Death of a Bankster

by David Bishop

  “Blanche. A woman who, believe me, looks nothing like her name implies. My husband said she was named after her great grandmother.”

  While Sue locked up the Crawford home and draped the doors in crime scene streamers, Maddie spoke to three neighbors who were at home. None of them saw anything going on at the Crawfords’ home that night or anything suspicious at any other time in the week or so preceding Sam’s murder. That seemed reasonable in light of the size of their residential lot and the way the driveway curved around behind two large trees, a palo verde and a mesquite, that grew in the front yard. The neighbors all said Paige and Sam were normal folks or seemed to be. One neighbor lady, name of Nancy, who lived across the street, did talk about Carla Roth as being a loose woman.

  Back in her car, Maddie got on the phone with Bill Molitor, the lead on the Phoenix PD’s forensics team. Bill agreed to bring his crew and meet Maddie at the Crawfords’ home at nine in the morning. She took a few minutes to give Bill a feel for the case. “For openers, we need to know for certain that we’ve got a murder. On this one, that’s job one. Right now, the only thing certain is that nothing is.”

  Maddie was confident that if there had been a murder, Bill’s team would find evidence of it. The fact remained, although Maddie doubted it, that this could be some elaborate hoax by Mr. and Mrs. Crawford with the collaboration of Carla Roth, RN. At this point, they had nothing to support the assertion that Sam Crawford had been murdered other than the claims of Paige Crawford, her neighbor, Carla Roth, and a phony FBI card showing the name of Special Agent in Charge, Dennis Powell. All of it, taken together, came up short of spelling murder.

  “So,” Sue asked, “what else you got going today?”

  “I’ve got an electrolysis appointment at 4:30,” Maddie said. “Hope I make that. Another sign I’m getting older is the need to have my random facial hairs zapped.”

  “Sort of a plug and play refacification system you got going, girl.”

  “I love your made-up word, but you’re spending way too much time with your computer, Sue.”

  “You got that right,” Sue said, a chuckle leaking out of the corner of her mouth.

  As they walked from the car to the door of the station, Sue brought them back to the Crawford case. “Did you notice Mrs. Crawford’s body language when she spoke of her husband’s secretary?”

  “I sure did,” Maddie said. “She bit off the name Blanche. I don’t think I’ve ever known a woman named Blanche except in fiction, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.”

  “She did say the secretary was named after her grandmother, maybe it came from there. But yeah, Paige’s arms crossed and her tone turned cold.”

  “I’m not exactly certain what that body language meant,” Maddie said with her eyebrows raised, “but it sure didn’t mean, my husband was so lucky to have a wonderful secretary like Blanche.”

  * * *

  “Unless you need us for something else, we should be on the plane in about three hours, heading back to Oregon.”

  “Anything more to report since we last spoke?”

  “No, the wife suspected nothing. She bought us as FBI agents. We’ve got Sam Crawford’s only computer, a laptop, and his only cell phone. We went through his house and his personal files. There’s nothing else. He kept it all pretty close … No. We found no safe. Whatever he had must be in his laptop or in some unknown location, maybe in his office at the bank, but not in his home. … What? Oh. We told Mrs. Crawford we saw dust kick up on a distant hill, but that was bull. We didn’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean the shot wasn’t fired from up there. I left Crawford’s laptop and his smart phone at the drop. What do you want us to do now?”

  “I’ve picked up the computer and phone. They’re being gone through as we speak, but it doesn’t look like there was anything much I didn’t already know. The real point in your taking them was to keep the locals from getting them and finding evidence of the laundering. Sounds like your end went off without a hitch. The shooting of Sam Crawford was totally unexpected. Your improvisation at the scene was excellent. Good thing we had you take the FBI cards in case you needed them.”

  “We had brought along the full FBI credentials you provided, but they only asked for the card. The relief man we had been using during the surveillance, an early retiree from CIA services, was outstanding as the local medical examiner. He stayed at a distance, near the body, leaning down most of the time. He spoke only to me, as Agent Powell, and in minutes was out of there with the body, no questions asked.”

