Spoiler Alert

By Richard Stein

Seven years ago, after his Ponzi scheme collapsed, Nashville attorney Anthony Colson vanished, along with forty million dollars of his clients money. Now, a man claiming to be the son of one of Colsons financial victims has a new theory of the crime, and he has hired Caitlin Logan, a young investigator from Del Mar, California, to solve the disappearance and, possibly, claim a substantial reward. Caitlins investigation will take her to Music City, where she will encounter Erica Blaine, Colsons ex-girlfriend who sold him out to the FBI; Carter Winslow, the author who wrote a salacious best-selling novel based on the crime; and Kyle Ford, the former PI who owns the Green Hills Bar and Grille and who is the one man in Nashville that Caitlins mother doesnt want her daughter to meet. And then there is Nashville television and movie producer Jonah Aaron and his wife, screenwriter Elana Grey, who have an agenda all their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514481899

Richard Stein

Dr. Richard Stein is an emeritus professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University. He and his wife live in the Forest Hills section of Nashville but spend winters in Del Mar, California. He is the author of six previously published novels, including The Dana Twins & Related Matters, Angels from Rikenny, three Jonah Aaron-Elana Grey mysteries, and one previous Caitlin Logan mystery entitled Spoiler Alert.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Caitlin Logan would have been more comfortable in jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Approaching her twenty-fifth birthday, she would rather have appeared youthful and energetic. However, for the last month and a half, except for the routine cases she had handled for Glenn Barton’s law firm and for Great Western Insurance, she had attracted little business as a private investigator.

And so, she had decided that it was prudent to look as professional as possible for her appointment with a potential new client. She was seated in her small but functional Del Mar, California office wearing a blue silk shirt, black slacks, and short block heels. Gazing across her desk at the fidgety man with the scar, she now considered herself overdressed for the occasion. He was wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a T-shirt with a picture of Skylar Jones, one of the sweethearts of country music. As difficult as it was, she tried not to stare at the scar which started just below his hairline, continued below his eye-patch, went down his left cheek, and ended at his jaw. She hoped he would turn his head to the side so that it wouldn’t be visible, but he didn’t. Instead, as he made eye contact with his good eye, the lesion remained in full view. She tried to imagine him without it, but couldn’t.

If not for the scar, Caitlin would have considered him to be a hunk, the muscular kind of man that the girls in her high school class wanted to date before they came to realize that the quality of the person was more important than his physique or the kind of car that he drove. She wondered how he came to be injured so severely and if his solid appearance pre-dated his injury or if he had compensated for whatever had happened to him by lifting weights.

As he completed telling his story for the first time, she also began to wonder if his injuries also included a subtle amount of brain damage. Despite her best effort, she had had difficulty following his tale which seemed to be a jumbled mess of details.

Look, I know it may sound weird ma’am. But you’ve got to help me out.

Caitlin shook her head. Please try it one more time, Mr. Babson. You lost me when you started talking about your father’s share of Colson’s millions and someone who was in witness protection. Can you try it again, but this time a bit more slowly?

The man sighed and scratched his face behind the line of the scar. I’ll try. But you can skip the mister part and call me Babson. Everybody does. Okay?

Okay.

He took several deep breaths, and for a moment Caitlin wondered if he had forgotten that he was supposed to be telling the story. Just as she was about to say something, he began. I guess you never heard of Anthony Colson before today.

I’m afraid not.

He nodded and licked his lips. I guess it didn’t make much sense to you then. He moved from side to side in the chair trying to get comfortable before he began his second run through. Anthony Colson and Owen Bradshaw were two lawyers back in Nashville. His slight drawl made the word lawyers sound like liars, which—in this case—was very appropriate. They had a very respectable looking law office. I been there. Big glass doors. Mahogany paneled walls. Anyhow, fifteen years ago, the fall of 2002, Colson and Bradshaw set up an investment fund. A lot of doctors in Music City, including my dad, put money into it. He paused and waited for her to nod before he continued. It seemed legit. It had been going for five or six years when my father got involved. His friends who had placed money with Bradshaw and Colson encouraged him. My dad had stayed away because the profits sounded too good to be true. He chuckled. Too good to be true and it involved lawyers. That should have been a warning.

I’m following you this time. Go ahead.

Well, when the economy went sour and the stock market tanked back in ’08, my father decided to move his retirement fund to Bradshaw and Colson to make back some of his losses. A year after that, Colson’s ex-girlfriend went to the feds and told them it all was a scam with phony financial statements and everything, a Pootzi scheme or something.

You mean a Ponzi scheme.

That’s the word… The interruption caused him to lose his train of thought and it took him a while to pick up his story. The feds arrested Bradshaw in 2009. He’s still in federal prison. But Colson and most of the money vanished.

How much money are we talking about?

