Death of a Bankster (4 page)

Chapter 6

An hour later, Paige Crawford walked out of the police department filled with promises, but empty of answers. On the way home, she stopped in Applebee’s for a definite drink and possibly something to eat, although she doubted she could keep anything she might eat from coming back up. A moment after sitting at the bar, she noticed the man who had changed her tire come in to sit down alone in a booth for two. He looked over, smiled, and came to her. After a brief chat, she joined him in his booth and told him all that had happened.

* * *

Sergeant Madeline Richards and Detective Sue Martin used part of Monday afternoon putting the finishing touches on a sting they expected to net them a murder suspect. The sting was set for the next day at two in the afternoon.

To open the Crawford case, they reconfirmed with the local FBI field office that Sue had gotten the straight scoop when she called while they were with Mrs. Crawford. Maddie called a man for whom in the past she had strong feelings, but who remained a long-distance, part-time lover, Lincoln Rogers. Rogers was a big shot in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, currently assigned to Unit-1 of the BAU which concentrated on counterterrorism and threat assessment. She wanted to give Lincoln Rogers a chance to validate Agents Powell and Withers. If he did, she might soon learn why the FBI had Sam Crawford under surveillance. In two minutes, Linc had checked as an insider and reconfirmed what Sue had learned from the Phoenix FBI field office. The bureau had no agents named Dennis Powell and Ann Withers in the national office and no money laundering or other case involving Samuel Crawford of Phoenix, Arizona.

Maddie then called Rosemary Conner, the county’s medical examiner who had replaced Dr. Ripley the year before. It seemed a little odd to be rechecking Sue’s contacts, but not as odd as this case was quickly becoming. The collector of people killed by others had no corpse with that name, and did not have a body which fit the description of Samuel Crawford. The same story Sue had gotten from a staff member in the M.E’s office when she had called.

While Maddie had been speaking to Dr. Conner, Detective Sue Martin called the bank to see if Mr. Crawford had come into work today or when they had last heard from him. When Sue got off the phone she went over to Maddie and waited for her to finish her call to the medical examiner.

When Maddie hung up, Sue told her, “The executive office at the bank hasn’t seen Crawford or heard from him since before the time he was alleged murdered last Thursday. I even spoke to the Bank President, name of Maxwell Norbert. He gave me the same story and expressed his concern because Sam Crawford had neither shown up for work on Friday or this morning, and he had not called in. Mr. Norbert characterized that behavior not at all like Sam Crawford, a longtime, dependable executive.”

* * *

Later that day, Maddie and Sue stopped at Saint Joseph’s Hospital on West Thomas Road and interviewed a registered nurse named Carla Roth. Ms. Roth told the same story they had heard from Paige Crawford. All of it: The shooting of Sam Crawford. That she had confirmed he was dead. That FBI agents Powell and Withers had taken Sam Crawford’s laptop and his smart phone. That someone purporting to be the local medical examiner had shown up and taken the body of Sam Crawford. That SAIC Powell had asked both her and Paige not to speak to anyone about any of it before Monday. That Agent Powell had returned Paige’s door key, and that neither of them had heard from either of the FBI agents since.

After leaving the hospital, and briefly stopping back at the station, Maddie and Sue went by the home of Sam and Paige Crawford. They told Paige they had confirmed everything she had said with Carla Roth. They asked Paige if she had anywhere to stay for a day or two. They were going to button up Paige Crawford’s residence as a crime scene.

“Why? Agent Powell said that wouldn’t be necessary. That he had the entire thing on tape.”

“You’re forgetting there are no Agents Powell and Withers, and the medical examiner who came and took your husband’s body was an imposter. There’s no tape showing anything and, at the moment, no body.”

“Of course, how foolish of me, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“In your place,” Sue said, “I doubt I would be either. We asked Ms. Roth and she said you could stay with her as long as we needed your house. That you already had a key.”

Paige Crawford nodded. “That’s … yeah, okay, I’ll stay with Carla.”

Sue stepped forward. “If you will head over there right away, I’ll go about sealing up your house. After that you won’t be able to reenter for anything until we tell you we’ve completed our process. I’ll need to go with you while you gather what you need to take from the crime scene. Please try to move as little as possible before you leave.”

