“You seem to be doing okay,” I said.
“My brother and I were given good educations. I got a degree in finance and have made that work for me.”
“What about your brother?”
“He graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in civil engineering and went to work for a large homebuilder in this area. He was doing well, but when my parents sold the house and moved to Douglas, Mom’s hometown, he moved, too. Mom and Dad settled in a retirement community just outside Douglas. It was one of those places that was ahead of its time. You bought into the assisted living part and had an apartment that you could live in the rest of your life. Depending on how frail you become, they’ll increase the level of care until you need the nursing home part of it. Danny was pretty close to them, and he wanted to live near them, and I had already married and started a family here in Atlanta.”
He finished his glass of whiskey, shook the ice cubes, and was reaching for the phone when his receptionist came through the door carrying an ornate silver-plated ice bucket and stand and an unopened bottle of Scotch clamped under the arm. She placed the ice bucket in its holder and the bottle on the desk. “I’ll be leaving now,” she said, “if you don’t need anything else.”
Charles waved his hand absentmindedly. “See you tomorrow, Patrice.” He poured himself another drink.
I could tell by the light coming through the big south-facing windows that the sun was getting lower in the western sky. I had finished my second beer, but kept the bottle in my hand in a pretense of still drinking from it. I didn’t want Charles to offer me another one. I might have accepted, and I still had to drive back to the hotel. No sense in taking a chance on a drunk driving charge.
“So, what did Danny do in Douglas?” I asked.
“He started his own construction company. Going back to the roots of the family fortune, I guess.” He chuckled, but it sounded a little bitter.
“Did it work for him?”
“He did well. The company grew and he was making good money. My mom’s trust fund took care of her and Dad and Danny didn’t have a wife and kids. He actually lived pretty simply. He sent me a fair amount of money to invest for him. We got a great return, and he actually ended up pretty wealthy.”
“What about your parents?”
“Danny took good care of them. He visited regularly and I went down when I could. When they got older and ended up in the nursing facility, Danny was there every day. The trust fund that was supporting our parents would terminate with their deaths. My dad died first, and a year later, my mom followed him. Twenty-two years ago this month. There was a provision in the trust documents, something to do with tax law, that provided that at the death of the last of my parents, the trust’s principle would be distributed to their heirs, namely Danny and me.”
“A substantial sum?” I was pushing a little, but since the ice and Scotch bottle had arrived, Charles was making its contents disappear at an ever more rapid pace. I thought it was worth the try.
“Not a lot. About two hundred grand. The principle wasn’t very large to begin with, and in their final years, they’d eaten into it. The trust was set up so that they could invade the principle if they needed the money for medical purposes. I also found out that Danny was putting a lot of his money into their care. I asked him why he didn’t let me know, and he said he had enough money to last him a lifetime and I had a family to support. I waived my share of the trust so that he got all the money. He tried to talk me out of it, but I didn’t need the dough and he certainly deserved it.”
“Danny sounds like a good guy.”
“He was. Probably the best person this family has produced in ten generations. And then the bitch showed up.”
“Tell me about Olivia.”
“Wow, where to start?” He paused, took a long breath, and sat quietly. He seemed to be thinking.
“The beginning?” I asked, interrupting.
“As good a place as any, I guess. She just sort of appeared one day. I was sitting in my office downtown when Danny walked in and introduced her to me.”
“When was this?”
“About a month before he died.” He was quiet again, remembering, I guess. He took a big swallow of Scotch and reached into the ice bucket, retrieved two cubes, put them carefully into his glass, and poured more whiskey over the ice
I interrupted again. “You said she just appeared. Where did she come from?”
“Keep in mind that Danny was not very sophisticated when it came to women. He was very shy and he’d hardly ever dated. After my parents died, he stayed in Douglas and kept busy, but I never heard him mention a woman.
“Apparently, he drove up here the afternoon before he brought Olivia to my office. He was staying in a hotel. He always did that. Said he didn’t want to intrude on my family. I didn’t even know he was in town. The evening before he showed up in my office, he checked into the hotel late in the afternoon when the front desk shift was changing. Olivia was a clerk there and was about to get off work. Somehow, they ended up going out for a drink. That was the same place Danny always stayed when he was in town. Maybe he knew her from before, but I can’t imagine him asking her out for a drink. Maybe she asked him. Anyway, they went to a bar when she got off and then back to the hotel where she spent the night with him.”
“Pretty quick for a couple their age,” I said.
“I thought so. Danny was in his early forties and she looked to be the same age.”
“Did he take her back to Douglas?”
“Yeah. But first they drove over to South Carolina and got married. He called that afternoon to tell me they had gone to Anderson, just over the state line, and said their I dos. That day in my office was the last time I saw my brother. Thirty days later, Danny was dead.”
“Of what?”
“The death certificate said it was a heart attack.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“Not for a minute. We have no history of heart problems in our family, and Danny never smoked and almost never took a drink. He jogged every day, took good care of himself.”
