Snow Blind-J Collins 4 (32 page)

“I don’t trust that fruity SOB; never have, even if he is Mary’s kin. But it don’t matter because the retirement places I own are at the bottom of my kids’

priorities.”

“Really? Why?”

He snorted and I caught a glimpse of the feisty Bud Linderman I’d remembered. “Carin’ for old people ain’t as glamorous as sellin’ cars or managin’ real estate or cowboy nightclubs. But it’s profitable. My boy Rory would rather work where there’s hot young chicks not, in his words, ‘a bunch of old bitties.’”

“This does have a point, right?”

Linderman blushed. Jesus. Made me feel like I’d reprimanded a garden gnome.

“The point is, I wanna hire you to figure out what’s going on at Prairie Gardens.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I ain’t. You’re a good investigator, prolly too 331

good. If anyone can make sense of it, you can.”

His flattery meant nothing.

“That little gal whose grandpa died is gonna file a lawsuit against us. And if his death was due to neglect on our end, I won’t fight her; I’ll try to settle with her as soon as possible.”

Lawsuit
, the magic word that perked up my ears.

He leaned forward, his face earnest. “I’m done tryin’ to cover up my mistakes. But by the same token, I ain’t gonna let some high-priced lawyer run roughshod over us if we ain’t at fault. I need someone unbiased to look into it.”

Ethical dilemma. Did I tell Linderman that Amery originally hired us to find out if Prairie Gardens had been neglectful and deceitful? That broke client confidentiality.

But if we weren’t working for Amery, the possibilities were wide open.

Why would I want to do it? I didn’t like Linderman, didn’t trust him either. Kevin would freak. Martinez would freak. While I weighed the factors, Linderman spoke up again.

“But here’s the thing. I have to hire you on the sly—cash on the barrelhead. My kids don’t want me involved. They think we should let Bradley handle it.

I think we wouldn’t be in this pickle if they’d kept a keener eye on what he was doin’.”

“Without breaching client privacy laws, there’s a good chance my partner made a verbal agreement with 332

Ms. Grayson on doing the legal legwork for her case
against
Prairie Gardens.”

“Then that’s perfect.”

“How so?”

“If what you find helps her case, then you can turn the information over to her. If what you find out shows something other than our neglect caused Mr. Sloane’s death, then justice will be served.”

I blew a stream of smoke upward.

“You don’t trust me.”

“Why should I? Given what I’ve discovered about your facility, I’d say you aren’t going to be so ‘do the right thing’ once I pass you a list of all the problems I’ve already uncovered.”

“True enough.”

“On the other hand, I have no way of knowing you aren’t trying to save your own ass by manipulating me into working for you, so you can find out what angle my partner is working on for Ms. Grayson.”

“That’s also true. But let me ask you something.

Who stands to benefit from Vernon Sloane’s death?”

“Financially? From the lawsuit?”

“No. From his will. It’s not Prairie Gardens. His granddaughter inherits all that money.”

“What money? Vernon Sloane didn’t have any money.”

“Someone fed you wrong information. Vernon Sloane was worth more than five million dollars.”

My eyes went
sproing
. “How in the hell do you 333

know that?”

“Company policy to have a will on hand for each resident.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“Nope. It’s not unusual when you consider the vast majority of the residents die at our facility. Saves time when we don’t have disputes over personal property.”

“Is that even legal?”

“Couldn’t do it if it wasn’t.”

“But isn’t that information supposed to be confidential?”

“Highly.”

“Then how’d you know about it?”

Linderman became quiet for a minute. “I shouldn’t know she’s the sole surviving heir. So I gotta ask, who else knows? Who else is sharing that information?”

“Has this been going on since LPL took over?”

“I reckon. Here’s what bothers me. The Prime Time Friends program was supposed to be strictly vol-untary for residents in the hive. Not a requirement with a room rate increase straight across the board.”

“The extra ten grand per month is a nice windfall.

Where does the money go?”

“Straight into the Friends account. Bradley un-earthed some donors from the get-go and set it up as a nonprofit organization, then titled himself the COO.”

