Hot Blooded Murder (7 page)

The faxes! I went back to my desk and stacked them. Then I laid out all the papers according to subject matter: two Acts of Sale, one Property Settlement and a wad of Agreements to Purchase. I’d gotten some from Leteesha. The Agreements to Purchase and an Act of Sale I had illegally faxed myself from Marcie’s. Some had been fanned out on her kitchen table beside the empty coffee cups; one was in her file cabinet. The Agreements to Purchase were printed forms filled in by hand. The forms had an Anton Delon Brokerage logo and a Metairie address up top. Marcie must have gotten them from Mr. Delon. Hadn’t I seen his name on her Caller I.D.?
Check on him.
I felt the case building beneath me like a volcano: rumbling, shifting, heating up before a big eruption.

I looked at the signatures. Seemed like the filler-out was Marcie, judging by how the writing matched up with her signature. I paused and thought: the joy of not being an expert! Here I could, as a total amateur, non-forensics person, blithely and expeditiously decide on the ownership of this handwriting. No waiting around, no time-consuming testing–just wham! Marcie did it. I smiled. This sort of stuff drove MacWain nuts.

Three separate Agreements–I flipped though them and looked at the dates–in six months. Seems there were a lot of
dis
agreements. They were all between Marcie and a couple named Filmore and Tammi Takeur. I hated reading legal documents, but they could reveal so much. Blood, terror, passion, greed, betrayal, all clothed in formal, antiquated English. I sighed, slugged water and got on with it. Very quickly I deduced that the $35,000 check on Marcie’s kitchen table was not for the stallion but instead, earnest money to seal the property deal. Now my stomach began preliminary seismic rumbling. I was getting hungry. Long time since breakfast. I read faster. In a few moments, I understood that the Takeurs had a firm deal to buy the property from Marcie for $335,000. A lotta hay, literally. But after paying off her mortgage she’d have a fifty thousand dollar profit. Not much considering the improvements she’d made. I knew that right around the corner, a forty-acre place had recently sold for eight hundred thousand, and the house was nothing compared to Marcie’s. So why had she been selling so cheap? Heck of deal for the Takeurs. Had Marcie been desperate?

Where was the actual thirty-five thousand dollar check Filmore Takeur gave to Marcie to hold the place? Who had that moullah?

My stomach wouldn’t wait any longer. I got up and picked out a Lean Cuisine from the freezer. Ripped open the box of Chicken with Almonds–360 calories; 16 grams protein–stabbed holes in the cellophane covering and microwaved it for five minutes. Using a tea towel to protect my hand from the heat I carried the little black tray back to the office and ate while I read.
Not bad.
I was trying to lose ten pounds. I gained and lost the same ten pounds over and over. I had myself on my own version of a diet–I bought whatever low-cal/low-fat frozen meals were on sale. Ate them for lunch and dinner often with a huge salad. I pigged out on fresh fruit. If I stuck with it, my overall poundage diminished.

To see if the deal Marcie had made with the Takeurs was a good one, I turned to the pile of papers from Leteesha and the one labeled Act of Sale. It sat right next to the Property Settlement. Maybe I’d start there. Get the more human side of things. I read slowly through the legal language. I understood it was a property settlement in the divorce of Marcia Brent Goodall from Theodore Samuel Goodall. Marcie got the farm, the horses, and the debt pertaining thereto and her husband got a 1961 Rolls Royce and a Ford Taurus. He also got workout equipment–weird. I ate the last bite of Almond Chicken and because no one was around, licked the last bits of sauce from the bottom of the tray then dumped it into my wastebasket. I took a drink of water.

Well. Workout equipment can be expensive. I cleverly deduced Theodore was some huge, muscled, fitness-crazed brute. Poor Marcie. He also got–that’s all. Nothing else. Not even a toothpick…I saw a potentially angry man here. What had old Theo been up to that put him at such a disadvantage? I resisted a frisson of anger. I must not inject my personal, common-but-devastating divorce experience, into the situation. He might have been the most faithful guy in the world. And wasn’t there any money? Didn’t seem like it.

