“Your client…” He took a deep breath, buying himself some time to choose his words carefully. “Your client, Jack Drescher, was involved in all of this.” He paused to allow her time to let that sink in.
She sat back in her seat as if to put distance between her and something she couldn’t wrap her mind around. “What? Kurt, what are you talking about?”
“Elizabeth, evidently he had some business dealings that had gone sour recently and was not doing well financially. Actually, that’s probably an understatement. Apparently, he was so over-leveraged that he was desperate. His accountant, who turned out to be the now deceased Joseph Stevens, had refused to sign off on a set of financial statements that he had prepared in the hopes of securing additional financing. Stevens refused to have his name associated with the statements because they were not only misleading, but downright false. Completely fabricated. So, without the CPA’s blessing, the bank refused Drescher any additional credit. As a result, he became insolvent. He had no liquid assets to work with on a day-to-day basis and his business came to a grinding halt. In his mind, the inn was his last hope. He actually started several months ago harassing poor Amelia about selling the place.”
“He was the real estate attorney who wouldn’t leave her alone?” Elizabeth was following right along, but she couldn’t believe her ears.
“Yes. He pretended to be an attorney in the hopes of coercing her into doing what he wanted her to do, sell it for next to nothing. This place could have meant millions to him. A prime piece of coastal Maine real estate. We think that initially his plans were to build luxury condos. But when cash became a problem he switched his plans to buying it cheap and selling it quickly to the highest bidder. That could have solved his financial problems in one transaction.”
“Oh my God! But how would he even have known about our inn? I know he and I never talked about it. Our discussions were strictly professional.” She looked at Kurt and furrowed her brow. “Vera!”
He shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head in a gesture of “could be.”
Elizabeth could imagine Vera chatting away with Drescher over drinks and inadvertently passing on personal information about her.
“Right. Well, most of the harassment came in the form of phone calls, but then he took it up a couple notches and started sending letters, very professional looking letters from this fictional attorney he was portraying. Your poor grandmother must have been so stressed out.
Elizabeth let out a heavy sigh. Had she been there sooner maybe she could have been of more help. She wished her grandmother had called her sooner. She wished she had thought to call her. She had had no idea of what was going on. She would have to live with that one.
“We had been tracking Drescher’s movements for quite some time in his business dealings throughout New England when we made the connection between him and Pennington Point Inn. As the tennis pro for the inn, I was able to maintain a good cover while I kept an eye on things up close. We knew it was just a matter of time before he slipped up and we could nail him. He is now facing a laundry list of charges against him including extortion and murder. Somehow, the financial problems that started all this seem so trivial in comparison.”
“Yeah. Seems like things really got out of control.” Elizabeth looked like she was in shock. A client she had admired and respected had done the unthinkable.
“I’ll say. He tried to convince Amelia that she didn’t rightfully own the property.”
“Yes!” Elizabeth remembered her conversation in the lighthouse. “My grandmother told me she couldn’t find her copy of their marriage license at the inn and had no luck at town hall.”
“Well, we didn’t give up on that. We put some people on it. I think the town clerk was just too lazy to go into storage when Amelia asked. But it’s amazing how motivated she became when we flashed an FBI badge. The oldest records had never been put on microfiche or any other type of long-term storage. They were just thrown into boxes and stored off site when they moved into the new town hall. It was a minor miracle that they still existed and could be read. We located a copy of her marriage certificate and the deed to the inn. Case closed on those questions.”
“Thank God.” Elizabeth heaved a sigh of relief. “If only she were around to hear this.”
“Oh, I think she knows.” He tried to comfort her with a pat on the shoulder.
Elizabeth fixed her gaze on a focal point across the room. She was trying hard to process what he was saying. She couldn’t help wonder if this had anything to do with all the times she had rejected Drescher. She shuddered.
Mitchell continued. “Evidently Amelia wasn’t caving in like he wanted her to. So he decided to pump up the pressure by making things miserable on a daily basis for her and the entire staff to the point that no one would want to stay or work at the inn. His brother owed him a favor or two so he coerced him into checking into the inn for the weekend to really stir things up.”
“Hutchins.” Elizabeth was catching on.
“Exactly. Bill and Sara Hutchins were really James Rizzo, Jack’s brother-in-law, and his wife, Ann. Ann is Drescher’s sister.”
Elizabeth was fighting back her anger toward the Dreschers, every last one of them.
“The Rizzos pretended to have a daughter who went missing.”
Elizabeth turned away from Mitchell. He had to lean in to hear her speak. “So there was never a Kelsey Hutchins who was missing and feared dead?” Her teeth were clenched in anger.
“No. That was merely an elaborate distraction for us and another black mark on the inn to dissuade potential guests from booking reservations there.”
She turned abruptly toward him. “They had half the Maine State Police out looking for that girl!” Her voice was elevated.
“Well, don’t worry. They, too, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They have racked up filing a false police report, obstruction of justice, interfering with a police officer, aiding and abetting a felon. The list goes on.
“On top of it all, Drescher lured his accountant, who wouldn’t sign off on his financials, to the Pennington Inn under the pretense of burying the hatchet, so to speak. Instead, Drescher buried the hatchet in him, probably thinking he could pin it on Tony, if he used his knife, or you and Rashelle by videotaping you finding the body, which he accomplished by hiding in the wine cooler.”
