Authors: Cindy Sample
In the meantime a million questions milled around my brain.
"My mother mentioned you're a developer. How are sales going in this market?"
"It's been kind of slow. But we think things will pick up again soon.” Peter ran a finger around the rim of his wine glass. “The lots have the most incredible views of Folsom Lake. Nothing else like it in the area."
"What's the name of your subdivision again?” I snagged a piece of salmon as I waited for his answer.
"Bella Lago."
The salmon I was gnawing on landed with a sick thud in my stomach.
Peter latched on to my free hand. “I'd love to show you the property sometime. The view of the lake from the top is spectacular.” He ran his finger lightly down my palm. “And romantic."
His touch made me tremble. But not in a good way.
"So do you have any partners?"
"I do.” He drained his wine glass and smacked it down on the table.
Peter's reticence was most unusual. Was it due to the typically competitive nature of real estate agents or something else entirely? I felt like a dog with a bone and I would keep gnawing until I got all of my answers. It was time to find out whose names the “L” and “C” stood for in the TLC partnership.
"How many houses have been built so far?"
He dropped his fork and knife on his plate. “Would you excuse me for a minute?” He stood up and walked away from the table heading, I assumed, to the men's room.
I stared at the mound of pale green potatoes on my plate. They resembled miniature hills. I thought about the subdivision Peter had developed. And the three delinquent loans I'd uncovered. And the empty lots Stan had driven by. What would it mean if Mike Clark prepared appraisals on multi-million dollar homes that didn't exist? Who would benefit from the fraudulent sales?
Our eyes locked as Peter returned to the table.
I had the answer to my question.
Peter rested his hand on top of mine. “Laurel, sorry if I seemed a little testy. Bella Lago has become a real sore point. We've had one problem after another. First there were huge excavation costs because of more bedrock than the engineers anticipated, then the county made us realign some of the water lines, which was another unexpected expense. Then...” He reached for the bottle of syrah and poured the remainder in his glass. “But I've taken care of all my issues. Finally."
The waiter arrived to clear our plates producing dessert menus for each of us. Peter snatched the menus and gave them back. “Sorry to end our evening so quickly, but I received a page when I was away from the table and unfortunately we need to get going.” He turned to the waiter. “We'll take the check."
Fine with me. I needed time to evaluate the information Peter had divulged. And the information he'd been reluctant to disclose. We both remained silent as we entered his luxury sedan and headed back to my house.
I had no idea what Peter was thinking but I hoped he didn't have the ability to read minds. Because my cerebral cortex was processing the information that it was very likely I was sitting next to a murderer. And the murderer was about to deliver me to an empty house.
My heart was pounding so hard it was a wonder Peter couldn't hear it. There had to be some place safe he could drop me off. Somewhere I could call the cops.
My mind was mulling over a variety of safe havens when Peter interrupted my thought process. “Laurel, do you mind if we stop at the Centurion office before I take you home? It's right on the way."
I nodded. It was perfect. Peter wouldn't be expecting me to run away and there was a gas station just around the corner from the building.
We arrived at the office in less than ten minutes. We parked in front of the Centurion building and Peter turned off the ignition. I was almost afraid to make eye contact with him, but he grinned at me, his left hand resting on the polished wood steering wheel.
I wondered if my imagination was getting out of control. Maybe I had read too many mysteries. An hour ago my ex-husband had been my number one suspect. Now my date had moved into the first place ranking.
I rummaged through my tote making sure my cell phone was close at hand. One of Ben's leftover cherry gummy bears dropped on the immaculate floor of the car. I picked it up and dumped it in the side pocket of my purse.
Peter pushed open one of the frosted glass double doors and I followed him inside. By now I desperately needed to use the bathroom. A full bladder would not be conducive to a speedy getaway. Plus the bathroom would provide a convenient excuse to disappear for a few minutes.
"Peter, I'm going to use the ladies room."
