by Herren, Greg
“You didn’t trust him?”
“Not as far as I could throw him.” The contempt in his voice was unmistakable. “He struck me as the kind of person who had big dreams, but never really had the mentality or perseverance to make them happen. One of the big deals he tried to pitch to me was an apartment complex to be built on Claiborne, near the hospitals.” He sighed again. “Now, we all know after Katrina there was a housing shortage here, but there was also a shortage of construction workers. And what he wanted to do was buy out a lot of his neighbors in Broadmoor and build the new complex there—but he couldn’t say for sure whether his neighbors would sell, and blah blah blah.” He scratched his nose. “Like I said, a dreamer with his head in the clouds.” He snapped his fingers. “With no business plan? I would always talk to him, as a courtesy to Mona, but it never amounted to anything. And then a few weeks ago—when was it exactly? Anyway, he came by and wanted to borrow some ‘venture capital’ from me.”
“And how much was that?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.” He shook his head. “He had a promissory note and everything ready for me to sign. But he couldn’t really give me any details about the venture…I told him I needed more information than that. He kept telling me how I could trust him, and so on and so forth…”
Fifty thousand dollars? The amount of the cashier’s check in Mona’s desk drawer?
I cleared my throat and interrupted him. “When exactly was this?”
He nodded. “A couple of weeks ago?” He frowned and stood up. “Let me get my appointment book and I can tell you exactly when it was.” He walked out of the room.
I heard the front door open and close, and got up myself.
Mandy Marino had aged far better than her husband. She was still slender—she could probably still fit into the uniform in the trophy case. She still wore her blond hair long, but she was able to pull the look off. Her face was remarkably free of wrinkles, and her makeup was perfect. She might have thickened a bit in the waist and her breasts might have been a little heavier, but she was still an incredibly beautiful woman.
She walked into the living room and gave a start. “I’m sorry.” She plastered the smile that she’d used as a Golden Girl on her face. She dropped her purse on the sideboard and held out a hand to me. “Mandy Marino, nice to meet you.”
“Chanse MacLeod. I’m investigating the disappearance of Mona O’Neill.”
“Has there been any word? I’m worried about her.” The smile faltered a little bit as she sat down. “I still can’t believe Mona would betray us the way she has. It’s just not like her, you know.”
“It does seem out of character,” I agreed with her.
“I guess it just goes to show you never really know someone.” Mandy got up and poured herself a glass of whiskey. “Do you mind? Would you like one?” I shook my head, and she tossed it back with a single movement. She smiled and sat back down. “It’s been a rather trying day, Mr. MacLeod.”
“Chanse, please.”
“You must call me Mandy, then.” She crossed her legs. “My mother is ill and doesn’t want to stay in the hospital anymore. Which is fine, but she also doesn’t want a full-time nurse—she wants me to take care of her, which just isn’t practical. Does that seem cold and selfish to you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Thank you—my mother seems to think I’m some kind of monster because I don’t want to drop everything and take care of her.” She closed her eyes, and pressed her fingers against her temples. “She doesn’t seem to understand—or care—that I have four children that need their mother, and a household of my own, and I can’t just abandon that to go stay with her and wait on her hand and foot. And wouldn’t it better for her to have a nurse, someone who would know what to do in the case of an emergency? But oh, no, not my mother.” She waved a hand tiredly and blew out a breath in a deeply tired sigh. “I’m sorry to bore you with this. What a horrible hostess you must think I am!” She gave me a wan, tired smile. “So, you’re looking for Mona? Do you have any leads?”
“A few.” I nodded. “Did you know her well?”
“Apparently not.” She made a face. “I thought I did. I considered her a friend—and I know Luke certainly did. She was like a member of the family, Mr. Mac—Chanse. To have her stab us in the back the way she did—well, I certainly would have never thought her capable of it.” She compressed her lips into a thin line. “I hope she’s happy with the thirty pieces of silver Global Insurance gave her.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, I suppose I shouldn’t be bitter. I’m sure she has her reasons for what she’s doing. Although how she could do this…” She focused her eyes on me. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, my mind is all over the place, I can’t just focus. So Mona’s disappeared.”
“She was last seen on Thursday night around nine p.m. No one has seen or heard from her since.”
“But that was days ago.” She looked horrified. “You don’t think it has something to do with the lawsuit?”
“I’m exploring all possibilities, Mandy. It may, and it may not.”
“It was two weeks ago,” Luke said as he walked back into the room, his appointment book open in his hands. “Two weeks ago yesterday, in fact. Hello, dear.” He kissed Mandy on the cheek. “I didn’t hear you come in. Is everything okay with your mother?”
“We can talk about that later, dear.” She gave him a brittle smile. “Did you know Mona is missing?”
“Loren called me this morning and filled me in—you’d already left for the hospital, and I didn’t want to bother you with this while you were dealing with your mother,” he replied. “Loren’s engaged Mr. MacLeod here to look for her.” He beamed at me. “Did Chanse tell you he played ball for LSU—he was a freshman when we were seniors.”
“Two weeks ago yesterday?” I cut off Mandy’s squeal of delight before she could say anything.
