I'll Take Care of You (6 page)

Sue “went along for many years, and privately I said to myself, ‘I don't know how she's doing this....' It was unacceptable to me, because she was a lovely, lovely person. She would go out of her way for anyone, and he turned into a person that I didn't even know anymore.”

Barbara said she saw Bill change over time—changes that she blamed largely on his escalating alcohol consumption.

“He had a good heart. There was no doubt about that,” she said. “He really was good, but I think alcohol interfered with his life.”

Patrick agreed that his brother “drank more than he should have, but there were times where we all [did that].” He noted that he and Bill always walked home from the bar when they imbibed, and he said he never witnessed any abusive behavior.

“I don't know that he was an out-and-outright alcoholic,” he said. “I do know that he was always of sound mind, because he would be up the next morning—no matter how late we were—and we'd be running down the beach.”

Kim viewed the failure of her parents' marriage differently, saying they had not spent enough time connecting with each other over the years, so it went bad after Bill “retired” and started working at home.

“They were at home all the time, driving each other crazy,” she said. “They had lost communication skills.”

 

 

A few months after meeting Bill, Nanette moved into Balboa Coves, and Bill called his cousin to tell her about the pretty new woman in his life.

“I am dating this lady, with two small children,” he said. “She's wonderful. She's very bright, and I enjoy talking to her. She has a couple degrees.”

“Good for you,” Barbara said. “I'm glad you found someone.”

To Barbara, Bill sounded sure that the relationship was going to work. “He was very confident that this was meant to happen, how well they gelled together,” she recalled. “He was very happy—very happy with her.”

Patrick didn't see it quite that way. To him, it seemed that Bill was happy to have met Nanette, whom Bill described as “a sweetheart and a dolly,” but he never mentioned anything to his brother about her being intelligent. It was more along the lines of “she's a good piece,” as in piece of ass.

“I think what Bill wanted . . . he wanted a good-looking chick on the arm,” Patrick said. “I don't know if he thought she wasn't worthy to be called his wife,” but that was the kind of thing that would have come out of Bill's mouth. “He was a very proud guy.”

Patrick wasn't all that impressed with Nanette. During one visit, Bill asked Nanette to cook his brother some fried eggs, and “she looked at him like he was stupid,” Patrick recalled. Once she made the eggs, he said, “they were terrible. They were runny. She wasn't a housewife. She was someone who could show a man a lot of fun if he was interested in her.”

Bill's brother also didn't care for the large nude photo of Nanette displayed at the Seashore Drive house for everyone to see as they walked in. For Patrick, it was a disgusting show of narcissism.

“There it was in your face, and that's the way she showed her interest in men,” he said. “She's proud of herself. She's a nice-looking woman. She had a great-looking body, apparently.”

When Barbara learned about the age difference between Bill and Nanette, she thought his new girlfriend was too young for him—and truly too young to have advanced degrees—but Barbara didn't say anything.

“With Bill, he was going to do what he was going to do.... You don't tell Bill what to do.”

What was the attraction between him and Nanette? “I think he loved blondes, number one,” she said. “He was always talking sexual innuendos and the guy stuff about sex, and here was this young chickiepoo . . . and she's telling him what he wants to hear.”

Patrick also thought that Bill liked having Nanette on his arm because it brought cache to his business image.

“I think he just figured she was an attractive woman and she was worth something because of that to the business, and whatever dealings she needed to know, Bill would tell her,” Patrick said. Nonetheless, Bill “may have given her a little too much rope and maybe that's when he found out she was taking him to the cleaners and he was pissed about it. But no, he never said she was a sweetie pie and she'd make a good wife. That would make me throw up.”

Bill's divorce filings offer some insight into why he likely enjoyed having Nanette around to discuss his entrepreneurial ventures and to accompany him on business dinners.

My wife has never been interested in the business of the community [property] or how the money was made,
he wrote.
Indeed, she was only interested in being there to spend it. I made not only
one
million dollar investment, but many such investments without ever having my wife complain, let alone comment. I would always inform her in conversation as to what was going on, but her interest was always only of a conversational nature. She did occasionally accompany me for social engagements done for purposes of conducting business. But she was interested, if at all, only in the social part, never the business.

