by D. L. Wood
“Really?” he pressed, surprised at her quick capitulation. “No argument? I know how strongly you feel about it.”
She shook her head. “I guess I just don’t think it’s the best way to protect them anymore.”
His shoulders relaxed. “Good. And, speaking of news, you’re not the only one that has some.”
The faint lines around her eyes tightened in disbelief. “What…you’ve got something other than being dragged off and beaten to a pulp?”
Despite the fact that it hurt to talk, he couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.
“Do I ever.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
Jacob Sims hardly lifted his gaze to meet his father’s, who sat across the table from him in the cramped space that served as a visitation room at the Tri-County Jail. Crowding it further was Trip, who leaned against the wall behind Jacob, his arms crossed.
“You skip school to be here?” Kurt Sims barked, his gruff tone reeking of accusation.
“No, Dad,” Jacob muttered. “School’s out at two thirty. I came right after.” His voice was languid, his posture deflated.
“You can’t be ditching school.”
“I’m not, I’m—”
“He’s not, Mr. Sims,” Trip interrupted protectively, speaking over Jacob. “He hasn’t missed a day so far.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Kurt snapped, glaring at Trip, before once again directing his ire at Jacob. “Why’d you bring him anyway? Can’t stand to be with me for five minutes on your own?”
“No, Dad, Trip’s my ride. The car stopped working two days ago—”
“What? The car did what? Why didn’t you say something?”
“To who? You can’t do anything about it from in here. And Aunt Meghan has enough to worry about.”
“Did you tell Adams?”
“No, Dad, I didn’t because it’s not Holt’s problem. He’s busy enough taking care of you.”
“Adams is doing his job.”
“It’s not a job if you don’t get paid,” Trip grumbled under his breath, just low enough to avoid Sims’s hearing.
“Tell Adams. I can’t have you missing practice because of the car.”
“Fine.” Jacob’s reply was a whisper, barely audible.
“What?”
“I said fine,” Jacob repeated sharply.
Sims adjusted in his seat, running a hand through his unkempt hair. “So how’s practice? You still working hard? You can’t slack on my account.”
“I’m not slacking,” Jacob said, hardly looking at his father. “I’ve been every day.”
“I need you to keep it up. Get that scholarship. Your future depends on it, and I won’t have you losing out because you got weak.” Kurt reached across the table and squeezed Jacob’s arm. When he let go, a telltale red impression lingered. “You hear me?”
“I’m not weak, Dad,” Jacob said, jerking his arm back and shoving it under the table.
“You’d better not be. And I don’t want you coming back here. You don’t need the distraction.”
“I just wanted to see how you were.”
“I’ll be fine unless you ruin everything while I’m in here. So get it together,” Kurt ordered, standing and knocking on the door to signal the guard that he was ready to go. Within seconds, the guard had opened the door and stood aside to allow Kurt to exit. Kurt stepped into the hall, catching Jacob’s eye one last time. “Don’t let me down, kid,” he growled. “Don’t you dare let me down.”
* * * * *
“Tell me.” Chloe stared expectantly at Holt. He was clearly exhausted, sore and hurting, but the hint of fire in his eyes told her that he must be on to something.
“So, like I told you before, after Sims was charged with Donner’s murder, I had my P.I. start looking into things—into Donner, his business, any problems he had— pretty standard stuff for a charge like that. The story is that Donner, through Donner Enterprises, has been in the real estate development business for over twenty years. Typically, what he does is buy a piece of property in a prime location—one that’s either already empty or he demolishes whatever’s on it—then he constructs a huge commercial development. He fills it with tenants, gets it nearly profitable, then sells it. He reaps a balloon profit and dumps the burden of managing the property. You can imagine the kind of revenue that generates after doing it a couple dozen times.”
“If it’s successful. If the property’s marketable once it’s developed.”
“Exactly. And for years Donner was extremely successful at it. He built all across Tennessee—Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville—and also in smaller locales that had an established or growing tourist industry, like—”
“Like Franklin.”
“Right. Donner made tens of millions and because he was the sole owner of Donner Enterprises, he didn’t have to share that with anyone. Now, he did typically have a couple of private investors in each project, as well as short term development loans from various banks to float the projects while he held onto them.”
“Which is pretty much what his people told us.”
“Right, except that starting about five years ago, Donner stopped being so successful.”
“What happened?”
“Whatever crystal ball he had been using to select his properties must’ve cracked because he had three in a row that went under.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. So by the time he covers his losses on those and pays his investors back, Donner Enterprises is cash poor. And now, he can’t secure the same kind of bank loans or private investors for future projects, because his track record has been damaged. Now, according to Tom, my P.I., despite whatever financial troubles Donner started having, he still maintained an impressive personal asset portfolio. His house in Franklin, one in Vail, and one in Key West, not to mention an apartment in New York, a yacht—you get the picture.”
“I imagine Claire Donner needs a pretty big allowance, too.”