“Detective, I’m afraid I may have already contaminated, if that’s the word, your crime scene. I’ve been back and forth between here and Carla’s the last couple days. Most of what I’ll need is already over there, just a few more changes of clothes and some more cosmetics.”

“We can’t do anything about what’s already happened,” Maddie said, “but we can try to minimize any changes from this point forward. Your home just officially became a crime scene. So, now, we need to follow established procedure.”

A moment later, Maddie asked Paige, “Have you cleaned since Thursday? Washed counters, maybe swept or vacuumed floors, cleaned toilets or anything at all?”

“No Sergeant. My housekeeper comes every Wednesday, sometimes Thursday so all this has happened since her last cleaning. Carla did come back here last Thursday, after I went to sleep, to clean up … the area near the front door. I routinely do some picking up between my housekeeper’s visits, nothing all that much. Just to keep things neat as I go along, you know. Clean the bathrooms. Keep the kitchen up. But I haven’t even done that, so no, no cleaning. Why does that matter?”

“The phony agents spent a couple hours in your house last Thursday night after you left to stay with Ms. Roth. Treating your home as a crime scene may help us find the real identities of these imposters.”

“And they murdered Sam.”

“Possibly, Mrs. Crawford,” Sue said. Maddie then added, “We don’t know that yet. But they can certainly tell us why they were watching your house, and where the phony medical examiner took your husband.”

“I spoke to your husband’s boss.” Sue leafed through a couple pages of a small notebook. “Yes, here it is. A Mr. Maxwell Norbert stated he had not heard from your husband. Is that your husband’s boss?”

“Yes. He’s the top executive officer. Sam worked directly under and reported to Max. They’ve been friends since before Sam and I got married.”

“Well,” Sue said, “all Mr. Norbert told me was that your husband had not come into work last Friday or since.”

“Well, of course he didn’t, Sam’s dead. But even if he were alive, why would he? Mr. Norbert had fired my husband.”

“What?” Maddie said.
This keeps getting screwier.

Sue looked toward Maddie who kept shaking her head. “Mr. Norbert said nothing about having fired Sam. Everything he said was in the context of Sam Crawford still being employed at the bank.”

Maddie turned to Paige who also shook her head. “That can’t be right. Sam told me in no uncertain terms that he had been fired.”

Sue repeated, “Norbert clearly spoke as if your husband was still employed. Although, I admit I had no reason to ask him that specifically. You had not said anything about your husband having been fired. When did that happen?”

“That same day, Thursday, while he was at the bank’s holding company in Los Angeles. Sam told me on the phone while he was waiting in baggage at Sky Harbor. I can’t imagine Maxie Norbert not knowing about that. He is the president of the bank. Sam wouldn’t have been fired without Maxie having participated in that decision … No. Wait a minute.” Paige’s fingers disappeared inside her hair and then reemerged, her hands extended. “That’s not right either. Sam said Norbert had been in L.A too. That Maxie had been the one who actually fired him. He knew. Oh, yes, Maxie knew.”

“Holding company?” Sue asked, her face showing her lack of understanding.

“In banking, if a company owns a bank, with or without other banking interests,” Paige explained, “at least as I understand it, the parent company is often structured as a holding company. Meaning its only assets are the shares of stock it holds in the subsidiary bank. That’s about all I know, if I’m even right about that.” Paige smiled, tightlipped. Her raised eyebrows made her eyes looks unusually large.

“We’ll visit the bank in the morning,” Maddie said. “Talk to Mr. Norbert in person. I assume Sam had a secretary, what’s her name?”

“Blanche. A woman who, believe me, looks nothing like her name implies. My husband said she was named after her great grandmother.”

While Sue locked up the Crawford home and draped the doors in crime scene streamers, Maddie spoke to three neighbors who were at home. None of them saw anything going on at the Crawfords’ home that night or anything suspicious at any other time in the week or so preceding Sam’s murder. That seemed reasonable in light of the size of their residential lot and the way the driveway curved around behind two large trees, a palo verde and a mesquite, that grew in the front yard. The neighbors all said Paige and Sam were normal folks or seemed to be. One neighbor lady, name of Nancy, who lived across the street, did talk about Carla Roth as being a
loose
woman.

