Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (41 page)

The house was large and new and took up several hundred feet of lake-front. A very expensive piece of property. There was no answer to Lisa’s knocks on the front door. She and Jock walked around to the side of the house and peered through a window into a two-car garage.

“Two cars inside,” said Lisa. “Let’s check the back.”

The backyard sloped down to the lake, a massive expanse of manicured grass spotted with flower beds. A large, screened swimming pool was part of a patio that was attached to the rear of the house. A man’s body, clad only in a swimsuit, lay with the upper torso in the water and the rest of the body on the pool deck.

Lisa took out her phone and dialed 911. She identified herself as an FBI agent and said that she’d found a dead man and would like for Orlando police officers to respond as quickly as possible. Less than two minutes later, Lisa and Jock heard the sound of sirens and a few minutes later two uniformed police officers walked into the backyard. “What’ve you got?” one asked.

“I’m FBI Special Agent Lisa Coyle.” She showed the cop her credentials. “We’re looking for a man named Travis Watson who lives here. I don’t know if that’s him in the pool. We didn’t want to disturb anything until your crime-scene people clear the area.”

“Good thinking,” said the officer. He looked at Jock. “Are you an agent as well?”

“Yes, but not FBI.”

“May I see some credentials?”

Jock handed him a small case with a picture ID card that identified him as a special representative of the president of the United States.

“Political?” asked the cop.

“No. Intelligence,” said Jock.

The officer handed the case back to Jock. “Thank you, sir,” he said and stood almost at attention.

The other cop said, “I’ve called for the detectives and the crime-scene unit. They should be here shortly.”

“I don’t think we need to wait around and get in the way,” Lisa said. She gave him a business card and asked that he call her as soon as they had any information. “I won’t interfere with your murder investigation,” she said. “I’m simply looking into some bank-fraud matters. Mr. Watson was a witness to some of that. If that’s him in the pool, I’m probably finished.”

Two hours later, Jock’s cell phone rang. Agent Coyle had dropped him at his hotel in downtown Orlando and gone back to her office in the federal building a few blocks away. She was on the phone.

“I just got a call from the Orlando detective working the Watson homicide. It was definitely Watson. He was shot in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. The medical examiner’s initial estimate is that Watson had only been dead a couple of hours when we found him.”

“I’m not sure where we go from here.”

“We may not be dead in the water yet,” Coyle said. “No pun intended.”

“Right,” said Jock, laughing.

“It looks as if Watson had been tortured. He had some knife slices on his belly. They weren’t deep, but probably hurt like hell.”

“Sounds like somebody wanted some information.”

“Does the name George Bass mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it does. Why?”

“Watson made several calls to Bass in the three or four hours before his death.”

“What makes you think Bass is involved? He may just have been a good friend.”

“Well, if that’s so, Watson’s good friend was killed an hour ago in a hit-and-run accident in downtown Winter Park. The police found the car within ten minutes. It was abandoned on the Rollins College campus. It was stolen earlier this afternoon.”

“Prints?”

“Wiped clean.”

“Maybe Bass was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Jock. “Got run over by some kid out joyriding in a stolen car.”

“That might be true, but then what would the kid have been doing in Watson’s neighborhood at about the time he was killed?”

“Crap. Too much of a coincidence. Who saw the car in Watson’s neighborhood?”

“The lady who lives across the street. She described it exactly. Didn’t get a tag number, so we can’t be positive it was the same car, but I don’t think that kind of a coincidence happens.”

“I agree,” said Jock. “Bass has been on our radar for a while now.”

“You didn’t mention this to me for what reason?”

“I didn’t want you to get too far out in front of the investigation. If you knew Bass was possibly a target, you might have overlooked something that would have led us in a different direction.”

“I’m a better cop than that,” said Lisa.

“I know that now. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Do you want to talk to the Winter Park detective who’s investigating the hit-and-run?”

“Absolutely.”

“He’ll meet us at the scene in thirty minutes. I’ll pick you up in front of the hotel.”

