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“Crawford had turned off the cameras remotely from his laptop at five p.m. on Friday,” Connor said. “We know that Archie Adler wasn’t involved because, a, he didn’t have remote access to the cameras and, b, he left on his boat at five on Friday afternoon. His defense attorney provided security camera footage from the marina where his boat was moored.”
“So Adler really wasn’t involved in the murders. Just in stealing from the operating fund?” Navarro asked.
“Exactly,” Connor replied. “Roxanne broke into Benny’s apartment using Crawford’s master key at four oh five on Saturday morning. Benny had taken a sleeping pill that night and was sound asleep. She’d already figured out the safe code and probably used the wheelchair in Benny’s room to get him to the safe for his fingerprint. She steals the coins and, wearing Crawford’s clothes, leaves Shady Oaks at four fifteen on Saturday morning.”
Sam nodded. “And she came back Saturday evening during Eloise’s party to search Frankie’s room because he suspected her.”
“That’s right,” Kit said. “She went into Frankie’s apartment during the party at seven thirty-five p.m. to search for whatever Frankie had against her. We found an email from Roxanne to Crawford saying that she ‘might have a bigger fish than BD’—Benny Dreyfus. Frankie had started to come on to her in the previous week, mentioning that he was bi, hoping to get her attention, and she knew about his fortune. We got that from the letter Frankie wrote to Georgia. And then Roxanne admitted to Sam and Georgia that she’d found out from Crawford that Frankie was a retired cop and not to trust his sudden advances.”
“When she was kidnapping you,” Navarro said to Sam.
“Yes,” Sam confirmed with a shudder.
Kit felt the same way. She wasn’t sure she’d ever forget the sight of Roxanne holding a stiletto to Sam’s throat.
“And,” she added, “Georgia had overheard Crawford telling Frankie that he wasn’t a homicide lieutenant anymore, that he—Crawford—was in charge at Shady Oaks, so that confirms that Crawford did know that Frankie was a retired cop. So Roxanne needed to find what Frankie knew.”
“He left the birthday dinner early and interrupted Roxanne’s search,” Navarro recalled. “She killed him. Why did she pull the stunt with the knives? Changing the wound and leaving a butcher knife in Frank’s chest?”
Connor smiled triumphantly. “Because some of the other Shady Oaks nurses had seen the stiletto. We asked around at Shady Oaks yesterday because that was a loose end for us. Two of the nurses identified it as the same blade they’d seen fall out of the bag that Roxanne kept in her locker. Roxanne told them that she’d been mugged once, and because she lived alone and traveled all the time, she kept it for protection. Neither nurse had thought any more about it until we showed them the stiletto.”
“Also, Roxanne knew she had to fake the real time of Frankie’s death,” Kit said, “because she didn’t have an alibi for that hour on Saturday night. She was on her dinner break and we couldn’t find her on any of the facility’s surveillance cameras. She pulled Frankie’s I’m-okay cord the next morning after her shift to give herself an airtight alibi. She wasn’t on the schedule to work most of Sunday and she made sure she was seen by her neighbors at the RV campground at various times of the day.”
“What about Crawford’s car?” Navarro asked. “Did she take that also?”
“Yes,” Kit said, “but not that night. She came back the next day and drove it to the chop shop. It’s all on traffic cams and surveillance video. We didn’t find that ourselves, by the way. The people you loaned us did all the footwork. We’ve noted who got what info in our formal report.”
“Thank you,” Navarro said. “So we have evidence supporting Roxanne killing Frank, killing Crawford, and stealing the coins. What about Benny Dreyfus’s murder?”
“We found a clone of Devon Jones’s key card in Roxanne’s pocket when we arrested her,” Kit said. “That’s how she got into Shady Oaks the night she stole the coins, then again when she killed Benny.”
“Plus, we found the bottle of digoxin hidden in her tiny house,” Connor said. “She knew that Benny was on the diltiazem already. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to prove that she killed any of her elderly husbands that same way, but I think it’s a fair assumption.”
Navarro nodded. “I agree, and that segues nicely into the thefts. Talk to me about the thefts from the retirement homes first.”