Back in her car, Maddie got on the phone with Bill Molitor, the lead on the Phoenix PD’s forensics team. Bill agreed to bring his crew and meet Maddie at the Crawfords’ home at nine in the morning. She took a few minutes to give Bill a feel for the case. “For openers, we need to know for certain that we’ve got a murder. On this one, that’s job one. Right now, the only thing certain is that nothing is.”

Maddie was confident that if there had been a murder, Bill’s team would find evidence of it. The fact remained, although Maddie doubted it, that this could be some elaborate hoax by Mr. and Mrs. Crawford with the collaboration of Carla Roth, RN. At this point, they had nothing to support the assertion that Sam Crawford had been murdered other than the claims of Paige Crawford, her neighbor, Carla Roth, and a phony FBI card showing the name of Special Agent in Charge, Dennis Powell. All of it, taken together, came up short of spelling murder.

“So,” Sue asked, “what else you got going today?”

“I’ve got an electrolysis appointment at 4:30,” Maddie said. “Hope I make that. Another sign I’m getting older is the need to have my random facial hairs zapped.”

“Sort of a plug and play refacification system you got going, girl.”

“I love your made-up word, but you’re spending way too much time with your computer, Sue.”

“You got that right,” Sue said, a chuckle leaking out of the corner of her mouth.

As they walked from the car to the door of the station, Sue brought them back to the Crawford case. “Did you notice Mrs. Crawford’s body language when she spoke of her husband’s secretary?”

“I sure did,” Maddie said. “She bit off the name Blanche. I don’t think I’ve ever known a woman named Blanche except in fiction, Blanche DuBois in
A Streetcar Named Desire
.”

“She did say the secretary was named after her grandmother, maybe it came from there. But yeah, Paige’s arms crossed and her tone turned cold.”

“I’m not exactly certain what that body language meant,” Maddie said with her eyebrows raised, “but it sure didn’t mean, my husband was so lucky to have a wonderful secretary like Blanche.”

* * *

“Unless you need us for something else, we should be on the plane in about three hours, heading back to Oregon.”

“Anything more to report since we last spoke?”

“No, the wife suspected nothing. She bought us as FBI agents. We’ve got Sam Crawford’s only computer, a laptop, and his only cell phone. We went through his house and his personal files. There’s nothing else. He kept it all pretty close … No. We found no safe. Whatever he had must be in his laptop or in some unknown location, maybe in his office at the bank, but not in his home. … What? Oh. We told Mrs. Crawford we saw dust kick up on a distant hill, but that was bull. We didn’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean the shot wasn’t fired from up there. I left Crawford’s laptop and his smart phone at the drop. What do you want us to do now?”

“I’ve picked up the computer and phone. They’re being gone through as we speak, but it doesn’t look like there was anything much I didn’t already know. The real point in your taking them was to keep the locals from getting them and finding evidence of the laundering. Sounds like your end went off without a hitch. The shooting of Sam Crawford was totally unexpected. Your improvisation at the scene was excellent. Good thing we had you take the FBI cards in case you needed them.”

“We had brought along the full FBI credentials you provided, but they only asked for the card. The relief man we had been using during the surveillance, an early retiree from CIA services, was outstanding as the local medical examiner. He stayed at a distance, near the body, leaning down most of the time. He spoke only to me, as Agent Powell, and in minutes was out of there with the body, no questions asked.”

“The locals are undoubtedly figuring you two as the shooters. We have to be very careful to avoid getting mixed up in a local murder. Your man’s initiative on where to park the body was pure genius. That way, we only needed to handle the body once. Your man obviously did much more than he thought he had signed up for. You say he’s retired?” After an affirming grunt, the voice continued. “Double his pay and throw in an extra two hundred for a job well done.”

“That’s generous, will do.”

“Are the widow and her neighbor going to be able to identify you two?”

“No real chance. I’ve removed the mustache I grew for the occasion. I had let my hair grow longer and lengthened my sideburns while we were in Phoenix. My hairs short again and I’ve cutback my sideburns. Linda, who pretty much stayed behind me, has removed the color rinse she had on her hair and she had quickly puffed her jawline before we headed for the house. We’ve burned all the clothes we wore that night.”