“All right. Then there’s your
wife, or almost ex-wife. The only reason I can see that she would have an
interest in your dying now is the fact that she knows she won’t get anything
once the divorce is final other than what’s in the settlement.” Fairchild
turned to look at Casey. “Will she make out well when that happens?”
Smiling slightly he replied,
“Not as well as she probably thinks she will.” He paused when Duke tried to
pull his arm off to get to a cat sitting on a neighbor’s front porch hissing at
him. The two had an adversarial relationship since the cat knew Duke couldn’t
get to her.
“My brother’s partner is a
lawyer,” Casey continued once they were well away from the cat. “He helped me
move substantial amounts of cash out of the country while making it appear on
the books that my business was bringing in less money. That legitimized the
apparent loss of funds.”
Fairchild nodded. “How long
ago did that happen?”
“The majority of it
six months ago more or less, when I decided that my marriage was probably going to be a thing
of the past very soon. Sammy and whoever he had helping him know what their
doing so the money’s untouchable except by me.”
“And him, as he set it up,”
Fairchild pointed out.
“I suppose that’s possible
since he’d have the information but why would he take the chance? It’s not as
if he and Bing need more money than they have already.”
“You might be surprised what
someone will do if they think they can get their hands on a sizable chunk of
change, and if you were to die he’s the only one who could touch it, the only
one who knows about it.”
“Not true. I told Bing a
couple of weeks ago, right after Kathy kicked me out of our house.”
Fairchild made note of that,
tapping the tip of his pen on the notebook afterwards. “There’s no end of
people who might have a reason to want you dead. I suppose you should be happy
that whoever is trying to do this wants to make it look like an accident, or in
the last case like suicide. Otherwise you could have someone taking potshots at
you from rooftops.”
Casey couldn’t help it; he
quickly glanced at the roofs around them. “Not a pleasant idea. Maybe I should
just donate everything to charity.”
“That could take some time,”
Fairchild replied seriously, “and give the person doing this even more incentive
to see you dead quickly.”
“I suppose. Is that the end
of the list, I hope?”
“Other than Mr. Harman.”
“Thomas? No way. He’s too,
to be honest too prissy to even think of doing something like this.”
“Mr. Rothem, believe me when
I say there isn’t anyone who wouldn’t kill someone else if the incentive was
right. And owning a business like yours would be quite the incentive.”
“I guess,” Casey said
dejectedly.
“Don’t worry, we’re going to
catch this person before he or she succeeds.”
“Your words to God’s ear. Is
there anything else you wanted to tell me?”
Fairchild nodded. “Yes, one
more thing.”
No comments:
Post a Comment