  “The locals are undoubtedly figuring you two as the shooters. We have to be very careful to avoid getting mixed up in a local murder. Your man’s initiative on where to park the body was pure genius. That way, we only needed to handle the body once. Your man obviously did much more than he thought he had signed up for. You say he’s retired?” After an affirming grunt, the voice continued. “Double his pay and throw in an extra two hundred for a job well done.”

  “That’s generous, will do.”

  “Are the widow and her neighbor going to be able to identify you two?”

  “No real chance. I’ve removed the mustache I grew for the occasion. I had let my hair grow longer and lengthened my sideburns while we were in Phoenix. My hairs short again and I’ve cutback my sideburns. Linda, who pretty much stayed behind me, has removed the color rinse she had on her hair and she had quickly puffed her jawline before we headed for the house. We’ve burned all the clothes we wore that night.”

  “Solid work.”

  “What about the body? Do we want to control the timing of their finding Crawford’s body?”

  “I’ll take care of that from here. You two shut it down.”

  “Okay, Captain. We’ll get on home.”

  “Good. You’ve got your stories straight about what you did in Phoenix during your short sightseeing vacation and all that?”

  “Yes sir. All square with brochures and ticket stubs from the places we visited, all in our luggage. The hotel room and rental car don’t need to be sanitized. We’re playing it as we were here and we used both of them.”

  “This was Linda’s first assignment. Does she have any pangs of conscience or whatever?”

  “No. She understands why you’re doing what you’re doing. She was shook when Crawford was shot. That shocked us both frankly, completely unexpected. But no, she handled it like a veteran. Then again, after that episode with you last year she is a veteran. You plan to solve the Crawford murder?”

  “That’s not my assignment. However, if the local cops solve it, depending on who the killer was, that might affect my assignment. I’ll need to monitor the situation and be ready to improvise and step in if necessary. This surveillance should have been clean and quiet. The unexpected murder turned it into a swamp with overlapping authorities.”

  “If you need me, I’m a phone call away.”

  “Remember, you’re a local cop yourself, so you can’t always be leaving that to come work with me.”

  “If you need me, I’m a phone call away.”

  “Thanks, Gene. Oops, I still can’t get used to calling you Clark. You were Gene too long. Okay, be sure your buddy’s van is sanitized.”

  “We took care of that yesterday. No traces can be found.”

  “Okay. Thanks, ah, Clark, got it right that time.” The two men laughed. “Seriously, I couldn’t have done it without you. Before you board that plane smash that untraceable cell phone and scatter the parts over several miles in the desert.”

  “Wilco, Captain. Take care.”

  “Hug Linda for me. I still need to get up that way for a visit.”

  “Anytime, Captain. You’re always welcome.”

  With that, Ryan Testler hung up the phone.

  * * *

  Maddie got home in time to play a little catch with her eleven-year-old son, Bradley. His fastball was getting a bit tougher to catch, but she figured she could handle it for a few more years. After dinner, while Bradley di
d his homework and played some video games, Maddie cleaned the kitchen along with her mother. Rita had lived with them since Maddie’s divorce from Bradley’s father, Curtis, and the death of her own husband, Maddie’s father, who had also been a cop.

  When her father died, her parents had been married for fifty years, a record Maddie had hoped she and Curtis would break, but they had fallen far short. Maddie and her mother had been good for each other during those tough years. She couldn’t imagine how it would be raising Bradley alone, a single parent, without her mother’s help.

  After cleaning the kitchen, Maddie joined Bradley in something they shared many nights, reading ten pages each from one of the Hardy Boys mysteries. Rita had given Bradley the series for a past Christmas. Bradley was more than able to read them alone, but it had been a ritual they had shared for several years, a ritual Maddie wanted to continue as long as Bradley was comfortable with it. The joint readings gave them a way to look forward to quality time together, while allowing Maddie the opportunity to occasionally talk with her son about whatever was on his mind. Sometimes, the stories also gave her an opening to explain a little about her own job.

