But what if… Paul found George already dead? But he said he had cashed the check written by George. And police seemingly confirmed it. Well, how about: Paul had a check that George had written on a different day (and given or mailed to him), on which he’d changed the date? That would still allow Stan to be the killer.
Or, for that matter, have Paul be the killer himself. Maybe George was being very stubborn, as Paul said, and the desperate for money man pushed him, and wrote out the check to himself, and walked out of the office quietly?
I needed to see George’s checkbook to try to figure this out. I pressed the door handle of the office door down and walked into the room.
I saw the office camera was still off. I walked behind the desk. The drawers were locked. I was prepared, and got out my set of lock-picks again. This took less than two minutes. I was definitely getting better at this whole “unlawful entry” business.
I carefully flipped through the drawers. Among folders filled with papers, I found the leather-bound checkbook with copies of some recent checks. Yes, here was the amount written to Paul at the party – $1250, about double the normal amount written out in the previous months. It was a bit higher than my calculations came out to, but my estimate was close enough. I looked closely at that check, and at some of the previous ones – the handwriting was very similar. Flipping through the check book, I saw that all the checks were written by the same person. And in any case – the police would be scrutinizing the checks that George wrote over his last days, and would have detected the forgery, and arrested Paul by now if they’d found it. So, George did write that check. And Stan therefore didn’t kill George.
That confirmed part of Paul's story – that he asked for, and got, double the money the night of the party. It still didn’t follow that he had no motive to kill George. I wanted to check around for any sort of agreement between George and Paul, to show what the payments were for.
In the bottom drawer there was a set of thick folders. I took it out and started leafing through.
I found an agreement between Paul and George, likely a copy of the one that Paul said he showed to the police, (vaguely worded as to why exactly George was paying out Paul and Claire money, but seemingly legal enough), printed out, dated about 10 months earlier and signed by both. That seemed to confirm Paul’s story. I wasn’t sure whether the agreement was binding on any heirs of George's – I was guessing not, as Teresa had said that it depended on the language in the paper itself, and I couldn’t pick out any references to any heirs. And so Paul likely was telling the truth when he said that he and Claire were better off if George had lived.
I closed that folder and put it aside, and then open the next one.
These were some print-outs of what looked like internet ads (Craigslist, eBay) for vintage RollsRoyces. They were collected over about a year, and were from different states – I saw Tennessee, California, Louisiana, Pennsylvania. Circled in red on each were prices. I sat down thinking. The RollsRoyce was the car that Wayne Kempler had at that show, the one that didn’t win. Was George Ellis thinking of buying it? That was possible. Suppose George had asked Wayne to come up, and wanted to offer to buy the car from him? And as George was very drunk and somewhat disorderly, and Wayne, still angry over the disqualification at the car show, spurned what he thought was George's insufficiently serious offer, and was insulted and enraged by his behavior? Would Wayne kill him in that flash of emotion?
I thought about it, tried to imagine it happening. My heart was beating fast in my chest. I was almost convinced – and then I remembered that Wayne had an alibi courtesy of one of the waiters from the catering company.
I moved on to the next folder.
These were the incorporation documents for Roger’s start-up. Roger had likely been upset about being cut off from the funding, if that even happened – he was certainly passionate about what he was working on. But I did not see much emotion from him over George's death. However – I remembered the dates on the papers Caitlin showed me in the office – that was over 2 months ago. If he were mad enough to kill George, why wait several months? And why do it at a party?
I pulled up the photos I took with my phone of the book-keeping paperwork at Ba-Ele Tech Inc’s office and zoomed in. Something connected in my brain, and my heart started jumping again. Per the office paperwork, the last check was cashed at the beginning of the month, 2 weeks ago. But Caitlin had told me the new funding was cut off 2 months ago. I picked up George's checkbook again, and flipped through it till I saw the remaining duplicate check. Here it was – comparing it with the others, I saw the difference in how the “a”s were written, and the loop over the “d”s. It was similar enough to not make you look twice if you didn't suspect a forgery – but the fake was detectable if you already had that suspicion in your mind.
If George had discovered the forgery when he was writing out the check to Paul at the party, and started an argument with Roger about it...
I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. Things were not looking good for Roger – this was yet another possible motive for him; and proof of his dishonest dealings, at the very least.
By now, I was shaking with the knowledge that I knew who the murderer was and that I had the documents in my possession to expose him. I wanted to go through all the papers related to Ba-Ele Tech Inc to see whether there was any more evidence.
I read through the paperwork in front of me, drawn up by John Sargent’s firm, and realized that Ba-Ele Tech was set up so that George was the founder and owner of it. Roger was the CTO, as I knew. I came across a non-compete agreement and an ownership agreement for an invention, complete with several pages of techno-jargon describing the invention. From skimming the pages, it looked like this was what Roger was working on. From the terms, it meant that the new breakthrough idea that Roger was talking about would be George’s property.
