Don't Cry Over Killed Milk (17 page)

“And you claim you didn’t electronically authorize any withdrawals that Saturday or sign any authorization slips?”

“I claim?” Dominic raised his voice. “I definitely did not make any authorizations. Whoever set me up took $25,000 from each of Trident’s three banks. We never took out that much cash. It was only used for small events like company picnics. Any significant amount of money was always wired. And I’d never taken out money on a Saturday before.”

“Should the banks have known that?” Damon asked, shifting in his seat.

Dominic considered the question. “I don’t see why they would,” he admitted. “They all probably have hundreds of corporate accounts. So as long as the process was followed, I doubt it would raise any red flags.”

“I thought banks had cameras. If you didn’t take the authorization slips to the banks, whoever did would be on camera,” Damon offered.

 
“Unfortunately, you have to go to a manager’s office to get cash from an authorization slip. Most banks don’t have cameras in there.”

“But they have cameras trained on the buildings’ entrances, don’t they?”

“My lawyer asked the same question,” Dominic replied. “It was probably the only intelligent thing he did. But the security tapes from the entryway cameras didn’t help. On the Saturday when I purportedly withdrew the money, there had been a storm. Umbrellas obscured the cameras from getting a good look at the banks’ customers. Not to mention long coats and hoods.”

“Sounds like the timing was unlucky for you,” Damon said.

“Either unlucky or whoever took the money out had been waiting for a rainy day,” Dominic said and rubbed his hands together. “You ask pretty good questions. Why are you working for a minor-league trade association instead of a newspaper?”

Damon shrugged his shoulders and answered with an open-ended question. “So the CEO had printouts of the electronic authorizations?”

“He did. They came from my account, all right, but I didn’t send them.”

“Did anyone else have your password?”

“Not that I know of. I’m sure someone hacked into my account.”

“How about the authorization slips?”

Dominic wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. “The CEO had copies of the slips from each of the banks. I don’t know how, but my signature was on each one of them.”

Damon’s mind shot back to his lunch with Bethany. Jeremiah Milk had told Jackson Krims that he could forge anyone’s signature. He said, “That does sound like fairly damning evidence. Were you in the office on that Saturday?”

“No,” Dominic Freeze shouted and balled his hands into fists. He took a deep breath and began to pace around the room. “I was fishing with a friend for most of the day. We were out at a lake an hour west of here—no rain there. I hadn’t gone fishing in years, but….” He trailed off. “Don’t put this in your article, okay?”

Damon bobbed his head.

“My wife had just moved out of the house and took our two children with her. This alimony and child support is a bitch without a salaried job. But going fishing saved me from prison. The time stamps on the electronic authorizations matched the time that I was fishing, and my buddy was willing to testify. That’s why my lawyer thinks the prosecutor was willing to plea bargain. At a trial, it would have been a pile of physical evidence against me on one side and my friend’s word on the other.”

Damon held up his hands preemptively. “Speaking of physical evidence, the press reported that the police found stacks of cash in your house.” Damon looked around the room.

“Yes,” Dominic said with a deflated tone. He sat in a La-Z-Boy opposite Damon. “The police found $75,000. That’s why I took the plea bargain—the evidence looked bad.”

“You didn’t know the money was here?” Damon asked.

Dominic picked up his head and suddenly became agitated. “Of course not! Do I have to spell it out for you? I was set up. The only reason I’m talking to you is that I want to clear my name. I didn’t have an alarm system in here, so anyone could have picked a lock on one of the doors. For that matter, I never made a habit of securing my windows. Some of them don’t even have screens. Anyone could have planted that money on me.”

“The newspapers mentioned that the money was in your basement—”

Dominic cut in, “Hundred dollar bills stuffed into a shoebox. My basement’s a mess. If the police hadn’t searched the house, I probably wouldn’t have found it for years.”

“Do you have any idea who could’ve put it there?” Damon asked.

Dominic grimaced. “No,” he said. “But it had to be someone at Trident. A computer hacker from the outside wouldn’t know the details of our withdrawal system or that we have a limit of $25,000 per transaction. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the people I managed did it to get my job.”

