Root of All Evil

by Libby Howard

  “The ‘who’ is what I’m trying to determine. The how is poison. Specifically poison in his coffee.”

  Coffee. I eyed the half-empty cup on my own desk and shuddered, remembering Spencer’s dollar-sign festooned mug on the warmer.

  My mind whirled with thoughts. I’d spoken with his wife this morning and she’d been furious, but poison was a far cry from grabbing a knife off the counter in the heat of an argument. Poison took thought and planning, and while I knew in my gut that Marissa Thompson was capable of such a thing, I couldn’t see her having the motive. Unless she wanted all of Spencer’s money and not just half of it.

  The wife might have somewhat of a motive, but I clearly didn’t.

  “Poison. What kind of poison?” I demanded.

  Detective Keeler watched me carefully as he spoke. “We’re not sure yet. It was powerful and fast-acting. A coworker said they were bringing him a file when he took a big gulp from his mug and promptly spit it out across the desk. He was screaming and clawing at his mouth and throat and began to cough and vomit blood. She immediately called for an ambulance, but he was dead before it arrived.”

  Holy cow. I stared openmouthed at the detective, horrified by his narrative and a bit surprised that he’d revealed such details to me when in my experience, he’d always been stingy about keeping information close to his vest.

  I cleared my throat and organized my thoughts for a moment. “No one else in the office was affected?”

  He shook his head. “We pulled all the coffee pots as well as the packets of grounds to test, just in case. With thirty-five people working there today and no one else showing symptoms, we believe Spencer Thompson was the sole target.”

  Not the office in general then, which meant either a client was angry at Spencer, or his wife had decided to take all their assets instead of half, or there was a disgruntled business partner, lover, or golf buddy, or anyone who’d slipped something into the man’s cup.

  “Well, it obviously wasn’t me. Spencer Thompson didn’t leave his cubicle during our meeting. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to slip something into his cup unobserved. And I had no reason to want him dead. It’s not like I walk around with a box of rat poison in my purse just in case some investment counselor insults me.”

  “You could have returned afterward,” Detective Keeler reminded me.

  “After I made that huge scene?” I scoffed. “I wouldn’t have gotten past the receptionist desk. It wasn’t me. And you know it wasn’t me or I would be down at the police station right now.”

  He nodded, a hint of a smile curling up the edge of his mouth. “He saw no other appointments after you. He died within ten minutes of you leaving. A bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do think.” And I was thinking something else as well. “Spencer Thompson didn’t touch his coffee the whole time I was there. He had it on one of those warmer things. It could have been poisoned before I got there.”

  His eyebrows lifted again. “Who pours a cup of coffee and leaves it sit for an hour untouched?”

  I waved at my own half-empty mug. “Someone busy, that’s who. And he had a warmer under it, so he wouldn’t dump it out and get some fresh from down the hall. Maybe not hours and hours, but definitely check an hour or so before I got there. Or maybe his coworkers. One of them might have slipped something in his mug after I left. That woman delivering the files, maybe.”

  “So, who do you think might have wanted Spencer Thompson dead?” he asked, still clicking his pen and eyeing me intently.

  Ah. Clearly my acting skills were worse than I’d thought. He hadn’t believed my sole reason for visiting Mr. Thompson was for personal investment advice. Before I could speak up, J.T. did.

  “As much as we want to assist the police, especially in something as serious as a murder investigation, we do have client confidentiality to consider,” my boss said.

  “I’m not asking for client lists or details.” Detective Keeler turned his eagle-eye gaze toward J.T “I just want to know that if either of you has reason to suspect someone you know of murdering Spencer Thompson, or have information material to the case, you’ll contact me. To withhold that information would be…problematic.”

  Suddenly the air crackled with all sorts of male testosterone. I waved a hand to break the tension before it escalated. “We will, Detective Keeler. Neither of us wants a murderer to go free. We’ve always cooperated with the police, but until you have something specific to ask us, we can’t just begin divulging information about clients that may have nothing at all to do with this murder.”

