Dead Water (14 page)

“So she was attractive but no glamour girl,” said Lew, “financially successful, very bright, but not the most self-confident woman.”

“Exactly. That’s why she was so flattered when Winston hit on her. Every other woman he had dated was drop dead gorgeous … trophy bimbos.”

“Did you ever talk to one of them?” asked Lew.

“Yes, I did. Only one, but she told me something very interesting. She said that her dates with Winston were strictly for show. He wanted her on his arm during a social gathering, but when no one was around, he sent her home or back to the hotel room—alone. No sex, no romance. Quite the opposite of what he did with Ashley.

“Chris told me that he came on to Ashley during a plane flight. Apparently, someone who knew them both had introduced them in the airport club at La Guardia in New York, then Winston got his seat changed so he could sit next to her on the flight back to Kansas City. Chris said they got off the plane, went to the hotel at the airport, and spent the night together.”

“Really,” said Lew. “Was Ashley—”

“No,” said Gina. “She wasn’t.”

“Then he’s quite the charmer.”

“Yes, he is,” said Gina. “Intensely charming. Murderously charming. You can understand how Chris would find it disturbing that he could get to Ashley so easily. I was pretty damn taken aback myself. And it’s not like I haven’t been around.”

“Did … do you find Winston attractive?” Lew asked.

Gina paused for a long moment. “He’s interesting. I told Doc he’s a mild-looking man, probably wears lifts to give him height, but pleasant to look at. He has a way, when he is focused on someone, of being … endearing. An odd word, I know. But when he wants to, he can be seductively sweet and attentive … if you are his target, that is. And, of course, let’s not underestimate the charm of sixty million bucks.” Gina shrugged.

“Right,” said Lew.

“But if you’re not the target, he’s a blank,” said Gina. “I don’t know any other way to put it.”

“Did he come on to you?”

“Never. And I saw him at a number of cocktail parties before he hooked up with Ashley, so there was opportunity. In fact, I made it a point to introduce myself. He didn’t even see me. I wasn’t even a blip on the radar screen. It was like talking to a brick wall.”

“That’s unusual for you, isn’t it?”

“Well … yeah … it is. I’m not an unattractive woman. Look at your friend Ray, he paid attention.”

Lew laughed. “I wouldn’t use Ray as an example. Not to hurt your feelings, Gina, but Ray loves women—all shapes and sizes.”

“And they love him,” said Osborne.

“In my experience, most men are like Ray,” said Gina.

“Were you jealous?” Lew’s voice was soft, forgiving.

Gina looked hard at Lew. “I wasn’t jealous so much as I was puzzled. I’m used to getting a second glance at least. That’s why I listened to Chris, especially the money angle.”

“So Chris put you on alert….” Lew urged her to continue.

“Yes. Then, a couple months after we talked, she was killed in a car accident. Coincidentally, right about the time that Winston went to work for Ashley.”

“How long ago was that?” asked Lew.

“Two and a half years ago. It still bugs the hell out of me—and I brought the file on it. I was on the city desk the night of the accident. I got a call from one of the EMTs at the scene. She’s married to a reporter who works for the paper, so she recognized Chris from the copy desk. When she called that night, she told me something that’s haunted me ever since.”

“Describe the circumstances of Chris’s death first,” said Lew.

“Single-car accident. She hit a tree on the way home from work, about three in the morning. Some alcohol in her blood but not enough for a DUI. It was classified an accident, even though a number of her friends and colleagues, even Ashley, thought it might have been suicide.”

“Why is that?”

“Chris was moody. The sisters were opposites. After she survived the cancer, Ashley was relentlessly upbeat, while Chris had a habit of getting down on herself. She was looking for another job at that time, too. She hated her boss.”

Gina stood up suddenly to refill her coffee cup. Then, cup in one hand, the other thrust deep into her pants pocket, she paced as she talked. “Here’s what the EMT told me. When they were cutting Chris out of the wreckage, the intern with the emergency team noticed that her arms were not broken.”

“I assume she hit the tree pretty hard?” asked Osborne. “Other bones must have been broken.”