George Bass had been run over as he crossed Park Avenue in front of city hall. He’d just left a SunTrust Bank branch. There were a number of witnesses, all of whom saw something different. No two stories matched. It was a shocking event to have happen on a tranquil street late on a Friday afternoon.

Dark had fallen by the time Jock and Lisa arrived and the Winter Park police had blocked off two blocks of the street. Light wagons had been arranged around the scene and forensic technicians were crawling around on all fours looking for evidence.

“Several people said they thought the car may have been waiting for Mr. Bass,” said the Winter Park detective. “Nobody paid much attention to the car, but it was idling in a parking space in front of the old theater building just up the street. That’s not unusual around here, but this guy
shot out of the space at a high rate of speed, hit Mr. Bass, and kept going. He turned right onto Fairbanks, but must have doubled back onto the Rollins campus, because that’s where we found the car.”

“You don’t think it was an accident,” Lisa said.

“Doesn’t look like it,” said the detective.

“Have you notified his family?”

“Yes. He only has a wife. No children.”

“How’s she taking it?” asked Jock.

“Surprisingly well,” the detective said. “I was caught off guard. I was expecting a lot more grief.”

“Do you mind if we go by and speak to her?” Jock asked.

The detective hesitated. “Just what is your interest in this?” he asked.

“Like I told you on the phone,” said Lisa. “We’re investigating a bank-fraud case and Mr. Bass was tied to the man killed in Orlando today, Travis Watson. Watson was a target of our investigation. It’s just too coincidental that both were killed on the same day and there’s no connection.”

Jock spoke. “I’m hoping she can shed some light on what kind of activities her husband may have been engaged in that could have gotten him killed.”

“I’m not sure I understand your involvement in this, Mr. Algren,” said the detective. “Why would a federal intelligence agent be interested in a murder in Winter Park?”

“The FBI is looking into bank fraud, and I’m interested in money laundering. We think that might have been going on here and may have been what got Bass and Warner killed.”

“Well, then, be my guest,” said the detective, “but don’t forget, the homicide investigation is mine. Let me know if you come across anything that’ll help me find a murderer.”

Betty Bass seemed unruffled when she answered the door a little after eight o’clock that evening. Special Agent Coyle introduced herself and Jock. “I’m sorry to intrude at a time like this, but I need to talk to you about your husband.”

“Come in. Now’s as good a time as any. I can’t say I wasn’t expecting you.”

“You were expecting the FBI?” asked Lisa Coyle.

“You or some other law enforcement people.”

They followed her to the living room and took seats. “Why were you expecting us?” Lisa asked.

“My husband was a crook. I don’t know what he was into, but it had to be illegal. I can’t say that I’m sorry he’s dead.”

Lisa leaned in, her voice quiet, sympathetic. “You want to tell us about it?”

“I can tell you what I know, but I’m afraid it’s not a lot. Five or six years ago, George began to have very good years with his brokerage business. There was a lot more money coming in than there had been in the years before.”

“And that made you suspicious?” Lisa asked.

“Not at first. That business always has ups and downs, but even when the stock market took a big hit, George kept making more and more money. I began to think it was coming from somewhere other than the brokerage business.”

“How much money are we talking about?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know. We were doing fine and George spent a lot of money
on refurbishing the house, bought a new and expensive car, that sort of thing. Not spectacular amounts, but more than we’d had to spend in the past.”

“And that made you suspicious?”

“Not really, but one day I found a briefcase full of cash. It was sitting on the desk in his office here at the house, and I moved it to dust under it. It was heavier than I suspected, and I dropped it. It wasn’t locked and it fell open when it hit the floor. The briefcase was stuffed with cash. Bundles of one hundred dollar bills. A lot of bundles.”

“Did you confront your husband about it?” Lisa asked.

“I did, but he told me it was some money a client had given him to invest and he hadn’t gotten around to putting it in the bank.”

“Did you find that suspicious?”

“Sure. I’d never heard of a client, an honest one at least, handing out briefcases full of cash. That’s usually handled by check, isn’t it?”

