A Grave Issue Page 16

  “Launder it, I suppose.” That was the step I hadn’t quite figured out yet. It was complicated.

  “How do you do that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know the fine points of it, but you have to find a way to make it look like the money is coming from a respectable source. Some kind of place that does a lot of cash business.” At least those were the basics of it.

  “What around here is like that? There’ve been a bunch of new businesses opening up in the past year or so.” Donna picked up her crochet hook. At least she’d slowed down on the baby-blanket production since the doctor had given the okay for her to make videos and programs and do some of the bookkeeping tasks that I sucked at.

  The Dollar General, the In-n-Out, the flower shop, the gym, and the bookkeeper were all new. None of them seemed likely to generate enough cash business to work. Suddenly, I sat up straight. “The car wash!”

  Donna looked confused for a moment. “The Clean Green Car Wash?”

  “Yeah! No one would think twice if a car wash had a lot of cash business. And there’s hardly ever anybody there.” Hadn’t I seen Professor Moonbeam going in and out of there regularly, and yet his truck was always crusted with dirt? Maybe he wasn’t there for a car wash at all. Maybe he was dropping off money to be laundered rather than dropping off his truck to be washed.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little on the nose? Cash laundering in a car wash?” Donna laughed.

  “Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. Do you know who owns it?” I asked.

  Her brow furrowed. “No. I figured it was a chain. How would you find out?”

  “Easy peasy. It’s public information.” I brought up the website for the California secretary of state. I tapped in a few search criteria, and in about five seconds, we had our answer. “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.”

  “Who? Who owns it?” She poked at me with her foot.

  I turned the laptop so she could see. Monique Woodall owned the Clean Green Car Wash.

  She gasped. “That makes perfect sense.”

  “It sure does. Monique would have to own it to make it all work and to keep the money hidden from Rosemarie and to keep Alan’s lily-white hands out of it.” The whole scheme was becoming clear in my mind. Alan wanted to leave Rosemarie, but he didn’t want to split things down the middle with her. So instead he found sneaky ways to put the money from his new business venture with Moonbeam in Monique’s name. What I didn’t know was how much Monique knew about it.

  What had the teller at the bank said about the musty-smelling money that Rosemarie had found in her safe? The money she thought Alan had left to pay for something in an emergency? He’d said that it smelled like the money from the employees at the car wash. I tapped another search into the computer. If Moonbeam and Alan were using the car wash to launder the marijuana money, that would explain that mildew smell of their money too. Maybe Moonbeam buried it for a while until he could start moving it through the laundering system.

  I brought up the website for the car wash. Its cover photo was of the building with a lot of the employees in their matching polo shirts in front. Well, I finally knew where I’d seen David before. He was smack-dab in the middle of the group shot.

  “So who else knows about Alan’s involvement?” Donna asked.

  I thought about it. “No one except Moonbeam. And Monique.”

  “And you. Who knows that Monique was sleeping with Alan?” Donna asked.

  “No one except Monique and Alan.”

  “And you,” she added.

  “Yeah, well, but I figured it out after the fact.”

  Donna stared at me. “Moonbeam has probably figured out that part too by now, right?”

  “I’m not sure.” I rubbed at my chin. “I think I need to ask some questions and find out.”

  * * *

  I didn’t know where Monique lived. I didn’t know where she hung out. I didn’t know what she did for entertainment, but I knew exactly where she’d be on any given weekday morning: waiting tables at the Cold Clutch Canyon Café. I had a sudden hankering for steel-cut oatmeal.

  The Cold Clutch has been around since forever, and it’s been a pretty decent diner for most of that time. It’s open only for breakfast and lunch, no dinner. Grilled cheese, burgers, Monte Cristo sandwiches, Cobb salads, milk shakes. All solid. All dependable.

  Then Dolores and Alfonso Molina moved to town. They bought the café from Freddie Koontz, who was ready to retire, and then they promptly closed the place for renovations. You would have thought they’d closed access to oxygen by the way people reacted. Then word started getting around. They’d hired some fancy cabinetmaker from the Bay Area to do the carpentry work. They’d bought all their appliances through Wolf and Sub-Zero. They were going to make the place into one of those fancy-ass restaurants where you paid twenty-eight dollars for one mushroom stuffed with crab on a little puddle of sauce.

  There was a little confusion when they reopened. Things didn’t seem all that different. The booths were all in the same place, but the cracked vinyl had been replaced. The pies still were displayed in a glass case, but it appeared to be refrigerated. Even the menu was the same, but different. There were still grilled cheese, burgers, milk shakes, and Monte Cristo sandwiches. The difference came in how they were prepared. Everything was now locally sourced, organic, and fresh. Nothing from cans. Nothing from the freezer. Everything was delicious. I wasn’t sure what they did to the oatmeal, but it was amazing. Creamy and rich and sweet.

  I went in and asked for a booth, which would put me in Monique’s section. She came over with a menu and a coffeepot.

  “Yes, please,” I said, turning over my cup. “Did your shoes recover from Alan’s funeral?”

  “What?” She stopped pouring.