“I’m sure. But, the thing is, when Donner started having his financial troubles, he didn’t change any of his spending habits. He didn’t sell anything. As far as we can tell, he kept everything and kept spending as if nothing was happening.”
“So he’s got lots going out and nothing coming in.”
“Less than nothing, actually, since the properties continued to cost him until he sold them. So what does a real estate developer do when he’s got to make some money, pay back existing investors to avoid bankruptcy, and rebuild his business, but no one will lend him anything?”
Chloe shrugged.
“He gets creative financing.” When Chloe seemed to struggle to catch on, he continued. “Okay, so apparently, just after things started going sideways for Donner Enterprises, the company started successively buying little pieces of run-down property here and there all over the state. About half a dozen that Tom could find, and that’s just in Tennessee. Who knows if or how many he bought elsewhere. Anyway, they were all undeveloped tracts or had buildings begging to be demolished. Typically, they would be located in urban areas, failing parts of town, but on the edge of some area of redevelopment. Far enough away to be really cheap, but close enough to take the chance that someday the property would become part of the advancing renewal, and the value would shoot sky high.”
“How did buying more property that he would have to wait to sell help him in the short term?”
“Because each time, usually less than thirty days after he purchased it, someone else would swoop in and buy it from him for a lot more than he paid. Quadruple his purchase price in some cases. So suddenly, he’s not cash poor anymore and he can afford to start and flip more projects. The money would have kept Donner and Donner Enterprises alive.”
“That seems awfully coincidental.”
“And that’s not all,” Holt agreed. “Tom did a little bit more digging on the properties he was flipping. Turns out that within six months of each of those sales Donner made, all of the properties, except for one, were
bought a third time, by other corporations, again at significant premiums.”
“Why did the values keep going up so fast?”
“That’s just it. They shouldn’t have. As far as we can tell there would be no reason for anybody to want to pay so much for any of them.”
“So what, you think Donner was doing something illegal?”
“Well, I don’t know about illegal, but something was definitely up.”
“So who were the buyers?”
Holt smirked. “This is where is gets even more interesting. The buyers were all corporations chartered in the Caribbean.”
“That sounds sketchy.”
“Mm-hmm. And, unfortunately for us, that’s as far as we can take it, because it’s pretty hard to get information on corporations based there. Which is usually the reason people incorporate there in the first place.” He smiled. “But I’ve got a theory.”
“Of course you do.”
“Imagine you’re Donner, and your business is failing. You need money, but a traditional bank won’t lend to you anymore because your balance sheet is debt heavy and you’re too high of a risk. You can’t get it from your current investors because you don’t want them to know there’s a problem. You can’t attract new investors, because your most recent projects have failed and trying to get capital that way would risk being exposed to your current investors. So, instead, you go to an alternative lending source.”
“What’s an ‘alternative lending source’?” she asked. In response, he raised his eyebrows, as if encouraging her to think creatively. She did. “What, like a loan shark?”
Holt nodded. “Just follow me, here. Donner goes to some outfit for a loan. This outfit agrees, but only at a very hefty rate of interest.”
“Okay,” Chloe said, following his train of thought.
“But this lender has two issues. One, the lender might run into some trouble enforcing that kind of interest depending on usury laws. He might find himself unable to enforce his claim on the interest at all. But that’s really not the primary problem.”
“What is?”
“This kind of lender wouldn’t tolerate default. So if he has a customer that ends up not being able to pay the money back with the interest, or even looks like he won’t be able to, this lender would take very serious and probably violent steps to prevent that from happening.”
“Like what? Breaking legs or something?”
“Maybe. Maybe worse. Depends how much money is at stake. But think about it. If you’re that lender, and you want to be able to enforce collection in that manner, then you’ll want to keep the loan quiet so that if you do have to press your right to collect and that customer ends up in the hospital—”
“Or the morgue—”
“Or the morgue, you don’t want your name out there as a potential suspect. So what do you do? You hide the loan as a real estate transaction. It lets you move lots of money very quickly for seemingly legitimate reasons. The customer buys a piece of crud property for next to nothing. You then buy it from him through some shell corporation or straw man individual for a whole lot more than he paid for it.”
“And that’s the loan,” Chloe surmised.
“Exactly. Then you give the customer six months or whatever to pay you back. How does he do that? He buys the property back from you through some other shell corporation at an even higher price, say, double what you paid him. The lender gets the principal back with interest and the other guy got his loan, albeit at a very high price. And if for some reason he can’t pay the loan back when it comes time, the lender can exert all the pressure he wants because nobody will ever know about the loan—”
“Or suspect that the lender has a motive for murder, or maiming the guy or whatever they do to him.”
“If it comes to that.”
“And you think that’s what happened here? You think Donner borrowed money in some sort of scheme and then didn’t pay it back, and the lender, whoever it was, got to him?”
“Well, I don’t have any proof. It’s just a theory really.”