  The detective stood and shoved his pen back into his pocket, pulling out a card and slapping it on top of my desk. “If something comes up, please call me. And Mrs. Carrera? Don’t go all Jessica Fletcher on me and get locked in a dumpster this time.”

  I flushed red and glared at his back as he left the office.

  “So,” J.T. drawled. “When were you going to tell me about getting into a shouting match with Spencer Thompson at the offices of Fullbright and Mason?”

  Chapter 14

  Thankfully, I did not lose my job over the incident at Fullbright and Mason. I spent the next few hours working on the skip traces, occasionally glancing at the paperwork Violet had given me. J.T. remained in the office, doing paperwork of his own. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I yanked the paperwork over to me and pulled up the bank website, using the list of usernames and passwords that Marissa Thompson had supplied to try to hack into her husband’s account. On the second try I got in, but ended up with a security question to answer, no doubt because of the unfamiliar IP on the login.

  What is your favorite color?

  I rolled my eyes and typed in “green,” thrilled that Spencer Thompson was so predictable. When I clicked on the account, my eyes nearly fell out of my head. The balance was close to a million dollars. Where the heck had Spencer Thompson gotten a million dollars? Was flipping properties that profitable? Had he really turned a few hundred dollars diverted from his savings account into this fortune? Judging from his scathing reaction to my meager savings, it was more than ironic. The guy had gone from comfortable middle class to millionaire in a scant five years. I scrolled down through the account records. No, less than five years. The account records only went back a year. The opening balance was a paltry nine thousand dollars. Over the last nine months, there were a myriad of deposits, transfers from other accounts, and what looked to be certified checks. Most of them were in increments under ten thousand, but the last two months had seen huge transfers of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But to flip houses, Spencer Thompson had to first buy them, and the checks I was seeing for purchases at foreclosure auctions and tax sales didn’t make sense. I downloaded and printed everything—transaction details and copies of checks and deposits, then got out my highlighters and pen.

  Five properties in the last nine months, including Melvin Elmer’s. Mr. Elmer’s property hadn’t been sold, and assuming the other two had…

  How did flipping four properties add up to a million dollars? I picked up the phone, realizing once more that I was in over my head.

  “Violet? Can you come over tonight and help me? I’ve got check copies and transaction records, but none of this makes sense. I’m hoping you can trace the money transfers and figure out where this money came from. Give me a call back.”

  I hung up and turned to J.T. “There’s a million dollars in this account. Do you think…maybe his wife…?”

  J.T. got up and came over to look at my computer, sucking in a breath when he saw the balance. “I’m clearly in the wrong business here. Maybe I need to start telling old people what to do with their money.”

  “He didn’t make a million dollars doing that. And I’m not even sure he made it flipping houses. Unless he’s been doing it a long time and has other accounts. Or maybe an account before he opened this one? These transfers came from somewhere, and I doubt they’re all escrow checks from property sales.
If so, where are the checks for the original purchases?”

  J.T. pointed to a sheet. “Here? These three are a foreclosure and there’s a tax sale buy.”

  “And those two sold for nearly half a million dollars?” I laughed. “There aren’t many houses in the county worth that. I think it would have been all over the paper if some local rich person lost their mansion at a tax sale for twelve thousand dollars.”

  “Then you’re right. There must be another account besides this one. And where did he get all this money?” J.T. said, echoing my thoughts. “His wife would have noticed if he’d been siphoning tens of thousands of dollars out of their savings to fund this scheme. Where did his start-up investment come from?”

  “That’s the mystery,” I told my boss.

  “Yeah, that and who killed him.” J.T. walked back to his desk. “I’m going to call Mrs. Thompson and let her know there’s significant assets in this account and she should get her lawyer on it immediately.”

