Fatal Fraud: A Fatal Series Novel

by Marie Force

  “Do you have any idea who might’ve killed her, Ken? And before you answer, I want you to really think about your options here. If you know something and don’t share it, you can be charged with a felony count of impeding a homicide investigation.”

  “I told you. I don’t know anything.”

  Sam had to give him credit, he never blinked, fidgeted or anything that murderers usually did when confronted by cops after committing the ultimate crime. “Were you at your parents’ home on Sunday?”

  “No.”

  Again, he gave no indication he was lying.

  “What if I had a witness who can put you there?”

  “Your witness is lying. I haven’t been anywhere near my parents’ house in months. I’d be willing to take a polygraph, if necessary.”

  Interesting, Sam thought. If he’s lying, he’s one hell of an accomplished liar. “Why did you and your sister decide to go to the Bahamas days after your mother’s murder?”

  “I told you—because Mandi is on Thanksgiving break from school, and we both wanted out of here for the holiday, seeing as we no longer have a family to spend it with.”

  Sam hated that the explanation actually made sense, but she couldn’t reconcile what Mandi had told her with the cool customer sitting before her.

  “So you’re close with your sister, then?”

  “We’ve had our differences over the years, but we’ve stuck together during this nightmare our mother brought down on us.”

  “What kind of differences?”

  “The usual sibling shit. Who got to use the car our parents made us share as teens, who took whose earbuds and didn’t return them. That kind of stuff. Things were a lot better between us after I left for college, and we weren’t living together anymore.”

  Recalling her own sisters saying the same thing once upon a time, Sam stood. “We’ll be back.”

  “I haven’t done anything. You can’t hold me here indefinitely.”

  Sam let him have the last word and left the room with Captain Malone following her out.

  “What’re you thinking?” Malone asked when they were in the hallway.

  “That the sister is minimizing her own involvement and pointing the finger at her brother to save her own ass.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to talk to Mandi again.”

  “I’ll watch from observation.”

  Sam led the way back to interview one, where Dominguez was overseeing Mandi’s efforts to record her version of what’d happened.

  Mandi popped up out of a slouch, her eyes wide with fright. She looked like someone who had something to hide. “Did you talk to Ken?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He says he didn’t do it.”

  “He’s lying!”

  “See, the thing is, I don’t think he is.”

  “He is! He did it!”

  “Convince me.”

  “I told you! He called me at one thirty on Sunday in a complete panic. I left my dorm to get the things he said he needed, and I was at my parents’ house by three and found him standing over my dead mother.”

  “He says he hasn’t been to their house in months. Did he tell you why he went there that day?”

  “To beg her to do the right thing and give back the money.”

  “Does he know you made the Cayman deposits for your mom?”

  She blinked and squirmed, and Sam could almost see smoke coming out of her ears as she tried to figure out how to reply to that. “No.”

  “How did you explain your frequent trips there to him?”

  “I told him I was taking a break from school. Like I said, this was long before we knew what my mother was really doing. I had no clue she’d stolen the money I was depositing for her until the Feds charged her.”

  “And then you knew exactly why she’d sent you to the islands and basically implicated you in her crime. The way I see it, Mandi, you had much more of a motive to end her than your brother did.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “So you say.”

  A knock sounded on the door, and Sam got up to see who was interrupting her interrogation. The only time that happened was if someone had found something that would help.

  Cameron Green gestured for her to come out of the room.

  Sam closed the door behind her. “What’s up?”

  “After we found Mandi’s ties to the Cayman Islands, I did some digging in some of the other more notorious tax shelters and found something interesting in Delaware. The VMcL Corporation was formed just over two years ago, and I thought you might be interested in who’s on the four-person board of directors. The company’s assets are listed at fifteen million.”

  Sam took the paper he handed to her and scanned it quickly. It listed Amanda McLeod as chair, Kenneth McLeod Jr. as vice chair, Kenneth McLeod Sr. as treasurer and Virginia McLeod as director-at-large. “Great work as usual, Green. This helps.”

  “Are you liking the daughter for this?”

  “I want to, but she insists it was the brother, who’s the coolest-under-pressure dude I’ve ever encountered if he murdered his mother. I don’t know what to believe. We need a warrant to dump their phones and the father’s,” she said, adding Ken Sr. on a hunch. “She insists the brother called her at one thirty in a freak-out, asking her to get stuff for him from the hardware store and then meet him at the parents’ house. I need to know if that call happened and if you can put him in the area on Sunday. I’ll ask Malone to get the warrant.”

  “Once we have it, I’ll get with Archie to track them,” Green said. “We can track the pings to isolate his location.”

  “Do hers and the father’s too. Let’s figure out who’s telling the truth here.”

  “On it.”

  Sam ducked her head into the observation room. “Cap? Can you come here, please?”

  “What’s going on?” she heard Mandi ask Dominguez. “I didn’t do anything! You need to let me go!”