“Was an autopsy done?”
“No. The authorities said there were no suspicious circumstances, and Olivia had the body cremated the same afternoon that he died. She didn’t even notify me. I only became aware of his death because she told the funeral home to send me the bill for the cremation. They sent it a few days later and even added the cost of the obituary in the local paper.”
“That was the first notification you got of your brother’s death?”
“Yes.”
“I read that obituary. I noticed that there was no mention of a surviving wife.”
“I asked the funeral home about that when I called about the bill. They told me that the woman who arranged for the cremation told them she was a friend and that Danny’s only living relative, me, was traveling in Europe and couldn’t be reached. Of course, that was a lie.”
“The funeral home went for that?”
“I guess so.”
“That still seems pretty thin. Did you follow up with the authorities down there?”
“Yes. I called the sheriff’s office and also talked to the medical examiner, who’s a family doc and moonlights as the ME. Neither of them found anything suspicious.”
“What about the money?” I asked.
“Gone. In those days, I was with one of the large brokerage firms. Danny had cleaned out his account the day after he got married.”
“Wouldn’t he have had to go through you to do that?”
“No. He could go to any staff member and get it done. Normally, I would have been notified when someone requested something like that, but not this time. Nobody told me about it because Danny had specifically instructed the person he’d talked to not to let me know about his closing his account. Said it was a family matter. He had the cash transferred to his account at a bank in Douglas. When I found out about his death, I looked at his account with my firm and found it closed.
That was quite a shock. And then I found out that on the same day that he closed the brokerage account, he had added Olivia’s name to his bank account, making it a joint account. By the time I discovered all this, she had already cleaned all the bank accounts out and disappeared.”
“How much money was involved?” I asked.
“Something north of a million and a half bucks. It turns out he’d sold his company to his chief assistant for a ridiculously small amount and put the cash in the same bank. He refinanced his house with a different bank and put all that money into the same joint account.”
“Olivia cleaned out the accounts.”
“Bet your ass. She did it the same day he died.”
“And disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“And you never heard from her?”
“Not directly. I did see a piece in the newspaper recently about a woman named Olivia Lathom who had become a best-selling author. I guess it might be the same woman, but who knows?”
“Did you follow up on it? Try to find out if it was the same person?”
“No. It wouldn’t change anything, and I wasn’t interested in putting myself through another emotional hurricane.”
“After Olivia and the money disappeared, did you tell the law enforcement people about it?”
“Sure, but they thought she might have left out of grief. After all, she’d only lived in Douglas for a month and had no ties there. She hadn’t even developed any friends to speak of. I figured they just didn’t want to deal with any of it, so I gave up.”
“What do you know about her background?”
“Nothing. I met her that once for about ten minutes, and never even had a conversation with her.”
“Do you remember her last name?”
“I’ve racked my brain trying to remember that, but I think Danny just introduced her as Olivia. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mention her last name. If she’d had a name from one of the old families, if she’d really grown up in Buckhead during the fifties and sixties like that newspaper article said, I think he would have mentioned it. We have a bad habit in Georgia of pegging people into the social order based on who their fathers were. We’re big on last names that mean something, or maybe just used to mean something. There are a lot of those ghosts around. Third- and fourth-generation descendants of prominent men who made a lot of money. The money’s gone, but the ghosts hang on.”
Charles finished another glass of Scotch. “I’ve talked too long and said too much, Counselor.”
“I appreciate your help, Charles. I know this can’t be fun to talk about.”
“Actually, it’s kind of cathartic, talking about it. Well, with a little help from the Scotch to loosen my tongue.” He looked at the bottle, now substantially diminished, and smiled ruefully. “Maybe more than a little Scotch, huh?”
He looked a bit confused, the mien of the truly inebriated. “Did I tell you about Danny’s son?” he asked.
“No, you didn’t. I thought Danny had never been married until he met Olivia.”
“He hadn’t, but you don’t have to get married to knock somebody up. Back when Danny was sowing his wild oats, which wasn’t until about a year or two before he met Olivia, he met a woman who worked behind the counter of one of those sex shops you see advertised on the interstate. This place was down near Valdosta, right at one of the off-ramps. God only knows what he was doing in a place like that. It was a one-night stand right after our folks died. Maybe their death set him off in some way I don’t understand, but he got her pregnant that night.”
“Do you know anything about the child?”
“Only that it was a boy and Danny took care of him. Sent money to his mother every month and visited the boy regularly.”
“Are you sure it was his son? Not somebody else’s whom the mother might have been sleeping with?”
“He was sure. He had some tests run and he showed me a picture of the boy one time when he was up here on business. The boy was the spitting image of Danny at the same age.”
“What happened to the boy’s mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever try to make contact with her or with your nephew?”
“No. I knew the boy was taken care of and I had my own family to worry about. I figured I’d just leave well enough alone.”
“How was the boy taken care of?”
