A.R. Winters - Tiffany Black 03 - Red Roses in Las Vegas

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A.R. Winters - Tiffany Black 03 - Red Roses in Las Vegas Page 5

by A. R. Winters


  I sighed. Nanna had a point – maybe two heads would be better than one, even when that second head was Ian’s. And come to think of it, I wanted to pull out all the stops when investigating this case, and that meant not having to worry about expenses. If Ian was my “partner” on this one, he could do the funding.

  “Fine,” I said. “But you’re paying for expenses.”

  Ian beamed. “It’s a deal, pardner.”

  I rolled my eyes, but let him shake my hand solemnly as the elevator went down.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ian, Nanna and I stopped by Glenn’s place, where we dropped off the blocks of cooking chocolate. Ian and I immediately raced out, leaving Nanna in our wake. We managed to make it to the Verdant Wealth offices just a little after 7.30, and I glanced around as we went up to their section of the building. It looked different in the bright light of the day – it was still too early to be bustling with people, but a few early-birds were arriving, looking all officious with their work clothes and confident strides.

  The doors marking the entry to Verdant Wealth Solutions slid open when we got there. The place was brightly lit, with some of the blinds pulled up, and there was a fresh vase of flowers on the receptionist’s desk. The open-space work area was still empty, and there was no receptionist waiting behind the fresh flowers.

  Ian and I took a few tentative strides forward. When I got to the branching-off corridor, I glanced to my right, and noticed that only one of the doors was wide open. It was beginning to feel a bit like the night Jack and I broke in, and I didn’t want a repeat of those events, so I called out, “Helloo-o?”

  I heard papers being pushed aside, and a fat, jolly-looking man walked out of the door. He had thick grey hair that framed his face messily, and a puffy face.

  “You must be Tiffany,” he said, walking towards me, and Ian and I stepped forward to shake hands. “I’m Clark.”

  “Tiffany,” I said. “And this is my friend, Ian.”

  “Partner,” said Ian, shaking Clark’s hand. “We’re co-detectives.”

  Clark glanced at me, and I smiled thinly. This was probably how commitment-phobic guys felt when they were introduced as someone’s boyfriend.

  Thankfully, Clark let the comment slide, and I told him how much I appreciated his making time to talk to us.

  He brushed away my gratitude. “Anything for a friend of Jack’s,” he said, turning around and leading us to his office. “Just let me know what I can do to help.”

  Clark’s office was set in a corner, with windows along both sides, but the only view he had was that of Sunset Road and part of the wide, open grounds of McCarran Airport. The floors had thin, industrial-grey carpeting, and in addition to his large desk with its two visitors’ chairs, there was another round table in the corner, with six chairs grouped around it. A low sofa clung to one wall, and a potted palm stood alone in different corner. The walls were bare – no artwork, no photos, no framed diplomas.

  I was a bit surprised at the lack of artwork. Clark had blue-grey eyes that glinted with what I assumed was a sense of humor, and I’d expected framed prints on his wall, saying things like, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet,” but I suppose he wanted to keep things serious at work.

  We sat down opposite him, and Clark said, “This business with Adam. Pretty nasty. I don’t really believe an old grandma could pull it off.”

  “Why not?” I asked. Maybe the guy was being polite, but I needed ammo, just in case we had to go to trial.

  “For one thing, how’d she get away? Jack and you were there, and I don’t think an old lady could run away that fast.”

  I nodded. “You’re right, but I don’t know if a jury will believe that. Some old ladies move pretty quickly – have you seen them rush into the stores when Metamucil’s on sale?”

  Clark laughed, a loud, booming laugh and said, “Well, now that you mention it – my mom can move pretty fast to get the cookies out of my way.”

  “How terrible.”

  We shared a sympathetic smile, and Ian said, “Tiffany, why are you wasting this man’s time?” He turned to Clark and said, “Tell us about Adam. Did he have any enemies?”

  That should’ve been my line.

  Clark shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” I said. “What kind of work does your company do? What did Adam do?”