“Yes. Actually, the car caught fire on impact, and she was badly burned, too. But the intern was confused by the condition of her arms. I talked to the intern, and he said Chris took the impact of the crash on her head and her entire lower body. Her arms, except for the burns, were okay. He said it was so unusual for her arms not to be broken that it made him think she was limp when the car struck the tree—that she was already unconscious. He tried to bring it up with the cops, but they wouldn’t listen. As far as they were concerned, it was an accident, case closed.”

“And Ashley thought it was suicide,” said Lew.

“She was
convinced
Chris had committed suicide.”

“I see,” said Lew.

“I, of course, was sure she was killed. And so I talked my boss into a magazine story on Michael Winston. In my gut, I knew something was really wrong.”

“Oh,” said Lew, “so this was not a
short
newspaper article that you wrote.”

“Oh no,” said Gina. “The business section had already run at least half a dozen of those. No, I talked my managing editor into a good, long magazine piece. Something that would give me an excuse to really dig.

“And that’s when things got interesting. I called Harvard to check on the business school degree and learned he had attended some two-week session, not the full program. He listed it on his résumé as a Harvard MBA. But, hey, just a venial sin. People do that all the time. Then I called the family business in Texas, and they flat-out refused to talk to me. That got me going. So I called a former colleague of mine who’s a sportswriter for the Houston newspaper. As I told Doc yesterday,
pay dirt.
And here’s that file.

“The sportswriter recognized the name instantly. He switched me upstairs to a special projects investigative reporter who had covered the stock fraud story. He just about fell out of his chair laughing when I told him Winston was saying he was worth sixty million dollars. But he sobered up when I told him I had a dear friend almost engaged to Winston. And he got real serious when I said she was wealthy. He went to the courthouse that afternoon and overnighted the divorce papers. My timing was impeccable. Winston had been in court down in Houston, six weeks earlier, swearing he was worth less than fifty thousand dollars and trying to weasel out of his marriage—he had a wife and three kids.

“Meanwhile, back up in Kansas City, word got out that I was working on the story. Somehow, someone—I don’t know who—learned I was nosing around Winston, and they got in touch with the one guy who had something on him. I got a phone call in the middle of the night from that man. He told me that Winston had stolen his business, his wife, and tried to kill him.”

Lew had been taking notes as Gina was talking. Now she raised her pen from the paper to look at Gina.

“Yes, attempted murder. The source said he had been the sole owner of a small commodity investment firm. His banker introduced him to Winston, who made him a good offer for half the company, probably with a line of credit from the idiot banker. Working with Winston, my source refinanced his end of the operation, taking on several million dollars in loans, which he put into the company. Six months later, he walks in one day and finds himself locked out of his office, locked out of his own business!

“It got worse. Winston was sleeping with the guy’s wife, and she had helped him forge papers that put control of the company in Winston’s hands.

“Then it got real nasty. My source decided to confront Winston. He went to his home—the wife had kicked him out—and as he’s walking up the driveway, he sees a car headed right at him, Winston at the wheel. The source said he didn’t believe Winston would actually hit him so he stood his ground. But the car kept coming, knocked him down, and ran over him. Broke both his legs.”

“What did the police do?” asked Lew.

“My source never reported it. He told me he was so humiliated losing his business, losing his wife, he couldn’t bear to have his business colleagues know what he let happen to him.”

“And you believed him?” said Lew.

“The man wept, Chief Ferris. He was broken, he was distraught, he was deeply disturbed. Yes, I believed him. And it’s why I believe Michael Winston is capable of killing Ashley.”

“Why do you think Winston stopped at breaking his legs?” asked Osborne. “Why didn’t he kill him?”

“Because he had a plan that wouldn’t work if the guy was dead,” said Gina. “This shows you how sick Winston is. After he left town, the commodity firm went belly up. When the financial statements were reviewed, whose signature was on the loans? The original owner. Who’s holding the bag right now?”

“That gentleman doesn’t sound very bright,” said Osborne.

“No one looked bright after Winston left town,” said Gina. “He is the consummate con man. Ingratiating, charming, a pathological liar: He is the perfect example of why a gifted con man is called an
artist.”

