She made a note on her pad. “That’s something I can find out for you.”
“I thought I’d meet her the morning I went to Joe’s place to check on him. But it was her brother who met me at the door, told me Joe was dead.”
“How old was the brother? Might give us some idea about her.”
“Mid-thirties, I guess.”
She looked over at me. “What else can you tell me about Joe? Past history? Employment? Family?”
I shook my head. “Other than he was retired, not much. When we got together, we talked investments. He never offered anything about his personal life. I never pressed.”
“How about social security number? Address? That kind of stuff.”
I fished my Blackberry out of my pocket, found Joe’s information and gave it to her.
When she finished writing it down, she said, “What makes you think foul play was involved?”
“Joe was never sick. Didn’t smoke. Took good care of himself. He marries—a week later he’s dead. It’s the timing. I think she killed him. How, I have no idea.”
“It could be as simple as a push or a fall. Withholding medicine is common—”
“Common? You make it sound like this happens all the time.”
“You’d probably be surprised how often it does happen. I looked into the death of an older man, virtually bedridden, who married his nurse. He was eighty-five, she in her late forties. His children said when he told them about the marriage, they supported it, thinking their father would get better care. Instead of giving him better care, she didn’t give him his medicine. He suffered a seizure and died.”
My jaw must have dropped.
“Worse, some of these women go from victim to victim.”
“Don’t these men—these victims—see what’s going on?”
She shrugged. “All they see is a beautiful young wife.”
“Poor Joe,” I said, a bit overwhelmed by it all. Lawyers and private investigators accumulated some pretty grim data.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions. It’s possible this woman’s a black widow. It’s also possible this marriage was harmless and aboveboard. We’ll know more once we find out what happened to him.” She paused, looked directly at me. “I’m assuming you want me to begin investigating?”
I met her gaze. “I’m assuming I’ve passed the toxicity test?”
This time I got the full smile. “Admirably.”
“The sooner the better.”
Her face turned serious. “It’s hard to say how much an investigation like this will cost. I charge a hundred dollars an hour. Did you have a limit on how much you were willing to spend?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Okay. To start, I require a retainer of a thousand dollars. Check’s fine. I’ll give you an itemized accounting.”
“How long will this take? When should I expect to hear from you?”
“Depends on who and what we’re dealing with.”
“Are we talking two days? A week?”
“We should know something in two to three days.”
That was acceptable. I got a check out of my wallet and wrote it for her retainer. I gave her one of my business cards with all my phone numbers—office, home, car, cell—on it.
She took the check and the business card, looked at the check, handed it back to me. “Before I take your money, some ground rules. Don’t call and ask how I’m doing. Don’t pester me or push me to go faster. When I have something to report, I’ll call you. The only time I want you calling me is if you have new information that might be helpful. Got that?”
“The don’t-be-a-pain-in-the-ass part? Yes.”
She smiled. “Good. Then we both know our roles.” She plucked the check out of my hand, dropped it in her bag. She reached across the table and shook my hand. “I’ll be in touch,” she said with a smug smile, slid out of the booth, and left.
I finished my coffee, left money on the table, walked out to the car. Eddie started circling excitedly when he saw me. I got in the car, patted him, put the key in the ignition. “Let’s go to work, fella.”
My office was a recently-restored historic Spanish-style stucco building in downtown Sarasota, burnt orange with a sign above the front door that included a white, round life preserver as the O in S.O.S. On top the life preserver read: Seattle On Stocks. On the bottom it continued: Sound Advice Can Be a Real Lifesaver.
I parked the Saab in the five-space parking garden to the side and strolled along the walkway to the front door. Eddie ran ahead of me. As soon as I opened the door, he scooted in.
“Good morning,” Rosemary said as I closed the door behind me. She looked at me, made a face. “Are you all right? You don’t look so good.”
From the kitchen, I heard Eddie lapping water from his bowl.
I stopped, perched on the arm of the lobby sofa. “I didn’t sleep well. I had dreams last night. When I talked to Dr. Swarthmore this morning, she wasn’t very sympathetic. She chided me for not being Don Juan.”
“She didn’t.”
“She wanted to know if I was seeing anybody. When I said I wasn’t, she said I wasn’t trying.”
“Rebecca is coming over. Dan and I think the two of you would hit if off.” This was a recurring conversation. Rosemary and her husband, Dan, wanted to fix me up with Rebecca, Rosemary’s sister. I’d seen pictures of Rebecca. She and Rosemary could have been twins. Same round face, blue eyes, button nose. The difference was Rosemary was blond, her sister redheaded. Fortunately or unfortunately, Rebecca still lived in England.
“Maybe,” I said vaguely. “The other thing that’s troubling me is Joe. I just met with this investigator Julian wanted me to hire. What if she finds out Joe’s new wife killed him? What do we do then?”
The phone rang. Rosemary shrugged, reached for the receiver. “Seattle on Stocks.”
Eddie ambled into the lobby from the kitchen, looked at me, yawned, and headed for my office. I followed. Enough worrying. Time to get to work.
