Torie couldn’t help it, she smiled at Paul. “Thank you.”
“My job.”
It was always the job with Paul. She turned back to Tibbet.
“We’ve already asked you about who might be interested in hurting you. So far we’re following up on things there, but what about Mister Peterson? Do you know anyone who would have wanted to hurt him?”
Torie shook her head to emphasize her answer. “No. No one. In all seriousness, Detective, if there was anyone who did their level best to help people it was Todd. The money didn’t change that one bit, did it, Paul?”
“No, it didn’t.” Paul was as adamant about that as she was.
“He gave a lot of money away, I know that. Of course, he was really good at investing it, too, so the money he won just continued to grow, or so he told me once. Then he’d win more stuff, like golf things. He won a car by doing a hole in one. He’d never shot a hole in one before, but he wanted to give a car as a prize to a charity for the church, and the next thing you know, he’s shooting a hole in one at the Castico Open. You know, the one out the Main Line at the Lands End Course?”
Tibbet nodded, indicating he knew it.
“So without spending more than the fee to play, he was able to give that to the church for the raffle.”
“Would there be anyone at the church who was jealous of the money, or who was pressuring him to give more?”
Glancing at Paul again to see if he had input, she said, “No, I don’t think so. I don’t get to church every week and I’m not in the sort of inner circle that plans things, but I don’t think anyone was particularly upset. The opposite actually seemed to be true. He never minded if they hit him up to cover a shortfall. I think he told the deacon’s committee that he’d match the annual donations.”
Paul spoke up. “I can corroborate that. He was quick to give.”
“Did you know of anyone who wanted more, Mister Jameson? Anyone who was trying to scam him, or get him to join them in some scheme or something?”
“As easygoing as he was, he was pretty sharp about that sort of thing. After all, he was a lawyer before he was a multimillionaire. He was generous, but not a soft touch.”
“How so?” Tibbet paused, his pen hovering over his book.
“He got into it with this guy once. The guy had set up a meeting, seemed to be legitimate and all that. But when Todd and I began to question him, the guy didn’t have good answers. We closed out the meeting, and Todd hired a private investigator. Shut the guy down. He was working for a legitimate charity, but was skimming huge amounts off the top.”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“He’s still in jail.”
“The name?”
Paul went to his desk and got out a file. Meanwhile Tibbet turned back to Torie.
“You know about this guy?”
“No, but I agree that Todd wasn’t easily taken in.”
Tibbet wrote the name Paul gave him, and promised to check it out. “So there’s no one you know, no one you can think of that would want to hurt you, Ms. Hagen?”
“No, I really wish I could. I want to be able to tell you someone or give you a name because it would make it less frightening. I don’t know anyone I’ve injured or upset enough that they would do this.”
“I understand,” Tibbet said as he closed his book. “If you think of anyone or anything, no matter how small, a sister of someone you dated that got hurt, a parent, a friend, anything, you let me know.”
Torie nodded and stood to shake hands as Tibbet left. Paul showed him to the door and came back to the table. He pulled two yellow pads from a nearby stack.
“Okay. We’re going to spend some time on a time line, all right? We’re going to start from now and work backwards in time, as much as you can remember. I’ve got a file on the stuff that happened to Todd when he would come home. We’re going to see if any of the dates match.”
He handed Torie a pen and went to his desk for the file.
They worked for over two hours, plodding through her life, dissecting her dates and her work.
“Crap,” she cursed as they reviewed a point that brought her work into play. “I had a call from the office. I need to check my messages.”
Flipping over another page, she clicked over to voice mail and began to listen to what were now thirty-two messages.
Predictably, there were a lot of calls from the press.
“Any idea how the press might have gotten my cell phone number?”
“Does the Chamber have it?”
“Damn.” She sighed. “Yeah, they do. My office does as well, so it could have come from there.”
She jotted down the names and information of the various reporters.
“You’re not obliged to call them back, Torie. They’re just after a story or a scoop or some comment they can use against you.”
