“They weren’t.” He punched his right fist into his left palm to emphasize the point. Laurie found herself flinching. It wasn’t the first time that she had reminded herself she might be speaking to a killer. It was the nature of her work. She had a sudden eerie image of him lifting Virginia Wakeling and throwing her from the roof of the museum. Whoever killed her had to have been strong, and this man clearly fit the bill.
Ivan’s voice was calm when he continued his explanation. “The money wasn’t missing. Like I said, she covered some small bills of mine, plus the car. The rest of the money was an investment in PUNCH. That’s my gym.”
Laurie nodded to signal that she was aware of his business.
“It was a dream of mine, and Virginia knew that. She was a client. I’d have her do some boxing exercises—nothing heavy, mostly some rope jumping and shadowboxing. It’s a great workout, and totally different from everything else. People love it, and I knew that I had a winning idea. I never asked her to help me. I was absolutely shocked when she told me she’d give me the seed money. I found an old-school boxing gym and convinced the owner to sell it to me so I could transform it into a hot spot. He’s technically a partner, but the business is all mine. Virginia believed in me. She knew I’d succeed, and I did.”
Laurie could tell that he was proud of his accomplishments. Had they been built on the murder of an innocent woman? “How much money did she front you?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars.”
Laurie could feel her eyes widen. People had killed for far less.
“I don’t understand, Ivan. If she was investing in your business, why didn’t you have a written agreement or some other proof of her intentions? My understanding from news reports at the time was that the children were adamant that their mother would never have agreed to give you that kind of money.”
“Because that’s what Virginia told them. Her children are greedy. They’ve had everything handed to them, and it’s never enough. They took one look at me and assumed I was a gold digger. To get them off her back, Virginia assured them that she wasn’t giving me anything. She wouldn’t even let me tell them that she’d paid for the Porsche. They had to suspect she was hiding it from them. I made a decent living as a trainer, but I would never have spent that kind of money on a car. But then after Virginia was killed, they made me out to be some kind of thief to the police.”
“Spending money on luxuries like sports cars is one thing. You don’t think a mother would tell her children that she was investing a substantial amount of money in a business?”
He shook his head. “I know that she didn’t. Don’t get me wrong: Virginia loved her children, and was very close to them. But they didn’t really know their mother. Virginia was going through a tremendous change when she was killed. Bob—that was her husband—had been gone for five years. She was finally living her life beyond just being his wife and their mother. She was completely independent and finding such joy in her philanthropy. She had stepped back from some causes that were important to Bob and had chosen her own. That, of course, included a seat on the board at the Metropolitan Museum.”
Laurie couldn’t help but notice the gentleness in this big man’s voice when he spoke about Virginia. “And how did your gym fit into that?”
“My point is that she was happy—really, truly happy—forging her own identity. But her children second-guessed everything. They wanted her in a time capsule. They didn’t like the idea of her changing, and I was part of that change. We were very serious about getting married. I had already bought a ring for her. But she wasn’t ready to tell the family. Virginia believed that once my boxing business was off the ground, her children might start to accept me. That’s why she helped me, and that’s why she didn’t tell anyone about it.”
“But there must have been checks that she signed, something to prove she consented to the expenditures.”
“She did it all electronically. Virginia was older than me, but better online than I am. She could donate a hundred thousand dollars to a charity with a few keystrokes.”
Or alternatively, Laurie thought, you knew her passwords and figured she was so wealthy and generous, she would never miss the money.
“She wired about half of that money directly to my partner for my initial buy-in,” Ivan explained, “and then the other half went to pay for equipment, improvements on the space—the costs of starting up a business. But it wasn’t gone. It was in a business that she believed in, which would have been part of our income after we were married.”
Ryan had been quiet up until this point, but Laurie could tell from the way he was leaning forward in his seat that he was eager to interject. “It’s just like I said, Laurie. Ivan was stereotyped from the very beginning, but he didn’t actually have a financial motive to hurt Virginia. First of all, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to prove that the money Virginia put into PUNCH was stolen. Even if Ivan had stolen money from her—”
“Which I didn’t—”
Ryan held up a palm to cut Ivan off. “Of course not. But assume for the sake of argument that he had, it would have been Virginia’s word against his if she had accused him of taking the money without her permission. They were in a close, romantic relationship. They weren’t officially engaged yet, but had clearly discussed marriage in the future, as evidenced by the purchase of a ring from Harry Winston. She had obviously spent other amounts of money on him voluntarily, including the Porsche. I’m telling you as a former prosecutor, no lawyer could have proven a case of theft against Ivan beyond a reasonable doubt. In a worst case scenario, they would have reached some kind of settlement where he repaid her from the business, as if she were an investor.”
Laurie could see the logic of Ryan’s argument. If anything, the only consequence of Virginia’s murder would be to ensure that Ivan never got to marry into her money. Her death had also called attention to her finances, virtually ensuring that Ivan would be the leading suspect. She had to hand it to these two. In a short meeting, they had managed to spin her perception of Ivan on its head. From this new perspective, she could see Ivan’s argument that he had nothing to gain and everything to lose from murdering Virginia.
Ivan must have recognized that she was beginning to get pulled into his side of the story. “I swear to you, Laurie, I didn’t do it. I loved Ginny. That’s what I called her. She told me that when she was young that was her nickname, but her husband wanted her to be called Virginia after he started to become well known. We would have been married within months if she had lived, and we would have been happy.”
Ryan added, “Laurie, I know you hate it when I step on your toes around here, but I’m telling you: this case will be a hit for Under Suspicion. It’s perfect. And we’d be helping a good man.”