  The first thing that struck me was that Spencer Thompson’s social media was completely sanitized and professional. I wasn’t surprised given that he made a living as a financial consultant, and a certain amount of salesmanship was expected in that job. He was all over every social media site, his posts filled with handy financial tips, news on stocks to watch, and pictures of him schmoozing at nearly every business-themed social event in the county. The latest one was a Chamber of Commerce happy hour where he was flanked by a real estate professional and a mortgage lender. Another picture from the same event had him next to a name I recognized—County Clerk Patrice Defoe. Her picture with a little brass nameplate was up on the wall at the courthouse right next to the Records Division. I made a mental note to ask Judge Beck if he knew Spencer Thompson. I wouldn’t have thought they ran in the same social circles, but the guy did seem to get around, rubbing elbows with everyone of interest in the county. How odd that I’d never heard his name mentioned before today, but then again, what use would I have for a financial services consultant? Up until Judge Beck moved in, I was more likely to be needing a bankruptcy attorney.

  I looked at the pictures, paging back through several years to see if there were any particular individuals he seemed to be more in the company of—especially any women named Tracy in the tags. There was no Tracy, although Spencer did seem to hang with a lot of mortgage lenders and real estate people, one guy from Piedmont mortgage in particular. I chalked that up more to the events he was attending and the type of professional crowd they would draw. Lenders, realtors, and financial consultants all needed to grow their client base, and I knew that partnerships between them often ended in much-needed business referrals.

  From the social media search, I moved on to his company website, pulling up the page for the consultants. Spencer Thompson, it seemed, specialized in estate planning and financial matters specific to those in or approaching retirement. Like everything else I’d seen so far, the photos and the bio were strictly business-like. There was nothing on a judicial case search beyond a few old speeding tickets. His credit report was pristine with no sign of anything that would indicate he was secretly applying for credit cards behind his wife’s back. With a sigh, I glanced at the clock and decided to dig into the more intimidating paperwork in the box.

  Armed with a highlighter and a notepad, I got to work. I quickly realized this this was a joint checking account, and that the Thompsons appeared to use their debit card for everything they bought. There were multiple convenience store purchases for a couple of dollars, and som
eone seemed to have a bit of a Starbucks habit. Overwhelmed with the volume, and unable to see any pattern through all the noise, I decided to concentrate on the deposits, plowing through the early statements and highlighting them by source. Spencer started at Fullbright and Mason five years ago, but Marissa had only included the last three years of deposits. Finally, I sat back and stretched. Five o’clock. J.T. was starting to pack up, but I was thinking I might stay an extra hour and finish going through at least the deposits. Might as well since this was all on Marissa Thompson’s dime.

  “Found anything yet?” J.T. asked as he stuffed a few files in an ancient hard-sided briefcase.

  “The only thing so far is that Spencer’s direct deposit amount changed two years ago,” I told him. “It’s not a huge amount—only a few hundred each check. It only adds up to roughly eight or nine thousand. I mean, I’d definitely want half of that in a divorce, but I figured it would be more from the way his wife was talking.”

  J.T. pursed his lips. “Could there be another explanation for the deposit variation? He upped his 401k contribution? A raise in the company health insurance premiums or something?”

  “The start of it doesn’t coincide with open enrollment, so I’m thinking no on the benefits explanation. It could be some kind of change in retirement contributions. That could happen mid-year.”