Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13)

by Jenna Bennett

  “What’ll happen now?” I wanted to know.

  Tim leaned forward. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I had a feeling I knew where this was going, too. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Figure out what happened,” Tim said.

  “How do you expect me to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Do... detective things.”

  “I’m not a detective.” But that brought up a good question. “Have you called the police?”

  “Of course not,” Tim said.

  “Why not? Someone’s stolen five hundred thousand dollars. Why wouldn’t you report it?”

  “Because the email came from here,” Tim said. “From inside LB&A. I can’t prove that I didn’t send it. I know I didn’t, but I can’t prove it. I can’t prove that anyone else didn’t send it, either. Someone did. Someone we work with.”

  That was an uncomfortable thought. That someone we worked with, someone we saw every day, was capable of stealing five hundred thousand dollars. Of taking Magnolia Houston’s money and ripping off poor, old Miss Harper, who was now stuck in an assisted living facility somewhere with no money to pay for it.

  And not only that, but was willing to implicate us—Tim and the company—in the scam.

  “Who do you suspect?” I asked Tim.

  He shook his head.

  “Well, how do you know I didn’t do it?” Since he was asking me for help, I had to assume I was off the suspect list.

  “You married a TBI agent,” Tim said, checking reasons off on his fingers. “Your best friend is a cop.”

  My best friend was actually a housewife and mother in North Carolina, married to a plastic surgeon with a couple of kids in tow. But she was my best friend from high school. High school was a long time ago. So for all intents and purposes, maybe Detective Tamara Grimaldi was my current best friend. She’d been my maid of honor at the wedding, not Charlotte.

  Funny, I hadn’t really thought of it that way before.

  “And you come from a family of lawyers,” Tim added. “Your brother’s a lawyer. Your sister’s a lawyer. Your brother-in-law is a lawyer. Your father was a lawyer. Your grandfather...”

  “I get it. And you’re right. I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it.” And not just because I’m married to a TBI agent, and my best friend is a cop, and I come from a family of lawyers. Stealing is wrong. Taking advantage of people is wrong. I was brought up to be better than that.

  “So you’ll help me figure out who did?”

  I guess I would. I didn’t honestly care a whole lot about Magnolia Houston’s half a million dollars—all she had to do was film herself in some risqué position and upload the video to YouTube and watch the dollars roll in to recoup it—but my heart went out to Miss Harper. After spending her life in the family home, taking care of it to the best of her ability, and then having Tim come along and convince her to sell it... well, the last thing she needed, was this kind of mess.

  “Isn’t DeWitts insured against something like this?”

  “I’m sure they are,” Tim said. “But they should have double-checked the email before paying out the money. Since they didn’t, the insurance company may refuse to pay. They pay for losses when it’s nobody’s fault, but this was gross negligence on DeWitts’ part. And that’s probably why they’re trying to pass it off onto me. Because the insurance won’t cover it and they don’t want to have to pay out-of-pocket.”

  I nodded. “And if the insurance won’t pay, and DeWitts won’t pay, and you won’t pay—”

  “I shouldn’t have to pay!”

  “—and I’m sure Magnolia Houston won’t want to pay again—”

  Tim shook his head.

  “—then Miss Harper is the one who’s out of luck here.”

  Tim nodded, trying not to look relieved. “So you’ll do it?”

  “I have no idea what to do,” I told him. “I’m not an investigator. I don’t know where to start, or how to go on from there. But I’ll see what I can dig up. We can’t let that poor old lady lose her house and her money because some sleezebag thought he’d rip her off.”

  Tim shook his head, looking pious.

  I leaned forward. “So tell me who you suspect.”

  TWO

  “Nobody!” Tim exclaimed, scooting back in his chair as if I had launched a personal attack on him.

  “Are you sure? If it was someone from here, there has to be someone you think is a more likely suspect than someone else.”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “Who do you know who could use half a million dollars?”

  “Everybody,” Tim said.

  I nodded. Too broad a question. “Who do you know who could use it and might steal to get it?”

  Tim hesitated.

  “You know everything that goes on here at the firm,” I coaxed. Tim has an ego, and he likes for it to be stroked. “You sign every check that’s paid out. You know exactly who is and isn’t making money.”

  “You’re not,” Tim said, unable to resist getting a little dig in.

  I nodded in acknowledgement. No, I wasn’t. “But as you’ve already established, you don’t suspect me. So there has to be someone else. Unless there’s a chance the email didn’t come from inside LB&A?”

  “Lane DeWitt said it did,” Tim said.

  But Lane DeWitt was probably not an expert on cyber crime. And he had every incentive to make Tim believe the email could only have originated here, at LB&A. That didn’t mean it was true.

  “If you want me to do this,” I told him, “I’m going to need access to everyone’s email. And everyone’s paperwork. Tax forms, sales, commissions paid and received. Do you do any kind of background check on people when they come to you and want to join LB&A?”

  “No,” Tim said, sounding bothered that I asked. “They’re licensed real estate agents. The state makes sure they have clean records.”

