A Motor for Murder (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 1) (10 page)

Caitlin wasn’t stupid. By all accounts, the dealership was busy and successful – and she was George’s right hand in running it. Besides her anger at George, I didn't really see a substantial motive for her to kill George.

And what would happen to the dealership after George’s death? Most likely Rita would inherit it, I thought. Would she fire Caitlin, in revenge for the affair? If so, by killing George, Caitlin would have destroyed her hopes for a steady stream of expensive gifts, a possible Mrs status, as well as her job. I thought she was too smart to do that.

Where did it leave me? Did I have myself a new suspect, Roger? But that car accident was 2 months ago. Roger was now driving a used BMW, a trade-in from Mayfair Motors, according to Rita. So he stayed in George’s good graces enough for that, at least. I thought back to the events of the party. He introduced himself as the CTO of his start-up, and said that they had enough money to be going for a while – but he was clearly uncomfortable telling me that; and who knows how long ‘a while’ is? Rita told me they were funded for 12 months, but she might not have known all the details. For all I knew, ‘a while’ meant ‘till the end of the week’.

When I got home, I looked up more about Roger on the internet. On LinkedIn, he was listed as “CTO and founder of Ba-Ele Tech Inc, working on breakthrough technologies in electric batteries for automotive needs”. I got the business card Roger gave me out of my purse and looked up the office address, searching for its location on a map, street view, as well as any ads or rental terms regarding it that I could find. The space wasn't being actively advertised as being for lease, which meant that the rent was paid at least for another 6 months. That made sense – when they were setting up the office, they probably paid rent for a year ahead; the money to do that for someone of George’s means what insignificant, but provided stability and better ability to do any needed modifications to the space.

17 

I dialed Rita’s number.

“Yes?” her voice sounded tired.

“Hi Rita, it's Veronica. How are you?”

“Oh. I'm OK. Teresa and I have been talking with the police for five hours. It was exhausting. They finally let me go and I just got home.”

“Oh poor you! That sounds awful. Anything I can do for you?”

“Convince them I didn’t kill George? Maybe then this will stop. Better yet: hand them the real killer on a silver platter!”

I really felt for her: the situation was a big burden to carry.

“Any news from Roger?”

“No.”

“Did you tell them about him being gone?”

“No. I didn’t tell Teresa either.”

“Is that really the best course of action, you think?” I thought it was foolish of her, and wanted to find out her reasoning.

“Well, I don’t want him to become a suspect if they know he’s missing.”

“By the way, did he crash a car from Mayfair Motors when he was here?”

“Yes. A Maserati. George was mad at him, they had a big shouting thing. But then George gave him the BMW, so I thought it all got settled.”

“I see.”

“Oh, by the way, we also opened the safe today. The police were here, and John, and Teresa. We found a copy of the will, identical to the one that John had in this office. What was more interesting was a bank withdrawal slip for $5K in cash from George’s personal account, dated the day before the party. It did match with the bank’s records, I checked.”

“So he withdrew 5K in cash the day before?” That meant Friday, and he would have had to go into a bank brunch to do it.

“Yes, and gave it to someone during the party.”

“Hmmm... any idea who?”

“No, not really. With everything that I am finding out about people around me, it could have been anyone.”

That was true, I thought.

“Hey, I wanted to ask you: what was in George’s will?”

“It’s pretty straightforward. A bunch of the money goes to me; there is a trust set up for it. Some left to a couple of charities. Some to his parents. It’s a remarkably boring will, actually.” She tried to laugh, but her laugh also sounded tired.

“Do you also get the house?”

“Yes.”

“Anything to anyone else?”

“No, not really. Oh, the 2 cars he had, the exotics, they go to the car club, to be auctioned off for charity.” Probably to be expected, but I made a mental note of that.

“What about Caitlin? Did he leave her anything?”

There was a pause. “No, he really didn’t. Considering how she was asking him for money, she ended up with nothing.”

“What about Mayfair Motors? ”

“I inherit the dealership.”

“How are the business affairs of the place?”

“They look OK. I’ll have lawyers check them. I’ve not been feeling up to it.”

I had another question, and although I felt too materialistic about asking it under the circumstances, I forged ahead.

“Was there a pre-nup between you and George?”

“Yes, there was. Obviously, when we got married, George already had lots of money, and I had none. Per our pre-nup, I don't inherit everything – his parents get half. But I do get the life insurance proceeds.”

I had tried to think this through, lining up the facts as Rita told them to me. A lot of money was going to Rita ($10M, per Vinay’s estimate); as was the house. The 2 exotic cars were going to the Alluring Exotics car club. So far, so predictable. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Seemed like I knew what there was to know about George Ellis’s will. (A thought crossed my mind – if Rita was telling me the truth about the will, of course. But I couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t be. So I let it go at that.) Now I had to think it through and figure out what it meant.

I thought of – and immediately discarded – the (senior) Ellises as suspects. First, they were not at the party (and the idea of them hiring one of the guests to do the murder was ridiculous). Second, they were well-off, well-known, and had no dire need of funds. Third, the idea just seemed preposterous.