  After Bradley went to sleep, Maddie planned to fix some popcorn and join her mother to watch a Kirk Douglas movie. Rita had carried her teenage torch for Kirk into her senior years. Maddie understood why. In his prime, Kirk Douglas had been a hunk, and Rita still saw him that way as she and Kirk had aged together. He was a fine actor. Recently, Maddie’s mother had begun to make comments about Robert Mitchum. “No one can replace Kirk,” she had said, “but I know all his movies so well that it may be time for a new man in my life, or maybe a second man,” she added with a chuckle.

  Maddie envied her mother. After having accepted and grown into her life as a widow, Rita seemed completely comfortable with herself and her life. When her husband died, she gave up her enchantment with men. “What can I tell ya? I’m a one-man woman. Your father was that one-man.”

  Chapter 7

  Maddie’s morning started like many others, with a cup of coffee and half of a bagel on the patio with her mother while they tag-teamed getting Bradley off to school.

  At times, Maddie found her mother exasperating; still she adored the woman who was indispensible if Maddie was to remain a cop. As for Rita, she loved the arrangement, or seemed to. It allowed her the opportunity to beat the same drum to Bradley, as she had to Maddie, about heaven and how you get there. She did it with love, not brimstone, so it was okay with Maddie who had grown up with that same message. As with most of us, her mother was her mother and nothing on earth would change her. The nuns at the school Maddie attended had served up the same message in the daytime. At least they had when they weren’t preaching fractions, decimals, and the multiplication tables. Rita’s messages were sandwiched around Maddie’s father beating the drum about being a good cop. As for Maddie’s ex-husband, Curtis beat … well, that’s another story for another time.

  “So what’s in your plans for today?”

  “Annie Smiddle and I are going shopping. To the mall, then the grocery store. We’ll leave in about two hours and be back before Bradley gets home.”

  “You and Annie Smiddle are getting pretty chummy aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. We’re both widows. She lives alone. She had one son who was killed in the Middle East, so she’s completely alone. She’s crazy about Bradley.”

  “That’s nice. She seems to be a good woman. Your feet must be feeling better if you two are going traipsing around in the mall.”

  “Feet are doing pretty well. But my hemorrhoids are killing me, Madeline Jane.”

  “I don’t really need to know that mother. Have you seen a doctor about them?”

  “Not yet,” her mother said while refilling their coffee cups. “But I need to. The damn things look like a handful of purple M&Ms.”

  “I’m not sure they make purple M&Ms, but how do you know how they look?”

  “I looked at them using that handheld mirror in your bathroom.”

  “Thanks Mom. You’ve succeeded in changing the taste of my bagel. I’m glad my mirror came in handy. How ‘bout running it through the dishwasher today?”

  “I didn’t sit on the damn thing, Madeline Jane, I only looked in it. That’s what mirrors are for, you know.”

  “I understand. Still, I’m kinda freaked out by the image of your hemorrhoids hovering over my hair mirror.”

  “I don’t understand them being called hemorrhoids, they should be named asteroids.”

  “That word was already taken, mother.”

  “Un-uh,” Rita said. “The butt problem came way before them things in the sky. The word asteroids had to have been available and waiting to be used when they came up with hemorrhoids.”

  The discussion of her mother’s hemorrhoids didn’t survive the interruption when Bradley hollered good-bye and headed out the door for the bus stop. Rita went back to bed. Maddie went in and took a quick shower, put on a pair of size ten black slacks, low heeled black flats, and a lime green jersey with half sleeves. Next she slathered on some make-up and ran a brush through her hair. Before leaving she poured a second cup of coffee into a big ceramic mug which would accompany her to work riding snugly in the dashboard holder of her getting-too-old Taurus. After this case, she was determined to get an SUV so she would have more room for a lot of things, including hauling Bradley and his friends.