He nodded and headed down the hallway to his own office. The overhead lights above the large brass plated Centurion Realty sign barely lit the space. The empty desks shape-shifted into distorted monsters ready to jump out at me from the shadows.
My nerves were completely shot by the time I reached the rear of the building. My hand was pressed against the ladies room door when a creaking sound startled me. I turned around to a terrifying sight, one I'd read about in many a murder mystery but never expected to experience myself.
I was staring at the wrong end of a revolver. Boy, those mystery novels had it all wrong. When faced with a gun, I didn't want to flee.
I wanted to pee.
Peter grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, the hard end of the gun digging into the small of my back. He prodded me down the corridor into his office then shoved me into one of the visitor chairs. My purse dropped, some of the contents rolling on the navy tweed carpet.
"You killed Garrett,” I blurted out. “And Jeremy."
Peter laughed. Not a pleasant sound. He walked around the uncluttered desk and sat down. The gun never wavered. “Laurel, I swear you are as nosy as your mother. I thought if I took you out to dinner I could find out what you'd discovered. But you just wouldn't stop asking questions."
"I am not as nosy as my mother.” Nobody is as nosy as my mother. I looked at the weapon pointed at me. Maybe my nosiness wasn't the real issue right now.
"Whatever. You've been poking around. I could tell at dinner you were close to figuring it all out. My plans have been screwed up ever since you joined that stupid Love Club. What are the odds you would be out on a date with each of the men I killed, on the night they died? If it weren't for you, no one would have tied Garrett and Jeremy's deaths together."
He cocked the gun right at my heart making me feel like an invisible bulls-eye was emblazoned over my left breast.
"But then it turned out the detectives considered you the primary suspect so it ended up working out in my favor. The only hitch was Mike Clark. Mike was under the impression you accidentally killed Garrett with the cell phone. One day we were talking and I slipped up and mentioned Garrett and I had fought. Mike figured out I killed him. Eventually he realized I must have murdered Jeremy as well. He tried to blackmail me. His partner. Can you believe it?"
Peter looked hurt that one of his merry band of fraud fugitives had tried to extort money from him.
"So you killed Mike,” I stated in a voice far calmer than I felt.
He smirked. “Right again. I'd agreed to pay him in cash and we arranged to meet at the Bella Lago sales office at midnight. Once he took off, I jumped in my truck and followed his motorcycle out of the subdivision and down Salmon Falls Road. You know how windy that road is?"
He looked at me for confirmation.
"It's a dangerous strip of road. What did you do? Ram him in the back of his motorcycle?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yep. Just as he rounded a curve I smashed into his bike and it crashed down into the canyon. I was sure he was a goner but I climbed down the hillside to make sure and he was still breathing. I grabbed the money then hit him on the back of his head with the pipe wrench. You can see I had no other choice, can't you?"
I bobbed my head in agreement. I wasn't sure Mike's blackmail was a perfect rationale for murdering him, but nodding seemed the most expedient response since the gun was still pointed at me.
"I was worried about using the same weapon I'd used on both Garrett and Jeremy but I figured the buzzards would have him for dinner long before his body was discovered. I sure didn't expect those two teenagers to find him so quickly. Don't kids have curfews any more?"
The subject of curfews was a continuing debate in my house but not a top priority right this second. I balanced on the edge of the chair, my hands clasped together, unable to resist asking the obvious. “The murders are all tied to Bella Lago, aren't they?"
He hesitated. I didn't know if it was the bottle of wine he downed at dinner or the fact he had nothing to lose by sharing his confession with me.
"You were right on target about the sales at Bella Lago. We had expectations for huge profits. But we incurred all those additional expenses from the water lines the county made us move which delayed the grand opening by six months."
"By then the market had changed and the economy was heading downhill fast,” I said.
"You got it. When we finally started selling lots, home prices were decreasing. Foreclosures were mounting. Not a lot of folks were looking to buy expensive lots to build multi-million dollar homes.
