testify in a superior court trial; I was on a break while the attorney tried to bargain down the charges on his client with Julie Walsh, today’s prosecutor. “Bradshaw says he doesn’t remember a cousin and the daughter’s not answering her phone. Richards has gone to talk with the office manager, see if there are any personal records. And Terry’s got Sabrina Ginsburg looking on her computer for an address book.”
“What about Georgia’s DMV?” I asked.
“Down, tiger,” he said with a grin. “We’ll get there. It’ll just be easier all around if we have a name for them.”
I conscientiously put the matter on a back burner of my mind and concentrated on the cases before me. In addition to the usual roll call of simple assaults, property damages, and break-ins, we had Elton Lee back in court again.
Less than a year ago, Mr. Lee had stood in front of me and pled guilty to a Class H felony, obtaining property by false pretenses. I had given him a suspended eight-month prison sentence on the condition he pay restitution and remain on probation for three years. Yet here he was again on the same charges: two more real estate scams.
Somehow or other, the man manages to get access to empty houses. Either they are houses that have been on the market a while or else they are model homes in half-built, modestly priced developments. Preying on the hopes and dreams of his low-income victims, he poses as a sympathetic real estate agent, takes their five-or six- hundred-dollar down payments, and then quits taking their calls. When one of his victims recognized him at a local grocery store, he told her that there was something wrong with her credit and that he was still trying to get her loan approved. She was trusting enough to give him another three hundred dollars to help hurry things along.
After taking his guilty plea to these new charges and hearing a summary of the facts, I found him guilty again.
“Mr. Lee, what’s it going to take to make you stop doing this?” I asked him.
He gave me a sheepish shrug. He really does have a warm and charming smile and he’s articulate as well. I can readily understand how his victims could trust him, especially when they so want to believe that he’s helping them buy a home of their very own. This was a man who could sell snake oil to doctors.
“You realize this new offense means you have violated your probation and that some judges would send you to jail for eight months right this minute?”
“No, ma’am, Your Honor, I didn’t, but I surely hope you won’t have to do that,” he said earnestly.
Frankly, I did, too. If I gave him active time, his victims would get no restitution.
“I see that you paid restitution for your first conviction?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, that’s one thing in your favor.” I sat back in my chair and considered all the possibilities. At last I leaned forward and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do, Mr. Lee. I’m going to sentence you to another eight months, to run consecutively with the first eight, and contingent upon several conditions. That means when you’ve served the first, you get to serve the second if you break probation again. Do you understand, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“This time, I’m ordering house arrest. You’ll wear an ankle monitor for the duration so that your probation officer can keep track of you and the only place you can go is to church and a legitimate job. And you will pay restitution to these new people even if you have to sell your own house. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re a bright man, Mr. Lee. There’s no reason why you couldn’t be a very successful salesman somewhere in the business world.”
“Even with this against me?” he asked.
“Even with this against you.”
“Ma’am, you reckon you could write me a letter of recommendation?”
I couldn’t help returning his smile. “You apply for a job and I’ll consider it,” I told him.
What the hell? He’d be a natural for a boss willing to keep him on a short leash.
Dwight and I met for lunch at the Bright Leaf Restaurant and he reported that Dee was still not answering her phone, but that a likely Georgia name had been found among Candace’s records: Manfred “Manny” Wells of Peach Blossom Mobile Estates in a suburb of Augusta, Georgia. Just over the South Carolina border off I-95.
“Wells was Candace’s maiden name,” Dwight told me.
I was ready to send the cavalry down I-95 to circle Manny’s double-wide until he gave up the car, but I reined in my impatience and reminded myself that I had leaped to groundless conclusions before. It could still be a total coincidence that Candace, in an act of unprecedented generosity, had given away a practically new Toyota at around the same time that Linsey Thomas was killed by one.
“Thanks for not telling me it’s none of my business,” I said as the waitress departed after bringing me a small spinach salad and Dwight a grilled chicken sandwich.
“So long as you remember it really isn’t,” he warned me. “What did Portland say when you told her?”
“I didn’t.”
“No?”
“No.”
Dwight knows that Portland Brewer used to be the first person I hashed out all my concerns and speculations with. She’s Uncle Ash’s niece and we bonded as children over a mutual hatred of an angelic little prisspot who used to tell on us and get us into trouble. She will always be my best friend, someone with whom I can bitch and moan about life’s big and little irritations. We’ve been too close for too long for that to change in a major way. Her marriage to Avery didn’t change things and neither has mine to Dwight. Shortly before we married, I had admitted