  Yes and no. You can’t get a real estate license if you have committed a crime in what they call a ‘substantially related field.’ To quote the Real Estate Licensing and Registration Act, § 501: “Licenses shall be granted only to persons who bear a good reputation for honesty, trustworthiness, integrity, and competence to transact the business of a broker or salesperson.”

  So anyone with a conviction for fraud, for instance, or embezzlement, or anything like that, shouldn’t expect to get a real estate license.

  Anyone with a conviction for drunk driving or fishing without a license, on the other hand, might not have anything to worry about. There’s nothing ‘substantially related’ about driving under the influence, or catching illicit catfish, and selling real estate.

  “So you don’t know whether anyone here has a criminal record.”

  “I know the state of Tennessee gave them all real estate licenses,” Tim said. “That’s always been good enough for me.”

  Trust is a nice thing. However— “You should consider running criminal background checks on everyone before you take them on.”

  Tim looked mutinous.

  “And we should definitely run them now. If someone who works here has a conviction for any kind of crime, that might be who’s behind this. Someone who’s been inclined to one kind of crime, might be inclined to another.”

  “Or not,” Tim said.

  Or not. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. And some people go to prison and serve their time and come out different. Just look at Rafe.

  But... “Fine,” I said. “We don’t have to run background checks on anyone. Do I at least have your permission to look at everyone’s email accounts and paperwork?”

  Tim sighed. “I guess. If it will help you find who did this. Talk to Brittany about getting you what you need.”

  “Is Brittany off the suspect list?”

  Tim opened his mouth. And didn’t say anything.

  “Because Brittany could probably use that half a million as much as anyone else. Maybe more.” She was the receptionist, and salaried. E
veryone else worked on commission. Something that can be a blessing as well as a curse. Brittany got a salary every couple of weeks, and could count on that amount, even if it—probably—didn’t amount to a whole lot. The agents, meanwhile, only got paid when they had a closing. And while it’s possible to make a nice chunk of change as a realtor—Tim was doing quite well, and so were several of the others—it’s also possible to be like me, and make less than Brittany.

  Really, sometimes I wonder why I bother. When the baby came, maybe I’d just quit real estate and stay home and write that bodice ripper I’ve been toying with in the back of my head.

  “You can sit at Brittany’s desk when she goes to lunch,” Tim said. “I’ll let Heidi know.”

  Gee, thanks.

  Heidi Hoppenfeldt usually did the honors at the reception desk whenever Brittany wasn’t around. She started out at LB&A (back in the days when it was Walker Lamont Realty) as Brenda Puckett’s protégée, but after Brenda was killed, Tim made her his assistant instead. I’m pretty sure Brenda was grooming Heidi for real estate greatness, although Tim uses her more as general dogsbody and Jill of all trades. She’s still here, so she must not mind.

  On the other hand, that might make her a candidate for Tim’s little problem. If she resented his treatment of her, and she needed money, she might have felt it was poetic justice to put him on the hot seat by using his email address and getting him in trouble with DeWitts.

  “I’ll do that,” I said, since it would give me access to Brittany’s computer and all the records on it. “And give Heidi a break.”

  Maybe she’d appreciate it. She and I haven’t ever gotten along especially well, either.

  Tim nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing I can think of at the moment. If you hear anything else from DeWitts or Miss Harper’s attorney, let me know.”

  Tim assured me he would. I braced my hands on the arms of the chair and heaved myself upright. “I’ll be in my office until lunch.”

  “I’ll let Brittany know you’ll be relieving her,” Tim said.

  “Maybe you should give Heidi a project, too, so she doesn’t wonder about the change. Send her on an errand or something.”

  “Good idea.” Tim smiled approvingly. “You know, Savannah, you’re smarter than you look.”

  “Thank you,” I said, since there was no point in saying anything else. And after all, he must think I was reasonably smart, since he’d asked my help with this. He wouldn’t have if he’d thought me dumb as a box of rocks. Or so I assumed.

  * * *

  I RETIRED to my office and started doing the stuff I’d come to LB&A to do in the first place.

  A week or so ago, I had signed up for lead generation software, to help me find more buyers and sellers. Between you and me, real estate hadn’t turned out to be the moneymaker I had hoped it would, when I got my license to practice last year. I haven’t sold many houses, and it’s not always easy to find new clients. In an effort to change that, I’d gone in with several other agents on this lead generation software that supposedly would fix the problem. Every morning now, I’d sign into my email and see if there was a New Lead! message. If there was, I’d have to contact the new lead and introduce myself and see how I might be able to help them. Nine times out of ten, they were looking for rentals. I don’t help people find places to rent. The tenth time, the house they were interested in was under contract. At that point, I’d take their contact info and offer to send them information about other houses with the same criteria—price, size, location—and that would be it. I’d do a search for like houses, send it off, and sit back and wait. In the five days I had had said lead generation software, I’d gotten four leads. No one had called me back a second time.

  I went through the motions again. Ten minutes later, with the list of properties dispatched to someone I’d probably never hear from again, I sat back on my chair, just as Heidi walked into the lobby and stopped at Brittany’s desk.

  “I have to go to the office store. We’re out of manila envelopes.”