"That subdivision drained me with all the cost overruns. We couldn't even sell our spec home we built. Everything I'd worked so hard for. We still had bills to pay to the bank, the subcontractors. There was only one thing we could do."
"Speaking of ‘we,’ does TLC stand for Tyler, Lindstrom and Clark?” I asked.
"Your mother was right. You are smart.” He leered at me. “As well as hot."
My mother said I was smart? Peter thought I was hot?
I looked at the muzzle of the revolver and shivered. Regardless of how smart and hot I was, the gun was still pointed in my direction.
"So who came up with the idea? Garrett?” I said.
He nodded. Of course. Garrett had tons of wealthy clients. As their CPA, his files contained not only their tax returns, but copies of their W-2 forms, 1099 statements, and complete bank and investment company year-end statements.
"He could create an entire loan package with authentic documents.” He smiled wickedly at me. “No one could tell they were fakes."
He was right. Neither Mary Lou, a senior underwriter, nor Earl had noticed anything amiss.
Peter continued to gloat over the deviousness of their scheme. “Garrett forged their signatures on the loan application and the closing documents. I'm a notary so that wasn't a problem. Mike produced fake appraisals with photos of other million dollar homes in the area. All these Tuscan style houses look alike anyway. And no one ever inspects the houses."
That was true. Banks used to rely on their approved appraisers to protect them from fraud. It was only recently the government decided they probably should intervene and regulate that aspect of the lending business more carefully.
"But how could you make sure the borrowers didn't catch on?"
He smacked the desk with the palm of his free hand. I curled back in my chair.
"Garrett was supposed to pick wealthy retirees, people who were set financially and who wouldn't be buying another house or applying for a new loan. We planned on making the mortgage payments for a couple of months then pay off the fake loans when lots sold and we had the extra cash. We figured if they ran their credit report some day, it would just look like a bank error, a loan that was on the books for a brief period of time then paid off."
"But what about the collection letters the servicing department sends out?” My analytical mind couldn't stop looking for the flaws in his scheme.
"Not a problem. We used different fake post office boxes for each of the borrowers."
Peter looked at me with reproachful eyes. “It was an excellent concept. And those big view parcels would have brought in profits of at least half a million each. It wasn't our fault the lots didn't sell and we couldn't pay off the fake loans. It was all due to the crappy economy."
Of course it wasn't his fault the fraudulent loans became delinquent. Totally due to the economy, which meant the list of people he could blame was endless.
"Okay, I understand your financial problems. And even though I don't agree with what you did...” Peter glared at me. “I realize you needed cash.” Fear was placed aside by curiosity. “But why did you have to kill three men?"
Okay, maybe I am a little nosy.
My captor started rummaging through his desk with his free hand, managing to keep the gun pointed at me with the other one. “One of Garrett's clients, Jeremy Slater, fit our profile: successful doctor with a nice home in Serrano. He had tons of money in the bank and no need to apply for an equity line. We didn't think he would need to run a credit report."
"But Jeremy decided to buy the vacation home in Tahoe,” I said. “When his application was declined by the bank he discovered there was a jumbo loan in his name on a property he didn't own."
Peter nodded as he slammed the first drawer shut and opened another one. “Right again. We put that loan through Worldwide Bank. Jeremy contacted them and discovered they had a full file on him, tax returns, verified assets. I guess at first he thought his partner committed the fraud because that guy was siphoning cash from the practice to cover gambling losses. When his partner assured him he had nothing to do with the fake loan, Jeremy realized no one else could have produced that information other than his personal CPA. Jeremy accused Garrett of creating a fraudulent loan and the dummy confessed."
That dummy Garrett.
"Jeremy and Garrett argued about it just hours before you and Garrett went out to dinner. He called me right after he got home. He was not in a good mood."
Good.
"Garrett was drinking heavily to ease the pain from your hitting him...” Peter paused a minute in his search and looked at me with admiration. “You really are quite a woman, Laurel."