I’d just settled behind my desk when Rosemary buzzed. “Mr. Ballack on one.” The start of a busy day. Oil prices had spooked the market. The Dow dropped two hundred points. I made a few buys for clients who saw this as an opportunity and grabbed a quick burger for lunch, but most of my day was spent reassuring my equities clients the drop was an aberration. By six-thirty, the calls had trickled to a stop. I turned off my computer, stood, stretched.
Eddie was asleep in his spot at the side of my desk. “Wake up, fella, let’s go get something to eat.” He roused himself, stood, stretched. Made me laugh. It was almost as if he were mimicking me.
We had dinner at a little place by New Pass Bridge called the Salty Dog. The manager kept Eddie’s favorite dog food and a dog-food bowl on hand. We were regulars. I had the Grouper. You know what Eddie had.
After dinner we went for a walk on the nature trail, I changed clothes at the condo, and we headed to the exercise room. I did an hour running on the treadmill, an hour on the weights. That was enough. We went home and crashed.
That night, I slept well. No dreams. Had I known what was about to happen, I wouldn’t have slept at all.
Chapter 6
The call came at work the next afternoon. Rosemary buzzed me. “There’s a Tony Wright on two.”
I picked up. “Hello, Tory.”
She didn’t bother greeting me. “I’ve learned some things. We need to meet immediately.”
“What did you—”
“Not over the phone. I can be at your office in thirty to forty minutes. Will you be there?”
“I’ll be here,” I said to myself. She’d already hung up.
I stood, went out to the lobby. “That was Tory Wright. Not Tony. She’ll be here in half an hour or so. When she arrives, would you show her back, please.”
“Surely. My hearing must be going; you’d think Tory would be a word I’d understand.”
“I only mention it because, as you’ll discover, she’s got a bit of an
attitude.”
She arched an eyebrow.
I nodded and went back to my office.
Not forty minutes later. Not thirty minutes later. Maybe not even twenty minutes later, I heard the door open. So did Eddie. His ears perked up, and his head turned toward the door. Suddenly, he trotted out to the lobby.
“You must be Ms. Wright,” I heard Rosemary say in her most polite voice.
“Matt’s expecting me.”
“I’ll show you back.”
Eddie ambled in first, altogether pleased with himself. Rosemary came next. “Right in here,” she said, offering a smile and extending an arm. As soon as Tory walked past her, Rosemary crossed her eyes and left.
I almost missed the eye bit. I was busy looking at Tory. She had on a Day-Glo orange top that left her midriff exposed. Skin-tight black stretch pants. She had her big black bag over her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Sunglasses hid her eyes.
I stood. “Come in. Have a seat.”
She sat in one of the visitor’s chairs, took off her sunglasses, and leaned forward. “I don’t want this to be interrupted. Can you cancel any appointments you have for the next hour, have her hold your calls?”
I reached for the phone, hit the intercom. “Rosemary, would you cancel anything I have for the next hour, hold all calls?”
“Would you like something to drink?” I asked Tory.
“A Diet Coke would be great.”
I buzzed again. “And could you bring us two Diet Cokes? Thanks, Rosemary.”
Moments later she brought in the drinks. “Would you like me to shut the door?” she asked as she left.
“Yes,” Tory answered for me.
Rosemary crossed her eyes again, closed the door with just enough of a slam to make Tory jump. I could tell these two would never be best buds.
Eddie, on the other hand, obviously liked Tory. He sat next to her, rested his head on her thigh. She got a folder out of her bag, put it on the desk, found what she wanted, then reached down and absentmindedly stroked Eddie’s head.
“Let’s start with Joe Jesso’s death.” Her tone of voice said she wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything. “It was natural causes, no doubt about it.”
“How can you be sure?”
She frowned. Obviously didn’t like being interrupted or questioned. “Oh, I’m absolutely sure. I talked to his primary care physician, Dr. Flores. Seems Jesso had been having angina for over a year and a half. Flores had him do a stress test and discovered two of his major arteries were eighty percent blocked. Flores wanted to schedule bypass surgery, but Jesso wouldn’t agree to it.”
She paused and took a sip of her drink. “According to the doc, Jesso had a real fear of hospitals. Lots of older people are fearful of going to the hospital, but Jesso must have been adamant. According to the EMS logs from the night he died, they responded to a frantic call from Jesso’s wife saying he was having severe chest pain. One of the paramedics told me that when they loaded Jesso into the ambulance, he complained he’d never had such bad pain. It must have been the early stages of a heart attack. The paramedic said he thought Jesso suffered a massive stroke on the way to the hospital. As hard as they worked on him, there wasn’t anything they could do.”
“So there isn’t any doubt it was natural causes?”
“None. I asked the paramedic if he thought there was any chance of foul play. He said what he saw was a heart attack in progress. With Jesso’s medical history, it was just a matter of time.”
“They why would Joe’s brother-in-law have told me Joe died in bed?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s not the way it happened. Makes me wonder about this guy.” She reached into a bag and pulled out a photo, handed it across the desk to me. “Let me tell you about his sister, your friend’s wife. This is a rare photo of Janet Wakeman—that’s her maiden name. You have no idea how hard that photo was to come by.”
