Linda Crowder - Jake and Emma 01 - Too Cute to Kill

by Linda Crowder

  “Sherry Thorne was a good broker,” he told them. “Sure, she rubbed people the wrong way – but only if they were on the other side of the negotiating table. She got good deals for her clients and closed a lot of sales.”

  “Did she have a lot of clients,” Emma asked. “Maybe there would be someone we could speak with.”

  Westmont snorted, “Not on a Sunday. Sherry specialized in bank-owned properties and estate sales. She liked them because they didn’t have the kind of emotional investment in the house as an owner occupant does.”

  “Sherry didn’t like drama, I take it.”

  “No she didn’t,” laughed the realtor. “God save me from owners who think their property is the Taj Mahal, she used to say.” He smiled to himself over the memory then his smile faded. “That was a horrible way for her to die. She didn’t deserve that.”

  “Does it surprise you to think of her being a drug addict?” asked Jake.

  “Yes it does. Sherry was sharp. She was driven but she always knew when to draw the line. You don’t think of an addict having that kind of self-control.”

  “No,” agreed Emma, “you don’t. Did Sherry have any business reason to be in Casper?”

  “Sure,” answered Westmont. “She had property listings all over this part of the state. The banks loved working with Sherry because she always got top dollar for their foreclosures.”

  “Did she always represent the sellers,” asked Jake, “or did she also represent buyers?”

  “She mostly represented banks or estate attorneys,” replied Westmont. He paused, mentally running through her client list. “She was starting to work with private investors though.”

  “Investors?” asked Emma.

  Westmont nodded. “The best thing about a bad economy is that an investor can pick up a property for under market value, do some repairs to it and sell it for a profit.”

  “Sounds risky,” observed Emma. “There’s so much that could be wrong with a property and you’d be taking a chance that you could sell it quickly for enough profit to make it worth your while.”

  “It is risky,” agreed the realtor. “That’s why an investor needs a realtor with a good eye and a head for the business end of flipping houses.”

  “And that was Sherry Thorne?” asked Emma.

  “Sherry was just getting into that line. It was a natural progression for her since she already had her finger on the type of properties that tend to sell under market – foreclosures and estates. She hadn’t made many deals yet, but like I said, she was just starting to work with investors.”

  “Did she have any investors in Casper?” asked Emma.

  “Her first investor was on a deal outside of Casper. Started working with them this summer.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember the details. “Seems to me they approached her as a buyer for a ranch she was listing as an estate sale. Sherry was thrilled to get them because there was some sort of story associated with the ranch that was scaring off local buyers.”

  “What kind of story?” asked Jake, though he was beginning to think he already knew.

  “Murder maybe, some kid went after his grandmother with an axe I think. Anyway, Sherry got a great deal on it for them and she’s been trying to develop relationships with investors ever since.”

  “Do you know the investor’s name?” asked Jake.

  “Some corporation,” answered Westmont, moving away from them to greet a couple that had just come into the house. “Stop by the office, maybe Mary could find the name for you.”

  Mary Hendricks had been Sherry Thorne’s assistant. She confirmed that Thorne had handled the sale of the Carver ranch after the death of the owners. The file listed the name of the buyers as The Gerecht Group, a Wyoming Corporation. No individuals were listed as contacts or officers of the corporation.

  “Isn’t that a bit odd?” asked Emma. “My assistant manages my contact list for me.”

  Hendricks looked blankly at Emma. “Ms. Thorne kept all her own contact files. I just made coffee, typed up her paperwork and filled in for her at open houses if she had somewhere else she had to be.”

  “The police said there was an appointment on her calendar the day she disappeared,” noted Jake. “Do you know who the appointment was with?”

  Hendricks shook her head. “I told you, I didn’t make her appointments.”

  “Did you handle the paperwork with her investors?” asked Jake.

  “No, not usually. She would call them if she found a property she thought they might be interested in. I never met any of her investors.”

  Emma briefed the assistant of the circumstances of Thorne’s death. “Does that surprise you?” she asked.

  Hendricks sat silently, her face turned to the window, watching the start of a winter snowstorm. “Not exactly,” she said at last. Emma and Jake exchanged surprised looks as the assistant continued. “Ms. Thorne wasn’t like the other brokers.”

  “In what way?” asked Emma.

  “She had secrets,” Hendricks said after some thought. “Not always. Not when she first came here, but for a while now there’s been something going on. She stopped having me maintain her appointment book and she started closing her door when she was on the phone. Not always, only sometimes, like there were some calls she didn’t want anyone to hear.”

  “Do you know who she was talking to?” asked Emma.

  Hendricks shrugged. “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. She was the boss.”

  10

  “So what do we know?” Jake asked the question once they were out of Gillette on their way back to Casper. Emma watched the barren, snowy landscape slide by outside her window. This part of Wyoming had its beauties but right now, it seemed to Emma that the scenery was bleak.

  “She handled the sale of the Carver ranch two years ago,” answered Emma. “So that’s a connection – a weak one – between her and Nate Carver.”