“Danny set up a trust for him. Funded it with monthly donations and set up a life insurance policy that in the event of his death would be paid to the trust. The big hit came when Danny died. Two million bucks in life insurance money poured into that trust. As I said, the boy was well taken care of.”
“Do you have a name for the boy or his mom?”
“I don’t, but it’ll be in my records. I set up the trust, but I’ll have to dig for the files. They’re in storage somewhere.”
“Will you do that for me?”
“Yeah. First thing tomorrow. Is the number on your business card your cell?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll text you the information.”
The Scotch was taking hold. He was slurring his words more and couldn’t seem to focus his eyes. He kept blinking, trying to stay awake. I was ready to leave. If he forgot to text me the information about the boy and his mother, I’d call him. I picked up one of his business cards from the little holder sitting on the edge of his desk.
“Can I give you a ride home?” I asked.
“No, thanks,” he said, holding up his glass. “I think I’ll have a few more of these and call Uber. I haven’t talked about my brother’s death in a long time, Matt. Maybe it’ll help. I truly loved him and then he was ripped out of my life without even a chance to say good-bye. I think the bitch killed him, but I couldn’t prove it. That’s where the story ends, I guess. If your victim is the same woman as the one who married my brother, I hope she suffered before she died.”
“Maybe she did, Charles. Maybe she did.”
CHAPTER 24
IT WAS A little after seven the next morning when I drove the rental out of the hotel parking lot. I stopped at a McDonald’s and ordered an Egg McMuffin and coffee to go. I found my way to I-85 North and started the two-hour trip to Anderson, South Carolina, just over the Georgia state line. Traffic was heavy, a typical morning in Atlanta. I drove out of it eventually and found myself tripping along an open road at seventy-five miles per hour.
I crossed a bridge over a narrow arm of Lake Hartwell, turned off I-85, and was soon driving down Main Street in Anderson. I found the Anderson County courthouse, parked, and went to the Judge of Probate’s office. A middle-aged woman with coiffed hair and a deep southern drawl greeted me with a smile. “May I help you?”
“I’d like to find a marriage license that was issued here, probably about twenty years ago.”
“Certainly. Do you have the couple’s names?”
“One of them.”
“That’ll probably do.”
“The groom’s name was Danny Lathom. I’m not sure about the bride’s name.”
She turned to a computer, typed on the keyboard, and said, “Here it is. May 16th, twenty years ago. He married a woman named Olivia Travers.”
“You mean I could have done this online without bothering you?”
She smiled. “No, sir. We’re not online and we’ve only digitized the index. If you want a copy of the marriage license, we’ll have to get it off microfiche. It’ll cost you five dollars.”
“Would that take long?”
“No. Since I have the date, I can get it for you in a jiffy. Well, maybe two or three jiffies, but it’s pretty quick.”
“Would you mind?”
“No, sir. Give me a minute.” She disappeared into the back of the office. I pulled a five-dollar bill from my wallet and waited, wondering who Olivia Travers really was. At least I had a last name. But, what if it wasn’t the name she’d been born with? She’d been in her forties when she met Danny and the chances were good that she’d
been married before. Oh well, this was a start. The clerk returned, handed me the document, and I handed her the five.
“I’ve got a question for you,” I said. “What kind of IDs do you require from people trying to get a marriage license?”
“A birth certificate, if possible, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t have one. Twenty years ago, a driver’s license would have sufficed. The clerks back then weren’t too particular, especially if the applicants were from out of state. We used to get a lot of people from Georgia coming up here because we didn’t have a waiting period between the issuance of the license and the wedding. The clerks would issue the license and perform the ceremony, all in about ten minutes.”
I looked at the license the clerk handed me. I couldn’t see anything that looked out of the ordinary. It was a fairly uncomplicated document, simply showing the names of the bride and groom and the date of the issuance of the license. I stuck it in my pocket, thanked the lady, and left.
I sat in my car for a few moments and fired up my laptop. I hooked it to my phone so that I could access the Internet, and pulled up the website for Coffee County, Georgia, of which Douglas was the county seat. I found that the probate court was the repository of death certificates, but the bureaucracy had been working overtime to frustrate the average taxpaying citizen. I would have to appear personally and pay a twenty-five-dollar fee before I could get a look at Danny Lathom’s death certificate.
I searched some more and found that it was impossible to fly commercially into Douglas or anywhere closer than Atlanta. I also discovered that I was looking at a five-hour drive. It was not even ten o’clock yet. If I left immediately and stopped somewhere south of Atlanta to grab a fast-food burger and ate in the car, I could get to Douglas before closing time at the courthouse.
I was scheduled to fly out of Atlanta late that afternoon. I was planning to go to Tampa and then drive on home to Longboat. But I needed that certificate. The wife’s maiden name was usually listed on the document, and maybe that would give me a clue that would lead me to the mysterious lady who’d married poor old Danny Lathom a month before his death.
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