Luke nodded. “Yes. He stopped by here.”
“And when did you find out she was changing her testimony?”
“That was last Monday, wasn’t it?” He looked over at his wife for verification.
Mandy nodded. “Yes, because that was the day I had to take Mother to the hospital, and after dealing with that all day I came home and you told me about it.” She looked at me. “Now, that was a shitty day—today was nothing in comparison.”
“Okay, great. Thank you both—I’ll get out of your hair now.” I stood up and shook hands with them both. “I’ll be in touch if I have any further questions.”
“Certainly—any time, anything we can do to help, you just let us know.” Luke walked me to the front door, with Mandy trailing along behind us. They walked out onto the porch with me.
“Once this lawsuit thing is taken care of, perhaps you could come join us for dinner sometime,” Mandy said. “A Tiger is always welcome in our house.”
I smiled and nodded. Once I got into my car, they waved again before they went back inside.
Robby O’Neill had tried to get Luke Marino to “invest” fifty thousand dollars with him two weeks ago.
Fifty thousand dollars—again.
Another coincidence?
My cell phone dinged to let me know I’d just gotten a text message.
I picked up the phone and looked at the screen.
It was from Abby.
Morgan Barras is a minority shareholder in Global Insurance.
I smiled and texted back, Want to meet at Slice and compare notes?
Not even ten seconds passed before this came back: On my way!
I put the car in gear and headed downtown.
Chapter Eleven
“I ordered for you,” Abby said when I sat down across from her at Slice. She was toying with an Italian salad. “You always get the same thing, so I figured why waste time? I’m starving.” She shrugged.
She was wearing what we called “professional drag”: a black shoulder-length wig, minor makeup application, and a business suit—navy blue skirt and jacket,
white silk blouse, and a rope of costume-jewelry pearls. She’d gotten the entire outfit at a consignment shop on Magazine Street for seventy-five dollars.
“Cool,” I replied as our waitress set a glass of Coke down in front of me. I smiled my thanks at her.
“Your food should be right out.” She smiled back at me and walked away to another table.
“So what’s with the professional lady outfit?” I asked, sipping Coke through my straw. Abby hated dressing up like a businesswoman and only did it when it was necessary.
She gave me a crooked smile. “I thought it might be a good idea to interview Robby O’Neill’s boss—and his secretary.” She gestured at her outfit with distaste written on her face. “And stuffed shirts respond better to this kind of drag.”
“Learn anything?”
She paused while our waitress placed a medium combination pizza on a stand in the center of our table. “Anything else I can get you?” she asked. We both shook our heads and she wandered away.
“Robby O’Neill was going to be fired yesterday morning, and possibly have criminal charges filed against him,” Abby said, using the spatula to put a large piece on her plate. She added parmesan cheese, and then liberally shook crushed red pepper all over it.
I waited for her to take a bite and swallow.
She smiled at me brightly. “About two weeks ago, the chief accountant at his company noticed some discrepancies in the accounts—and called for an outside audit.”
“Around the time Robby started trying to come up with fifty thousand dollars,” I added.
She nodded. “It didn’t take long for them to discover that the discrepancies were all in Robby’s client accounts. He was smart—he never took a huge amount from anyone at a time—a thousand here, a couple of hundred there.” She took another bite. “Ordinarily, his boss certainly would have never told me anything about this internal problem, but with Robby being murdered and all—and he wants to cooperate in any way he can to make sure the killer is caught. Criminal or no, Robby was like family.” She made a sour face. “Family he was going to send to jail, but family. But the total was between forty and fifty thousand dollars, yes. Apparently, when he was confronted, Robby confessed to everything—he was overextended, and he just borrowed here and there to stay ahead of the credit cards, the house payment, etc. He always intended to pay it back, of course. They fired him on the spot. But, and this is the important part—they gave him until Monday morning to pay the money back. If he didn’t give them the money, they were filing embezzlement charges.”
“Nice of them to give him an out.”
“Yeah, well.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s the company line, of course, the big magnanimous ‘we didn’t want to prosecute him’ line. His assistant told me the real story.” She laughed. “Typical company bullshit—they didn’t want to prosecute. Bad publicity for the firm, you see, and it wouldn’t look too good to their clients—who might decide to move their business to another firm. And then, of course, on Monday they found out he was dead and there was no chance of getting the money back. But at least now we know he didn’t owe a loan shark or drug dealers. He wasn’t killed for the debt—nobody from the company would have killed him over it. They wanted to sweep it all under the rug as much as they could—and my guess is they still haven’t let the clients know and are trying to figure out if they can keep covering up Robby’s embezzlement.”
“Maybe one of the clients found out?”
“He never took more than a thousand dollars from any one client—he spread it around. That’s why it took so long for the accountants to catch on. He was pretty smart about it—but you know how that works, you take some here and get away with it, so you take some from someone else, and it just snowballs.”
“I don’t understand why he didn’t just scale back.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t. And so Robby O’Neill needed fifty thousand dollars by Monday morning. But his money problems don’t solve the question of what happened to Mona—and his boss… I can’t see him killing Robby over the embezzling, you know—and if none of the clients knew…”
“Was Jeph able to get into Mona’s computer?” I took another slice from the tray. It was really good—but then Slice was one of my favorite pizza places.