The cars were the only items not going to direct family or a charity. Were the cars enough for Wayne to kill George over? They were certainly expensive, and Wayne probably couldn’t afford to buy them at an open auction. But if they were willed to the club, Wayne as president could have at least a short-term glow of the pride of ownership – being able to say you possess such remarkable vehicles. Did Wayne seem to have that “collector’s fever”, the desire to have the best of everything? I thought about what I read in books about collectors – apparently, some went crazy over their collections and what do anything, including murder, to add a particularly rare specimen. In fact, in a recent mystery I read, the killer had committed five elaborate murders over several decades, all to add to his collection of rare books.

What if someone was trying to frame Rita for the murder? Doing that would get her out of the way of the money – since, per the “slayer statute”, the money would by-pass her and be distributed according to what’s outlined in her will; i.e. go to lose family, most likely. The obvious person to benefit from that would be Roger. It would make a pretty nice motive for him: some of the money might go to him directly. But even for the money that would go to Rita’s parents –  I knew they didn't have any other children, it was unlikely that they would refuse their son, the young inventor, anything that he desired. I couldn’t believe that someone so nerdy and tech-y and young could be the killer, of his brother-in-law no less. And the invention he was working on sounded very cool. I wanted his idea to succeed. I wanted to continue to believe in it – and in him.

But it was at least possible that he planned all this – and that having Rita be a suspect and take the fall for it was part of the plan. And Roger didn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder, as far as I knew. Rita told me that he had said he had gone to his room and was reading things on his laptop on there. True, his internet browsing records showed he had accessed some online forums on electric cars about 5 minutes before George's body was found – but that was plenty of time to step out of his room and push George to his death.

Now that he was gone, missing, that probably made it more likely that he was the perpetrator, in the eyes of the police. But for me, somehow, knowing that he was so shocked at the discovery of the affair that he took off, made him less likely to be the plotting mastermind of such a scheme. Maybe he was just scared, suspicious that his sister was a murderer? Or just confused with everything that happened?

I sat for a long time at the kitchen table, trying to figure it out. Then I got hungry, and got out the pot of chicken soup I made over the weekend – one of my few attempts at cooking, and warmed up a bowl of it in the microwave. I sat down to eat, and Bitty, following the smell, galloped from the bedroom, jumped onto the table and was plotting to stick her nose into it. Now with the weather getting colder, she was busy trying to put on weight, and was a lot more interested in my food. I was a softie who deserved to struggle with cat interest in my food, since I allowed her onto the kitchen table in the first place. So I ate, using me free hand to try to keep cat whiskers out of my soup.

18

I rummaged in my closet and pulled out a black polo shirt, with a giant “Security Shield” sign on the left side of the chest. It was given out at work to all participants in a big, important, and crazy security project (got to love the tech companies and their fondness for giving out logo-wear to employees!). We worked non-stop for three months, and managed to launch the new set of security features on time. The polo was far from stylish, but on this occasion it looked generic enough to help me pass for a security guard of an office building.

Next – I found some black pants and a black belt; tucked in my shirt to complete the look (now I looked sufficiently shapeless), and finally fished out a baseball cap with the same “Security Shield” logo and put on sneakers.

The low grey office park buildings looked just like other office park buildings, and gave the same impression of compartmentalized efficiency. This one contained a chess academy run by a Ukrainian emigrant, an Indian deli, a personal trainer’s office, what looked like someone trying to be a CPA / financial adviser, and finally Ba-Ele Tech Inc.

As I really didn’t think I could find Roger any faster than police or a professional investigator would, I decided for the time being to assume that he was not in danger,  and not go looking for him explicitly; and instead try to get the rest of the known facts to fit into some sort of a theory.

I drove around the complex and the next office park across the street as well – no white BMW in the parking lot in either place.

I parked at the far end of the row and pulled the baseball cap low over my eyes, popped a stick of chewing gum into my mouth, and leisurely, like someone who is on her feet all day and walking the same route, chewing the gum in rhythm with my steps, walked out. The most difficult things to disguise, in general, are a person’s back and walk, and I was hoping that adding the gum-chewing was changing the cadence of my gait to make it unrecognizable at a casual glance. I wanted my entire demeanor to project the boredom of someone doing the same thing day in and day out, like a guard in an office park. If someone saw me or a security camera recorded a video of my walking past, I was hoping that it would have been un-recognizable as being me.

I knew, from what Roger had told me and from driving by the office complex the previous week and not seeing his car, that Roger normally wouldn’t show up in the office before 10:30. It was barely 7:30 am on Wednesday.

Of course, he was missing and not answering his phone, but I still preferred to be careful. Not to mention – there was no reason to be observed by more people than necessary. So I chose an early time for my visit.