Dominic Freeze’s story sounds remarkably plausible
, Damon thought. He was convinced that Dominic was the victim of a well-executed scheme of revenge somehow perpetrated by Jeremiah Milk and Kenneth Randolph rather than a CPA-turned-criminal who had been caught with a shoebox full of cash.

Damon took a deep breath and plunged into unknown water. “Do you think Samantha Richter set you up?”

Dominic’s face registered confusion, then turned to fury. “What? How the hell do you know about Samantha Richter?” He stood abruptly. “And now that I think about it, if you’re from the trade association, why are you here on a Sunday?”

Damon leapt to his feet and back-pedaled slowly toward the front door. He had made a critical mistake. And then the realization hit him—Samantha Richter had nothing to do with Trident Gaskets or the embezzlement. And a trade association newsletter writer would have no idea who she was.

“There was a reference to her in the newsletter’s files,” Damon said weakly.

“Bullshit,” countered Dominic Freeze with rage. “You’re not with any trade association.” The man stepped toward a mahogany credenza and gripped a drawer handle.

Was he going for a weapon? Damon didn’t wait to find out. He yanked open the front door and sprinted to his car without looking back. He gunned the engine and tore out of the cul-de-sac.

Chapter 17

Nervous sweat dripped from Damon’s face. He drank black coffee from a foam cup and ate a gritty cheeseburger in a garden-variety fast food restaurant ten miles from Dominic’s home. Had Dominic Freeze seen his license plate?

Damon mentally shoved the thought from his mind, and his focus circled to phony signatures. Jeremiah could have forged the authorization slips as long as he knew what Dominic Freeze’s handwriting looked like. As a twenty percent owner, Kenneth Randolph would surely have access to Trident’s electronic database of files, including documents with Dominic’s signature. He could have passed an image of the signature to Jeremiah. And Jeremiah would need to know the company’s policy on maximum withdrawals; that pointed to Randolph, too.

Damon considered the embezzled money. Sophisticated companies didn’t regularly use cash, and reimbursements for company picnics didn’t call for a weekly allowance of up to $25,000. Times three. Dominic was probably lying when he said he never withdrew that much money. More than likely, Trident was dispensing cash under the table—perhaps to illegal immigrants cranking out gaskets on the factory floor or to grease the right wheels for lucrative contracts. As the facilitator of finances, Dominic would have been complicit in any such schemes. So even after he’d been fired, Damon concluded, Dominic wouldn’t want to risk jail time by blowing the whistle on illegal distributions.

 
Damon choked down the last bites of burger and studied his directions to Samantha Richter’s home. Dominic had mentioned a former wife. Had Samantha Richter married Dominic and kept her own last name? No, Damon thought—the messages she sent him were too salacious. Samantha had mistress written all over her. Were they still lovers? If so, Damon would be taking a huge risk by going to see her. Dominic Freeze could answer the door, gun in hand. But Damon still had unanswered questions and wasn’t willing to leave Philadelphia yet. He didn’t know the origin of “bite the bullet,” but it seemed perilously apt to his situation.

* * *

Samantha Richter’s white stucco apartment building in South Philly’s Pennsport neighborhood resembled a cardboard milk carton. Her unit was on the third floor.

An attractive blond in her early thirties answered Damon’s knock. She had good bone structure and long eyelashes that were offset by a vinegar smile.

“Yes?” she asked, appraising Damon from shoulders to waist. Damon could hear a television playing cartoons behind her.

“Are you Samantha Richter?” Damon asked.

“I am,” she replied with hesitation.

Damon decided to be direct. “My name is Damon Lassard. I’m working with the police on some details pertaining to the murder of a man named Jeremiah Milk in Northern Virginia.”

Samantha’s face shifted from apprehension to confusion.

“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with me?” A child cried out from the next room. “Hold on,” she said to Damon and left him on the doorstep.

He took two steps inside. Samantha Richter retrieved a sippy cup for a toddler who was planted on the living room carpet six feet in front of a television set. She returned and pointed Damon to a stool in front of a breakfast bar, leaving the door to the outside hallway open. From the kitchen, she could keep an eye on the boy without him overhearing their conversation.

“Do you know who Jeremiah Milk is?” Damon asked.