  “We’re a financial advisory service,” Clark said, glancing from Ian to me. “We tell clients what to do with their money, and most of the time we’ll make the investments for them, if it’s a vehicle like hedge funds or ETFs. We’ve also got a couple of traders on board – Adam was one of them – so if a client wants more hands-on management than investing in some other firm or ETF, we can do that. We can customize their strategies.”

  “Right. So Adam was a trader.”

  “Yes. He was meant to do long-term, buy-and-hold stuff, although I’ve heard that he did some short-term trades as well.”

  “What does that mean?” Ian asked.

  “What was his day-to-day like?” I added.

  “Well.” Clark rubbed his forehead, glanced at his computer screen and clicked his mouse. “I’m just going through some emails while we talk,” he explained to me, and then turned and scrolled through his screen as he talked. “Right. Adam. Well, he did a bit of trading, and most of his day was spent on researching what to buy or sell. The actual trading – just a few clicks of the button, it’s all done virtually now – didn’t take him very long.”

  “Did he meet clients?” I asked. “Or people working where he’d invest?”

  “Um, once in a while.” I watched Clark read something on the screen and clicked his mouse a couple of times before he looked at me again. “He was having a hard time managing it all. The clients usually went through an advisor first, and they only spent a few minutes with him, detailing what they wanted. He’d meet some company people once in a while, but mostly, we’ve got another guy who does that kind of info-gathering.”

  “Right.” I thought about it, and watched Ian out of the corner of my eye. He opened his mouth to say something, and I gave him a subtle kick and a warning look. I didn’t want him going off on a tangent right now.

  “So what kind of people did Adam meet at work?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem like very many.”

  “No,” Clark shook his head, still reading something. I wondered if he’d come to the office early because of me, or if he just came to the office early every day. For a brief second, I wondered if he’d killed Adam – as the CEO, he’d have easy access to the building. “Adam met a handful of people each week, and usually it wasn’t for very long.”

  “What about Nanna?” asked Ian. “Did she have an advisor here?”

  “I went through Gwendolyn’s files here,” Clark said, looking at me seriously. “Once in a while we get clients referred directly to someone, and your nanna was one of them. She dealt exclusively with Adam.”

  “So if anything went wrong, she’d only blame Adam.” Clark nodded and I said, “Did Adam lose anyone else’s money?”

  “A fair few. But most of our clients have higher net wealth and Clark only invests a portion of their funds. None of them suffered huge losses like your nanna, and she only lost that because she asked for an ‘extremely aggressive’ strategy. It means high risk; it might pay out, but there’s a big, big risk of losing most of the money.”

  “So it wasn’t Adam’s fault he lost the money?”

  Clark sighed and shook his head. “I’m not saying that. Adam wasn’t performing very well and your nanna should’ve gotten a couple of warning letters each time Adam lost a bit of her funds. That way she wouldn’t have had the shock of losing 90% all at once.”

  “What’s the average fund size Adam dealt with?” Ian asked, and Clark turned his attention to him.

  “Between fifty and two hundred k,” Clark said.

  “So Nanna’s money was peanuts to him.”

  “It all adds
up,” Clark said politely.

  “What kind of funds do your other people manage?” Ian asked.

  Clark smiled thinly. “A bit larger than that.”

  “So why was Adam managing less?” Ian asked.

  Clark glanced from me to Ian. “I don’t see how it’s relevant to the investigation.”

  I needed the man’s help to get his employees to co-operate with me, so I didn’t want to push the matter, but Ian said, “Oh, come on, tell us. Now I’m curious.”

  “Well.” Clark sighed and crossed his arms. “We haven’t told the cops this, since it’s not really something they needed to know. But Adam wasn’t doing too well. He was skipping admin tasks – like those letters he should’ve sent your nanna, warning her about the lost funds. His trading wasn’t going too well; he lost his touch a few years back, but we kept him on because hey, the whole market’s doing badly, so maybe it wasn’t all his fault. But we cut back his account limits.”

  I frowned. “He must’ve been frustrated with work.”