  “Yes. I’ll check on Monday to see who the registered agent is for The Gerecht Group. The attorney who handled the estate said he had to sell it way below market value because of the bad economy.”

  “Which would agree with what Mr. Westmont told us,” observed Emma. “But I don’t see how that puts us any closer to figuring out what happened to her.”

  “Which leads us to the other interesting thing we learned on this trip,” said Jake.

  “And that was?” asked Emma.

  “No one we talked to thought Sherry Thorne was the type of person to use drugs.”

  Emma shook her head. “That’s not news. Sheriff Newsome told you that the Gillette police had asked the people who knew Sherry Thorne and they hadn’t ever known her to use drugs.”

  “That’s true,” answered Jake, his eyes never leaving the road. Antelope could run out on the highway with little notice so drivers were wise not to become distracted at dusk. “But everyone we spoke with said that Thorne would push legal and ethical boundaries but she wasn’t the type to cross them.”

  “Except Mary Hendricks, who thought Sherry was hiding something,” noted Emma.

  “That’s right,” agreed Jake. “Something recent.”

  “Drug use?” asked Emma.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think Mary thought so. I think Mary thought there was something fishy about Sherry’s clients. Remember, Sherry stopped having Mary keep her appointments and didn’t have her do paperwork for her investment clients.”

  “And closed the door – sometimes – when she was on the phone,” mused Emma. They spent a few miles in silence as the sun slipped behind the horizon. Jake flipped his headlights to bright and kept a wary eye out for wildlife.

  Finally, Emma spoke. “So what makes an aggressive, just barely ethical real estate broker step over the line?”

  “Maybe she didn’t,” speculated Jake. Emma turned to look at him. By the dash lights his face looked dark and mysterious.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The police know she drove her car to Casper and parked it at the
east side Wal-Mart. She never went inside, not according to the store surveillance cameras, so she must have met someone in that parking lot, right?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” admitted Emma. “Yes, I suppose she must have met someone and gone off in their car.”

  “You’re a woman…”

  “Thanks for noticing!”

  Jake spared her a momentary glance before returning his attention to the road. “What I meant is, you’re a woman, would you get into a car with a strange man after dark, 100 miles from home?”

  “If I were a drug addict and he was my connection,” replied Emma.

  “But let’s say you’re not a drug addict, because I’m beginning to think the Sheriff is wrong about that.”

  “In that case, there’s no way I’d get into a car with a stranger,” she paused. “I would get into a car with a friend, but why would I meet a friend at the Wal-Mart parking lot?”

  “You wouldn’t,” agreed Jake. “But you would meet a lover there.”

  “Someone who didn’t want the two of you to be seen together. That would explain what she had been secretive about and what kind of phone call she wouldn’t have wanted to have overheard.” Emma fell silent again.

  After a few more miles, Emma ventured, “If that is true, then it would have to be her lover who fed her the drugs without her knowing it. That would make it…”

  “Murder,” agreed Jake.

  11

  Emma was writing case notes for the client who’d just left her office when Kristy buzzed her to let her know Jake was on the phone. “I only have ten minutes before my next appointment,” she warned when she hear Jake’s cheerless hello.

  “I won’t even use five,” he answered.

  “You sound grim,” she observed.

  “I checked with the Secretary of State’s office on the ownership of the Gerecht Group. They had a contact person listed in Cheyenne,” he said.

  “Well that’s something.”

  “No, it isn’t. When I called, I found out the contact person is simply the registered agent. He is not involved with the operation of the corporation nor is he willing or obligated to tell me who hired him to serve as the registered agent.” Jake sighed.

  “Is that right?” asked Emma. “I thought that kind of information was supposed to be public.”

  “Only in a publicly held corporation. Gerecht Group is private, so all they are required to disclose is a registered agent. The real owners may be out of state or even out of the country, for all we know.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Emma with exasperation. “Therapists practically have to leave a DNA sample with the state and this corporation just has to have a mail drop?”

  “Pretty much,” admitted Jake. “I am in court this afternoon. What’s your schedule like?”

  Emma checked the calendar on her computer. “I have two more appointments today then an interdisciplinary team meeting for one of my clients. Want me to start dinner?”

  They decided Jake would stop by their favorite Mexican food restaurant, a few blocks from the courthouse, and bring dinner home with him. Emma returned to her case notes and finished them just as Kristy opened the door to show in her next client.

  April Mensa was a new client, referred by Heath House, a domestic violence prevention agency. Emma greeted her warmly and took the new client paperwork from Kristy as her assistant left the office.

  As they talked, Emma learned that April had grown up in a violent household. She’d married at 17 to escape and shortly after became pregnant with her first child. Neither she nor her new husband had the emotional maturity to cope with the subsequent miscarriage and the marriage had buckled under the strain.

  Divorced by 19 and unwilling to return to her parents’ home, April moved in with a friend who introduced her to Ed, the man who became her second husband. This time her pregnancy resulted in the birth of a beautiful baby boy and Emma smiled over the picture his proud mother showed of her now four year-old son.