I stared at the grainy enlargement. It showed an older, balding man in a plaid sport coat, his arm around the waist of a flashy blonde.
“That’s Janet with her first husband, Harry Kemper,” Tory continued. “I don’t know whether it was her idea or his, but right after they were married, Harry footed the bill for a lot of cosmetic surgery. Janet had a nose job, breast augmentation, laser vision correction. She went from a mousy, nondescript brunette to a Pam Anderson look-alike in less than six months.”
I could see what she meant. In the photo, three things stood out. Harry’s leer and Janet’s breasts.
“Janet was twenty-two, Harry seventy-five at the time. I’m told Harry liked to show off his attractive young wife. I’m also told that Janet—somewhat shy before her makeover—loved the attention. She was suddenly desirable and took full advantage of it, using sex to get what she wanted. One of the men she had affairs with was Harry’s attorney, Greg Nevitt—”
“That’s the guy who said he was her brother.”
She frowned, shook her head again. “He may have said that, but he’s not. We’ll get to him in a minute.” She glanced down at her notes, took another sip of her drink. “Harry was worth a little over three million when he died of pneumonia in 1995. Janet probably thought she was going to inherit it all. Surprise, surprise. Harry’s money was tied up in trusts. Janet received a bequest for a paltry hundred thousand.”
“She didn’t have Nevitt alter the trusts for her?”
“No. I don’t think Janet really thought about manipulating the inheritance until after her experience with Kemper. I think that’s when she realized how much money she could get if she had a lawyer who could make the estate and inheritance laws work in her favor.”
“So she hooked up with Nevitt.”
“That’s what I think. Janet remarried, almost immediately, an older man, Walter Remminger. This time, with Nevitt helping her, Janet had the will altered leaving everything to her. On that six-month marriage, she made close to half a million. Three months later, they struck again. Janet married husband number three, Sol Hecht. Nevitt restructured Hecht’s estate so his three grown children received nothing and Janet received property and securities worth just under a million.”
“Didn’t the kids fight it?”
“Of course, but everything Wakeman and Nevitt had done was legal. It was a legal marriage. It was a legal will. The courts may not have liked it, but they had no choice.”
I got up and paced around a little. “You’re saying there’s nothing anyone can do to stop her?”
“If she’s careful, probably not. She’s not doing anything illegal. In fact, as a professional trophy wife—an invention of the macho male culture—she’s filling a niche.”
“You sound like you’re on her side.”
She made a face. “Only because you’re applying double standards. It’s okay for a guy to have a trophy wife. But being a trophy wife is bad.”
“That’s not what—”
“Please, don’t tell me about men,” she said, her voice bitter. “They’ll fuck you and forget you in a heartbeat, but if a woman takes advantage of a relationship, well now, that’s wrong.”
“You don’t think what she did to Hecht’s kids was wrong?”
“All I’m saying is she supplies what men demand. You can’t put all the blame on her.”
“I’m not looking to fix blame. I’m looking to fix the problem. I want to know how to stop this woman. I think Joe’d be alive today if it weren’t for her.”
“I didn’t find any evidence that she hastened his death.”
“The fact that their marriage and his death were so close together was a coincidence? I know coincidences do occur, but there’s something in the back of my mind that says this one was made to happen.”
She laughed, her anger dissipated. “You don’t know how wrong you are. We’ve talked about her. Let me tell you about your friend, Joe. He wasn’t the innocent old geezer you made him out to be.”
I sat back down. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to
like hearing this.
Chapter 7
“Did you ask him anything about his background? Who he worked for? What he did? Any of that?”
“Of course,” I said defensively. “I know he worked in loan approval at Shore Bank and Trust until he retired.”
“Do you know anything about Shore Bank?”
“Not really. It’s a small—”
“Do you do any business with them?”
“No. Banks—”
“You’re positive you don’t know anything about them.”
“No.” I said irritably. “What’s so important about Shore Bank?” “Didn’t you think it was strange that Jesso worked for years at Shore but wrote you checks on a Northern Trust account?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Do you know who owns Shore Bank? Who runs it?”
“No. I assume—”
“Never assume. Here’s what you needed to know. Shore Bank is run by Don D’Onifrio. Chairman and CEO, he personally owns eighty-three percent of the bank’s stock. Dee—as he likes to be called—works for the Menendez drug cartel. The only reason that bank exists is to launder drug money.”
“Can’t be,” I said, stunned.
She grinned. “Thought that might rock you. Now you understand why I asked you all those questions. I had to be sure you weren’t involved with Shore.”
“Just because the bank’s dirty doesn’t mean Joe was. He was only a loan officer.”
“Jesso made at least five trips to South America in the three years before he retired, maybe more. I didn’t research farther back than that. Maybe those trips were innocent, but I think they indicate he knew the bank was in the drug business and was actively involved.”
I heard the words, but they didn’t compute. I visualized Joe pulling annual reports out of his battered brown briefcase. Showing me what had him intrigued about a company. The slight shake to his hands. The excitement of the chase in his voice. The whimsical smile as he decided what he wanted to do.
Jay Giles Page 3