Lew snorted. “I know exactly what you’re talking about. Loon Lake may be tiny, but we are a microcosm of the world. We’ve got everything here. We have perverts, we have card sharks, and we certainly have con men. Actually,” she winked at Doc, “we are very fortunate to have Ray on our side.”

“Really?” said Gina. She looked intrigued. “Now that’s interesting, because I happen to believe the only way to stop Michael Winston is to beat him at his own game. And I can guarantee you that when we find him, he will be running a scam of some kind. He always does. He has to. He’s
driven
to con people.”

“There’s another side to that,” said Lew. “People ask for it.”

“Absolutely,” said Gina. “Greed—and laziness—make it easy to dupe people. Think about it. He was indicted for fraud less than a thousand miles away, but no one checked his credentials. And he is very sly. Take Kansas City. Here’s an old-fashioned town that is traditionally closed to outsiders. No one gets into monied society in that town unless they’re born to it. But he did. Instantly. Ingratiated himself not because of
his
money but because he could make
you
lots of money.

“My hunch is that’s how we’ll find him up here. He’s making money for somebody else, allegedly anyway. Someone powerful, someone networked.”

Lew looked at Osborne. He shook his head. He couldn’t think of anyone either.

“Gina,” he said, “we don’t have anyone like that up here. Loon Lake is hardly a finance capital of America.”

“Casinos, maybe he’s got a tie into casinos.”

“I doubt it,” said Lew. “The Native Americans operate close to the vest. Not too many outsiders get in.”

“But that’s exactly the point I made about Kansas City.”

Lew shrugged and made a note on her pad. “Did you tell Ashley about the incident with his ex-partner?”

“No, the way things went over the next six months, I didn’t think I had to. In a way, I thought I was saving her from being broken, too. I thought I could save her from further humiliation.”

Gina sat down, crossed her legs, and swung the top one hard again. “I was so wrong.”

eighteen

“The woods were made for the hunters of dreams, The brooks for the fisher of song To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game The streams and woods belong.”

Sam Walter Foss

“Did
you know all this before your interview with Winston?” ask Lew.

“Yes, but I told no one. I wanted to be sure he wasn’t tipped off before I could get to him. So I called his office and set up an interview and, of course, he loved it. He was thrilled to get the attention.”

“Why? What did he have to gain from all this publicity?” asked Lew.

“Business. He had ownership of the commodity firm. He was selling himself as an investment expert: giving seminars, he even got himself on
Wall Street Week.
People were falling all over themselves to throw money at the man.”

“And where is that money today?” said Lew.

“Gone. Every penny plus Ashley’s half million. Went with him when he left town.”

“You mean to tell us that people were investing large sums of money with this man, and no one checked on his credentials?” asked Osborne.

“They never do,” said Gina. “The only people who ever check credentials are newspaper terriers like me … and people hate us for it. They hate us because we blow holes in their heroes. This is not a new story. Kansas City loved Michael Winston because he rode into town as the quintessential American male: self-made millionaire, handsome, a man’s man. You know the type,” said Gina. Then she sat up straight, flexed her biceps like a weight lifter and, lowering her voice, growled, “Me big game hunter.”

“Is he a hunter?” asked Osborne.

“Not just a hunter, he is an expert marksman … or so he would brag. That really appealed to the good ol’ boys because Kansas City is big on hunting … horses and hunting. At the time I started researching my story, the most sought-after social engagement in town was an invitation from Winston to join him in his private plane for elk hunting in Montana, pig hunting in the Carolinas, pheasant hunting in the Dakotas … or duck hunting in Eagle Nest, Wisconsin. And that, I think, is where he made the one misstep that will lead us to him.”

Gina scraped her chair forward once again, crossed her arms over her chest and looked at them intently.

“Keep in mind that the event I’m about to describe takes place
before
our confrontation interview, okay? Winston has no idea I’m on to anything. And he’s extremely solicitous, probably convinced he can con me into a flattering profile that will boost his image ever so much more. Rumors are floating that he’ll be drafted to run for the U.S. Senate; everything is going his way.”