A single sheet fell from the file I was stacking. Notice of Foreclosure it said, poorly copied. Had it been on the kitchen table, too? Had to have been! My chest tightened. I read it. Dated May 1, 2005–twenty-one days ago–it said if Marcie didn’t pay Cade Pritchard seven back mortgage payments, he was going to foreclose. So. The barely break-even price with the Takeurs made more sense. Marcie was trying to fend off foreclosure. Now I was really puzzled. Looks like she had buyers galloping up at the very last minute like the cavalry: Pritchard could receive his back payments, and Marcie would walk away with at least her credit rating intact.
So, why was she dead?
I felt a surge of anger. What
fool
killed her? What a stupid, stupid waste!

Perhaps I might consult the Lila-Diner Information Highway later this afternoon to see if any words were drifting around in that gossip-rich atmosphere. Maybe knowledge of this pending foreclosure had prompted Tommy Grayson to abruptly halt Marcie’s credit at his feed store? Maybe, I picked up a pen, I should visit Tommy as well? I added his name to the people-to-see list.

I sorted through the documents and was puzzled why Leteesha hadn’t gotten me the actual divorce papers, too. Perhaps her boss showing up distracted her and she forgot to print them?

I picked up the phone and called Leteesha. As it rang, I turned to the back page of the property settlement and read: ‘Parish of St. Tremaine, State of Louisiana, October 30, 2004.’ The settlement had been filed just seven months ago. It hadn’t taken Marcie long to go broke. Or, maybe she was already broke when it was filed. It’s tough to make money with so many horses. If she had no other means of support, feed, farrier, vet, advertising and other expenses could vacuum up the stud fees and the sales revenues of young horses promptly.

“St. Tremaine Parish Records,” said Leteesha’s voice on the line.

“Leteesha. Bryn here.”

“Hey.”

“Can someone have a property settlement and not have their divorce finalized?”

“Yep. It happens. Not too often. You saw that omission in the Goodall’s documents?”

“Yeah. Thought it was strange. Maybe I missed the actual divorce papers.”

“Nope. No divorce is on file.” I instantly thought:
maybe the brute Theodore is the inheritor.
Holy macaroni! That made him…

“Find anything else?” Leteesha asked.

I glanced through the papers. “Here, on this Act of Sale, back when the Goodalls bought the farm?” I shuddered at the expression. “Have you got that there?” I heard Leteesha tap some keys. Then I asked her: “Can you wait just a sec? I might have more questions.”

“Uh-huh,” said Leteesha.

I read quickly. Outside, Lulu barked once, a hard bark, so loud I jumped and restrained myself from screaming
Hush!
at her. That squirrel.

“Aha! What about this! Aimée Pritchard herself was the farm’s owner. I can’t find Cade’s name on any of these documents, except on one about foreclosure.” I read on. “They, rather,
she
owned the property. Purchased it in 1991 for…” I shuffled around again, found the earlier Act of Sale I’d gotten from Leteesha “–hot damn, Leteesha! Eighty-five thousand dollars? That huge place? Wow.”

“Yeah, I see it here,” said Leteesha. “Glad you noticed that.”

“The survey attached shows it’s actually three parcels of land, combined. They add up to a total of fifty-three acres.” I remembered the neighboring place had sold for much more with its mere forty acres. “The land must be worth four times that! Never mind that ante-bellum house. But I happen to have copies of an Agreement to Purchase that Marcie signed
day before yesterday
to sell the house for three hundred and thirty-five grand. So Marcie was hardly cleaning up.”

“Read the court documents. You’ll see that she paid the Pritchard’s not much less than that. Let me find it on my computer.” I heard the tap of keys, then Leteesha said, “Here it is, and you’ve got it there, too. Find the Goodall’s Act of Sale papers.”

“Got ‘em.” I read swiftly then said, “The Goodall’s bought the place for $285,000 from Aimée with a whopping down payment of $185,000–so immediately Cade, via his dead wife, was paid back
her
original investment, plus one hundred thousand bucks, just through the down payment!”

Leteesha jumped in, “Add Marcie’s improvements. New fencing, waterlines to all the pastures, gutting and expanding that barn. She must have spent close to fifty, sixty thousand on those improvements. I visited a few times, Bryn, wondering if I should buy myself a Morgan. I watched the progress, with some envy. Marcie made it first class.”

I was thinking the deal the Takeurs had signed for was a very good one. Marcie would barely break even, if that. But I said, “She didn’t paint the barn or the exterior of the house and she didn’t install automatic waterers. I wonder why not?”

“Could be that’s when the money ran out. I never noticed.”

“I did, this morning. I saw the house and I watered the barn. Dragged a hose around.”