  Captain Malone stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

  “We’re going to track the cell phones to see who’s telling the truth. Can you take care of the warrants?”

  “I will. Good call, no pun intended.”

  She handed him the paper Green had provided. “In the meantime, Green has found a corporation in Delaware worth fifteen million, and guess who’s on the board of directors?”

  Malone scanned the sheet. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Let’s go ask Ken Jr. if he knew he was vice chair of the board.”

  They went back to interview two.

  “Got another question for you, Ken. Have you ever heard of a corporation called VMcL?”

  “No. Why?”

  Sam placed the paper on the table in front of him. “I assumed you would’ve heard of it since you’re the vice chair of the board of directors.”

  “What? No, I’m not.”

  Sam pointed to the place where he was listed. “Yes, you are.”

  He looked up at her, shock etched into every corner of his face. “I know nothing about this, Lieutenant. I swear to God.”

  Sam believed him.

  “I can’t believe she’d use me this way.” He shook his head. “Who implicates their own kid in a crime of this magnitude? Who does that, Lieutenant?” He seemed on the verge of tears. “She was my mother. Wasn’t she supposed to protect me?”

  Sam had heard Nick ask the same heartbreaking questions about his own mother. “Yes, she was.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I had no idea she’d done this, and now I suppose I can be held criminally liable for things I had nothing to do with.”

  “This may be an opportunity to fix some of the wrong your mother did.”

  “How so?”

  “As a director of the company, I’d imagine you’d have the ability to determine where the money goes.”

  He brightened visibly. “I would, wouldn’t I?”

  “I think
so.”

  “I’ll do anything I can to make this right for the people she stole from.”

  “Hold that thought.” Sam retrieved the paper about the company’s board of directors. “We’ll be back.”

  Sam left interview two, and while Malone went to see to the warrants for the phones, Sam returned to interview one. “What’s the deal with the VMcL Corporation?”

  Mandi’s brows furrowed. “I don’t know any company by that name.”

  Sam put the printout on the table. “That’s strange, because you’re the chair of the company’s board of directors.” She pointed to the place where Mandi could see her name.

  “I am? How’s that possible if I’ve never heard of the company?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “I don’t know either! She never told me anything about this.”

  “The company has fifteen million in assets.”

  “Oh. Well… I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do.”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say about it. I didn’t know she made me the chair of a company I’d never heard of. I didn’t know she was sending me to the Caymans to deposit stolen money. I didn’t kill her.”

  “You were pretty oblivious all the way around, huh?”

  “I was in college, Lieutenant. Did you go to college? Do you know what’s involved?”

  “I went to college and grad school—with dyslexia—so yeah, I know what’s involved.”

  “I didn’t have time to pay attention to what she was doing with her business.”

  “But you had plenty of time to take trips to the Cayman Islands whenever she needed you to.”

  “Those were vacations. Since when are vacations illegal?”

  “They’re not, unless you’re actually on the payroll to stash money in tax-free havens.”

  “I wasn’t. She didn’t give me a dime except for my tuition. My brother and I were always expected to work, and we did. They even made us share a car in high school so we wouldn’t be spoiled. None of our friends had to share a car with their siblings. We were the only ones.”

  Poor baby, Sam wanted to say. How did you ever survive such hardship?

  After hearing how Ginny had raised her kids, Sam needed more insight into who she had been as a person, how she’d ended up defrauding friends and family and what her relationships with her kids had been like.

  She left Mandi and went to talk to Ken Jr. again. “Who was closest to your mother?”

  “Her sister, Janet.”

  “Did your mother steal from her?” Sam didn’t recall seeing anyone named Janet on the list of fraud victims.

  “No, but probably because Janet is an artist and never really had money to steal. She knows my mother better than anyone.”

  “Write down her address and phone number.”

  Chapter Thirty

  To save time, Sam decided to call Janet rather than visiting her in person. Since she was looking only for background, she could do that over the phone. She used her cell so the MPD number wouldn’t show up on Janet’s caller ID.

  Janet answered on the fourth ring, sounding winded. “Hello?”

  “Janet Milton?”

  “That’s me. Who’s this?”

  “Lieutenant Sam Holland with the Metro PD in Washington.”

  “The vice president’s wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this about Ginny?”

  “It is.”

  Janet sighed. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m looking for some insight into your sister.”

  Janet’s harsh laugh echoed through the phone. “You and everyone else.”

  “Talk to me about her relationship with each of her kids.”

  “What about them?”

  “Was she close to them?”

  “She was before she decided to become a criminal. After that, things were a bit strained, to say the least.”

  “Before that, was she closer to one of her children over the other?”

  “She always had a special bond with Mandi. Ken Jr. was independent from a young age. He didn’t ‘need’ Ginny the way Mandi did.”

  “How so?”

