Look Closer

The chief waves a hand. “Ted’s hit it big on some personal-injury lawsuit, has a lot of money, and he’s feeling like Mr. Big Shot now with his cash and success, so he decides having a wife who can’t hardly feed herself isn’t so conducive to his lifestyle of the rich and famous, and he wants some arm candy on the side. I’m right so far?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And he basically blows all that money and can’t afford to care for his wife the way she needs caring.”

“Well, ‘blowing the money’ is not how Simon put it,” says Jane. “Simon Dobias said the money was stolen.”

“Stolen by who?”

Jane glances at Andy before she answers the chief.

“Stolen by Lauren Lemoyne,” she says.

—

The chief stares at her. “Lauren. Our victim Lauren?”

“Lauren Lemoyne, now Lauren Betancourt, yes.”

“She stole the Dobias family’s money?” He slaps his hand on the desk. “She was the arm candy?”

“Yes and yes,” says Jane. “Lauren Lemoyne was Ted’s ‘arm candy,’ as you put it. They worked together at the same law firm. He was the senior partner, she was some young, beautiful paralegal. The cliché writes itself.”

“No shit.”

“No shit,” says Jane. “Apparently, Simon found them together in Ted’s office one night having sex. And the affair continued after that. Ted wouldn’t break it off. He was in love.”

“The complaint Simon Dobias filed was for theft, fraud, whatever Simon could think of,” Andy Tate chimes in. “He wanted Grace Park P.D. to arrest Lauren. He claimed she seduced Ted, had a long affair with him, convinced him that she was in love with him, and convinced him of one other thing, too—to put her name on the money-market account.”

“And did they?” the chief asks. “Arrest her?”

Jane shrugs. “There was no crime. Ted put her name on the account. She was made a signatory with full access. She had just as much a right to that money as Ted did, legally.”

The chief runs his tongue along his cheek, thinking this over. “How much she steal?”

“Over six million dollars,” says Jane. “Wiped the account clean. All of Ted’s—virtually all of the family’s money was consolidated into that account. She took every penny.”

“Jay-sus.” The chief shakes his head. “So she takes off, leaves the family in financial ruin, unable to support the mom.”

“Well, they certainly didn’t have the money to afford around-the-clock care anymore,” says Jane. “They decided on a nursing home.”

“And then she killed herself. Because of the affair?”

“Well, probably all of it,” Jane says. “She could hardly take care of herself, her husband was stepping out on her, the money was all gone, and she was headed for a nursing home—and who knows her mental state after having a stroke? But yeah, the affair could’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Lauren left some real carnage behind.” She opens her hands. “So now you understand why St. Louis PD is so sure he killed his father.”

“Yeah, he strayed from Mom and brought a lioness into the den.”

“And you can see why he had plenty of motive to kill Lauren Betancourt. She didn’t just screw his father and break his mother’s heart. That might be enough right there for some people.”

“But she did a lot more than that,” says the chief. “Simon probably blames Lauren Betancourt for the death of his mother and the destruction of his family.”

76 Jane

“Do I think Simon Dobias killed his dad? Yes, I do.”

Jane, Andy, and Chief Carlyle sit in front of the chief’s laptop, on a Zoom conference with a lieutenant in the St. Louis P.D. named Brenda Tarkington, and with Rick Gully, now retired and living in Wyoming.

“I’m with Brenda on that,” says Gully. “During final exams week his senior year in college, he drove down to St. Louis, clubbed Ted Dobias over the head with a wine bottle, then stabbed him in the stomach while he was down on the ground near his swimming pool and pushed him into the pool. Then he drove back up to Chicago and called up his shrink early that morning to confess his sins. Only, we couldn’t force the shrink to talk to us because of the privilege. Courts ruled against us. Even though he hadn’t talked to his shrink for a few years, the courts said he was still contacting her in a ‘patient-therapist capacity.’”

“And without that,” says Jane, “you couldn’t prove it?”