Nice. “How do they split the monthly income between the actual Friends employees?”

334

“Near as I can figure a grand each for the four volunteers, and three grand each for Luella and Bradley.”

“Seems an unfair split. They do the shit work and the COO reaps the benefits.”

“Something you gotta remember. These women are retired. They work two twenty-hour weeks out of the month. Their wages aren’t reported because they’re part of a volunteer organization and no one’s expectin’ them to get paid.”

“Okay. Still not seeing how those workers wouldn’t be pissed about the inequity. Especially since the rumor is, Bradley is never there. I mean never.”

“And that’s where Bradley sweetens the pot. If any of the volunteers get a resident to bequeath their estate to Prime Time Friends, she receives five percent off the top.”

“You’re kidding.”

He studied me. “I thought maybe your client suspected the administration was siccing the Friends on residents who have a substantial estate, which was why she’d hired you to investigate.”

Should I hedge? Nah. Linderman shared more information than was wise. Who knew what else he’d tell me if I appeared to divulge secrets of my own.

“No. She was more worried about the large amounts of money her grandfather was withdrawing from his bank account on a regular basis that couldn’t be accounted for.” But Amery had pointed out influence being leveled on him from someone.

335

“How did this come to
your
attention, Bud? If you just became interested in the business again, I would think the information would be hard to find.”

“That’s the thing. It should be.” A sad, bitter look crossed his face. “Dee lets me have access to everything. See, she thinks she’s humoring me, that I’m just another worthless old man trying to relive his glory years. My kids are tryin’ to muscle me out of all of the businesses I’ve spent my life building. After the office staff goes home for the day, I come in and poke around through the files and the computers and whatnot.”

I had no idea on whether Linderman’s kids were justified in taking over his business interests, and it’d be easy for me to get sucked into his well of pity. I focused on the facts. “Does Dee know how Prime Time Friends operates?”

“Yep. She gets a quarterly bonus for ‘joint administrative duties’ to the tune of a coupla thousand bucks.

So, I was snoopin’ and I found that two residents who had recently died bequeathed the bulk of their estate to the Friends program.”

“Big amounts?”

“Eh. Just a coupla hundred thousand.”

Linderman made it sound like small potatoes, but that was a lot of money to a lot of people, me included.

“Which Friend received the kickback for bringing in the loot?”

“The program director, Luella Spotted Tail.”

“What do you know about her?”

336

“Not much. She was a holdover from the previous owners. We initially kept her on in a transition position.”

“Long transition. It’s been what, a year?”

“Not quite. According to Bradley, because she’s Indian, he ain’t never been too sure she wouldn’t sue if she was fired outright. When she officially left the payroll, we were no longer subject to the EEO standards. Some of the residents don’t like her much.

Bradley doesn’t like her. Doesn’t trust her either.”

Not surprising. That attitude mirrored most local attitudes about Indians and it pissed me off, but I managed to bite back a smart retort. “Why keep her on?”

“’Cause I guess she could sweet talk a honeybee from a flower. She’s added nearly half a million dollars to the Prime Time Friends coffers since they started it.”

A kick in the gut couldn’t have sucked the air from my lungs any faster. Money was one helluva motive.

In addition to Luella’s awareness of how the COO felt, she might be looking at a big score before she bailed out of the program entirely.

Honestly, I was as confused and conflicted about the case as I’d been at the beginning. I sighed.

“I hear that sigh a lot from my kids, Miz Collins.”

“Sorry. Much as I appreciate it, you overloaded me with information, Bud.”

“Does that mean you’re saying no?”

“No. It means I need to think about it before I make a decision.”

337

“Well, at least you didn’t throw me out on my ear.”

“Did you expect me to?”

Bud pushed to his feet and reached for his coat.

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure. You have quite the tough-as-nails reputation. You didn’t get that by bein’ an easy mark fallin’ for every sob story comin’ down the pike.”

He buttoned his duster and slipped on his gloves before he looked at me again. “But I’ve no doubt you’ll do the best thing for everyone.”