  She backed out of the garage and headed for the Crawford residence to meet the forensics team that would hopefully prove once and for all that Sam Crawford had been shot dead in his doorway last Thursday night. Their assignments would include hunting for evidence that might help Maddie identify the imposters who represented themselves as FBI Agents Powell and Withers, and, maybe, or instead, the fake medical examiner. While accelerating down her street, Maddie waved at Lenny the plumber who as usual for this time of the morning stood at the back of his open truck laying it out for today’s jobs. Then to Annie Smiddle who had trudged out to pick up her morning paper from the driveway, the housecoat draped from her drooping shoulders hanging lower in front than in back.

  Maddie popped a few chewable papaya tablets with the hope they would help settle her stomach. Last night she and her mother had watched Out of the Past, a movie starring both of her mother’s hunks: Robert Mitchum, as the good guy, and Kirk Douglas as the bad guy. The female lead was Jane Greer. The movie was good, so was the popcorn and soda. She had consumed too much and it now knocked at her door wanting to be let out. Maddie hoped the papaya would allow it to be patient, buy her some time.

  Bill Molitor and his forensics crew arrived at Paige Crawford’s home in a van, pulling to the curb behind Maddie. Well, technically this was still the home of Sam and Paige Crawford, pending the determination of whether or not Sam was still among those who cared about owning a home.

  Maddie and Molitor’s crew put booties over their shoes and pulled on latex gloves before going inside. After giving them an overview of the claimed murder, Bill’s team got to work with Maddie spending most of that time on the phone.

  Five minutes later, Bill called over to Maddie. “We’ve definitely got blood traces on the floor inside the front door, right where you said, in the grout lines around the tiles. There was considerable blood which spread out toward the center of the room. How tall was Mr. Crawford?”

  “The printout from his driver’s license shows five-eleven. Does that check?”

  “Based on the description you passed on from the two witnesses, both saying his left foot dangled out the doorway over the porch, yeah, the blood’s in about the right place for a shot to the head.”

  “That’s how it was described,” Maddie said, “anything else?”

  “We’re not done yet, but so far, no. If the story’s accurate we likely won’t find any more blood farther in, but we’ll check. Do we know the direction from which the shot was fired?”

  “Mrs. Crawford and Carla Roth had no idea. The fake FBI agents told Mrs. Crawford the
y saw dust blow from up on a distant hill. That could be bull. Based on the time it took them to get to the door, unless they paused before coming to the house, they would have been no more than several houses away, maybe in a car at the end of the street. Of course, this assumes the shooter was one of the fake feebs.”

  “That seems likely, doesn’t it? One of those guys being the shooter.”

  “That’s the only thing about this case so far that does seem likely, so maybe it’s not. Why else would anyone misrepresent themselves as cops and get tangled up in a murder? I think they wanted to take the body and Sam Crawford’s computer and smart phone, as well as look through his desk and stuff.”

  “Professionals?”

  “Best guess, yeah. Good guess too. Amateurs don’t show up with fake FBI cards and someone standing by to play the medical examiner. The important point right now is these imposters were in here a while. In the study for certain, the desk, maybe looking for a floor or wall safe behind pictures or wherever. See what you can find that might point us toward the perps. Assuming Crawford is dead we can’t talk to him, so I’d sure like to have a heart-to-heart with these imposters.”

  Bill nodded before returning to work with his crew.

  Maddie called her partner, Sue Martin, who had spent the morning focusing on the public and police records on Paige and her husband. “What have you found on Mr. and Mrs. Crawford?” Maddie asked.

  “No bad shit. They’re both clean. Credit’s good. Paige Crawford worked a few years as a dress designer, but she ended that a few years after they were married. He’s fifty, she’s forty-two. What I looked at said they’ve been married sixteen years. No kids. This was the only marriage for both of them. Paige has had a parking ticket, Sam two speeding tickets, but no big speed. No arrests. No reports of domestic violence or disturbing the peace. The Crawfords appear to be the kind of folks we hired on to serve and protect. In shorthand, I got nada.”

  “Run that nurse, Carla Roth, through the mill. She’s really the only corroboration there is so let’s take a peek under her tent.”