“Oh! But back to those papers, Bryn.” I heard the tapping of Leteesha’s fingers on a calculator. “Aimée got a great deal back when Marcie and Theo bought it.”

“Is that right. You’re better at math than I am, Leteesha.”

“I file so many of these papers. You pick up on things, that’s all.”

I felt a startled moment: how much Leteesha knew about everyone who died, divorced, married, and bought or sold property in the whole parish. She was amazingly discreet with it all.

“What I am getting here though, Leteesha, is that the Goodall’s, as a married couple, bought the farm–from a dead woman. I know Aimée Pritchard was killed in 1992. MacWain just reminded me, back when I was dragging that hose around. So how could that be?”

“Now you’ve got me. I never looked that closely. That’s one for the lawyers.”

“Was it just some simple oversight? Cade Pritchard failing to transfer the property to his own name, not having time, whatever, prostrate with grief, et cetera–and the sale just went through on the papers as they were?”

“I’m baffled, Bryn.”

“Of course he made a huge profit. Taxable profit? No taxes paid by a dead woman, are there? Or if there are, they’d be really tough to collect.”
So maybe Cade was dodging the IRS as well?

“I wouldn’t think. Don’t know.”

I expelled a huge quantity of puzzled breath. “Well. I need time to sort this out.”

“You hear anything more about the stallion?”

“No. In a minute I’m going to run over to the pound and check on him. Make sure those fools don’t get trigger-happy and shoot him up with some kind of lethal injection.”

“Now if only I had the money, there’s a horse I would love to have.” Leteesha’s decade-long horse search was legend at Lila’s.

“You would?” I’d always thought she wanted a taller, more dressage-type horse. Dressage is a style of riding publicized by the touring white Lipizzaner stallions. I competed in dressage, minus the airs above the ground.

There was silence on the phone. Then a tiny sniff. Sweet Leteesha. I bet she was crying for the horse. I waited. Resisted crying myself.

“Bryn. You–promise–you try real hard not to let them kill that horse now?”

“Promise. Why don’t you visit him? Take him a carrot.”

“I will. I’ll do that. You call you need any more help, hear?”

“I hear. I’ll call. You take care, Leteesha.” We rang off.

I turned back to the sheaf of faxes and court documents and read through it all again to be sure I understood everything. Marcie was behind seven months in her mortgage payments. Cade was threatening foreclosure. She was frantic to sell to the Takeurs even though their bid price was low, because she’d make back a big part of her original investment and save her credit rating. She could go on and purchase a smaller place. But the Takeurs kept waffling. Three purchase agreements, and in each one Marcie lowered the price. They did this for six long frustrating months. The Takeurs were seeking financing of the mortgage with the Delon Mortgage Brokerage. Then the Takeurs failed to buy for whatever reason. Shortly after that, Marcie died. The Takeurs couldn’t be guilty of her death, because with her dead, how could they buy the farm? They had to know it would go into a lengthy probate or some such legal entanglement.

More questions arose. Marcie and Theodore made a hundred and eighty-five thousand dollar down payment. Where did they get such a sum? Stallion the killer? Yeah right, Sheriff!

Mr. Cade Pritchard must have been receiving mortgage payments from Marcie and Theo. Their monthly payment was $1195.08. I tapped on my calculator: seven times $1195.08 equaled $8365.56. Marcie was under pressure to come up with over eight grand, immediately. I stared at the notice of foreclosure. I put Cade Pritchard’s name down under Theodore Goodall’s, Anton Delon’s and Tommy Grayson’s on my “Must See” list.

I pushed my chair away from the desk. Stretched and yawned. Too many numbers. I needed air, even if it was hot air.

Lulu woofed at the patio doors. Getting too warm for her out there. I got up in a moil of concern from all the morbid financial information. I walked to the French doors and opened one. Lulu bounced in. Against her ultra-soft, but over-permed-looking jet-black coat, her tongue flopped like a red silk ribbon. I said to her:

“Lu. There’s something at that farm I overlooked. Not sure what. I have a nagging feeling.”
Second Brain trying to make contact, no doubt.
“And where’s Marcie’s dog, eh, Lulu? We can’t just forget the dog, now can we?” Lu wagged her tail, clearly agreeing with me. Then her eyes shifted politely toward the kitchen. I stepped aside. She headed there and in a moment I heard her lap up water. I followed my dog into the kitchen, folded my arms and frowned at her.