  Clark shrugged. “Look, I was treating him fairly. I didn’t fire him, and I don’t think he would’ve gotten much of a job somewhere else, with that track record.”

  “Besides,” Ian told me, “If he hated it here, he would’ve just quit. Right?” he asked Clark.

  Clark nodded. “Right.”

  “If you were giving him smaller accounts,” I said, “You must’ve also been giving him less pay.”

  “That’s how it works,” Clark said.

  “How much does a trader here earn?”

  Clark shrugged. “It depends, based on how much they bring in. Adam’s most recent trades hadn’t gone so well, so wasn’t making more than about 60k in the last year or so.”

  “Who could’ve been coming here to meet Adam after midnight?” I asked, and Clark shrugged.

  “It wouldn’t be a client, because then he’d bill us. I’d say it’s something personal – maybe a girlfriend or something. Although he already had a girlfriend. So maybe he was cheating on her in here.”

  He made a face to show just what he thought of that idea, and I said, “Did Adam work late often?”

  “Definitely not till midnight, ever,” said Clark. “He usually left by five-thirty, and he rarely stayed after six.”

  “Did he have bad relationships with any other clients?” Ian asked. “Did anyone else call him up and yell at him?”

  I could see Clark bite back a smile as he shook his head. “I’m afraid not. He lost some money, but nobody else yelled at him.”

  I sighed. That had been a good try.

  “Did he seem any different in the days before he was killed?” I asked. “Worried, or stressed, or unusually happy?”

  Clark shook his head. “No. Not that I noticed. Of course, I’m often not here in this office, and my time’s tied up in meetings a lot. But he didn’t seem different.”

  “He must’ve hated his co-workers,” Ian said. “Seeing how they got more money and bigger accounts than him.”

  Clark shook his head. “There’s not much back-biting in this office. Not that I know of, of course.” He looked at me apologetically and explained, “Maybe they hide the backbiting from the CEO. But Clark seemed like a pretty laid-back kinda guy, got on ok with his co-workers. Even when we reduced his pay and his accounts, he didn’t kick up a big fuss or anything. ’Course, we were just doing what’s fair.”

  “Who’s we?” I asked. “Who owns this company?”

  “Myself, and a few small investors.”

  Clark told us a bit about the structure of his company, and it seemed fairly standard to me – a CFO, a couple of admin people, and couple dozen folks in different positions of varying importance.

  “I have a favor to ask,” I said. “Could you maybe send your employees an email letting them know I’ll be talking to them?”

  Clark smiled. “Done. Did that first thing, when I came in this morning. One of them probably has his girlfriend’s details too, so you can talk to her.”

  “Right.” I nodded. “Who would you say were his closest friends here?”

  “Well there’s Sharon,” said Clark. “She’s an accountant here. And I’ve seen him chatting with Noel, Susan and Greg – we’re all pretty friendly here.”

  “What about the alarms?” Ian said. We all looked at him in confusion, and he said, “The alarm that Adam pressed that night. What’s up with that?”

  I smiled. Ian wasn’t as dumb as I thought he was – but then again, I suppose he must’ve had some smarts to have invested in a company that had a big IPO.

  “We take security measures seriously here,” said Clark.

  “Why?” asked Ian. “It’s not like a bank, you don’t keep massive amounts of cash on the premises.”

  I watched as Clark looked studiously blank.

  Ian said, “You do some money laundering, don’t you?”

  Clark smiled and shook his head. “I’ll tell you what we told the cops. You can never be too careful in this town.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Ian said. “I think you keep lots of cash in your office.”

  Clark’s smile grew frosty, and I kicked Ian under the table.

  “Ow!” he said, turning to me. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Ignore Ian,” I told Clark. “He’s been watching too many Mafia movies.”

  Clark laughed politely, and I frowned at Ian, trying to get the message across. The man might be the biggest money launderer in Vegas, for all I knew, but I needed his help.

  Voices drifted over to us. The office was starting to fill with employees, and Clark used this chance to stand up. “It was a pleasure chatting with you,” he said, and Ian and I followed his lead and stood up.