  I glanced through the gap in the door, as Brittany furrowed her brow and tucked the wad of bubblegum into her cheek so she could talk. “Are you sure? There were plenty yesterday.”

  “I checked,” Heidi said. “Tim said that Savannah can take over while you go to lunch.”

  She glanced toward my door. I’m pretty sure the look was smug.

  “Of course he did,” I said, and tried to sound as if this was the first I’d heard of it.

  They both waited. I sighed. “Fine. Let me know when you’re ready to go, Brittany.”

  Brittany smirked. Heidi waddled off down the hall toward the parking lot. I tried not to think unkind thoughts about the way she moved, since I was getting to the waddling stage myself.

  It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes later that Brittany got up from her desk and pulled her purse out of a drawer. “I’m going.”

  “Seriously?” I glanced at my watch. “It’s ten-fifteen.” Who goes to lunch at ten-fifteen?

  “Appointment,” Brittany said.

  “Convenient.” I got to my feet and walked into the lobby. “I guess I’ll be manning the desk for longer than an hour, then.”

  Brittany smirked. “You can always call Tim if you have to pee.”

  I’m pregnant. I always have to pee.

  And then she was gone. The door slammed shut, and Brittany trucked past the window at a good clip, a big, self-congratulatory grin on her face.

  I stuck my tongue out—just in case anyone was watching—before taking her place behind the desk. And just in case she realized she had forgotten something and decided to come back, I waited five minutes before I turned to the computer and started searching.

  It was all there. Paystubs and salaries, gross sales and commissions. Home addresses and social security numbers. If I’d been inclined to larceny, I could have had a field day with all this information.

  Maybe the guilty party hadn’t been Brittany after all. She’d had all this at her fingertips for over a year, and hadn’t done anything with it.

  She took home an OK, but hardly generous salary. More than I made, for sure, since I was dependent on my non-existent commissions, and only got paid when I sold a house. But she didn’t make a lot. A few of the other agents were in the same boat I was, and didn’t make much, either. They were people I hardly ever saw, so they may have had other jobs and practiced real estate only on weekends. Or perhaps they had a business of renovating houses, and only sold the houses they renovated. One every three months or so. Either way, they were in the slim-to-none category along with me and Brittany.

  Heidi Hoppenfeldt did better than I thought she would be. I had assumed, since she mostly worked as an assistant to Tim, that she was salaried, and that the salary was small, like Brittany’s. But while that was true, Heidi got bonuses. Whenever Tim had a closing, Heidi got a percentage of Tim’s proceeds. Not a big percentage, by any means. But since Tim is one of those agents who sells a lot of houses, many of them expensive, Heidi did all right.

  That didn’t take her out of contention for being the guilty party in this case, of course. It just meant that if she was the guilty party, she wasn’t motivated solely by money, but perhaps equally by getting Tim in trouble.

  And speaking of Tim... he made more money than most of us put together. He got paid for being the broker, and being in charge of us all—the place where the buck stopped. That was done with a percentage of what the rest of us pulled in. And then he made his own money in addition to that, and plenty of it. He certainly had no reason to want to steal Magnolia Houston’s half a million dollars... not to mention how bad the whole thing made him look. And besides, if he’d been behind it, chances were he wouldn’t have asked me to investigate. Tim might not think a whole lot of my abilities in the real estate realm, but he couldn’t deny that I’d solved my share of mysteries. And that was in addition to my special agent husband and my friend the homicide detective. If he’d had
a hand in this, I doubted he would have involved me. Too risky, just in case I did figure it out and pointed the finger at him.

  Several of the others had healthy incomes, too. I looked at their 1099s for last year, and their income so far for the current year, and was envious. Those people went down to the bottom of my mental list, since they had no need to steal. They were making plenty of money honestly.

  Although that thought made me sit back and think. What were the reasons why someone might have done this?

  And speaking of mental lists: it was getting a little disorganized up there in my head, so I pulled a legal pad out of Brittany’s desk drawer, grabbed a pen from the mug beside the computer monitor, and proceeded to take notes.

  So what were the reasons—financial or otherwise—someone might have done this?

  The need—or desire—for money was the obvious number one reason. Someone either needed or wanted Magnolia Houston’s half a million dollars.

  There was a difference between needing and wanting—and I don’t mean the obvious one.

  Someone who needed the money, didn’t have enough money of their own. Either didn’t make enough, or had some unexpected expense they didn’t know how to cover. Accident, illness, or maybe just a new house.

  Someone who wanted it... well, that was a different story.

  Someone might just want more than they had, not because they needed more, but just because it was there and they could figure out a way to take it. Some people just don’t have a very clear concept of ‘enough.’

  On the other hand, it might be someone who didn’t want Magnolia to have it. Taking the money away from her was the goal, rather than appropriating it for themselves.

  Someone who didn’t think she deserved it? Someone who shared my opinion of her ‘talents’ and my incredulousness that she could make money—and such a lot of money—bouncing her boobs in front of a camera?

  I guess I’d need to talk to Magnolia—or have Tim talk to Magnolia—about who might have had it in for her in a financial way. Or maybe not even in a financial way. Someone who just didn’t like her, and wanted to hit her somewhere where it might hurt.