Clawback (11 page)

“Edie and I sure as hell aren't the only ones who lost money on this deal,” Bob said, “not by a long shot. I'm guessing there are a whole bunch of people from around here who are in the same boat. I wouldn't be surprised if everybody else is just as pissed as I am.”

“I doubt many people lost more than a million bucks, though,” Hank interjected. “That many dollars sound like a lot of reasons to be pissed off. I've seen cases where murders happened over far less money than that. The problem is, of all Dan's customers, you're the only one who showed up at the crime scene with blood all over your clothing.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Bob demanded. “I did not kill Dan Frazier. I didn't kill Millie, either. I tried to help them. I went to their place with one purpose and one purpose only—to ask Dan face-to-face what the hell was going on and what had they done with my money. The only reason I went inside the house was to help Millie, and that was because Dan specifically asked me to check on her. Check on the 911 tape. You might even hear her voice.”

“Okay, then,” Hank said, closing his notebook and ending the interview. “I guess that's all for right now.”

“Does that mean I can go home?”

Hank shook his head. “Soon,” he said, “but I believe someone else wants to talk to you first.”

“If I could just call my wife . . .”

“Sorry, Mr. Larson,” Hank said. “That's just not possible at the moment.”

Hank stood up, collected his note pad, and left the interview room. The lock clicked home as he shut the door, leaving Bob Larson trapped inside. Once again he was alone in the room—alone, frustrated, and needing to pee. Again. Damn that Flomax anyway!

W
hile Julia prepared the coffee, Haley pulled out her phone and scrolled through her recent calls. She wanted to be the one who told her employees what was going on. Even though Haley didn't have all the details about what had happened across the street, she wanted to be the one to deliver the bad news to her girls, even though, in a politically correct world, she wasn't supposed to call them “girls.”

Since Carmen Rios's number was the last one on the list, she was the first one Haley called. “I'm transcribing messages as fast as I can,” Carmen told her. “Over a hundred so far, and the mailbox fills up again within a matter of minutes. But is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“That Mr. and Mrs. Frazier are dead?”

Haley sighed. That meant she was already too late in delivering the news. This was a small town after all. Rumors were obviously flying thick and fast.

“What are you hearing?” she asked.

“That they're dead,” Carmen answered. “I also heard that someone has been taken into custody. What's going to happen now, Ms. Jackson? Will we still be in business when all this is over?”

“I hope so,” Haley said. “With OFM out of business the investment side is gone, but we'll still have the insurance lines.”

“But what if the clients go away?” Carmen objected. “I can tell from the messages that people are upset. You should hear what they're saying on the phone. Some of the messages are really ugly. They're saying Dan was a crook, and we're all crooks, too.”

“Try not to take the messages personally,” Haley advised. “When things settle down, we'll do what we can to mend fences.”

As Haley finished the call with Carmen, Julia returned with a mug of coffee. “Will you be taking over the business?” she asked.

Haley nodded. “I hope so,” she said. “That was the intention, at least, but with everything that's happened . . .”

“I'll leave you alone,” Julia said. “You sit right here, make yourself at home, and do whatever calling you need to do.”

Taking Julia at her word, Haley spent the next forty-five minutes making one difficult phone call after another, letting her other employees in on what had happened. Walking each of the stunned women through their shock and disbelief was no easy task. Only when she was finished with the last of the girls did Haley dial her grandmother's number, but it turned out Gram was already totally up to speed.

“I heard,” Carol Hotchkiss said. “I called down to the pharmacy to check on a prescription, and Sylvia told me about it. I didn't want to bother you because I was sure you were busy, but how are you holding up? Are you okay?”

The question made Haley falter slightly. “I think so,” she said. “I'm coping. It's a lot to take in. I've just been calling the girls from the office to give them the news.”

“That's got to be tough,” Gram said, not bothering to hide the concern in her voice. “Come home when you can. I've thawed out that mac and cheese casserole you made last week. Once you're here, we'll have a nice supper, just the two of us.”