“It’s pretty far-fetched, Holt.
“Yeah, I agree. But there’s a couple of really interesting things. Remember I said there was one piece of property that didn’t sell for a second time within the six-month period?”
“So?”
“So—the six-month period ended three weeks before Donner died.”
“You’re saying there was a payment due?”
“Maybe. So think about it. Sims files his lawsuit and drags the whole project into court. So now, Donner can’t flip the property because it’s tied up in legal proceedings. If he can’t flip it, maybe he can’t pay the lender back. And maybe the lender gets tired of waiting.”
“Well, if they kill him, they never get paid. So that doesn’t make much sense.”
“Unless you’re convinced he either can’t or won’t ever pay and you want to send a message to other customers.”
“But even if you’re right, who’s the lender? Do you think Banyon or maybe even Vettner-Drake is involved?”
“That I don’t know. I don’t have anything connecting them to it. Yet.”
“Well, it doesn’t do you any good to have a theory without anyone to point to, does it?”
“Well, yes and no. I mean, it’s awfully circumstantial, and I’m not even sure I could have any of this admitted into evidence. But if I can convince a judge that it isn’t complete speculation, even without a name, it gives the jury another option. Something else to help muddy the reasonable doubt waters for Sims.”
“But it’s just a bunch of conjecture.”
“Well, it’s a bunch of conjecture that my detective told me and within one hour I was lying in a field bleeding half to death.”
“You really think that the timing of you getting this information in relation to when those guys came after you proves that the two are connected?”
“The timing isn’t the only thing that convinced me.”
“What did?”
“Remember Joe Bellamy? The corpse?”
“Yeah…”
“According to Tom, he’s from New Jersey. Years ago he was licensed as a private investigator that did work for a lawyer up there, by the name of Richard Arjulio.” Holt took a breath, wincing slightly as he grabbed his aching ribs. “That remaining piece of property? The one that hadn’t resold in the six months? We can’t find out who the owners of the Caribbean chartered corporation are, but guess who’s listed as the U.S. agent of service?”
Chloe finally saw where this was going. “Richard Arjulio?”
“Richard Arjulio. I may not have absolute proof, but I’ve got a corpse on Donner’s property who once upon a time had a link to the lawyer who works for the corporation that bought one of the inflated value properties from Donner. It might be enough. At least, enough to create doubt in the jury’s mind.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she agreed somberly. “But I’m worried,” she said eyeing his wounds, “that it might also be enough to get you killed.”
* * * * *
When the doctor finally entered Holt’s room on rounds, Chloe slipped into the hallway outside to call Reese to update him on Holt’s situation. She could have gone upstairs to tell him in person, but she wanted to get back in to see Holt as soon as the doctor left. An orderly came around the corner pushing a gurney bearing an unconscious patient, and she pressed against the wall to avoid her toes being run over. Turning and gripping the cell phone, she strained harder to listen over the metallic rattling of the gurney’s wheels.
“And he’s okay?” Reese asked. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. They said he should be released in about half an hour.”
“And you’re done with this, okay? Right?”
“Don’t worry. We’ve already talked about it. I’m going to step back.”
“Good.”
“Look, I’m going back in there to see what the doctor says. I’ll update you if I learn anything else.”
Chloe disconnected and slid back inside Holt’s room just as the doctor walked out and nodded at her. Holt sat up a little straighter as she entered.
“He says that other than a couple of broken ribs, I’m fine.”
Chloe narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re lying.”
Holt pursed his lips in exaggerated contemplation. “Not exactly lying. Downplaying, maybe. But he did say I could go as soon as the paperwork’s done.”
Chloe checked her watch. She would have to leave in twenty minutes to pick up the kids from school. She took in Holt’s battered form once more as she resumed her spot on the edge of his bed. Concern crept in and she reached out to gently grip his arm. “Listen, I’ll do what you want and drop all this. I won’t butt in, and I will leave all the lawyering to you. But you have to be careful, too. I know you have to do what you have to do, but you can be smart about it. Safe, about it. I don’t want anything to happen to you, either.”
He eyed her with amusement. “It almost sounds like you’re worried about me.”
“Of course I’m worried about you.” Several seconds passed as she measured what she wanted to say. “I really wish you would let Sims find someone else to represent him. Is any client worth,” she gestured to his battered face, “that?”
Holt shrugged stoutly. “I like to live on the edge.”
Chloe’s lips set hard in frustration. “I mean it, Holt. You’re not taking this seriously enough. I care about what happens to you. The kids care about what happens to you.” Her eyes were bright and intently sincere. “You can’t be this cavalier about it.”
His shoulders relaxed, and he bent toward her a little. “Hey, I’m just messing around.” He placed his hand on hers and patted it gently. “It’ll be fine, I promise. This isn’t the first time I’ve been threatened over a case.”
“Is it the first time somebody actually took a crack at you?”
“Well,” he started reluctantly, “maybe. But it’s not that bad.”