That by itself was a compelling motive. That invention certainly seemed promising and might be worth millions very soon. Together with the forged check I found earlier, it made a pretty tough situation for the kid. But to think that he killed his chief investor, AND the husband of his sister, still seemed preposterous.
I kept rooting for the underdog, kept looking around, shuffling the papers and skimming them, looking for the missing piece. Feeling very confused. Even confronted by this additional motive, I didn’t want him to be the murderer – he looked so young, so geeky, so engrossed in his world of cars! But maybe it was for the sake of his engrossment into that world that he killed George.
Something still didn’t make sense if Roger was the killer. The murder could have happened some other day as well. Why chose the party day though, if one always lived at the house? A party would have multiple suspects with credible motives present. Also, loud music and lots of commotion. That also meant more possible witnesses, if things went wrong. But that brought to my mind a particular type of personality – risk-taking (the public manner of death, the body ending up in a pool with a crowd surrounding it, the possibility that the victim makes it out alive; as opposed to, say, one on one in a dark alleyway somewhere). That didn’t jive with my impression of who Roger was – a geek who preferred the online forums to a party, if his alibi was to be believed.
I should have thought of this sooner. If anything, such a public death indicated revenge, or a risk-taker, or a public personality – someone who might enjoy showing off, like Rita herself, or Caitlin. Or even Wayne, with his antique cars and the adoration he elicited for them. It didn’t seem to fit with my idea of Roger – but then again, he did drop out of Stanford, where we was apparently doing very well, to work on his brand-new idea. So yes, he could take risks...
And then I heard a clicking noise.
23
When I lifted my head, the first thing I saw was a gun pointed at me from across the room.
“Stay where you are.” A man’s voice said.
I stopped, my heart almost jumping out of my chest.
John Sa
rgent was standing in the room. The clicking noise I heard must have been him closing the door behind him as he came in. His gun was still on me, and he was squinting. In a moment of panic, I thought he didn’t recognize me.
“It’s me, it’s Veronica!”
He didn’t move the gun.
“Why did you come in here?” he asked. There was an edge to his voice. He didn’t sound like the polite gentleman he’d been in my previous interactions with him.
“I... I was bored downstairs, and decided to come up. I was just browsing around”.
“What were you looking for in the drawers?”
“I… I don’t know. I was just looking around. I thought I could find something interesting to... to read in George's office.” I wasn’t sounding very convincing to anybody. “I wasn’t looking to steal anything.”
By now, I expected him to lower the gun; at most – get his phone out, call the police and have me arrested for trespassing. But he kept looking at me. I might have imagined it, but his hand holding the gun was shaking.
And I wished the security camera in the office wasn’t off.
“John, it’s me. Please put down the gun.” He kept looking at me over the gun, and shook his head from side to side.
“Why?.. John?.. Please? ” My thoughts were turning into a jumbled mash in my head, and I was struggling to make sense of what going on. As my eyes swept over the lawyer’s figure in fear and confusion, one of the racing thoughts triggered another, and then another, and I held on to them for dear life as they dragged me to the conclusion. I suddenly understood what was happening.
“You did it. You killed George.”
That didn’t seem to have any visible effect on John. I had expected some change in his manner, not sure what – maybe diabolical laughter? Maybe a confession?
Instead, he said, almost with glee: “You can’t prove it. What motive would I have? I do not benefit directly from his will.”
“No, not directly.” As I spoke, I was feeling more confident in my words. “But George was essentially the owner of Roger's new invention. You were trying to advise Ba-Ele Tech Inc on intellectual property. You thought the new idea had huge potential, and you wanted to go forward. You knew that George wouldn’t let go of it willingly, even with that minor spat about the totaled Maserati between them.” I did not mention that I knew that George withheld the funding. “You though that with George out of the way Roger would do what you told him – meaning, license or sell it to someone for a lot of money. We are talking millions here, aren’t we? And that you would get a nice chunk of it, too.”
He smiled, baring his upper teeth. The smile sent a chill down my spine. “That’s good. But you won’t be able to prove it. Besides, why would I chose that evening to do it? What would trigger me to act? I am respectable public citizen, generally not prone to murderous impulses.”
I thought I knew what happened: John had forged a check to Ba-Ele Tech; George found the forged check when he was writing a check to Paul, realized that John did the forgery, and confronted John in his drunken state; and John, fearing exposure, disbarment and the end of his career, and seeing the opportunity to both silence George and get control of the promising invention, took it.
I did not want to tell him or show what proof I found, lest he would try to destroy it if I were to meet with an unfortunate end right now. Instead I turned my attention to a very urgent topic.
“What are you going to do? Shoot me right now? In broad daylight? Here in the office? That’s just stupid.” I put much more bravado into my voice than I felt.
“I could. I could say I mistook you for a burglar. Technically, you are somewhere where you are not supposed to be, ruffling through George’s papers. You broke in to his desk. And don’t you know that over 60% of burglaries occur in residential neighborhoods, and mostly during the day time, like those ads for security systems tell us?” His eyes narrowed over the barrel of the gun aimed at me, and I felt cold. Mentally, I was saying good-bye to my family, and to Bitty and reciting in my mind the provisions for her care that I put in my will after adopting her.
