The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(44)

“It was March twelfth.”

“No, I mean do you remember that day?” Faz noted Gonzalez was not wearing a wedding ring and guessed the young man had recalled an attractive young woman like Andrea Strickland.

“Oh, uh, yes. Sort of.”

“Tell us what you remember,” Del said, taking out a small spiral notebook and pen.

Gonzalez’s gaze flicked to the pad and pen, then back to Faz. “Just that she wanted to open the two accounts. She said she’d been relocated by her business.”

“Did she say what type of business?” Faz asked.

“It was an outdoor apparel company, I believe.”

“Did she say where she’d moved from?”

“Somewhere in Southern California, I believe. I remember because she joked about the company having more clients since it rains so much here.”

“What else do you recall?” Faz asked.

Gonzalez glanced away as if trying to remember. “She said she’d just divorced and was tired of the guys in Southern California. She said the whole scene was too superficial for her. She said she was staying with a girlfriend until she found her own place.”

And Faz was certain that nugget of well-placed information had piqued Gonzalez’s interest, just as Andrea Strickland, aka Lynn Hoff, had intended it to. High school education maybe, but she was smart and she knew how to play the game.

“You helped her open the accounts?” Faz said.

“I did.”

“How much did she deposit in the business account on her initial visit?”

Gonzalez didn’t even look at the printed sheets of paper on his desk. “It was just a couple hundred dollars.”

“Did she make deposits to that account?”

“Almost daily.”

Faz noticed Del glance at him. He loved being right.

“May I?” Faz asked.

Gonzalez handed him the sheets of paper. Del leaned over Faz’s shoulder. As Faz had suspected, Strickland had made a steady stream of deposits and withdrawals intended not to draw attention—$1,775, $1,350, $2,260. Over the ensuing month and a half, these small deposits and withdrawals to the business account had increased. The amount of money that had moved through the account had added up to $128,775.42. The Emerald Credit Union was clearly not the only bank account Andrea Strickland had opened. The question was, where had she transferred the rest of the money, and in whose name? Faz was betting the money had gone overseas, to a country that did not report on the identity of its customers.

The number that caught his eye, however, was in the far column on the last line, the one indicating Lynn Hoff’s balance in both accounts: $0.00.

“She closed the accounts,” Faz said, looking up at Gonzalez. “Did she close the accounts?”

“Apparently.”

“You didn’t close it for her?”

“She didn’t come in.”

To open an account a customer had to personally go into a bank and provide proper identification. That was not necessary to transfer the money and close the account, which could be done electronically—if the person had the account number and password.

Faz looked at Del. “She closed the account June twenty-sixth,” he said, not bothering to elaborate. Del knew it was the Monday after Kurt Schill had pulled Andrea Strickland’s body from the depths of Puget Sound.





CHAPTER 16


I got my job back at the insurance company working for Brenda, and that first week back she invited me to lunch to “catch up.” I think she was worried about me and, as my surrogate mom, felt it her duty to make sure I was okay. I wasn’t, of course. I now fully understood the man I had married—manipulative, abusive, probably manic-depressive. I knew he would continue to try to take advantage of me so long as he thought he could gain access to my trust funds. At present, he was on his best behavior, but only because he had to be. He had nowhere to go. His job search was not going well. BSBT, not surprisingly, would not provide him with a recommendation. When prospective employers called, BSBT’s human resources director “declined to comment,” which was a law firm’s way of saying the ex-employee was incompetent or dishonest, without getting sued, and every employer knew it. Graham continued to spin it, saying he didn’t want to work for someone else, that the real money “was in working for himself.” I ignored his comments. Most recently, Graham was talking to a law school roommate who had opened his own firm in a house and was looking for some attorneys to attend depositions and appear in court.

Brenda chose a restaurant called the Port House—a chic brewery that was so Portland with plank floors, a tall wood-beam ceiling, and brick walls. She had an appointment out of the office and suggested we meet at 1:15 p.m., after much of the lunch crowd had thinned. I removed my sunglasses as I entered but didn’t immediately see her. The hostess led me to a table on the sidewalk patio where I could people-watch while waiting. I pulled up my latest novel on my phone to read. A man’s voice interrupted me.

“Excuse me?”

I figured it was a panhandler about to hit me up for change. To my surprise, the man standing on the other side of the small wrought-iron fence wore a suit.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, smiling. “I don’t normally do this, but if you’re not waiting for someone, I wonder if I could buy you a beer?”