“Well . . . yes, I did. And it’s a good thing for you that I was so nosy. It might turn out that I was listening to Stan and Tori talk about the man who killed her!”
“Who were they talking about?” This time it was Delores who asked the pertinent question.
“Tori’s business manager. She called him her money man. Did you know that Tori got an allowance every month from him? And she had to ask him if she needed more than what he gave her.”
“That’s not all that unusual,” Hannah told Georgina. “A lot of people who have investments with a money manager get monthly allowances.”
“But it was her money! She earned it, not him! What right did he have to say how much of it she could have? Not only that, but she paid him for keeping her money! I heard her tell Stan that she sent him a check every month.”
Georgina sounded outraged and Hannah could understand that. For people who’d always handled their own money, hiring a money manager seemed like an unnecessary expense. Hannah understood that and she tried to explain it to Georgina.
“It’s seems strange to you and me, but Tori earned a lot of money when she was at the top of her profession. And when you earn a lot of money, it’s hard to exercise self-control and not run right out to spend it. Tori knew her acting career wouldn’t last forever and she wanted help to make some sound investments so that she’d have enough to last for the rest of her life.”
“I guess I get it,” Georgina said, but she still looked a bit dubious. “Why didn’t Tori just put it in the bank? That’s what a lot of people do.”
“Because the bank doesn’t pay much interest and Tori wanted her money to work for her and earn more money. She probably didn’t know that much about the stock market and investments, so she hired an expert to handle it for her.”
“Okay. That makes some kind of sense,” Georgina conceded.
“Why was Tori talking to Stan about her money man?” Hannah asked.
“Because Stan’s an accountant and he went through all her financial papers for her. From what I could hear, it sounded like Stan found a bunch of things wrong with the way the business manager was handling Tori’s money.”
“That’s troublesome,” Delores commented. “Did it sound like he was deliberately cheating Tori?”
“That’s what Stan said. He said some stocks that Tori had were missing from her portfolio and there was no record of them being sold and reinvested someplace else. And some money was missing from one of the savings accounts she had in a New York bank.”
“Did Stan say how much money was missing?” Delores asked.
“He said he couldn’t tell to the penny what was missing without doing a full accounting, but that he could give her a preliminary ballpark figure.”
“And that figure was . . .” Hannah held her breath. This could be very important.
“Close to sixty thousand dollars. And that was just for the current year.”
“What did Tori say to that?” Delores asked.
“She said that she’d get the rest of her financial records to Stan by the end of the day so that he could give her a full accounting. And she asked how long that would take. Stan told her he could probably finish it in a couple of weeks now that he knew what he was looking for. And then he warned her that a full accounting could be expensive.”
“Did Tori ask how expensive?” Delores looked interested.
“Yes. And Stan said it might be as high as five thousand dollars.”
“Did Tori agree to that?” Hannah asked.
“Oh, yes. It didn’t seem to faze Tori at all because she just laughed and said that since her money man had already cheated her out of sixty thousand this year, another five grand sure wouldn’t kill her.” Georgina stopped and shuddered. “And that’s what I keep thinking about. That’s just it. That’s why I told you all this. It could have killed Tori if she ignored Stan’s advice!”
Hannah was confused. “What advice?”
“Stan’s advice came a little later, right after the waitress that was taking over for me delivered Tori’s second vodka martini. Tori told Stan that she had a good notion to call her money man before he left his office for the day. She was going to tell him that she knew he’d cheated her. And that if he didn’t pay her back every penny by the end of the month, she was going to contact every single one of his clients and tell them exactly what he’d done to her and urge them to get their own independent accounting the way she’d done.”
“That sounds like Tori,” Delores said, looking as if she really missed her outspoken friend.
“Well, Stan told her not to do it, that she would be cutting off her nose to spite her face. He pointed out that if her business manager knew that Tori was onto him, he might grab all the money he could from all of his clients and take off for parts unknown. And if he did that, they’d never get their money back.”
“Good point!” Hannah said.
“Tori thought so, too. She said that Stan was right, that she wouldn’t do anything to alert her money man until Stan had finished his full accounting. But . . .”
“But what?” Delores asked her.
“But what if Tori didn’t keep her word? That would be a motive for her money man to kill her before she could tell any of his other clients, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Hannah said, exchanging glances with her mother. They both knew how impulsive Tori could be. If she’d done what she’d threatened and called her business manager, that would be a compelling motive for her murder.
*