“Usually.”

“It was about this time that George became abusive,” Betty said. “He’d always been a bit distant, but suddenly he just got mean. He’d be gone for days at a time, without explanation. If I asked where he’d been, he’d tell me it was none of my business. He had a short temper and nothing ever seemed to satisfy him. He began to talk about moving to an island somewhere, crazy talk like that. We couldn’t afford to move, and we’ve been in this house for years. I didn’t want to go anywhere at my age. He told me he’d go without me. Things like that.”

“Was he physically abusive?” asked Lisa.

“No. He never hit me.”

“Why didn’t you leave him?”

“I was thinking about it. I even went to see a lawyer, but then our daughter was killed last year. Murdered. That took the heart out of me. I didn’t want to live. George seemed not to care that Katie was dead. I was so devastated that I couldn’t get out of bed some mornings.”

Jock spoke for the first time. “Mrs. Bass,” he said, “I understand that a man named Matt Royal came to see you last week.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “He’s a nice man. The boyfriend of a detective who was almost like a daughter to us.”

“Did you tell him any of this?”

“No. He was helping J. D. Duncan, that’s the detective over on the west coast, look into Katie’s murder. It didn’t seem pertinent.”

“Was there any tension between Katie and your husband?” Jock asked.

“A lot. Katie wouldn’t come visit much when George was here. If he was out of town, she’d come over for a day or two. We never spent more than one night at a time with her in Sarasota, because there just seemed to be something between George and Katie.”

“Did you ever ask either one what that was all about?” asked Jock.

“Yes, but they only said that it was nothing, that they just didn’t get along well. They’d just grown apart. It was more than that, but I never did figure it out.”

“Was there anything else that made you suspicious of your husband?” Lisa asked.

“He always had several cell phones with numbers in the 941 area code. The Sarasota area code. I asked about them once and he got so angry that I was afraid to bring them up again. He seemed to conduct a lot of business on them.”

“Do you know a man named Travis Watson?” asked Lisa.

“Yes. He’s George’s banker.”

“Did the money continue to come in?”

“That’s one of the funny things. After I found the briefcase full of cash, the money seemed to dry up. We had enough to live on, but that was coming from retirement accounts that George had set up years ago. It was like the faucet was turned off. Then one day a couple of years ago, when George was on one of his out-of-town trips, I found a file on his desk. He usually kept that in a safe, and I didn’t have the combination. The file was full of bank statements under different names in different banks. I didn’t understand them, but they all had a post office box address in Winter Park. The same address. And there was a lot of money in each one of them. It totaled millions of dollars.”

“Did you ask your husband about them?” asked Lisa.

“Yes. He exploded. Told me if I ever mentioned them again, he’d kill me. I took him seriously. I went to see a lawyer the next day about a divorce.”

“Katie was adopted, wasn’t she?” asked Jock, changing the subject abruptly.

Betty looked surprised. “Yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

“Did Katie know that she wasn’t your birth child?” Jock asked.

“No.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“We thought it would be best if she didn’t know. What good would it have done for her to know that?”

“Did you go through an adoption agency?” Jock asked.

“No. It was a private adoption. All legal and everything. The lawyers handled it. We went to court and got the adoption approved. What’s this got to do with George’s legal problems?”

“Maybe nothing,” Jock said. “Does the name Sal Bonino mean anything to you?”

Betty Bass’s jaw literally dropped, her eyes widened in shock. “Yes,” she said. “How do you know that name?”

“Who is he?” Jock asked.

“Salvatore Bonino was a little boy who lived in Italy and was horribly abused by his parents. When he was four years old, his parents were killed in some sort of gang murder. Little Sal was taken in by an American couple who worked in Rome toward the end of World War II. They brought him to the U.S. right at the end of the war, gave him their name and raised him as their own. It was all very secretive because Sal was never adopted legally.”

“How do you know about Sal?” asked Lisa.

“The couple who brought him to this country was named Bass. They gave Sal an English name. George.”