“Yeah,” I said, “it would be nice. Don’t worry. I know you were just doing your job. Of course, the building log did show me signing out not very long after I got there.”
I left it at that. Let him think about it.
I busied myself in the kitchen. Ten minutes later I heard the door close and Kate came into the kitchen, still smiling.
“So?”
“So, I’m meeting him for breakfast tomorrow. How did you know I was attracted to him?”
I laughed. “Kate, it was written all over your face and body language. Let’s turn in. I’m falling off my feet.”
45
I DRIFTED OFF TO SLEEP right away, but nightmares kept waking me up. In one Jonathan Reid was chasing me and I’d run down an alley that ended in a concrete block wall. He kept coming at me with his arms extended and his fingers curled as though he intended to strangle me. I was never so glad to wake up and find it was a dream.
Throughout the night little vignettes filled with danger plagued me. Each time I woke up, relieved to find I was safe. The last dream featured the Riddler in the Gotham TV series. When you dream something it generally represents something different than the content of the dream, but this time I wondered if perhaps it meant we’d find out how Jonathan Reid/Juan Rojas also created the alias of Kenneth Monnigan. It was certainly a puzzle with a missing piece.
By the time I crawled out of bed and made it into the kitchen the next morning, despite the lack of sleep I felt okay but drowsy. Sure enough, even though Kate had left to meet McCrary for breakfast at a popular coffee shop in the Marina, the dear made a pot of coffee for me before she left. I poured a steaming cup and took a frozen bagel out of the fridge, nuked it for a few seconds so I could cut it, then put it in the toaster oven. I sipped coffee while waiting for the toaster ding to signal my bagel was ready. A little more awake now, I slathered it with cream cheese topped with sliced tomato and small dash of pepper. Then I flipped on the radio to listen to the news.
I tuned in the middle of a rather cryptic report about three women who were rescued from a drug deal gone bad, followed by the weather. No names were mentioned, and details were sparse, but I knew it was us because the right after the same weather report that airs far too many times throughout the day, the commentator made reference to a breaking story about a multi-million dollar scandal in the Fashion District. Details as they become known. Oh yeah, details. If there was one thing I knew, it was the details.
Kim called from the hotel about ten-thirty and asked if Kate and I were up and dressed yet. I told her I was, and that I expected Kate in a half-hour or so. I slyly added, “She left pretty early to have breakfast with Detective McCrary.” I felt one of my damned giggles coming and hard as I tried, couldn’t stop it.
Her curiosity aroused, Kim asked, “And, um, what does that giggle mean, dear Cami?”
“Not much. Just that after you left they exchanged numbers and when he found out she would be here for a few more days he asked her to breakfast. I don’t think he’s just interested in her as a friend. You should have seen his face.”
“Well, he is cute, and aside from the fact that he almost arrested you for murder, he’s pretty nice don’t you think? She could do worse. Listen, Nate is going to go back to DC late this afternoon, but there are new developments. Last night they got the rest of the story about Monnigan. Interested?”
Oh, she is sneaky sometimes, that Kim. “What a silly question. Of course I’m interested.”
“Then, Nate and I will be at your house about one o’clock. Kate should certainly be back by then. He will give you the latest and then I’ll drive him to LAX. We’re checking out of the hotel, so I’ll be back with you for another night or so if that’s okay.”
Did she even have to ask? Of course it was okay.
Promptly at one o’clock Nate and Kim rang my bell. To say I was anxious to hear the last piece in the Jonathan Reid puzzle would be a gross understatement. I couldn’t wait and after we settled into the comfort of the living room Nate filled us in.
“It happened after Reid had established himself as a respected businessman in Century City and had also hooked up with Domingo Rojas. The drug lord told him they needed a front man to assist in laundering millions of dollars of drug money to be converted into pesos through the Los Angeles Fashion District. In order to do that, he needed businesses in the Fashion District that would cooperate, and felt the best way was to own major interests in some of them and pull others into the scheme to set up a large network. It would be beyond profitable for all involved.”
He proceeded to tell us how everything was put in motion. According to what Reid broke down and told them, the idea was really appealing to him. It tapped into his instinct for larceny and desire for more and more money. The Fashion District laundering operation was the brilliant idea of Rojas, so by putting their heads together the brothers created the character of the mysterious Kenneth Monnigan, the reclusive millionaire investor.
They created all of the necessary documents to make it seem there really was such a person. The real Kenneth Monnigan died at the age of two, but his age would have been right so it began with a phony birth certificate. Once the identity was solid, they bought into several manufacturers, found the middleman to handle the purchases and sales whereby the dollars were converted, and they were in business. At peak, hundreds of millions of dollars passed through the system.
Right about the time Marjory Newfield contacted Kate, raids had gone bad and main middleman was busted. Nate became involved when Director Kincaid’s team overheard the scramble to find a substitute. He told Nathan and Nathan told Kim. The next thing he knew, Kim insisted upon helping and pulled me and Kate into it.