  April’s second husband was considerably older than she was and worked on the oil rigs that were scattered across Wyoming. Emma knew that meant he would have been gone for a week or more at a time, then home for a week before leaving for the rigs again. It was a hard life for a family but the money was good and April had enjoyed being able to stay home with her baby.

  When he was home, her husband liked to go to the bars. Before the baby was born, April would go with him, drinking ginger ale while she was pregnant. After the baby came, she stayed home. The couple argued about it, but there wasn’t anyone April felt comfortable leaving her child with until the wee hours so she’d held firm.

  The violence started slowly, a fist raised in the heat of an argument; bruises where he’d grabbed her arm. When he slammed her against the wall and threatened to kill her, she decided to leave. The next time her husband went to the rigs, April packed her bags and showed up at Heath House.

  As they talked, April mentioned that her husband had lost a friend he’d gone to high school with just before Christmas and the close encounter with his own mortality seemed to plunge him into a deep depression. The violence had escalated after that.

  “I told him there weren’t no reason to be so upset and thinking about dying himself,” said April. “I said to him, ‘Nate was a druggie. You’re not a druggie,’ but he was really freaked out about it.”

  Emma’s heart clutched when she heard the name of April’s husband’s friend. “Did Nate die of an overdose?” she asked, hoping it was some other Nate that Ed had known.

  April’s eyes grew large, “Oh no, he was murdered. Out at the Fort. Somebody tied him to the bridge and slit his throat. I told my husband nobody was fixin’ to murder him, but like I said he was pretty freaked.”

  “I would imagine it would be a shock to anyone’s system to lose a friend like that,” said Emma. “You said your husband had known him since high school?”

  “That’s what he said, though I never met the guy so I don’t think they were still friends. Ed said Nate had probably been going on about the treasure and somebody didn’t know he was full of shit and killed him over it.”

  “Treasure?” asked Emma.

  “I don’t know much about that,” said April. “Ed told me how in school Nate was always claiming there was some kind of treasure buried out at his grandparents’ place. He said nobody ever took him seriously. Everybody knew his folks didn’t have any money.”

  Emma refrained from asking any more questions since she couldn’t think of a therapeutic reason why she needed to know. Her phone beeped quietly, Kristy’s signal that the hour was nearly over.

  “Let’s meet again next week,” she suggested. “Now that I know where you’ve been, we can start looking at where you want to go with your life.”

  April smiled. “That would be great,” she said. She stood and Emma walked her out of the office and left her with Kristy to set up the appointment.

  Returning to her office, Emma plunked down in her chair dejectedly. Here was a piece of information that might help find Nate’s killer and there wasn’t anyone she could tell – not even Jake. She’d asked April if she or her husband had told the police about the treasure story but April had been adamant that neither wanted any involvement with a murder or with the police.

  There are only three situations in which a therapist can violate a client’s confidentiality. If April were going to hurt someone, if she were going to hurt herself or if someone else was going to be hurt. In all three cases, the danger had to be clear and immediate to waive confidentiality.

  Since none of those conditions applied in this case, Emma would just have to keep the knowledge of the treasure to herself and hope Jake stumbled across it some other way.

  She sat stewing over the story. April’s husband thought someone might have believed the tale and killed Nate over it, but was that reasonable? She put herself in the place of the unknown killer.

  If I heard him talking about a treasure, I wouldn’t
kill him. I’d make him take me to it. She thought awhile longer. Or I’d make him tell me where it was and then maybe I’d kill him.

  That might fit with the scenario on the bridge, but I think it would be crazy to kill him before I had my hands on the treasure. Once I had my hands on the treasure, why would I take him back into town to the bridge? No, that didn’t make any sense.

  Emma sighed. She supposed it didn’t make any difference that the police wouldn’t hear the story since it didn’t seem to have any bearing on the killing. She started typing her case notes into the computer.

  Suddenly, she stopped typing. What was it Nick had told his probation officer? His father had wanted to take him out to the ranch. He’d said they had to do it right away, before the ranch was sold out of the family.

  What if Nate had wanted his son to help him find the treasure? Emma had just started to muse on this idea when she heard a discreet knock on her office door. She looked up just as Kristy opened the door.

  “Is my next appointment here so early?” asked Emma, glancing at the clock on her computer.

  “No.” Kristy closed the door and sat across the desk from Emma. “There’s a young man here. He’s really upset but he won’t tell me anything other than that he needs to talk to you.”

  “Did he give you his name?” asked Emma.

  “No. He’s making me a little nervous. Do you want me to keep the door open, just in case you need something?” It was unusual for a client to become violent or abusive but Emma was a realist and knew there was a certain vulnerability to meeting with clients in a closed office.

  “Keep it cracked a bit,” she agreed. “Since he’s not a client, I think we can bend confidentiality just a bit in the name of safety.”

  Kristy agreed and disappeared into the reception area. She returned with a young man, in his late teens or early twenties, who did look decidedly distraught. Emma could understand why Kristy had been concerned. As she offered him a seat, she noticed the door close but not quite click shut and knew Kristy would be listening until it seemed there was no cause for concern.