I saw no activity at the Indian deli or the chess academy, but the personal trainer had a couple of Porsches parked in front – belonging to those go-getters that, I imagined, got up early, worked out hard and went on to make oodles of money throughout their day. No cars were in front of the CPA / financial adviser. I was probably taking too many precautions with my disguise – but you never know. If Roger was here, either because he was hiding, or because Rita didn’t tell me the truth, my dress-up might have allowed me to not be immediately recognized if spotted, and to make my getaway. And playing detective with this cloak-and-dagger stuff was fun! Doing this gave me a mission to accomplish today, and distracted me from thinking about the reality of the murder.

Walking along the row of the doors of the office park and chewing my gum, I discretely kept an eye out for their security systems and saw none. The door to Ba-Ele Tech Inc didn’t have a camera or any special security system on it either. I stood by the door and listened to any noises inside. Not hearing any for about two minutes I walked up to the lock, pulled on gloves and got out a set of lock picks. I got them at DefCon two years ago, and I brought with me today specifically for the purpose of gaining entry into the office. (Working in computer security, my job sent me to BlackHat and DefCon regularly, and I had picked up some interesting skills in the process – including attending a long session on how to pick locks. Time had come to put my knowledge into practice.) I stood outside for 3 minutes, working on getting the door opened. Finally the lock clicked. I opened the door just a crack and paused, listening for a siren, or a beep, or anything indicating that a security alarm was activated. Silence.

I counted to 30, didn’t hear anything except my heart beating madly, and went in.

This was my first time “breaking and entering”. I closed the glass door behind me, took a deep breath and looked around.

I was in a small office. The room had posters on the walls of several super-cars and car diagrams, including a big one of Tesla Model S, a small desk and 2 chairs, and a locked filing cabinet. There was no desktop computer, but there was a monitor on the desk – likely, Roger connected it to his laptop when he came here. There was no phone on the desk – any calls to the start-up probably just went to Roger’s cell phone.

Behind the desk was another door. I came close and studied it: this one had serious locks, and what looked like an active security system. From the shape of the building, I knew that the space behind that door was big enough for a 6-car garage. It was clear that this wasn’t used only as a physical address of the start-up; Roger actually did his work on the premises, in the area beyond that door. I sniffed the air. I didn’t know what to expect – a whiff of something burning, of some acidic smoke perhaps? – but in any case didn’t smell anything of the kind. I decided that so far there was no reason for me to try to get in there. I doubted that Roger was hiding there, but in case he was, I didn’t want a confrontation right now. I switched my attention to the filing cabinet, and carefully picked its lock.

The grey light from the outside filtered through the outer glass door, so I did not turn the ceiling lights on.

I pulled out several drawers of the file cabinet, saw some files inside, took them out and flipped through them. Second from the top was a manila folder labeled “Finances”. I sat down on the cheap black office chair, and started reading through it. The adrenaline from being in the place illegally kept me focused (otherwise, accounting has always bored me to tears, and would have this time as well).

I saw that the rent on this office was pre-paid in advance for a year (and had another 9 months remaining). The funding for the enterprise was coming from George's account, with several checks deposited in the last severals months: regularly, one per month, the last one at the beginning of September. I noticed that neither Roger, nor George, nor John was paid any salary from the Ba-Ele Tech Inc so far – making the start-up’s only expenses the rest for the office (relatively cheap for the area), some office products (like the monitor on the desk), and the majority of money going into buying supplies for Roger's experiments. I read through the supply lists and order forms – things from hardware stores, some other harder-to-find stuff bought on Amazon, and so on.

Whoever did their accounting kept good records. I speculated for a second on who that was. Roger? John? George himself could have done it, but I doubted he had the time. Vinay had said that George kept things to do with this start-up “pretty close to the vest”, so I didn’t think that they employed an accountant. A quick search on LinkedIn on my phone told me that Ba-Ele Tech Inc didn't have a formal CFO.

When my phone alarm, which I had set for 20 minutes, started vibrating in my pocket, I nearly jumped up a foot into the air, startled. It was time to go – I didn't want to overstay my welcome and get noticed.

I took photos of the book-keeping and incorporation records with my phone, carefully put everything back, got up, moved the chair I was sitting on. I took one last look around, walked out and locked the door behind me.

As I drove on and the rush from picking a lock, breaking in and ruffling through drawers dissipated, I realized that I felt pretty bad about what I had just done – breaking into Roger’s office made me feel dirty in some way, since it was a violation of the kid’s trust. I felt that it impinged on his ideas and his dream, and made the world less trusting and magical, somehow. I was surprised by the negative feelings in me. I still thought of him as a college kid. He was about 12 years younger than me, and still had stars in his eyes.

When I got to work (early, to make up for my absences the previous couple of days), I left the baseball cap in my car, and un-tucked my polo shirt. Now I looked just like any other engineer fond of free “swag” with the company product name on it. I had a bunch of code reviews from my colleagues that accumulated over the last several days, awaiting my sign-off; I got through all of them before my colleagues came in. The feeling of peering through grey unappetizing soup – which I recognized as the feeling of disgust with myself – persisted. I worked on to overcome it.

I dove into my research on a new computer virus that recently surfaced in Iowa; the signature was similar to a loose band of Eastern European hackers my firm had been tracking for a while.