tonight. I’m going to have him match up the security footage from the dates you were there with every bank on that island.”
“I used the ATM at one bank to get out cash.”
“And that was it? He’s not going to find that you made any deposits while you were there?”
“What if I said I did but had no idea why I was doing it? Would that matter?”
“Potentially. If you were to provide account numbers and other salient information that would allow for restitution to your mother’s victims, I’m quite certain there’d be room to negotiate on any other potential charges you might be facing.”
“What other charges?”
“Murder, for one.”
“I didn’t kill her!”
“But I think you know who did, and you helped clean up after that person. If you know who killed her and don’t tell us what you know, you can also be charged with hindering our investigation.”
She started crying again, sobs jolting her petite frame. “I was just a college kid minding my own business. My mom offered to pay for my vacations if I did a favor for her while I was there. I’m not sure how that’s a crime.”
“It’s a crime because you’ve known all along where the money is stashed and you denied it.”
“She told me she’d kill me if I breathed a word of it to anyone. ‘They’ll never think to investigate you,’ she said. And the Feds didn’t. No one asked me anything until you came to my dorm.”
And until Cameron Green dug into the financials and social media for the entire McLeod family. Why in the world hadn’t the Feds done that too?
“Who killed your mother?”
“Why does it matter? Didn’t she deserve it?”
“That’s not for me to decide. My job is to find out who killed her. Whether or not she deserved what she got is for a higher power to determine.” Sam leaned in. “Who killed her?”
Mandi shook her head as tears streamed down her face and sobs echoed through the room.
“Who did it, Mandi?”
“My brother! He did it. He went to the house to beg her to do the right thing and give back the money, but she told him there was no way that was happening. They got into a fight in the garage, and when she told him to stop being a whiny baby, he grabbed the closest thing and just swung it at her. He didn’t mean to kill her.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“He called me, hysterical. Told me to come quickly. He needed my help.”
“What did he need you to do?”
“He couldn’t find anything with bleach in the house, so he asked me to get some and disposable rags and garbage bags.”
Sam took notes as Mandi ran through the list. “What did you need the garbage bags for?”
“I think he was going to try to get her out of there, but there was just so much blood.”
“Did he tell you what he did before he sent you to the store?”
“No, but I could tell it was something horrible, because I’d never heard him sound so freaked out.”
“When he asked for bleach and garbage bags, you still didn’t suspect murder?”
“No, I figured he’d dropped a bottle of merlot on one of my mother’s Turkish carpets or something like that.”
“What did you think when you got to the house and saw what’d happened to your mother?”
“I freaked out. Completely lost it. I hated her for what she did to our lives, but I didn’t want her to die. Not like that. And my brother… He was just out of his mind. He’s not a murderer, Lieutenant. He’s a really good guy. You have to understand what she did to us, what she did to everyone.”
“I’m having a hard time feeling sorry for you, Mandi, when you knew all along who killed her and where the money was and didn’t tell anyone.”
“She said she’d kill me!”
“And you actually believed your own mother would kill you if you did the right thing and told the authorities where she hid all that money? Or, I should say, where you hid it for her.”
“I didn’t know that’s what I was doing.”
“So you say.”
“It’s the truth!”
“Even when the shit hit the fan with the Feds, it never occurred to you to say, ‘Oh, by the way, I know where the money is stashed’?”
“Not if I valued my life. My mother was very clear about what would happen to me if I told anyone what I knew. She said if I ever breathed a word