The package that we found in your car, that supposedly contained the missing girl’s necklace, was actually from Drescher. It was originally a token of his affection for you but when you left unexpectedly for the weekend in Maine, it suddenly took on a whole new purpose.
Elizabeth was staring intently at the floor. She breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. “Somehow, whatever they get just doesn’t seem like it’s enough for what they’ve done.”
“I know. But they all will certainly see prison time. Drescher also had his nephew involved in this mess, too.”
“Armand.”
Mitchell raised his eyebrows at her. He was definitely impressed. “Yes, again. He got himself hired as an all-around handy guy, helping in all areas of the inn’s operations, wherever he was needed. He got his foot in the door by first befriending Slater.”
Elizabeth’s eyes got wide upon hearing this.
“He asked Slater to recommend him for the job. So since his job took him all over the inn, he was able to slip in and out without anyone getting suspicious or asking questions. Drescher had him distributing those handwritten notes asking about the missing girl. His intention was to further stir up the pot and to legitimize the search.”
Elizabeth realized she wasn’t the only one receiving the mysterious notes. “I never thought I could feel this much hatred toward someone.”
“I understand. That wasn’t all he was distributing…” He waited until he had her undivided attention.
She looked at him, squinted her eyes slightly, and tilted her head as if trying to figure out what he was going to say next.
“From what we can tell, Armand was also the one who was delivering Zoloft to Amelia…your grandmother.”
Elizabeth’s eyes took on the look of a tiger.
“He apparently brought drinks to Amelia under the guise of delivering refreshments from the kitchen and they were laced with the drug.”
Elizabeth jumped to her feet slamming her hands on the table. “That BASTARD!!”
Kurt rose to his feet, skirted around the table and grabbed onto her arms. He knew she was very vulnerable right now. She burst into tears and he pulled her into his arms. She sobbed uncontrollably for a while with her face buried in his chest. Finally, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. She was having trouble accepting what he had told her. It was bad enough before when it looked like someone might be slipping her grandmother the drug. But somehow, it was so much worse hearing who actually did the dirty deed.
Suddenly she started to feel faint and her knees were feeling weak. Kurt grabbed her around the torso and eased her into the nearest chair. “Breathe, Elizabeth, breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Breathe.” He looked intently at her to see if she was doing what he was telling her to do.
Her head bobbed a couple of times and then stabilized. She blinked to try to stay focused and took deep breaths. He kept his arm around her back to support her. She raised her hand as if to say she was all right. He pulled his arm away, but kept it within a safe distance and watched her carefully. She seemed to be recovering nicely. Perhaps the wine wasn’t such a good idea but he thought she was a very strong woman, particularly under the circumstances.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, don’t worry about it. You’re fine. I know this is a lot to take in.”
Her head was still feeling a little light headed so she reached out and held onto his arm for a moment. She needed something or someone to hang onto. She was so glad to see him again, even if he was the bearer of bad news. She released his arm again.
He kept his eye on her and an arm within reach of catching her but she seemed to quickly come around so he pulled back and returned to his seat.
She looked into his eyes with a smile and shook her head slightly. “So Vera was never involved?” Elizabeth cringed when she thought back to her conversation in her boss’s office earlier that morning.
“It doesn’t appear so. Zoloft is a pretty common drug. Readily available. We have FBI agents tailing Armand and should have him in custody shortly.”
She smiled. Even so, she didn’t know if she could really trust Vera again. “It’s amazing how screwed up things can get, especially when you have no control over them.” She looked to see if he had a response.
“I think a very wise person once said that it’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you handle it that makes a difference.”
She considered his words of wisdom and sat silently for a while. She realized that at some point she would be able to understand that he was absolutely right. It would take some time, but she knew that eventually she would be able to accept what had happened at the inn during the last couple of weeks and also so many years ago with Renard and the missing student. She needed to move on. And maybe that meant moving on from Vera as well.
He glanced down at his cell phone and pressed a key to retrieve a text message. He looked up with a smile. “We just took Drescher into custody.”
Elizabeth thought about that for a moment, stood up from the table and moved around to the side of it. She smiled, took a deep breath and then leaned over and kissed him on the right side of his face, bushing the left side with her hand. She stood up straight again, looked directly into his eyes and said, “Kurt, I hope to see you again. Thank you for everything you have done. I really appreciate it.” She pulled his jacket off of her shoulders and draped it over the chair she had just vacated and turned away, leaving a half a glass of wine on the table.
A look of surprise came across his face. “Elizabeth…are you okay?” He was suddenly concerned about her leaving alone.
She lowered her head for a moment as if she was deep in thought and then smiled slightly. She turned back and looked into his eyes with one side of her mouth curled upward and said, “I’ll be fine.”
He watched as she turned, walked toward the door, and out onto the streets of Manhattan.
Glancing across the street to her building, she got a glimpse of Drescher being led out of her building with his hands in cuffs behind him. He looked rather humble between two uniformed New York City police officers. Half a dozen plain clothed men wearing black wind breakers followed behind. She assumed they were FBI agents. Several unmarked black Surburbans were waiting at the curb along with two New York City patrol cars with lights flashing.
He turned his head toward her and made eye contact.
She turned away from him and headed in the opposite direction down Lexington Avenue in the light rain
About The Author
Ms. Goetjen resides in Connecticut with her husband and their three children.
The Precipice Page 25