It Takes Two to Strangle (18 page)

The journey home to Hollydale was uneventful as was his afternoon volunteering at the library. His thoughts turned to Bethany. Damon had secured good seats for Friday’s musical at the Kennedy Center. The two days in West Virginia took his mind off of his upcoming date, but now, as the hours crawled by with no word from Gerry, trepidation over the pending evening with Bethany set in. He summoned his courage and called her to confirm a time to pick her up. To Damon’s relief, Bethany didn’t pick up and he left a message.

Gerry had promised to call and fill Damon in on the results of the police’s interrogation of Victor, but Damon still hadn’t heard from him when he left the library at five o’clock. He walked to The Cookery to see Rebecca. It was only a quarter of a mile, but he hadn’t exercised in days so the walk felt good.

While Damon was in West Virginia, Hollydale had moved on from the murder in many ways. The fairgrounds were barren, the carnival caravan had driven off to its next destination and, as Margaret had informed Gerry the previous day, Jordan Hall and Clara Jovanovic returned to Richmond and Toma had gone back to Baltimore.

Rebecca’s shop smelled of fresh baked bread. She spooned a generous dollop of honey on an inch thick slice of sourdough and placed it on a napkin in front of him.

“Thanks,” he said taking a sizeable bite and covering his open mouth with his hand. “This bread is phenomenal. It tastes like it took hours to make.”

“Actually it takes four days,” she said with a smile. She explained the fermentation process involved in a creating a multi-day sourdough starter—it sounded more like a dissertation defense than a baking instruction.

Rebecca brought a pitcher of pink lemonade and two pilsner glasses to the countertop and asked him what he had discovered about Anthony Weams. The anesthesiologist was all but a distant memory to Damon, but when he had breakfast with Rebecca less than three days earlier, Weams had been at the forefront of his suspicions. Damon filled her in with the details of his trip, but made sure to leave out Hannah Roscoph’s name. The other fact he couldn’t reveal to Rebecca was that there had been multiple strangulations. The police were still keeping that fact close to the vest.

After his morning shift at the library the following day, with still no message from Gerry, Damon decided to take a drive to Manassas, Virginia, where Big Surf was operating for the week. The area surrounding the Prince William County fair in Manassas was more spacious than the neighborhoods bordering the fairgrounds in Arlington, but within the boundaries of the fair itself the scenery was nearly identical.

The area housing the temporary living quarters was desolate. Damon remembered that Jim Riley had decided to move into Lirim’s trailer. He wondered if the man had even bothered to buy a new mattress. The submarine style trailers all had similar features, but Damon recognized distinguishing characteristics—including the large metal initials “LJ”––on the one at the far end.

He approached the door and knocked. Jim invited Damon inside. The small table held a large accounting ledger. Bacon odor permeated stale air inside the trailer.

“I’m surprised to see you again,” Jim said.

“I wanted to ask you a question about Lirim.”

“Go ahead.” Jim picked up the ledger and placed it in a cabinet beneath the small kitchen counter. “You’re not the police, but I had nothing to do with Lirim’s death so it doesn’t bother me.” Damon noticed the swelling on Jim’s earlobe had diminished and the scrapes on his forearm were scabbed over.

“The Arlington police have been working with the sheriff’s office in Morgantown West Virginia,” Damon started, leaving out his contribution.

“That’s where Lirim lived.”

Damon nodded. “About fifteen years ago, Lirim and Victor McElroy were involved in an illegal money making scheme.”

“Sounds familiar,” Jim said with a smirk.

“But it was much worse. Lirim and Victor kidnapped an eleven-year-old girl, took illicit photos of her and sold copies of them.”

Jim balled his fists. “What a couple of sickos.” His indignation seemed genuine.

“My thoughts exactly,” Damon said.

“So did the girl come back and choke the life out of Lirim?”

“I don’t think so,” Damon replied. His brain wrinkled. He, Gerry and Ravi Anbani had accepted Hannah Roscoph’s word that she hadn’t told anyone about Lirim and Victor. But if she had lied, there could be an entire set of suspects to Lirim’s murder unknown to the police. And for that matter, the call to Hannah took place five days after the murder—she could have killed him herself.