Another piece of normalcy. “Thank you, Gram,” Haley said. “That sounds perfect.”

Finished with her calls, Haley stood up and looked across the street as a final patrol car eased out of Dan and Millie's driveway. Putting the vehicle in park, the officer exited his vehicle and manually pulled the gate shut. Then, after stringing a strip of crime scene tape from one side of the gate to the other, he returned to the patrol car and drove away.

The utter finality symbolized by that tape hit Haley hard. Managing to stave off a new set of tears, she went looking for Julia, who was in the kitchen starting to make dinner. “The last of the cops just left,” Haley said, “and I should probably be going, too. If you're too busy to take me, I can probably get someone to come pick me up.”

“You're sure you don't want dinner?”

“No, thanks. It's sweet of you to offer, but I live with my grandmother. I need to get home to make dinner for her.”

“All right, then,” Julia said. “And of course I'll take you. After all, I brought you here. I wouldn't think of your having to ask someone else for a ride back.”

The drive from downtown Sedona to the office in the Village of Oak Creek was mostly done in silence. Haley was too strung out to make idle chitchat, and Julia seemed to understand and respect that.

As they neared the office, Haley feared the parking lot would still be as jammed with cars and people as it had been when she'd arrived there hours earlier. Instead, the lot was virtually deserted. Her own car, a humble years-old Honda, looking lost and forlorn, was parked three rows back from the front entrance in an otherwise empty row. The SEC truck was gone. The door that had been propped open for loading earlier that morning was now shut and locked. What took Haley's breath away was the mass of flowers that completely covered the sidewalk and banked up against the front door.

One glance at that display of flowers was enough to make Haley cry again. She couldn't help it. Carmen had told her about all the angry, disgruntled clients out there, but it turns out there were plenty of other people in town who were willing to give Dan and Millie Frazier the benefit of the doubt. That profusion of flowers was one way of showing they cared.

“Are you sure you'll be all right now?” Julia asked, as Haley exited the car.

“Yes,” Haley said. “I will be. Thank you for everything—for coming to get me so I'd know what was up, and thank you for giving me a private place to stay long enough to pull myself together.”

Julia smiled. “Think nothing of it,” she said. “That's what friends are for.”

Haley stood transfixed, watching as Julia King's silver Lexus pulled out of the parking lot and drove away. Shaking her head, Haley couldn't help but marvel. On this terribly appalling day, something entirely unexpected had happened. Life had handed her a precious gift—a brand-new friend.

W
hen the interview door opened the next time, the person who entered was Sedona PD's chief detective, a guy named Eric Drinkwater, and not necessarily one of Bob Larson's favorite people. Drinkwater had hired on as a city cop after serving as an MP in Desert Storm and after working for the sheriff's department in either Maricopa or Pima County—Bob wasn't sure which.

When Eric first came to town and before he married, he'd been a regular at the Sugarloaf Café—a regular with a reputation for being a stingy tipper. Finally, after he'd stiffed the waitstaff of their tips once too often, Edie had called him on it. Much to everyone's relief, he'd stopped coming by the restaurant altogether after that, something the café's employees regarded as a personal favor. Bob hadn't minded having Hank Sotomeyer ask him questions, but he wasn't thrilled to see Eric Drinkwater.

Drinkwater activated the recording equipment and made the required announcement before addresing Bob directly.

“Ever hear of a guy named Charles Ponzi?” the detective asked, grabbing one of the two chairs on the far side of the table from Bob. He may not have been physically present in the room during Hank's interview, but clearly he'd been following what had been said, word for word.

“Who?” Bob replied.

“Charles Ponzi, of Ponzi scheme fame,” Drinkwater said. “He conned people into investing with him by promising them huge returns. For a while he delivered. Early investors made out like bandits, because he paid them the large returns he'd promised. The only problem was, he siphoned a lot of the money into assets for himself. Then, when things started going south, he used funds from later investors to pay large returns to the early ones. The whole deal worked just fine right up until the money ran out. Which is why, when later investors came looking for their money, it wasn't there.”