  We followed him out into the open-space area and turned right into a tiny kitchenette with a shiny plastic table, surrounded by cheap plastic chairs. There was a pod coffee machine on one end of the counter, a microwave, a big plastic water cooler and a small fridge. It reminded me a little of a smaller version of the employees’ break room at the Treasury.

  “This is Greg, Jay, Chris and Kareena,” Clark said. “I sent you guys an email – Tiffany here’s looking into Adam’s death and that’s her partner, Ian.”

  Clark left us and went back to work, and Ian and I chatted with them about Adam. There wasn’t much they could tell us – Adam was friendly, they said, but it’s not like they were really close. He seemed nice enough and had no enemies, as far as they knew. His closest friend here seemed to be Sharon, the accountant Clark had mentioned to us. They didn’t know much about his personal life, other than the fact that he had a girlfriend. She was an interior designer, Kareena offered, but she hardly came to the Verdant Wealth office parties. None of them had ever seen her.

  I excused Ian and myself for a minute. We headed out to the parking lot and stood in a quiet corner to discuss our “strategy.” The lot was becoming busier, mostly filling with late-model Toyotas, Fords and Volvos, and employees were entering the building in twos and threes, chatting with each other or exchanging polite nods. These were all the people who’d left home in time, shaved and packed their lunch, and driven at a reasonable pace along the freeway. A little later, it would be the laggards who arrived – the ones who’d nicked themselves shaving, or taken a little too long at the gym, or kept pressing snooze until the very last minute.

  I turned to Ian, who was ogling a pretty woman in a business suit, and said, “You know, I think I don’t mind working with you.”

  Ian beamed and said, “See. I told you watching all those episodes of CSI would come in handy. But you should’ve let me ask Clark about the money laundering. I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s doing, and he keeps lots of cash in here. Why else would he have those fancy alarms installed?”

  I looked at Ian doubtfully. “I don’t want to piss him off.”

  “But what if his company’s like that firm in the movie? You know, the one where all these lawyers were working for the Mafia and then they killed
whoever tried to leave? Maybe Clark killed Adam. Maybe Adam found out what was going on and he was about to blab to the Feds.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t add up. If they really were working for the mob or something, they’d pay Adam more to keep quiet, not pay him less.”

  “Maybe they were threatening him.” Ian smiled, his eyes full of visions of a world where the Mob ruled all, and even innocent-looking financial advisory firms were just fronts for them. “It’s just like in The Godfather,” he breathed.

  I rolled my eyes. “I doubt it. And if they really are working for the Mob, I can find out.”

  “How?” Ian asked eagerly. “Do you know people? Could you get a hit out on someone if you want?”

  “Of course not. Nanna knows a guy who’s a retired enforcer.”

  “That’s so cool!”

  “No. It’s not cool, it’s criminal. And you’re not to say anything about Nanna knowing this guy.”

  “My lips are sealed!” Ian made the universal sign of zipping lips and throwing away the key.

  “Anyway,” I said, “We should split up to cover the rest of the office.”

  Ian grinned broadly. “Really? You trust me to interview people on my own? And this is our first case! And we’ve only been working together a few hours!”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s why we’re splitting up, because I trust you. We’ll just talk to Sharon together.”

  We were really splitting up because there were at least forty people in the office, including the interns, and it would take forever to talk to them all if we did it together. I was pretty sure most of them knew nothing, just like the four people we’d talked to in the kitchenette – how much do you know about your co-workers’ lives anyway?

  So Ian and I talked about what questions we’d ask, and then we split up. It took a bit over an hour and a half for us to get through the whole office. We asked the same questions each time, and we got the same answers too.

  Adam seemed like a nice guy; no, he didn’t seem to have any enemies; no, he didn’t seem any different in the days before his death. Nobody knew much about his private life, nobody had ever seen his girlfriend, and nobody knew how red roses might have anything to do with Adam’s death. Everyone thought that Sharon was his closest friend here – she’d given him a lift a couple of times when his car wasn’t running, and the two were often seen chatting with each other.

 

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