Nathan said, “Here’s the way it worked. Monnigan was mostly a voice on the phone. Few had ever actually met him or seen him. So the Cartel supplied the cash from drug deals to Reid. The volume increased steadily, triggering the attempt to buy the bank. Reid confessed that posing as Monnigan he fronted for fifteen businesses in the Fashion District. The bigger players like the three we targeted were among the few who actually ever met him. According to what he revealed to the Feds last night, that was only a fraction of what they had in play. With the certainty of prison looming in his future, Reid was desperate to make a deal to save as much of his skin as he could. When he opened up, the info flowed like a gusher.”
“What an amazing story,” Kate said. Can something like this be in my movie The producers will love it.?”
“I’m sure they will, but I have to ask you to hold off until I clear it since this is an active case now. You three actually supplied the missing piece. What we hadn’t tied together until last night was that Reid was Monnigan. We thought there was a third party involved.”
Wow. This certainly had all of the elements of a cool thriller. It goes to show that sometimes you think you know someone when you don’t know them at all.
I wondered what would happen to their agency with Cunningham dead and Reid in prison. Maybe my business was about to get much larger.
46
KIM STAYED FOR ANOTHER day so she could complete an exit interview about the case. She said she was looking forward to returning to her life in DC, particularly with the commitment for an estimated three million dollar Homeland Security furniture project for the new wire-tapping facility in hand. It would take time for the building to be built, but Director Kincaid said they were about to break ground and fast-track it, so she could schedule her design team to go over the blueprints to firm up preliminary estimates.
Kate’s word was always her bond. Her contract for the FraudBusters movie was signed and her agent negotiated a clause naming me and Kim as consultants as well as giving each of us fifteen percent of the purchase price of the story. The night before she returned to San Francisco, McCrary took her out for a romantic dinner and promised to visit her as soon as he could. The man was smitten and from the look on Kate’s face, so was she.
I returned to the of
fice amid cheers from my employees. With the chaos at Reid/Cunningham we were easily poised to land several of their accounts. I would need to expand my office space and wanted to hire several of their employees starting with Suzie if the firm closed down.
A month passed with no new breaks in the mystery of who killed Tyler Cunningham.
Then on a rainy day in November I received a call from McCrary. He asked if I could come to his office because he had some information he knew I would be very interested in. It had not yet been shared with the media. We set a late afternoon appointment and I won’t lie. I was anxious to find out what it was about. Thinking logically, it had to have something to do with the Cunningham murder. Why else would he want to see me?
Promptly at four o’clock I was shown to his office at 100 West First St. between the 110 and 101 freeways. He was located in the Robbery Homicide Division. His office wasn’t like my plush Century City office, but still very stylish. It wasn’t the vision I had in my mind of police headquarters. Gray steel or oak desks of yesteryear were nowhere to be seen. Forget the old Jack Webb Dragnet TV show with the bullpens and furniture that looked ready for the junk heap.
This modern building was opened in October of 2009 and featured functional modular workstations very similar to the ones manufactured in Kim’s division of FACR. Nice surface finishes, ergonomic chairs and good task lighting. I was surprised to find that the color scheme in McCrary’s office was a tasteful burgundy and gray with a dark gray workstation topped with beechwood laminate tops.
He invited me to sit down and offered me coffee or a cold drink. “Thanks for coming, Cameron. I wanted you to be one of the first to know about this. I figured you would want to know who killed Tyler Cunningham and tried to frame you.”
At last! Even though I had been cleared completely, I’d yearned to know who wanted to see me pay for my former boss’ death. I actually felt a little short-winded and my heart slammed against my ribs. I would finally find out.
McCrary said, “First of all, I want to tell you again how sorry I am you had to go through what you did. Aaron Kincaid filled me in on all of the good things you three have done for your government. To have that shadow cast over you must have been very hard to bear.”
I nodded. “It certainly was. But, don’t keep me in suspense any longer. Who was it and how did they do it?”
He leaned his elbows on his desktop and tented his fingers, then looked directly into my eyes. “Jonathan Reid.”
I tried not to react with shock, but truthfully, I almost fell out of my chair.
“He cracked yesterday and confessed to it. You knew he cut a deal related to the money laundering, and maybe he thought his deal would protect him, but that isn’t the case. This is a whole different set of charges. This is murder.”
I learned that for all of the years they had been together, Cunningham never knew anything other than the surface story—that the Reids were an old money San Diego family, his grandfather’s company built yachts for the very wealthy and Reid had a talent for the advertising business. He never had even a hint that Reid was part Mexican—not just part Mexican, but the son and brother of a drug lord.