Standing opposite a Formica counter from Damon, Samantha shoved unwashed plastic containers holding the remnants of mashed foods to a corner. Locks of wavy hair bounced as she shook her head from side to side.

“How about Dominic Freeze?”

Samantha froze. She narrowed her eyes. “Why do the police want to know about him?”

“I’m not a police officer,” Damon clarified. “But I’m working with them and I need to know about Mr. Freeze.”

“What does Dominic have to do with anything?”

Damon lowered his voice. “I know you had a relationship with him while he was married.”

Samantha glanced at the two-year-old boy in the adjacent room. His eyes were fixed on the television set. “So what?” she said coolly. “That’s between me and him.”

Damon mentally checked a box—he had been correct about the extramarital affair. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Ms. Richter. I want to find out what happened to Jeremiah Milk, and I suspect that Dominic Freeze may have been involved. I just don’t know how yet.”

Samantha looked down at the countertop.

“What about Kenneth Randolph?” Damon tried. “He paid you $100,000 through a company called RDF.”

“So you know,” she said meekly, still not looking up at Damon.

“I have phone and computer records of you contacting Dominic Freeze, and photographs of the two of you.”

“Hmmph,” she snorted. “Those must be the ones Kenneth took. Did he give them to you?”

“Not directly,” Damon said. “Please tell me what happened, Ms. Richter.”

She tapped her fingers on the countertop and looked up. “You’re really not with the police?”

“Not technically. But if what you tell me is relevant to Jeremiah Milk’s death, I’ll have to notify them.”

She stood in silence for a moment, then said, “You keep mentioning this Jeremiah person. Who is he?”

“He was my neighbor, in Arlington, Virginia. He and Dominic Freeze went to grade school together. A week ago, Jeremiah was found dead at the state park where he worked as a ranger.”

Samantha winced. “Well,” she said, “If I tell you about Dominic, I may need the police to protect me and my son from him if word of this gets out.”

Damon raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure my police contacts in Arlington can arrange that with the force up here,” he said.

Samantha stepped over to the front door and closed it, then came back into the kitchen and brought a glass down from a cupboard shelf. She filled it with water. “I didn’t sleep with Dominic. But his wife thinks I did.”

She took a sip of water and set it and her elbows on the counter. Samantha looked Damon in the eye. Long lashes fluttered. “Kenneth Randolph paid me $100,000 to pretend that I was having an affair with Dominic.”

Damon’s breath caught. He blew it out slowly. “Pretend?”

She smiled. “Think about what you saw, Mr. Lassard. I called Dominic’s phone incessantly. But almost all of the calls went one way, from me to him. At first, I tried to actually have an affair with him. For the money Kenneth paid me, I thought it would be easiest just to sleep with Dominic. Morals be damned—I’m a single mother raising a two-year-old and jockeying a cash register at Target.” She glanced toward her son. “Kenneth trailed behind me for the first week and took pictures. I stalked Dominic and approached him several times. I pretended to run into him on accident—once on the street downtown and once in a park. I even sat down across from him in a restaurant when he was waiting to have lunch with someone else.”

She straightened up. “I asked him to dinner, but despite my best efforts, he wasn’t interested. He told me that he was flattered but married. So I started calling him. The first few times, I pretended to be a telemarketer. I tried to keep him on the line for as long as I could to create believable phone records. But he had caller ID and caught on quickly. He asked me what I wanted. I told him I was the blond woman he met by ‘happenstance’ several times and asked him out again. After another couple of calls, he realized I was stalking him and stopped picking up. But I kept calling and leaving messages on his voicemail so there would be a record. I started e-mailing and texting him, too. I made those hotter so Kenneth could have a good record.”

“I don’t have records of Dominic’s calls. Did he ever phone you?”

“He did, but only a couple of times. He told me to stop bothering him. During the last call, he threatened to get a restraining order. But by then, I had records of almost six weeks of calls, e-mails, and texts. And Kenneth had several photos of the two of us together from the first week.”

“I saw pictures of you and Dominic going into a motel room,” Damon said.

