first, we panicked. She had most of our savings and wasn’t returning our calls? How could that be? So we went to her house, and Ken said she wasn’t home. He didn’t know where she was or when she’d be back.” Tina swallowed hard and seemed to fight tears. “I had to keep Jack from storming into the house. He was convinced she was in there, and Ken was covering for her.”
“What did you do then?”
“We went to the Rockville Police Department, filed a report, met with detectives and were told they were going to look into it.”
“Did they?”
“They said they did, but they weren’t able to locate Ginny either. We asked them to get a warrant to search their house, and they said they’d try, but that never happened. So we started calling the FBI every day until we got through to an agent who took our report and promised to look into it. We never heard from him again.”
Sam hated the way law enforcement had failed these people. “I’m sorry you had that experience.”
“I am too, because in all the time that was wasted, Ginny had the chance to hide the money in places we’ll probably never locate. We’ll never get back all those months that could’ve been spent stopping her before one of the other victims finally got someone to take this seriously.”
“Where were you on Sunday?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“We’re asking everyone who had motive where they were when she was killed.”
“I didn’t kill her. Believe me, I wanted her alive so she could tell us what the hell she did with all that money. The IRS and the FBI went through everything and couldn’t find where she spent more than a million of the twenty-two million she stole. So where’s the other twenty-one million? Only she knew that, and now…” She shrugged with a helplessness that sparked sympathy in Sam. She could only imagine how frustrated and heartbroken Tina had to feel. She’d lost a lot more than her life savings to Ginny. “I was at my tennis club from eleven to two on Sunday. My club membership is the one thing I managed to hang on to after we lost the money.”
“Is there someone who can confirm that?”
“My friend Celeste was with me the whole time.”
“Can we please have her number?”
Glaring at Sam, Tina found the number on her phone and recited it.
Sam wrote it down, tore the page out of her pad and handed it to Freddie, who got up to go outside to make the call.
“Tell me about the day your husband died.”
“Do I have to?”
“I’d appreciate it if you would.”
Tina sagged into the corner of her sofa, arms crossed as she fixated on a spot behind Sam. “He’d been so upset. So, so upset. I suggested he play golf with some friends while I visited our daughter. She’d had a baby three weeks earlier, so I’d been spending a lot of time helping her. I think about that now and just wonder if I’d been around more, I might’ve known what he was planning. But I had no idea. I knew he was devastated over what Ginny did, but it never occurred to me that he would… I just didn’t think…”
She blinked furiously and then swiped at tears. “How could he leave me to deal with this alone?” Shaking her head, she wiped more tears.
Sam made an effort to be patient and not rush her.
“I came home and couldn’t find him. I checked upstairs and in the garage before going out to his woodshop when I noticed the door was open. He hadn’t been out there in months, since before we realized Ginny had stolen our money, so I took it as a good sign. I vividly remember walking out there, feeling hopeful that maybe we were going to get back on track, that we would be okay.”
Tina dropped her head. “But when I went in there, he… He was hanging from the rafters. I screamed and went to him and tried to get him down, but he was gone. Later, I found out he’d been there more than three hours by the time I found him. He waited until he knew I’d be gone awhile.” Wiping away more tears, she looked up at Sam. “That’s what she did to us, Lieutenant. She took our money, stole my husband’s will to live, denied our daughter and grandson their father and grandfather. She took everything we had, and I blame myself.