“Are you going to just shoot me in cold blood?” I didn’t want to believe it. “Is that how you killed George? In cold blood, when he was too drunk to resist?”
“You are trying to keep me talking. It won’t work.”
“What about Rita? She’ll hear the shot!” My voice was rising. I knew that it was highly unlikely that she would hear me scream with the door closed.
“She took a sleeping pill and she’s out cold. I don’t think she will hear anything. Regardless, I'll just feed her my burglar story. Those drawers were locked. You broke in, don’t forget. She’ll believe me.”
I was desperately trying to argue with him, as if by my debating skills I could convince him not to kill me. I was trying to extend my life, clawing for reasons against the rock of reality.
“This isn’t your house. Why would you go checking for burglars, with a gun, in someone else's house?”
“I was concerned about my client’s safety. She was a woman, alone, under tremendous emotional strain since the murder of her husband, and in no condition to defend herself.”
I swallowed hard and cast around for something in the recesses of my mind. The word “alone” sent the mental gears turning. There was no footage of me breaking into the office – but there was footage of me coming in, from the outside cameras!
“There are cameras outside the house, they’ll show that I walked in through the front door and that Rita let me in! And she would say that you saw me come in to the living room with her!”
John blinked. He did not think of that. I bought myself a little bit of time. Maybe I still had a chance.
“I would say I forgot you were still in the house. You told Rita you’d be in the home theater. I absolutely didn’t expect to find you in George's home office, in a different part of the house.”
His voice sounded tentative. Then, whatever he was thinking, he made a decision. He shook his head and raised the gun a little.
“OK, get moving. We are getting out of here.”
“What, you are going to shoot me somewhere else and then dispose of the body? The tape from the security recordings would still be evidence that I was here. And how are you going to march me out under the barrel of a gun in full view of the cameras outside? You are not going to get away with it.”
“I will come back and fix that footage. It would look like you left by yourself. C’mon, go!”
Given his involvement with a tech start-up – yes, it was plausible that he knew enough to doctor that footage in a way that a casual observer would not be able to detect.
I slowly and carefully went around the desk the towards the door, trying not to turn my back to John. He was circling the room as well so as not to get too close to me, not taking his eyes and his gun off me. I finally reached the door and turned to face the hallways, which seemed to be 40 years long all of a sudden. That made me think that another 40 years of life would be a sweet proposition right about then, something I may not get to experience. I kept walking forward slowly.
24
I went thought the door way and several steps into the hallway.
And then suddenly heard a loud crash.
I jumped to the side and saw John in a heap on the floor. Rita, with a cast-iron pan in one hand, a picture of cool and toughness, stepped out from behind the door where she had waited to hit him over the head. I was too stunned to do anything but look at her. She bent down, checked that he was out cold and then pulled out a phone with her other hand and dialed.
“Hello, police?”
Before the police came, we spent several very tense minutes watching John, unconscious, on the floor. Rita held her pan and I held his gun, ready to tell him to not move until the police show up. And I had the presence of mind to ask Rita, before the police arrived, to corroborate my story: that the desk drawers were unlocked and that I had her permission to look at all the papers in the of
fice.
The police came. John regained consciousness. They checked that he was OK, then put hand-cuffs on him and took him away. Detective Davis came over and took my statement. (I omitted the fact that I had in my possession the lock picks, as they are strictly speaking illegal for me to have by Washington state law.) The pan was taken in evidence, as were the files and print-outs on Ba-Ele Tech Inc that I dug up.
Several hours later, everyone else had left. The silence in the big house seemed endless. Looking around, it felt like all these events were receding into the past already, and I was trying to acknowledge them before they become ghosts and disappeared altogether.
After e-mailing, calling and texting Roger and leaving him a detailed message describing what had happened, we ordered in some Malay food and settled in to wait for it to arrive on the big blue sofa in the central living room. Rita was staring out into space.
“Thank you, you saved my life!” I said for the nth time.
Rita sighed. “I am sorry this happened. I got you involved in this, and you nearly got killed in my house.”
“Well, technically, I think John was planning on killing me somewhere else. And my own curiosity got the better of me here. You are not at fault at all.”
“I asked you to find out who killed George. You were doing this at my request. And I am very grateful for everything you’ve done.” She gave a weak smile. And then continued: “I kept thinking about the murder, all these nights when I couldn’t sleep. And then today, John became jumpy and seemed to be in a hurry to finish our conversation after you came in. But he was very insistent on me taking a sleeping pill right after we talked, saying that I needed to relax. So I knew that wasn’t because he didn’t want to keep you waiting to talk to me. I realized, just this morning, that he might have had a motive. So I told him I was taking the sleeping pill, and went to my room. And then I heard him move through the house – I assume he went to check the home theater, and then I heard him come upstairs, as if he were looking for something. I thought you might be in danger. So I ran to the kitchen on the second floor and grabbed that pan.”
A Motor for Murder (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 1) Page 13