“You're saying that's what happened to Edie and me—we got caught up in a Ponzi scheme?”

“Textbook case,” Drinkwater said. “I just got off the phone with the SEC. According to them, Ocotillo Fund Management has been a Ponzi scheme from beginning to end. There's no telling how big it is at this point. They're guessing it'll end up amounting to several thousand investors, a fair number of whom were clients of our homicide victim Mr. Frazier.”

“They're probably as upset as I am.”

“I'm sure that's true, Mr. Larson, but as my colleague Detective Sotomeyer just pointed out, of all those disgruntled customers, you're the only one who happened to show up at the crime scene with blood all over your body and with a possible murder weapon in the back of your vehicle.”

“A what?”

“A possible murder weapon, Bob—a bloody knife.”

“And you found it where?”

“In the back of your Bronco.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” Bob demanded.

“Believe me, this is no joking matter,” Drinkwater replied. “So maybe you and I should take another crack at this. How about if you tell me again exactly what went on this morning?”

“My car was unlocked and the windows open,” Bob said. “The AC quit working years ago. Whoever did it must have tossed the knife inside as they were leaving.”

“So you believe that the killer or killers were still at the residence while you were there?”

“They had to be.”

“But you saw no one.”

“I was looking out for Millie and Dan,” Bob said.

“There were no signs of a break-in at the residence,” Eric continued. “Millie and Dan Frazier opened their door and let the killer into their home. That suggests their assailant was someone they knew, most likely someone they knew well and maybe someone they had known for years. Someone like you, perhaps?”

“I already told Hank all of this,” Bob insisted.

“Yes, that's true,” Eric allowed, “but how about if you tell the same story to me, then, from the very beginning.”

Bob took a deep breath. The last thing he wanted to do right then was rehash the whole ugly story, but he could see that he didn't have a choice.

“It all started this morning,” he said. “I was sitting in Edie's and my apartment drinking coffee when I saw the piece on TV about Dan's investment company, Ocotillo Fund Management, going belly-up . . .”

I
t took time for Ali to make her way back to I-17 through that tangled, forested maze. The moment she hit enough bars on her cell, her phone rang. “Ali!” her mother exclaimed. “Are you almost here? I was worried before, but now I'm downright frantic.”

“I'm still up on the Rim and just now getting back on the freeway,” Ali answered. “I went up to the homeless camp off Schnebly Hill Road to see if Dad might have stopped by there.”

“And?” Edie asked eagerly. “Had he?” There was such naked hopefulness in her mother's questions that it made Ali's heart hurt.

“No,” she answered. “No one up there had seen him, but what's wrong now? You sound upset.”

“I just heard from someone here at the Shadows who got it off some kind of Internet news feed that there's been a double homicide here in town today. In Sedona, no less. They're not releasing any information pending notification of next of kin and all that, but I'm beside myself with worry. What if Bobby somehow got himself in the middle of it?”

“Why on earth would Dad end up in the middle of a double homicide, Mom? It's just not possible.”

“Then why won't he answer his phone?”

“There are a number of possibilities that don't include a double homicide. Maybe he forgot to plug his phone in and it ran out of juice. Maybe it got turned on silent, and he doesn't know it's ringing.”

And maybe
, Ali thought,
he turned it off so he could have a few moments of peace and quiet.

“And maybe he's lying dead in a ditch somewhere,” Edie fumed. “I've got half a mind to get in the car and drive around looking for him.”

“Going out looking for him is the last thing you should do right about now,” Ali cautioned. “Is Betsy still there with you?”

“Yes.”

“Stay there with her, then,” Ali said. Call-waiting buzzed in Ali's ear. “Look, Mom,” she said. “I've got another call. Believe me, I'm coming as fast as I can.”