CHAPTER 27
Tate waited.
Parked on the street across from the long, low building of the sheriff’s department, he sat in his Toyota. While sipping now-cold takeout coffee he picked up from a kiosk two blocks over, he kept one eye on the building where Kara was being interviewed. Even though he was busy, catching up on phone calls, responding to email, researching the Internet, he checked his watch every ten minutes.
She’d been inside for over an hour and he was getting antsy, turning the engine on and off to warm the interior as snow began to fall again, big, fat flakes that melted on the hood of his SUV. He would have loved to have been a part of it, but she’d told him it was something she had to do alone. Besides, he was certain the cops wouldn’t have allowed him in.
While sitting here, he’d managed a couple of phone interviews, including one with Silas Dean. Samuel Senior’s former partner had been livid at the intrusion, at the “insinuation,” and had threatened a lawsuit in which he’d sputtered, “You, the rag you work for and anyone associated with this damned case will regret ruining my reputation. I mean it. I’m sick to the back teeth from this. It was bad enough that I was associated with Samuel McIntyre—let me tell you the guy had shit for brains, and go ahead, quote me on that—but that’s all there was to it. I wasn’t anywhere near the McIntyre place that night and I have witnesses to the fact.” He’d then rattled off several family members who could vouch for him. The same had been for the night Margrove was murdered. The alibis, though thin, had checked out.
Tate scratched Dean from the suspect list.
Next, Tate had pulled up Merritt Margrove’s will, a copy of which he’d found scanned to the jump drive he’d discovered in the dead man’s office. As expected, everything he owned went to his wife with one exception. Margrove had taken out a million-dollar insurance policy. Kara McIntyre was listed as the beneficiary.
That was odd.
Or maybe not.
Margrove had been skimming from the estate for years, living off Kara’s inheritance. Both he and Faiza Donnell had submitted bills to the estate with obviously inflated costs for their charge. In Faiza’s case, she’d padded the cost of nannies and private schools, dance lessons and horseback riding camps, expensive trips, her own time, the upkeep of both the house in Portland and on the mountain and so on and so forth. Margrove’s attorney’s fees seemed exorbitant and spanned two decades. Added to that the lawyer had made some bad investments with the inheritance. On top of Kara’s care and legal fees, Margrove had scraped off attorney’s and consultation fees especially earmarked for Jonas McIntyre, and paid for expenses out of the same McIntyre account, charging trips and meals and hotel rooms to the estate as he tried to find a way to get Jonas’s convictions overturned. There had even been a new car “noted for Kara McIntyre” when she’d turned sixteen, though the title to the Cadillac had never been registered in Kara’s name.
Both Faiza Donner and Merritt Margrove had worked the court system and probably could be sued, civilly and possibly criminally.
Tate drummed his fingers against the top of the steering wheel. It was almost as if they’d been depleting the fortune together. Either separately or in tandem.
Margrove, apparently, had felt some guilt and taken out the insurance policy, then, within two years, had borrowed against it.
“The best-laid plans,” Tate said, and turned on the engine again.
He thought about that as traffic passed, vehicles pulled in and out of the county parking lots, and people bundled in jackets, hats, scarves and boots bustled in and out of the buildings.
His phone rang and he saw it was Connell, returning his call.
“You got my message?” Tate asked, clicking on.
“Yeah, I did. So here’s the rundown,” Connell said. From the sound of background noise, the muffled rumble of an engine and rush of air, Tate figured Connell was driving. “I checked and you’re right, the McIntyres’ estate has been drained. There are loans against the property in the West Hills, big loans, hard money borrowed from private lenders. High interest. Large payments.”
“But the property was for the kids,” Tate said as a van for a painting company tried to squeeze into the parking spot in front of him.
“Between Merritt Margrove and Faiza Donner, they had control of the money. It was left to the surviving kids. Jonas had to forfeit his share as he was in prison, and Kara wasn’t of age until this year. It was odd in a way, because usually it’s twenty-five or thirty, or some multiple of five years, but for whatever reason, her parents chose twenty-eight.”