  “I noticed you’d gotten mud on them. People don’t realize how soft the ground can be at a cemetery. It’s always better to wear flats.” I shrugged. “Or wedge heels. Wedges work great. Stilettos? Not so much. Anyway, I hope you were able to clean them. I’d hate to see such an expensive pair of shoes ruined.”

  “How do you know they were expensive?” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me.

  “I saw the red soles, Monique. If you don’t want people to know you’re rocking Louboutins, don’t flash those soles around. I’m probably not the only one who recognizes that kind of thing around here.” Living in Los Angeles had made me more style conscious than most of the people around Verbena were, but fashionistas existed everywhere.

  She turned nearly as red as the sole of her shoes had been. “What do you want?”

  “Steel-cut oatmeal and to know what your relationship with Alan Brewer was.” I shut the menu and handed it to her.

  “I served Alan lunch three times a week.” She finished pouring my coffee and made a note in her pad. “Brown sugar and bananas or berries with raw sugar on your oatmeal?”

  “Brown sugar and bananas . . . and really? That’s it? Lunch three times a week? Four parcels of fairly expensive land seems like a pretty big tip.” I took a sip of coffee.

  Monique went from red to white in about two seconds. For a moment, I thought she might faint. She grabbed the edge of the table and swayed. “What do you know about the land?”

  “I know your name is on at least four parcels that Alan was able to snap up cheap after the King Snake Fire.” Four parcels that were currently housing marijuana operations.

  “And?” Her hand holding the coffeepot trembled a little.

  “I know he put your name on all the deeds. Why is that, Monique? Did he owe you something?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t like that at all.” She looked around. “I can’t really talk here or now. I get off at one thirty. I’ll explain everything. Or at least everything I know.”

  “Deal. Come to the funeral home. We can talk there,” I said.

  She took a step back. “Are you kidding? No way. That place gives me the creeps.”

  “You
know you’re talking about my home, right?” It still bugged me that people saw us that way.

  She shrugged. “If the house fits, Death Ray.”

  I ate my oatmeal and paid with exact change. That Death Ray dig cost her a tip.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  We ended up deciding to meet at the gazebo at two.

  I waited for Monique in the shade of a live oak tree. The heat wasn’t too bad. Or I was getting used to it again. There was a light breeze that felt a bit like a low-powered blow dryer running over my whole body, but it also rustled the leaves enough to create shadow patterns that danced across the cracked cement around the stage and across the benches surrounding it. Around the edges of the square, setup was already starting for the Fire Festival. Booths were getting set up and hay bales were being strategically placed as seating. I was there five minutes early. Monique was five minutes late. Five minutes that I spent wondering if I’d spooked her and she’d run off rather than get entangled in Alan’s murder investigation—what there was of it—but she walked up and sat down on the bench next to me at exactly five minutes after two.

  “I didn’t know anything about the properties until Alan died,” she said without preamble.

  I shook my head as if I had something in my ears. “What?”

  She blew out a breath. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but he didn’t tell me.”

  “How did you find out?” I asked. And what had happened to Monique’s habit of making everything sound like a question?

  “These envelopes used to come to my apartment, and he always told me not to open them, to leave them for him. So I did. Then after he . . . he died . . .” She hiccupped a little and pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

  “Take your time,” I said. Could she have really cared about Alan?

  She nodded and took a few deep breaths. “After he died, I decided to look in the envelopes. You know, to check if there was something that needed dealing with. A bill to be paid or something.”

  “And what were they?” I asked.

  “Utility bills. Tax statements. Bank statements. All addressed to me at my apartment, but all for those properties you were talking about.” She tipped her head back to look at the sky or maybe to keep her mascara from running. Her eyes were pretty moist.

  It still didn’t quite make sense. If he was leasing those properties to Professor Moonbeam, why was he footing the bills? Marijuana operations can suck up a lot of electricity and a lot of water. So Alan was that forward-thinking investor that Moonbeam had mentioned. “So Alan was paying the bills for those properties?”

  She nodded. “I was curious, so I went to the addresses to see what was going on.”

  I knew what she’d found, but I figured I’d make her say it. I sat and let the silence stretch between us.

  “They’re all marijuana grows. All the properties were burned during the King Snake Fire. Alan must have bought them up at a good price, and now he’s letting Professor Moonbeam grow his plants on them. Alan paid for the utilities and water and then got a cut of the business on the back end too.” She glanced at me as if I was going to judge her, then something hit her. “Was. He was letting Moonbeam grow there.”

  That part made a certain amount of sense. Moonbeam wouldn’t need much besides power and water to get started. He wouldn’t need a usable home or anything like that. “How did he manage to push all that paper with your name on it without you knowing about it?”

  She shrugged. “He was the manager of a bank. He could do a lot of things.” Her eyes welled up again. “He did a lot of things really well.”

  “So you two were involved,” I said, stating the obvious.

  She nodded. “It started off so innocent. We didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  Monique might not have, but I had my doubts about Alan. Players gonna play. Alan had left a string of honey blondes behind him.

