Mettner read off the name of the realtor that Lydia had hired to sell the home. “Vivian Smith. So what?”
“Well,” Josie said. “She’s not Vivian Smith anymore. She got married since her days at the real estate office. Now she’s Vivian Toland.”
Again, all eyes were on her. Gretchen let out a long stream of expletives.
“Vivian and Nadine worked together,” Noah explained. “They started out at the same real estate agency. Vivian lied to our faces when she told us she’d never heard of or met Nadine Fiore.”
“Fiore owned the property in Sullivan County,” Josie added. “But she also owned several others all over the state. She lived in Montgomery County, the same as Vivian Toland, for many years while they were running these cons.”
Mettner motioned toward the other stacks of paper on Josie’s desk. “Are they all like this?”
Josie nodded.
Chitwood looked up from the papers in his hand. “Let me get this straight. We’re talking about a con that Nadine Fiore, Hugo Watts, Lydia Norris and Vivian Toland were all in on together?”
“For years,” Josie said. “Nadine found well-off men looking to buy expensive homes. She identified the ones who were closer to death than not and who had no children. Lydia seduced them, got them to marry her. They died. Hugo handled the estates, collected exorbitant fees, and then Vivian sold the houses once all was said and done.”
“But wait,” said Mettner. “Lydia’s got all the money. She must have racked up millions in assets over those years.”
“I don’t know how much,” Gretchen interjected. “From my research, these guys were wealthy but not mega-rich.”
“Mega-rich would have drawn too much attention,” Chitwood said. “If someone is uber-rich there’s bound to be some family members coming out of the woodwork to dispute a new, younger wife’s inheritance. Distant cousins… someone.”
“That makes sense,” Mettner said. “But we’re talking about five marriages. Surely that netted her a decent amount of money.”
“Could be,” said Gretchen.
“Four marriages between her two marriages to Hugo,” said Noah. “She didn’t marry him the second time for the kids, or because they were in love or trying to ‘patch things up.’ She remarried him so he could get his hands on his share of the assets.”
“Holy shit,” said Mettner. “Wait, where does Vivian fit into all of this? It looks like she was just getting a standard realtor’s fee.”
Josie’s excitement faded for a moment. “That’s what I can’t figure out. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps she caught on to what they were doing and threatened to out them somehow, so they cut her in by letting her handle the sales on the back end.”
“This explains why they had to move around so much when Amber was growing up,” Mettner said. “What a mess. I wish she had told me.”
Gretchen waved a document in the air. “If this was your childhood, would you want to tell anyone?”
Mettner grimaced. “Good point.”
“What about the kids?” Chitwood said. “We haven’t talked about them and how they fit into this whole thing. I mean, if Hugo, Nadine, Lydia, and even Vivian Toland had accumulated so much wealth from all of Lydia’s exploits, why was Eden living in a one-bedroom apartment and working as a barista in Philadelphia?”
“And why was Gabriel living in such a dump?” Gretchen added. “We know Amber left, cut all ties. She didn’t want anything from them, not even to pay for college. But what about the other two?”
“Neither Hugo nor Lydia seem like model parents,” said Josie. “I’m sure once their children were grown, they were no longer interested in providing for them. The better question is, what did these people have these kids doing?”
“They were with the abusive aunt,” said Mettner.
“Not always,” said Josie.
“Then they were being shuffled around from one place to another every time Lydia got remarried,” he suggested.
Chitwood said, “You really think these sociopaths didn’t try to use their kids somehow to con people out of money?”
“But how?” said Mettner. “How would they use their kids to get money?”
“Russell Haven Dam,” Josie muttered.
“What’s that?” Noah said.
“Russell Haven Dam,” Josie repeated. “The Chief is right. They did use the kids.”
“What are you talking about?” Mettner said.
“When the kids were young, Lydia had to have spent months and sometimes years establishing relationships with these men. Hugo would have had the children on his own for long periods of time between Lydia’s husbands’ deaths. Periods where he wouldn’t have access to the money Lydia had. Yeah, he left them with Aunt Nadine sometimes, but they didn’t live with her continuously. From everything we’ve heard about her, I doubt she would have agreed to raise Hugo’s children while he lived his own life and Lydia conned wealthy men out of their estates. Hugo would have had them a pretty fair amount of the time. He told us himself that he moved them every time Lydia got remarried.”
“So they could be close to their mother,” Gretchen said.
“No way,” said Noah. “He did it so he could keep an eye on Lydia and make sure she was doing her part in the con.”
“Makes sense,” Josie agreed. “He must have used the kids. If he was able to use the kids to run smaller-scale cons, he could have brought in enough money to keep himself and the kids afloat while Lydia was off doing the big jobs.”
“He’s a lawyer,” said Mettner. “Why would he need to use his kids to scam people out of money to stay afloat?”
“I don’t think he was practicing much law,” said Gretchen. “Not the way he moved from county to county. Maybe his practice wasn’t bringing in regular cash, or maybe he blew through whatever money he got too fast. I think the boss is right. He used the kids to run small-time cons for his own benefit while Lydia was running long cons.”
Josie nodded. “Yes, exactly! I kept thinking that Ella Purdue was really Lydia using a fake name, becoming a patient of Jeremy Rafferty, and blackmailing him, but what could a grown woman possibly use as blackmail? Rafferty was widowed.”
“A sexual assault allegation?” Mettner suggested. “Maybe she threatened to go public and lie and say he had sexually abused her?”
“No,” said Josie. “I mean, yeah, that would make sense, but I don’t think that Lydia would have had time for all that. Also, she wouldn’t want to bring that kind of attention to herself because it might taint her in the minds of future husbands. Plus, like I said, Hugo would have needed the money.”
“He made one of the girls become Jeremy Rafferty’s patient,” Noah said.
Forty-One
The sentence hung in the air. The many cups of coffee Josie had consumed that morning burned the lining of her stomach. She tried to imagine Amber or Eden as teenage girls being made to lie to and manipulate much older men.