  I grimaced, thinking of our conversation this morning. If she’d had Spencer served with the divorce papers today and he’d not died, I had a feeling this account would have been closed and emptied with the guy halfway to South America. Or not. If Spencer Thompson had a lucrative business going on here, half a continuing loaf was better than none. Better to work out a deal and pay his soon-to-be ex half a million, continuing to generate money at this rate, than grab it all and end up in another country where you had to live the rest of your life on what you’d hauled down in a suitcase.

  J.T. hung up the phone and shook his head. “Left a message. Do you think Marissa Thompson decided she wanted all of a million dollars instead of half?”

  I shrugged. “She didn’t know how much was in the account, or even where the account was. All she knew as of this morning was that her husband had a side business she’d known nothing about, and that there were probably some significant assets under that business name. She was angry. Furious. I’m thinking that maybe I wasn’t the only one yelling at Spencer Thompson in his office today, but I can’t see her killing him over what for all she knew might have been a few thousand dollars.”

  J.T. shook his head. “I don’t know. If I were that detective, I’d be looking at Mrs. Thompson. Poison is a woman’s weapon.”

  I snorted. “Maybe it is if you read a lot of mystery novels. Personally, I’d go for a knife. Or a gun. At least that way you’re sure the person is dead.”

  “But that’s messy,” J.T. countered. “And it leaves you holding a murder weapon and covered either in blood or gunshot residue or both. You could be halfway across the country with an alibi using poison.”

  I couldn’t believe we were having this discussion. “Yeah, but there’s a lot of research that goes into poison. And browser history isn’t as easy to delete as everyone thinks. Neither are those credit card receipts and store records that show you buying a box of rat poison a few days earlier. I still think most women would go for a gun or a knife.”

  “Holt got killed with drugs,” he countered.

  “That was accidental,” I reminded him. “And Luanne Trainor took an iPad to the side of the head.”

  “I still think poison means it’s more likely to be a woman, and Mrs. Thompson would be my top suspect.”

  “I’m sure Spencer Thompson angered a lot more women than me and his wife,” I commented dryly. “There could still be a mistress that I haven’t turned up. There could be disgruntled clients. Maybe Tracey Abramson decided Spencer Thompson needed to go. Maybe Melvin Elmer drove down there with a box of rat poison and dumped it in the man’s coffee. Maybe he grabbed the receptionist’s butt one too many times, or there was a coworker that didn’t get the promotion, or a manager whose wife Spencer screwed. The possibilities are endless.”

  J.T. chuckled, then waved at me to pack up as his phone began to ring. After a few exchanged words, he motioned for me to stay.

  “That was Marissa Thompson’s lawyer,” he told me as he hung up the phone. “It seems Detective Keeler and I have a lot in common. He brought Mrs. Thompson in for questioning in her husband’s murder. And you weren’t the only one yelling at Mr. Thompson in his office today. It seems after speaking with you, Marissa headed over there to vent her anger at her husband for having a business on the sly. The lawyer is requesting we continue to look for accounts as well as any possible affair, and that we are free to tell the police everything we found out on his client’s behalf, as well as that she knew nothing about the size of any bank accounts or anything beyond the fact that her husband was flipping properties behind her back.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Keeler isn’t an idiot. Poisoning takes some planning. I doubt Marissa Thompson ran out of the coffee shop at eight o’clock this morning and bought poison in between our talk and her going to Fullbright and Mason. And she certainly wasn’t planning on killing him before that. I don’t think she was planning on killing him after that, either.”

  “Plus, Spencer Thompson would hardly leave his irate wife unattended in his office area so she could lace his coffee with poison,” J.T. added.

  “Plus, plus, if she went there right after we spoke, that means he hadn’t touched his coffee for four hours. Nobody, even those with a giant mug and a warmer plate, lets their coffee sit untouched for four hours. The poisoning had to take place sometime in the hour before I got there, or right afterward.”

  “Fess up, Kay,” J.T. teased. “You killed the guy.”

  I raised my hands. “I swear I’m innocent. Well, innocent of everything except losing my temper and causing a scene at Fullbright and Mason.”