The man didn’t know me. Our past association had been confrontational at best. Now he acted like he had my number cold. “Why?”

“Because puttin’ the screws to me would be sweet revenge. And I’d do the same damn thing if I were in your position.”

“I’m nothing like you, Linderman.”

“I know. That’s why I’m convinced you’ll do the right thing, Miz Collins. Good day.”

The open and shut case didn’t seem so open and shut anymore.

338

I mulled over Linderman’s visit.

It’d be reasonable to protect his business interests and blame Vernon Sloane’s death on murder rather than negligence. But when the pieces were laid out, I realized I’d been just as quick to jump on the “accident” bandwagon as everyone else.

Why? Because no one wanted to believe someone could be so cold as to let an old man freeze to death?

For money?

No one working at Prairie Gardens would blink about Luella taking Vernon for an “outing”—even out to die. At five percent, her personal cut of five million was substantial.

Just not as substantial as Amery’s one hundred percent.

If I took the case, would it prove Kim’s accusation 339

right? I’d do anything to make problems for Kevin and his relationship with Amery?

Wrong. It had nothing to do with Kevin. We weren’t working for Amery. In fact, when I went through the file folders, I noticed he’d voided her last check and the contract. So if I decided to help Linderman, Kevin couldn’t claim we were contractu-ally obligated to Miz Grayson. The only conf lict of interest was his personal relationship with the dead man’s granddaughter.

What about the conflict Martinez has with
Linderman?

Yeah, it might piss Tony off, but it was my business. I seriously doubted he wanted me sticking my nose into his affairs. I hadn’t questioned him on the identity of the redheaded bombshell he’d been doing business with. Since Linderman was a shell of his former self I hardly saw him as a physical threat. Was it naïve to think Linderman had changed?

Are you hoping that helping Linderman will
prove any man—including your father—is capable of
change?

Again. Not the same thing. Sheriff Richards practically dared me to snoop around. It was as much about my ego to uncover information, or browbeat it out of people, to prove my worthiness as an investigator, as it was guilt out of helping Doug Collins.

Regardless. It was another fucked-up situation. It bugged the shit out of me I didn’t know what my dad 340

and BD Hoffman had fought about. Chances were slim BD would spill his guts to me either, but he was the only lead I had.

I closed down the office and made the trek to Bear Butte County. My damn truck was almost out of gas again. With the increased fuel prices, I’d begun to question why I lived so far away from work. As a county employee, I’d had to live in Bear Butte County.

But it’d been damn near a year since I’d quit. Why was I still living there? Wasn’t like I had a great house.

Or fantastic neighbors. True, my place was only twenty-five minutes out of Rapid. Tony never complained about the drive, but I wondered if that was part of the reason we’d been spending fewer nights together and he’d been afraid to bring it up.

Right. Martinez had such a difficult time speaking his mind.

BD Hoffman owned a trucking business on the outskirts of the county seat. The building was a standard metal prefab set in the middle of an immense gravel parking lot. I parked between empty livestock trailers and ventured inside.

No receptionist. I guessed ninety-nine percent of the work was handled over the phone. I loitered politely, my midwestern manners intact, at least until the point I tired of listening to
plop plop
as the snow melted and dripped off my boots.

Although Bear Butte County is small, I’d never met BD, as he hadn’t cooled his boot heels in the 341

sheriff ’s office during my tenure. I’d caused enough problems locally that he might recognize me, so I disguised myself with a floppy knit cap, which hid my hair, and donned smart girl glasses with clear lenses.

I called out, “Hello?”

“Hang on,” boomed from the belly of the cavern-ous building.

The guy growled like an angry grizzly. Probably looked like a lumbering bear, too. So I was surprised when a skinny runt rounded the corner.

I gave him a quick perusal. He was midforties, bowlegged, probably bald beneath his Peterbilt ball cap, short, wiry, with the typical cowboy goatee and mustache. He wore zip-up denim striped coveralls and stained suede hiking boots. His nose and mouth were swollen like he’d been punched in the face. I couldn’t be sure if this was BD; cowboys liked to fight. Someone other than my father could’ve punched the guy.