We did the math, and right about the time Reid hooked up with his stepbrother and became involved in laundering drug money apparently Cunningham had noticed a change in him, including a certain swagger he hadn’t possessed in prior years. As Reid explained it to the cops, the old goat started prying into his personal life and apparently even hired private detectives because he smelled a rat. Whatever kind of jerk Cunningham was, he was an honest straight shooter and couldn’t stand the idea of the taint of crime affecting the business he built.
The detectives were good. They found the connection to the Rojas Cartel when they discovered that his name had been changed as a baby from Juan Rojas to Jonathan Reid. They followed him when he met with Domingo Rojas and took photos of the two together. Cunningham confronted Reid with the photos and information and asked him to sell his share of the agency to him to protect their reputation or he would go to the authorities. Reid’s solution was to murder him. He said he couldn’t trust that Cunningham would keep his mouth shut even if he did sell his share.
McCrary said the night of the murder Reid stayed after hours so he didn’t have to sign out. It was my bad luck that I happened to go to the office that night, and I was right about someone breaking in—twice. It was Reid who paid off one of the security people to let him into my office and turn off the alarm. Once to take the trophy, and after killing his partner, to return it. He made sure there was some blood on it to incriminate me. When he dumped the soda on me in the cafe, that was his first step in setting me up so there would be impartial witnesses who heard us fight. He got very lucky when I shouted about them being dead.
It was almost too much to absorb. McCrary said, “You look a little pale. Are you okay? Can I get you some water?”
I sucked in my breath. “Thanks, McCrary, but I’m okay now. I’m really okay but I still can’t believe what a horrible person this man I knew for so many years really is. Hopefully, I can sleep soundly knowing it’s really over. Will I need to testify against him when he comes to trial?”
“Probably, but don’t worry. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Go home and get some rest. You deserve it.”
I began to walk away, then turned back to him. “About testifying, I don’t need to cross that mythical bridge later. I’ll be a star witness whenever you need me.”
About the Author
MORGAN ST.JAMES is on the board of Writers of Southern Nevada and belongs to multiple writers’ groups. St. James has 16 books in publication including the award-winning INCEST, MURDER AND A MIRACLE currently under option to Sony TV plus over 600 published articles about the business and craft of writing. She frequently appears on the radio, TV, author’s panels, presents writers’ workshops and appears on panels at conferences.
In 2016 she co-narrated an episode of “A Crime to Remember” on Investigation Discovery TV Channel. She co-hosted the Writers’ Tricks of the Trade Show on Blog Talk Radio with true crime writer and historian Dennis N. Griffin and Eric James Miller for a year and a half, and also publishes the quarterly Writers Tricks of the Trade online magazine.
www.morganstjames-author.com,
http://morganstjames.blogspot.com.
http://silversistersmysteries.blogspot.com,
http://writerstricksofthetrade.blogspot.com
TO MY READERS
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Praise For Ripoff Book two in the series
5 Stars Definitely a heroine and situation to root for Kimberly comes back from a vacation or business trip and discovers her company is bankrupt and her boyfriend cleaned her out. Talk about a bad day. Having only about a month or two before her situation is dire she takes a job with the Federal prison system. She also discovers that she is not the only one her ex-boyfriend conned. Six of them band together and prevent him from suckering the next one. Instead they turn the tables on him. She also discovers an embezzlement scheme at work. Can she and two new friends prove what she thinks she has found? A really funny story where a woman fights back instead of staying a victim. T Breakiron
It keeps you interested in what will happen next I enjoyed this novel very much. It kept me wan
ting to keep reading so I could get to the end and find out if I had figured it out. I had not. Thank you. James Kirkland
5 Stars Funny and Fashionable The action moves at a nice pace, and the characters are well conceived and interesting. Our heroines have some serious human frailties, which make the women easy to like and to root for. Of the three, Kate is probably the one that could have used just a little more fine-tuning. Cool cougar Kimberly and giggly, plastic surgery aficionado Cameron seriously outshine the somewhat reserved redhead. The novel's villains are nasty and greedy, but the authors also give them plenty of vulnerability. I wanted to see them caught, but I also felt sorry for them.
In the end, though, RIPOFF: A FUNNY CRIME CAPER lives up to its title. It's a quick, enjoyable read where the good triumph over the naughty look good while doing so! C. Lahain
Visit www.morganstjames-author.com for more reviews
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to all of my writer friends and family who have supported me throughout my writing career, the development of this book and other books in this series.
Sometimes, just when you think you have the plot together you get a sudden inspiration for something that will make it better, or maybe you find the pieces of the puzzle don’t completely fit. Then it is back to the keyboard and maybe even rethinking the plot. Suddenly, there it is—the perfect solution.
That happened in this book when while I was researching for a little-known type of crime for the plot I discovered information about the really clever money laundering scheme that was raided in the Los Angeles Fashion District. What could be better?
Payback Page 18