  “Speaking of…” J.T. waggled an index finger at me. “No more of that. Professional behavior. And put our clients first. I know you want to help this old guy, but you can’t let that interfere with what’s paying the bills.”

  He was right. Although deep inside I knew that when it came to a choice between a paying client and seeing justice served, I’d lean toward the latter. Which probably meant I might not last long in this job.

  I wasn’t a superhero. I had bills to pay as well and being some sort of geriatric Nancy Drew wouldn’t satisfy my mortgage company or put food on the table. J.T. was right. Paying clients had to be a priority. But there was nothing that said I couldn’t continue to seek justice for people on my own time.

  Chapter 15

  “I had an idea,” Violet announced as she plopped an armful of papers on my dining room table. We were on one side of the table, and Judge Beck was on the other, trying to pretend to be working while obviously listening in to our conversation.

  “Spill it,” I told the young woman.

  “Well, tracing bank transfers and deposits without a subpoena and the bank’s cooperation is a whole lot of hacking that’s way out of my comfort zone and ability, so I decided to tackle this from a property title angle.”

  “I’m not hearing this,” Judge Beck murmured. “Not hearing anything about hacking into back accounts. Not at all.”

  “Nobody is hacking anything,” I told him. “Although I have no idea what Violet means when she says she is looking at this from a property title angle.”

  The girl tossed her blonde ponytail over her shoulder and sat down in the chair. “Okay, think of it this way. The bank isn’t going to give us information on Brockhurst Properties’ deposits without a court order, right?”

  “Right.”

  “We’ve got a list of what banks initiated the transfer, and it probably won’t take long for the guy’s wife to get all that information since he’s dead, right?”

  “Marissa Thompson can authorize her lawyer to get the banking information, especially once she gets a death certificate, but that doesn’t help us right now,” I countered. “Melvin Elmer only has a few weeks before he’s evicted.”

  “The only thing that will help Melvin Elmer is a lawyer,” Judge Beck spoke up. “Be honest, Kay. What’s the real reason you’re continuing to dig into Spencer Thompson’s side business?”

  “Be
cause I suspect he got the money illegally. I don’t know how or from whom, but I think he embezzled it and if I track it backward far enough, I’m hoping to figure out where he stole it and get it restored to its rightful owner before Marissa Thompson runs off and buys a house in South Beach with it all,” I retorted.

  “So we have two goals. Or you have two goals,” Judge Beck said with a smile. “One is to expose a potential embezzlement. The other is to prove identity theft and fraud. And both cases are intertwined. Is that a coincidence? Or does this linking go deeper than you’ve thought to date?”

  His meaning hit me about the same time as it hit Violet.

  “You’re thinking that Spencer Thompson was the identity thief? That he took out a hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage fraudulently, then bought the house at his own foreclosure sale to flip?” Violet’s mouth dropped open. “That’s horrible. That’s beyond predatory. He ruined that old man’s life twice, then refused to even give him six months in his home. What a monster. I’m glad he’s dead.”

  “Isn’t that kind of farfetched?” I asked. “I can see Spencer Thompson padding his bank account, or stealing money from Humble Properties, LLC in some crazy accounting shell game, but identity theft and mortgage fraud? That falls in the category of people who stick skimmers in credit card machines and run phishing websites. It seems… I don’t know, it seems rather crude and unsophisticated for a financial investment counselor. And risky.”

  “Less risky than you think,” Violet told me. “A huge percentage of identity thieves are never caught. Small crimes get less attention than huge corporate embezzlements, especially when an at-risk population is targeted. It’s probably a safer way to steal money that way than pad your expense account.”

  “I wouldn’t call a hundred thousand dollars a small crime,” I pointed out.

  “No, but Violet is right about crimes against companies versus crimes against a vulnerable section of our population,” Judge Beck said. “Corporations have the resources to come after someone with a hammer. Thousands of people with a few thousand dollars each in fake credit card charges are usually police reports that end up going nowhere.”