  “Ginny referred to Mandi as her Mini-Me. They did everything together. At times, she would say she worried that being so close to Mandi was making it difficult to be her parent. She hated saying no to her but knew she needed to so she didn’t create a monster. Have you spoken to the kids?”

  “I have. I’m going to be honest with you, Ms. Milton. I have them both in custody and suspect one of them might’ve killed your sister.”

  A long silence met her statement.

  Sam was about to ask her if she had any thoughts on whether one or both of Ginny’s kids would be capable of murder when Janet started talking.

  “I can’t see Ken doing that, because as far as I know, he hadn’t seen either of his parents since before the federal charges were filed. But Mandi… I don’t know. She says she hasn’t seen them, but I have a hard time picturing her not seeing Ginny on a regular basis.”

  “Even after Ginny stole from the parents of Mandi’s friends?”

  “Even then. I was with Ginny two months ago at her house, and we were talking about what’d happened and what she’d been trying to do with the investment opportunity and how she hadn’t intended for it to go the way it did.”

  “What did she intend?”

  “She genuinely planned to go through with the purchase of a property that would be the next high-end planned community, but endless red tape and unexpected zoning challenges had messed up everything. She said no one understood how difficult it was to put together something as complex as what she was trying to do, and with people getting anxious about their money and what’d become of it, she’d run out of time. While I was there that day, Mandi came into the kitchen and stopped short when she saw me.”

  “She told us she hadn’t seen either of her parents since before the federal charges were filed.”

  “That’s not true. This wasn’t that long ago, and she was definitely there. Don’t get me wrong, Lieutenant. I love my niece—and my nephew. I loved my sister despite her many flaws. I’m not trying to get either of them in trouble.”

  “I understand. We’re just trying to get at the truth. What are your feelings about Ken Sr. not knowing about the scam?”

  “I think he’s full of shit, but then, I’ve always thought that. He’s a blowhard. Has a big opinion of himself and isn’t afraid to share it with anyone who’ll listen.”

  “So you think he knew about the scam.”

  “No question. I’ve always believed that, but the Feds couldn’t prove it, which is why he wasn’t charged along with Ginny.”

  “What did she tell you about his involvement?”

  “That he didn’t know. She never deviated from that throughout the investigation.”

  “Do you think he threatened her in some way?”

  “I wondered that, but she was adamant that everything was fine between them and that he had nothing to do with the scam.”

  “Would she have told you if things weren’t good between them?”

  “I don’t think so. She never had a bad word to say about him in all the years they were together, even to me, and we talked about everything. Sometimes, I’d wonder how she could stand him because he was so pompous, but that didn’t seem to bother her.”

  “Is he close to the kids?”

  “To Ken more than Mandi. He used to joke about how he didn’t ‘get her’ and how it was a good thing he had a son, or he might think he was the problem.”

  Sam had already gotten an asshole vibe from Ken Sr., and Janet’s insight only added to it. “Wasn’t he angry to find out she took money from their family members, colleagues, friends?”

  “If he was, I never saw that, which is another reason why I believe he knew exactly what she was doing. How else do you explain why he stayed with her after she took money from his brother, his former c
oworkers, their mutual friends? Would you stay with your spouse if he did something like that?”

  Since Nick would never do such a thing, that wasn’t something she needed to worry about, but she wasn’t about to say so. “It does seem odd to me that he didn’t raise more of a stink.”

  “He didn’t raise a stink because he knew, Lieutenant. He knew what she was doing and maybe even endorsed it.”

  “What I don’t get was their end game. So they steal from everyone, stash the money somewhere and then stick around long enough for the investors to get squirrely and report them to the authorities. Why weren’t they long gone? They had more than enough to live comfortably forever.”

  “It was probably because of our mother. Her health has been declining over the last year, and Ginny always took care of her. She wouldn’t leave her.”

  “Even if it meant getting caught in a web of her own making?”

  “Even if. She was very devoted to our mother and vice versa, especially since Mother has been in an acute care facility for dementia.”

  “Are you devoted as well?”

  “My mother and I have never once seen eye to eye on anything. We aren’t close. I visit my parents once or twice a month, but Ginny was there every day. She was the one who followed my mother’s plan for her life. I had my own ideas and wasn’t afraid to express them.”

  “Does she know your sister is dead?”

  “She does. I was there yesterday to share the news with both my parents. After basically accusing me of lying about what happened to Ginny, she finally understood I was telling her the truth when I showed her an online story about Ginny’s murder. Mother was devastated and asked me to leave. That about sums up our relationship. But then again, she refused to believe her precious Ginny did anything wrong with the investment either. She kept saying it had to be a misunderstanding, because Ginny would never do something like that.”

  “Do you believe she could do something like that?”

  “I loved my sister, Lieutenant. We were always close despite being two very different people. But I do believe she was capable of scamming people. She had a taste for the high life, and after Ken lost his job—”

  “Wait. When did that happen?”