Samantha grinned. “That was Kenneth’s idea. It was a good one, too. Before I even met Kenneth or Dominic, Kenneth had it planned out. Dominic collects antique toys. It’s a little weird but no secret—his name is all over toy collection blogs and chat room sites on the Internet. Kenneth called Dominic and told him he was a toy dealer from Boston passing through Philadelphia on his way to a show in North Carolina. He said he was staying at a motel in town and planned to have a private showing. Kenneth dropped the names of a few other locals who are big into vintage toys—it wasn’t hard for him to find the names online. Apparently, private showings aren’t uncommon for hard-core toy hobbyists, so Dominic went to a motel where Kenneth had booked a room. Kenneth left the door ajar and the lights on inside. When no one answered Dominic’s knock, he pushed the door open to look inside. Just then, Kenneth snapped a set of photos with a high-zoom camera from across the street.”

“And you went through the same motel door on a later occasion,” Damon said.

“Exactly. Dominic left when he saw that the room was empty. Weeks later, after Kenneth hired me, he booked into the same motel and asked for the same room so the numbers matched. All I did was walk inside while Kenneth took pictures.”

“So it looked as if you and Dominic were meeting there for a tryst.”

“I think that was the nail in the coffin for Dominic’s wife,” Samantha said with a sigh. “I hated to break up a marriage, but I have to look out for myself. I want my son to be able to go to college someday. I put half of the money in an account for that. Then I paid off my car loan and credit card debt, and I have enough to pay for my son’s day care until he starts school. I stuck the rest in the bank. It may have been a despicable thing to do, but now I have financial freedom.”

“You don’t get alimony?”

Samantha laughed. “I’m not even sure who the father is.” She shook her head. “My mother used to tell me to dot my i’s and cross my thighs. I should’ve listened to her. But since I had Henry over there, I’ve settled down when it comes to men.”

She offered Damon a glass of water, and he accepted it. “How did Dominic’s wife find out?” he asked.

“That was easy,” Samantha said. She walked around the counter and plucked a stool from beside Damon. She pulled it away several feet and sat down. “Kenneth sent her a series of anonymous letters.”

“What did they say?”

“The first one informed her that Dominic was having an affair. The second contained the phone records and some of the pictures. The last letter contained the graphic text messages, e-mails, and the photos of me and Dominic going into the same motel room. Kenneth sent them each three days apart.”

“I heard that it worked. Dominic’s wife took their kids and left him.”

Samantha lowered her eyelids. “I didn’t know they had children.”

I bet you didn’t bother to ask
, Damon thought. He concluded that Kenneth Randolph had used Jeremiah Milk’s money not only to end Dominic Freeze’s career but also to destroy his marriage and family.

“I really need to get back to my son,” Samantha said. “I let him watch too much television as it is.”

“Of course,” Damon said. “But before I go, can you tell me about Kenneth Randolph?”

“Hold on a second.” Samantha Richter spent the next five minutes changing her son’s diaper and then setting him up at a table with crayons and a coloring book.

“I met Kenneth Randolph at the Target where I work,” Samantha said when she returned. “I noticed him in my checkout line three days in a row. That doesn’t happen by chance—there are about twenty cashiers at any given time. But it isn’t too unusual, either.” She batted her lashes. “I tend to have a lot of men in my line.”

“What did he say to you?” Damon asked.

“On the third day, he asked me if I would be interested in making a serious amount of money.” She lowered her voice. “I tried to blow him off. I thought he was a creep who wanted me to work at a strip club. But he read my mind. He said it had nothing to do with selling my body, and I could be $100,000 richer in a month. Of course that piqued my interest, but I was wary.”

She wet her lips with her tongue. Despite her attractive features, Damon couldn’t see past her complicity in knowingly wrecking a man’s marriage.

She continued. “I met him after work at Target’s cafe area, and he told me of his plan to split up Dominic and his wife. I didn’t commit right away, so Kenneth wrote down his phone number and told me to think about it and call him in a couple of days. In the meantime, he gave me Dominic’s address. Even before Kenneth walked away, I knew I would do it. I didn’t tell him then, but I couldn’t pass up the money. I drove to Dominic’s house early the next morning and followed him to his office. I’m not sure why. I think I just wanted to make sure I could go through with it. And I realized that I could. I called Kenneth and told him so, and we went from there.”