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“Well, yeah. He came to town with money. You know that. Duncan Marks mentioned it at dinner.”
“Yeah, everybody keeps telling me that. But no one can tell mewherethe money came from.”
“Well, maybe the bank can help.”
“Only reason we’re going there. Otherwise I wouldn’t set foot in one.”
“You don’t like banks?”
“Not since they foreclosed on my house here and repossessed my car. And with my shitty credit score,theydon’t likemeeither,” replied Decker.
***
Bart Tinsdale was the bank’s vice president. He had been at the institution long enough to have known Don Richards. Tinsdale was tall and lanky but his suit was ill-fitting, the pants and coat sleeves too short for his limbs. His shoes were old and battered, and his socks seemed to have lost their elasticity.
However, he had an alert eye and firm handshake, and quickly guided them back to his small glass-enclosed office area off the main lobby, where they all sat around his desk.
He pointed out the window. “Every time I look out that window and see the Grill, I think about Don and David.”
“So you knew them both?” asked Decker.
Tinsdale nodded. “I was just a bank clerk back then.”
Lancaster said, “Well, you worked your way up. VP now.”
Tinsdale’s face crinkled. “I’m a little fish in a little pond. And I’m perfectly happy about that. Good place to raise kids, and I’ve got five.”
“Wow, I’ve got one and some days it’s more than I can handle.”
The banker nodded appreciatively. “My wife is a saint. And if the kids turn out well, it’s more because of her than me. But I do the coaching bit. Soccer and baseball. And I’m an assistant coach for basketball. I played in high school. Pretty full schedule.”
“I can see that.”
He sat forward. “But you didn’t come about that.”
Decker said, “No. We’ve reopened the investigation into David Katz’s and Don Richards’s murders. And we’re also investigating the attempted murder of Rachel Katz.”
Tinsdale involuntarily shuddered. “Been way too many killings around here.” He gazed at Decker. “You were here when the shootings happened at the high school. My oldest daughter was a freshman when that happened. Thank God she was okay.”
“Yeah, thank God,” said Lancaster.
“So what can I do for you?” asked Tinsdale.
“For starters, we’d like to know more about the loan that Richards made to David Katz. Do you have those records?”
“Well, they’d be on the computer. Everything’s on the computer. Even the old stuff now.” He looked at his keyboard before glancing up. “Do you need to get a warrant for that?”
“Katz is dead. I don’t see what harm there is in looking at old bank records.”
“I guess that’s true.” Tinsdale tapped some keys and maneuvered through some screens. “Okay, what exactly do you want to know?”
“How much was the loan for?” asked Decker.
Tinsdale read off the screen. “Two point five million.”
Lancaster gaped. “That’s a pretty big loan, isn’t it?”
“Well, I’ve done bigger. But it is fairly substantial for a restaurant in Burlington, I’ll grant you that, particularly since it was so many years ago. But it was apparently an expensive buildout.”
