I wriggled out the next bundle, and a bank book fell out. No one I knew stored their bank book in the garage or with their tax returns. This could belong to Maryanne Albright and Gordon put it with the tax returns when he was compiling evidence for his defense in the suit Leonard brought.
The tax return package bulged. A glance inside showed not only the return but a sheaf of what looked like receipts. This was going to take me longer than a few minutes to sort through. Troy was going to love me after this.
I straightened. “This is what I was looking for, but I can’t examine it out here.”
I hurried back into the house before he could ask any questions, moved the bills from the table, and laid out the tax return.
Troy stared down at the papers with what could almost be classified as a scowl. “How does this apply to Clement Dodd’s case? I can’t let you scrounge around in material that’s unrelated.”
I had to remind myself that I couldn’t kick him in the shin. It’d be assault on an officer of the law. I’d already spent a night in a cell for something I didn’t do. I had no desire to go back, no matter how frustrating I found Troy at this moment.
“It’s related to a motive someone else might have had for murdering Gordon Albright, and that creates reasonable doubt for my client.” He’d been trying to speed this along the whole time. Maybe that would play in my favor. “I’d be able to finish with it sooner if you’re willing to help.”
He pulled out a chair and sat next to me.
That seemed like the closest to an acceptance as I was going to get. I handed him the stack of receipts that had the label Medical paper-clipped to them. “I need you to hand me these in order.”
I grabbed a paper and pen and brought out my cell phone. If Gordon put this bank book with the tax receipts, it was a good bet he’d thought it would help make his case. So if I could find that the numbers matched, I’d be able to prove Gordon hadn’t been taking money from his mother for drugs.
For the next hour and a half, Troy and I worked the numbers—and, to my surprise, he didn’t complain anymore.
He put the paperclip back on the stack of receipts after I finished with the last one. Partway in, he’d seemed to catch on to the theory I was working, because when we came to a couple of receipts that looked like they might be forged, he called the company and confirmed they were legitimate for me.
“There are still gaps,” I said.
There were enough gaps that I hadn’t proved or disproved anything yet. The medical expenses matched almost every withdrawal in the bank book, but not all.
My gaze strayed to the remaining papers in the file. And I almost felt bad. Troy had been quite obliging since we sat down, and now I was going to have to push that.
His gaze followed mine, and he pulled the papers over and separated them into stacks. “Where do you want me to start?”
We’d never be besties, but he was growing on me a little.
Gordon had labeled everything else with a date and a line in the bank book, showing when he’d removed the money. He couldn’t have known his brother would question him after their mother’s death, so this must have simply been how he handled being a conscientious power of attorney. Or maybe he’d simply been the kind of man who didn’t like to take chances—yet another feature that wouldn’t match with a drug addict.
When we finished all the stacks, only one withdrawal remained unaccounted for.
The large one that nearly drained the account the week before Maryanne Albright died.
13
Gordon Albright hadn’t been a drug addict, but he might still have been a thief.
If he’d had a drug addiction, he would have been skimming money all along. That large withdrawal at the end made it look more like he’d known his mother was reaching the end of her life and wanted to take what was left of her money before she died. Upon death, her accounts would have been frozen, and his power of attorney would have ended. Then the estate would have been split between him and his brother, giving him only half.
He might have fed Leonard the drug addiction story himself to convince his brother to drop the suit. That didn’t explain the strange reaction from Leonard’s wife, though.
What would explain her reaction was if Leonard made up the drug addiction story to cover up the fact that he knew his brother stole that money and killed him over it.
If that was the case, he shouldn’t have sued Gordon at all, but perhaps that was a mistake he realized once it was too late. Bringing the suit at all would make him a suspect if Gordon died under suspicious circumstances. If he dropped the suit, waited, and then planted Gordon’s body in Clement’s house, he had a chance of getting away with it.
Did he want vengeance more than he wanted the money returned? If he’d continued with the suit and won—which he might have since Gordon had no record of where that large sum of money went—he would have gotten his inheritance. Killing his brother got him nothing monetarily.
This case made me feel a bit like I was trying to run a marathon with one shoe on. I had to keep moving forward, but everything felt awkward.
I took a picture of the bank book on my phone, wrote down the name of the accountant Gordon Albright used, and then Troy and I packaged everything else back up and replaced it where we’d found it. I couldn’t remove them without permission, and they’d be safe here anyway.
There was only one way to unravel this conundrum. Anderson and I had to go back and confront Leonard Albright and his wife with the evidence I’d found proving Gordon didn’t have a drug addiction after all.
When I left Gordon’s house, I called Chief McTavish on my drive home and asked about Gordon’s financial records. They hadn’t been included in the discovery package I received from the prosecution. Chief McTavish confirmed for me that they did look at his bank records, but there wasn’t anything that stood out. Since the prosecution wasn’t planning to use any of the information, it hadn’t been included in what I’d been given.
I gave him the date and amount I was looking for specifically. “Did he have anything on that date or in the weeks that followed?”
“He didn’t have that size of a deposit before or after that date.” His voice had a what-are-you-up-to-now tone to it.
I wasn’t about to tell him. We weren’t exactly in agreement on this case.
Depositing what he’d taken from his mother in one large chunk would have made it too obvious. Maybe he’d done it slowly over time. “Did his deposits increase at all after that date?”
“Nope. Like I said, nothing in his financials stood out or pointed at anything going on that could have resulted in his death.”
I thanked him and disconnected.
That was annoying. What had Gordon done with the money, hidden it in his mattress? It made it more difficult to argue that he’d merely stolen it if he hadn’t somehow deposited it in his accounts. It made it look like he’d taken it to use for something.
Leonard would argue drugs, but nothing else pointed to that, so I still had enough to make a solid case that Leonard lied to us about what was going on between him and Gordon.