  “He’d always sit in my section at the café when he came in for lunch. He liked that table by the window that looks out on the street.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I’m sure the passersby weren’t the only things he liked to look at. I’d bet Monique’s perky butt was on the viewing menu too.

  “I mentioned something about my classes at the community college, and he would always ask me how things were going. Then when I was having a real bad time with statistics, he offered to help me with my homework.” She sniffled.

  Oh, dear Lord. Had he seriously been recycling lines from high school?

  “He was so sweet and always so interested in how I was doing and how he could help.” She sighed. “I fell for him. I fell for him hard.”

  “You knew he was married, though, right?” I wasn’t sure how observant she was, but a wife was hard to miss.

  She bit her lip. “I know. It’s not good to mess with another woman’s man, but his marriage to Rosemarie was over already anyway.”

  “Did Rosemarie know that?” I asked.

  She turned to look at me. “He said she did, that it was just a matter of time. They had grown apart.” Her tone was wistful.

  “And he said he was going to leave her for you?” Isn’t that what every cheater said?

  She nodded. “He said he just needed to make sure everything was in order before he did. He asked me to sign some papers. I did. It didn’t seem like that much to do.”

  He’d do everything like buying property in his mistress’s name without her even knowing about it.

  A single tear overflowed from Monique’s left eye and slid down her cheek, leaving a little mascara trail. “I didn’t actually believe he’d do it, you know? I didn’t really think he’d leave her. When I opened those envelopes and saw the bank accounts in my name and all the money . . . it hit me so hard. He really loved me. He was really going to leave Rosemarie. Why else would he have done that?”

  Why else indeed? One reason I could think of was that he was funneling money into something that Rosemarie would be hard pressed to find once the divorce proceedings started.

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked.

  She looked up, a crease furrowing her porcelain brow. “About what?”

  “About the properties and the money.” What could she do? Turn them over to Rosemarie?

  She looked surprised that I’d asked. “I’m going to take over where Alan left off.”

  My eyes widened. Monique the drug kingpin? It didn’t sound right. “What do you know about running a marijuana business?”

  “First of all, I’m not really running the business. I’m a landowner leasing property to someone. Second, I know plenty. I’m graduating at the end of next semester with my AA in business from Pluma Vista Community College.” She sat up very straight. I’d clearly insulted her.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize.” I held up my hands in front of me.

  She nodded. “Well, it’s really helped in sorting things out.”

  “What needed to be sorted?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know, what revenue came from where and that kind of stuff.” She stopped, suddenly becoming wary. “Why do you want to know all this anyway?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t think Kyle Hansen killed Alan.”

  She sat back on the bench. “Who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why when I stumbled across the properties he’d put in your name, I wanted to understand why.” I leaned in. “Is there anyone in that business who would want to hurt Alan?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “What about Professor Moonbeam? Could there have been a falling out between them? He has a history of expressing his anger physically.” I pressed.

  She shook her head. “No. They had a good relationship. There weren’t any problems between them.” She looked at her watch. “Look, I have to go. I have Econ at three o’clock, and the professor gives the death stare to anyone who walks in late.” She stood up.

  “Thank you for explaining this all to me,” I said. “Monique, who else knew about you and Alan?”

 
; “Nobody,” she said with great emphasis.

  I shot her a look. “Nobody? Someone knows. This town runs on gossip. I can’t fart on Main Street without it ending up on the front page of the Free Press.”

  Monique snorted. “That doesn’t have anything to do with gossip. That’s because that Rafe guy has a crush on you.”

  “What? No. He just wants to use me as a source.” I waved the information away.

  “He sure wants to use you for something. I don’t think it’s as a source, though,” she said. “Does the information about Alan and me have to go any further? Can it stay between us?” She smiled at me.

  She was really cute. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to keep it between us, Monique. People are going to notice, especially if you keep buying Louboutins.” I stopped for a second. “Is that a Birkin bag?”

  She clutched the purse to her chest. “There was a lot of money in those accounts. I thought it would be okay to buy myself a few things.”

  A few really nice and really expensive things. “Someone besides me is going to notice.”

  “Yeah, but they won’t know where the money came from. Alan’s name isn’t on anything. Keep it between us?” She looked hopeful.

  Birkin bags weren’t something you bought off the rack. I tried to calculate how long it had been since Alan had died and Monique said she’d opened those envelopes. “Monique, are you one hundred percent sure you didn’t dip into that money before Alan died? Maybe just the tiniest bit?”

  She turned even redder. “Okay. I did. I peeked into some envelopes, and there was so much money! I just wanted a few nice things. Then Alan noticed, and he got so mad at me. That’s why I was working all those extra shifts. I was trying to earn some money to put back into the accounts.”

  It was going to take a hell of a lot of extra shifts to get enough tips for a Birkin bag. “And now?”

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s all my money now, isn’t it? It seems kind of silly for me to break my neck to pay myself back.”

  “Doesn’t some of that money belong to Professor Moonbeam?” I asked.

  “Some of it. Not all of it. He’ll get his when the time comes.” She hesitated. “I haven’t explained it to my folks yet, and I’m not sure how my dad is going to take it. You’re not going to tell, are you?”