“Well, if you don’t think she killed Lirim, what does it have to do with me?” Jim asked, interrupting Damon’s thoughts.

“I wanted to know whether he and Victor were still in the business.”

“You mean were they stripping down little kids in this very trailer and taking pictures?”

“Either that or selling copies of pictures he already had to anyone on the carnival circuit.”

The smaller man looked Damon straight in the eyes. “I can’t be positive. I wasn’t watching him all of the time, but I don’t think he was doing anything like that. At least not for the past five years when I was his partner.”

“And distribution?”

“I doubt it. Not everyone in the carnival game is as clean as a whistle, but I just didn’t see anything of that sort.”

“Well, he had photos fifteen years ago and the police believe he sold them while he traveled with Big Surf.”

“Fifteen years was a long time ago, before every joker had a wireless tablet or access to a laptop,” Jim said. “But it wasn’t Big Surf back then.”

Damon raised his eyebrows with interest.

“Lirim called it Mountaineer Carnivals,” Jim continued. “When I invested, he shut down that corporation and started Big Surf to make the legalities easier.”

Damon wondered whether Gerry knew about the corporate change. And if a black SUV could be registered to a corporation, could it have been registered to Mountaineer Carnivals?

Jim was being helpful, but there was still one piece of information Damon wanted from him. He decided to jump in feet first and hoped he wouldn’t regret it. No one knew he was in Jim’s trailer, or even in Manassas.

“Jim, you said you’re not afraid to talk, but you are hiding something, aren’t you?”

Jim’s narrow face twitched and he sat down on the worn pea-green sofa. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said flatly.

“There’s a reason you didn’t file a civil suit against Lirim and Victor to reclaim your share of the money Big Surf paid the IRS. The same reason, I’m guessing, you didn’t go back to the IRS or to the police when you found out they starting skimming again.”

“The IRS penalized the company the first time. Why would I want to bring them back?” He conjured as much bravado as he could muster.

“Because they weren’t just skimming tax dollars, but profits as well. Profits that you were entitled to your fair share of. And the IRS has a criminal investigation arm. They may not have been called in the first time, but you could have been pretty certain they would have been involved if the IRS found out Lirim and Victor had started skimming again.”

Riley scratched his chin with vigor. “I know, I know,” he said. “The reason I kept my mouth closed has nothing to do with Lirim’s death, but I just can’t tell you what it is.” His eyes took on an oily quality.

“If you don’t come clean, the police may arrest you for murder,” Damon said. It wasn’t technically a lie.

But Jim picked up on the nuance. “The police may arrest me?”

“I don’t know whether they will or not, but look at it from their point of view,” Damon said. “With Lirim dead, the skimming stops immediately. You get to fire Victor and you can buy out Lirim’s share of Big Surf from Clara. Everyone in town seems to know about the clothesline used to strangle Lirim, and you knew where it was kept. You have some pretty nasty looking scratches on your forearm that didn’t appear until just after the murder. And on top of all of that, there’s a secret reason you can’t tattle on your business partner and his henchman accountant. If you were the police and your other leads had run cold, what would you do?”

Jim Riley grunted. He stood up from the sofa, retrieved a can of root beer from the refrigerator and contemplated the nutrition label.

“It’s pretty simple really,” he said a full minute later, still staring at the soda. “When I was getting ready to buy into Big Surf, I needed a loan—basically a mortgage on my half of the company. I had a decent amount of money saved, but nowhere near enough for a full share. I didn’t own my home and had no other collateral. I applied for a business loan with two banks but they both turned me down, so I went to Lirim and told him the deal was off. I couldn’t get the financing.”

Damon nodded his head.

“Lirim got very upset,” Jim continued. “This was right around the time when he was involved with the Florida venture capitalists. I’m pretty sure he needed cash, and quickly. Lirim had already mortgaged most of the carnival’s equipment and couldn’t get another loan himself.”