Obviously different from Sue, Nanette was
very
interested in soaking up everything he could teach her about his business affairs. If only Bill had known
why
she'd been so interested.

CHAPTER 9

Just as Nanette had predicted, the Newport Beach police did want to interview her ex-husband, K. Ross Johnston.

K. Ross told Detective Bill Hartford that he and Nanette had met in Arizona in the early 1980s, were married in 1983, and had two children. Five years later, he said, Nanette told him she'd fallen out of love and wanted a divorce. She didn't contest his move for sole custody of the kids, and the divorce became final in 1989. He moved with the children to Mission Viejo, California, in March 1990.

In 1991, Nanette told him she was living with Bill McLaughlin, whom he'd met once when he picked up the kids, but Nanette claimed it was a purely professional relationship.

When K. Ross talked about Nanette, it was obvious that he was still hurt from all the lying and cheating Nanette had done while they were married. Thinking it odd that Nanette made a point of saying, “Eric has nothing to do with this,” K. Ross made sure to relay her comment to the detective and to describe Nanette's twentysomething boyfriend.

K. Ross said Eric Naposki had helped coach Kristofer's teams in soccer, baseball, and basketball, and he'd thought it was odd that Eric had worn shorts to the soccer game the chilly night before Bill's murder, but Eric “was like a rock” and did not complain.

Despite Nanette's claims that it was “strictly business” with Bill and that he was just her “mentor,” K. Ross was pretty confident that she was seeing Eric
and
Bill romantically. After all, K. Ross was only too familiar with her expertise at juggling men.

Recounting the evening's events to Detective Hartford, K. Ross said the final championship game started later than its scheduled six o'clock kickoff, and then the two teams tied. They were still tied after two overtime periods, so the winner had to be decided in a shoot-out, with five shots per team. It was a formal and dramatic procedure: The goalie came out each time an opposing player lined up the ball and took his shot. The parents screamed whether a point was scored or missed.

Kristofer's team ultimately came in second place, but there was still reason to celebrate because his team had made it into the championships. That said, Nanette and Eric seemed to be in a real hurry to leave before the end-of-season commemorative medal ceremony, saying that Eric had to get to an eight o'clock appointment. Even though it was her turn to take the kids, Nanette said she would leave them with K. Ross and take them another night.

K. Ross looked at his watch. Noticing it was already 8:20
P.M.
, he wondered why Nanette, who had come to every one of her son's games, would purposely miss watching him get his championship medal.

“Well, it's eight-twenty right now,” he told her. “There's no way [Eric] can make it to an eight o'clock appointment. Just stay and watch the ceremony.”

But Nanette and Eric were already rushing off toward the parking lot, which was at least a soccer field away.

“No, that's okay. We've got to go. We'll see you later,” Nanette called over her shoulder as they took off in a manner that K. Ross described as “skedaddling,” or “hoofing it.”

 

 

Detective Dave Byington, who was pulled from patrol to do surveillance on this case, posed as a scruffy beach bum as he assumed his position on the sand behind the Seashore house on December 20, the night before Bill's funeral.

He watched Nanette park out front, carry her shopping bags down the side of the house, and go inside. Nanette had told police that she was worried the same killer might be looking for her, and yet, Byington saw no fear on her face or in her body language. She didn't look over her shoulder, or draw the blinds across the big picture window in the living room. From his spot on the beach, Byington watched Nanette and the kids through a big picture window, decorating the tree together as if they didn't have a care in the world.

 

 

On Wednesday, December 21, Bill's memorial service was held at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, complete with a mass, Communion, and about seven priests in attendance. Bill was a good Catholic, who said grace before dinner, even when the family went out to eat at Chart House.

In fact, all the McLaughlins were good Catholics. After Bill was gone, Monsignor Bill Barry, his neighbor at Balboa Coves, used to hold mass for Kim, Kevin, and Sandy at his kitchen table.

Because Bill had made good after enjoying the benefits of the Student Worker Program at Loyola Marymount, he endowed a scholarship to his alma mater, a Catholic university from which Kim and Jenny also graduated, and Kevin attended for two years before dropping out.