She laughed. “Yes, and like most people, she’d saved all of her passwords.” She speared a piece of pepperoni off her pizza and popped it into her mouth. “Mona O’Neill was one smart lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d never think someone in the Irish Channel would be worth so much,” Abby replied with a shrug. “I mean, she wasn’t Garden District or even State Street rich, but she wasn’t worrying about how to pay the power bill or scrounging to buy milk, either.” She sighed. “She has no debt. She paid for her car in cash. If she used her credit cards, she paid them off every month, never carried a balance. The house was paid for. She has several hundred thousand dollars in CDs and another hundred thousand or so invested in stocks—Entergy, Shell. Her basic savings account wasn’t huge, but it was healthy.”
“She got a settlement when her husband was killed on the job,” I observed. “She was smart with the money, I guess.”
Abby nodded. “The trusts she’d created for Robby and Lorelle each had less than a thousand dollars in them. The one for Jonny still carries a balance of about sixty thousand dollars.” She whistled. “Jonny’s house is completely paid for—he owns it free and clear. According to city records, she paid a little less than two hundred thousand for it—it was a fixer-upper. The insurance assessed its value at $350,000 a few months back, right around the time Jonny and Heather moved in, so Jonny must have done some really good work on the place.”
“It still looks like a dump.” I took a drink from my glass of sweet tea. “I can’t imagine anyone being willing to pay that kind of money for it. But real estate prices in this city have been out of control since Katrina.”
“They were out of control before Katrina,” she pointed out. “It just got worse after.”
“True.” I nodded. I was lucky—my landlady, Barbara Castlemaine, could get a hell of a lot more money for my apartment than what I was paying. But I’d gotten her out of what could have proven to be an incredibly sticky and embarrassing situation, so she gave me a great deal on my rent. She also paid me a ridiculous amount of money annually to work as a security consultant for her company, Crown Oil.
“And you know damned well there’s a big difference between insurance value and market value. You can claim a value at anything, but whether you can get that is a whole different story.” She took a drink from her iced tea. “Jeph couldn’t get back far enough into her online banking records to see how much money was in Jonny’s trust before she paid for the house and so forth, or how much all the trusts had in them to begin with. The Verlaines had to have been awfully generous with her, though—she’s got an awful lot of financial resources for a widow who worked as a property manager.”
“The Verlaines have always been generous when buying someone off,” I commented. It was something I knew from bitter firsthand experience. “What I really don’t understand is why wouldn’t she give Robby the money he needed?” I brooded over it for a moment. “You’d think she’d want to keep him out of jail.”
“Well, we also don’t know for sure what their relationship was like,” Abby replied. “He wasn’t close to either of his siblings, and he didn’t have much to do with his mother—didn’t Jonny say that?”
“Lorelle,” I corrected her. “But no matter how bad the situation was, I can’t believe she’d let her son go to jail—if for no other reason than her grandchildren.”
“Well, he’d already been fired.” Abby shrugged. “He was going to lose everything. It was just a matter of time before he defaulted on those credit cards and lost the house on Napoleon. What did it matter if he went to jail or not? I bet he was getting really desperate—and desperate people do desperate things. And if she bailed him out of the embezzlem
ent—between the house and the credit cards, she’d have to come up with a couple of hundred thousand dollars to get him out from under.”
“Maybe that was why she sold out Luke Marino,” I wondered out loud. “Maybe Global Insurance was paying her enough to buy Robby out of debt?”
She shook her head. “Credit is such a fucking trap. I don’t know why more people don’t realize what a rip-off it is.” She sighed. “What they needed to do was take the kids out of Catholic school and put them in public schools, and sell that house on Napoleon and move into something less expensive, is what they needed to do. But people never seem to want to scale back.” She scowled. “Idiot. Why would he ever in a million years have thought it was okay to steal from his clients? As long as I live I’ll never understand people.”
“It’s the American way,” I observed casually. “See how much debt we can accrue before we die. Whoever dies with the most debt and the most toys wins.”
Abby rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t make it any less stupid. So, what do you think? Robby tried to get the money out of Luke Marino and then turned to Mona, who got it from Morgan Barras?”
“That doesn’t make sense to me.” I scowled at my pizza. “Why didn’t she just cash in some of her CDs—or she could have taken it out of Jonny’s trust. She had a lot of options—why would she sell out Luke Marino?”
“There’s no proof anywhere she did sell out Luke Marino,” Abby pointed out. “You keep approaching this from the perspective that she was fucking him over. Isn’t it just as likely the insurance company was right—that Luke was scamming them, and she was playing along with him? Didn’t someone say she was changing her testimony because she thought God was punishing her for lying by shutting down St. Anselm’s?” She raised her eyebrows. “Seriously, you’re not being objective. You—and everyone else in this city—hate insurance companies, and Luke’s a local hero. You’ve never even considered the possibility it was all a scam to begin with. And insurance companies—may they all rot in hell—do get scammed. That’s primarily why they act like such assholes in the first place.”