“Goddard is formally handling all of that,” Connor began, “but we have a lot of the high points. Roxanne would research the retirement facilities her agency scheduled for her to identify which elderly person made the easiest and most profitable mark. Goddard found some files on Roxanne’s laptop, and Neil Fogarty—the sister’s boyfriend—supplied some of the rest. She didn’t steal from every job, only one in three or so. We thought that Frankie might have discovered this, but he didn’t. He suspected something, but then found out about her four dead husbands and feared Benny would be next. We’ll come back to the husbands later.”
“Roxanne and her sister Jackie had been stealing stuff from the elderly for more than fifteen years,” Kit said, “according to Fogarty. That confirmed the pattern we found in the reported thefts from the retirement homes Roxanne had worked in—they started fifteen years ago. She’d do the schmoozing and the stealing. Sometimes her marks were men, others were women. She’d research what causes were important to them, then casually mention she was on the board of this or that charity. She’d get her mark to sign over something valuable—paintings, jewelry, collections, and other portable things—to her ‘charities.’ They weren’t really charities, but they looked legit on the surface. They were shell companies set up by her sister Jackie, who—again according to the boyfriend—was the brains of the scheme. Jackie’s an accountant and knew how to funnel the money and how to donate enough money to actual charities that they wouldn’t raise suspicions.”
“Neil Fogarty was the broker,” Connor added. “He came into the picture about ten years ago. On the surface, everything looks legit. When she could, Roxanne got the targets to legally sign the items over. She usually picked targets who either didn’t have family who visited or who were angry with their families for putting them in a home.”
Navarro frowned. “Benny Dreyfus wasn’t either of those things.”
Kit sighed. “But he had a four-million-dollar collection, and they couldn’t pass that up. This was going to be Roxanne’s last job. She was going to retire from being a traveling nurse. She’d already bought a beach house in Florida. Ironically, not too far from the previous Shady Oaks director who embezzled for years.”
“I’m missing something,” Navarro said, still frowning. “Roxanne found out about Benny’s coins because of the article, but that claimed they were in the family’s bank vault. How did she originally expect to steal them?”
“The same way she stole the Dutch Master painting from William Freeman,” Connor answered. “Freeman was angry that his son had put him in a home, even though medically speaking that was the safest place for him to be. We talked to the bank manager where William’s painting was kept. It was ten years ago, but the manager remembered that William was brought to the bank in a wheelchair—during the time frame that Roxanne worked in William’s retirement facility. He remembers because it was a valuable painting. He was concerned and asked William if his son knew he was taking it. William was very clear that the painting was his, not his son’s, and if the son found out, William would have the bank manager’s job. The manager respected William’s wishes and never divulged his trip until the painting was reported stolen. When the police asked if it had been stolen, he said that William had taken it. There was no theft, as the painting belonged to him. He also remembered that William had been accompanied by a woman. It was probably Roxanne, but we can’t prove it. She most likely thought she could get Benny to do the same thing. And then, according to Frankie’s letter to Georgia, she found out the coins were in Shady Oaks, when she saw Benny looking at them. Having the coins at Shady Oaks made Roxanne’s job a lot easier. Until it wasn’t.”
“Because of Frank,” Navarro murmured. “Does Goddard think they’ll be able to recover any of the other stolen items?”
Kit shrugged because Goddard hadn’t sounded hopeful. “They’re going to try, but most of those items went to people like Emil Barrington Senior—people who bought privately or illegally and who had no intention of showing their purchase to the world.”
“That sucks,” Sam muttered.
Navarro nodded. “It does, indeed. I imagine the four dead husbands will also be hard to prove.”
Connor sighed. “Yeah. I’ve written up what we know to pass on to the jurisdictions where the murders occurred. One of the husbands lived in California, one each in Nevada, Arizona, and Tennessee. The one in Tennessee was likely her first. The circumstances were the same. She met them through a retirement or nursing home—they were either residents or visited friends who were residents. She picked men who were close to death and who had preexisting heart conditions, and who didn’t have any families to contest the will once her victim died.”