K. Ross Johnston and his girlfriend, Julia, had wanted to attend the funeral to pay their respects to the man who had been so kind to Lishele and Kristofer, but Nanette told them it was just for close family. She said they could attend the wake afterward, but then she called to tell them it had been canceled.

Sandy drove Jenny, Kevin, Sue, and Kim to the church for the 9:00
A.M.
service. Kim, who was sitting in the front seat, burst into tears when she recognized some of the priests from Loyola.

“Kim was just destroyed by this,” Sandy recalled. “I'm not saying Jenny wasn't, but she didn't show it.”

As they pulled into the church parking lot, they could see the priests wearing their elaborate ceremonial garb—the white robes with ties and tall hats. Unbeknownst to them, they were all being filmed by Newport Beach cops, who were watching for suspicious behavior as they searched for Bill's killer.

Nanette came with her two children in tow: nine-year-old Kristofer wearing a little-boy suit and necktie, and seven-year-old Lishele in a dark dress with a floral print. Nanette wore a businesslike black skirt suit, with the jacket buttoned up. Sandy was admiring it so much that Nanette later asked Sue what size Sandy was, saying she wanted to buy one for Sandy as a gift.

Nanette's face was blank. She never showed much emotion anyway, but on that day, she seemed especially aloof and hard to read, while everyone else was in shock. But more than that, Sandy couldn't believe that Nanette had brought such young children to the service.

“I thought it was inappropriate,” she said. “I didn't even know what she had told them. Did she tell them he had a heart attack? To this day, I still think she used those kids as props to draw sympathy in her direction.”

Nanette sat with the McLaughlin family in the front pews on the left side of the church. The room wasn't full, but a healthy crowd of about one hundred people had filed in, including some of Bill's business associates, his brother Patrick and his kids, and Bill's extended family, who had flown in from Chicago.

With a blowup photo of Bill on an easel in the foreground, his friend Denis Townsend gave the eulogy, trying to offer some words of compassion for Nanette, who he assumed was in mourning like the rest of them.

“That kind of raised the hairs on my neck a little bit, because I'd had five or six days actually of looking at Nanette from a different vantage point,” Sandy recalled later. “I was feeling very funny about her at this point. As aloof as she was to Bill, I didn't think she deserved that callout. . . . [Denis] was kind of showing her sympathy, because we were all starting to act strange around her. I think Denis picked up on something.”

Kevin was so upset that it was even more difficult for him to speak, but he still got up to say a few words. He was more uncoordinated than usual and so angry about his father's murder that his nose crinkled up. Jenny and Kim sniffled to themselves, but they were keeping it together until they heard a wail erupt from nearby.

As they turned to look, they saw the sound was coming from Lishele, who was shaking and sobbing loudly as she stood up and turned away from the poster of Bill. Nanette didn't shed a tear, at least not that anyone could see, and she also didn't take her traumatized daughter into her arms and cradle her, as some mothers would have. Nanette just sat there, stonelike.

 

 

After the service, the McLaughlin family and friends congregated in the rectory. Patrick and his sons were trying to make chitchat with Kristofer when he let a bomb drop.

“My mom's boyfriend plays football,” he said.

Patrick and his sons didn't mention this comment to Bill's children, but they quickly realized that the police needed to hear this—immediately. The information came as quite a shock to those who thought Bill and Nanette had been in an exclusive relationship.

Afterward, Nanette, her kids, and the McLaughlin family headed over to have lunch at Bill's favorite Italian haunt on Balboa Island, where he'd often ordered the gnocchi. On the way there, they talked about the service.

“Oh, my God,” Jenny said, “I was holding up okay during the service, but Lishele was making me cry.”

From there, Nanette said she had some things to do. Undercover detectives, who had been monitoring the funeral, followed her to the Champion Yamaha shop in Newport, where she used Bill's credit card to pay off the balance on three motorcycles for which she'd already made a deposit. Including an earlier purchase for a trailer, helmets, and other equipment, the total came to nearly $8,000. She signed the bills,
Nanette McLaughlin.
Then she went to the bank and got a $3,100 cash advance on one of Bill's credit cards.