Damon’s mind jumped to the Florida venture capitalists. He had forgotten about them, though he was sure Gerry hadn’t. “So what were you buying into?” Damon asked.

“Contracts and goodwill with the counties, mainly. Lirim had an established relationship with a number of fairs and that’s like platinum in the carnival business. Also, he had the infrastructure all set up, employees and equipment.”

“Okay, I get it. Lirim needed an infusion of money and couldn’t get it himself. He had you lined up—a buyer with a cash down payment but in need of a loan for the remainder.”

“Right. So when I told Lirim I was pulling out—after he initially blew up, he calmed down and told me not to worry. Two days later, he set up a meeting for me with a man who called himself China.” He picked at the scab on his arm. “China wasn’t Chinese—he looked Russian or maybe Ukrainian. He was basically a rogue financial advisor. He helped me create a fraudulent account, which made it look like I had a large investment portfolio that could be collateralized. And he knew a small business loan manager who, for a percentage of the loan value, would look the other way if the paperwork was reasonable on its face. Unlike Lirim, I didn’t have any other mortgages, so it didn’t raise any red flags at the upper levels of the bank.” Jim Riley dropped his head into his hands. “If I told anyone about the skimming, Lirim would have exposed me.”

“You don’t know China’s real name?” Damon asked.

“I honestly don’t, and I don’t know where to find him,” Jim said. “Everything was done under my name. I can probably dig up the name of the loan manager. I’m sure the police will ask for it.”

Damon told Jim that he appreciated his candor.

“Do you think the police will arrest me for fraud?” Jim asked.

“I don’t know,” Damon said. The staleness in the trailer was starting to constrict his throat and sitting less than fifteen feet from where a dead body had lain didn’t help.

Damon exited the trailer, leaving a despondent-looking Jim lying on the sofa. Damon bent over and took several deep breaths of fresh air. It cleared his throat, and he strolled briskly through the fairgrounds back to his car.

He wondered what would happen to the arrangement Skipper had with Jim to pay for his schooling if Jim was incarcerated. Could the argument he witnessed between Skipper and Lirim have been about something more significant than a week’s pay? If Lirim was threatening to expose Jim Riley’s fraud and Skipper knew about it, Skipper’s tuition money would dry up.

Damon checked himself. Lirim had no reason to expose Jim’s fraud. Otherwise, he would be an accomplice for setting up the arrangement. Then again, Lirim had apparently used the threat of exposure to keep Jim from halting the skimming scheme.

Before starting his vehicle, Damon called Gerry Sloman to inform him of Jim’s confession. Gerry answered on the second ring.

“Gerry. I haven’t heard from you in almost two days. What’s happening?”

“A lot, Damon. I’m driving back to Arlington as we speak.”

“I just spoke to Jim Riley,” Damon said. “I figured out what he’s been hiding.”

“Damn it, Damon, you can’t just approach a suspect on your own. Listen, come over for dinner tonight and fill me in.”

Chapter 17

Damon arrived at Gerry and Trina Sloman’s house bearing a bottle of red table wine. He knew Gerry wouldn’t partake of more than a minimal amount while he was in the throes of a major case, but Trina would appreciate the gesture. She invited him into the stone-fronted house and Gerry greeted Damon with a fatigued handshake.

They ate homemade lasagna and a terrific salad in the Sloman’s well-appointed dining room. Trina provided a defensive “we rarely have guests,” even though neither man had challenged the formal location. The conversation over the meal was light, and Trina was interested in Damon’s upcoming evening with Bethany, who hadn’t yet returned his call.

After coffee, Trina retreated from the dining room and left Gerry and Damon to discuss the case. Gerry asked Damon to provide details of his conversation with Jim Riley, and after Damon was finished Gerry requested that he refrain from interviewing any other suspects. “Margaret is worried that you’re too involved,” Gerry said. “Listen, I appreciate using you as a sounding board, but you’re being too proactive. And approaching a suspect on your own was downright dangerous.”