The man with the scar shrugged his shoulders. I heard as high as a hundred and ninety million dollars and as low as thirty million. Since the books were cooked so to speak, it’s hard to say how much money vanished and how much was never there except in Bradshaw and Colson’s imagination. Anyway, that money was from all the investors, not just my father. Only three million of it was his. He was a doctor. Did I say that before?

I’m not sure. Anyway, you said it now. Please go on.

That three million dollars was almost all of his retirement package and it would have been my inheritance seeing how he’s dead and I’m his only child.

Caitlin took a deep breath. I would assume that the FBI has been looking for Mr. Colson.

Goddamn right, they been looking for Colson and the money! They found six million in an account registered to Mr. Bradshaw in Antigua but that’s it. Otherwise, they got nothing.

And you said this all happened in Nashville.

Right. Mostly country singers and doctors had invested in Bradshaw and Colson’s fund. The musicians had the brains to get out. Some of the doctors stayed in. I got a friend who says that when it comes to money, doctors are like the guy who was so dumb he couldn’t pour piss from a boot if the directions was on the heel.

Caitlin chuckled. I hadn’t heard that phrase before.

The man shrugged his shoulders. Anyhow, when my dad died I figured the money was lost forever. Then I remembered something. When my dad came back from his first meeting with Bradshaw and Colson he told me that when he was coming out of their office, he thought he saw Herbert Kane and another man going in and I figured…

Slow down… This is one of the places where you lost me before. Who is Herbert Kane?

He wrinkled his nose and tilted his head. How can you not… Sorry. How long you been living here?

I was born here. I’ve lived in Del Mar my entire life.

Got it. Of course you wouldn’t know… Herbert Kane was said to be the head of organized crime in Memphis. He was a regular Godfather. His picture had been in the paper a lot. I figured if he invested money in the scam, maybe he went after Colson when things fell apart and instead of looking for Colson, maybe Colson’s dead because Kane killed him and they should be looking for Kane.

Looking for Kane? Is he missing?

Well, that’s it. See, Kane and his son-in-law, a man named Robert Pettigrew, disappeared right around the time Anthony Colson did. That was March 2010.

That’s interesting, but your father only thought he saw Kane and Pettigrew at Colson’s office. It might not have been them.

I asked myself the same question. Then I tracked this down. He took a copy of a magazine clipping out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. This picture was taken at a charity function held at Colson’s home. It’s proof that Colson knew Kane and Pettigrew.

Caitlin noted that the photo was from the pages of the Nashville society magazine, NFocus, dated September 2009. Two couples in formal attire, identified in the caption as Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Kane and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pettigrew, were shown standing in front of a fireplace above which was a large square painting of the night-time sky. While the photograph was like any that might be taken of guests at a society affair, the celestial representation was unusual in that two moons were present. Caitlin handed him back the picture.

Keep it. I know what they look like. You never know. You might run into one of them.

Is there any significance to the fact that there are two moons in the painting?

He chuckled. Funny you should ask. Bradshaw and Colson tried to use that painting as the title page in their information to investors. My dad said that Bradshaw and Colson were trying to send a hidden message that they, Bradshaw and Colson, were the two biggest objects in the financial sky and that they were out of this world. It’s typical of their bullshit and it cost them plenty.

Caitlin had been following the story, but now she was confused. What do you mean when you say it cost them plenty? How?

"You ever hear of the sci-fi film Angels from Rikenny."

Caitlin smiled. Sure. I must have been twelve years old when I convinced my mother to take me to see it.

"That painting was one of four backgrounds used in the film to represent the sky as seen from the planet Rikenny. That’s why there are two moons. Colson bought the original painting but didn’t buy the rights to use it in his advertising. Jonah Aaron, the guy who produced Angels from Rikenny, sued Colson for using it without permission. Mr. Aaron didn’t want his film to be associated with Colson’s investment plan in case the whole thing turned out to be a fraud. Colson didn’t want a lawsuit where someone might testify that being associated with Colson’s investment program was slandering the good name of his movie studio. Colson not only quit using the picture in his advertising, he paid Jonah Aaron two million dollars to drop the suit."

What does that have to do with Kane and Pettigrew?

Nothing, but you asked me why there were two moons in the painting and how using the painting cost Colson and Bradshaw a boatload of money. The point is that everyone is looking for Colson. I know the FBI kept watching both his wife and his ex-girlfriend to see if one of them left the country to go meet him. They didn’t. It was in the papers that Mrs. Colson was really pissed off that she couldn’t even go to the grocery store without being followed. But maybe Colson don’t have the money. Maybe Kane and Pettigrew killed Colson and they disappeared with the cash. I mean, they were gangsters and they knew Colson.

Caitlin Logan leaned back in her chair and looked out the window as she thought it over. Even if Kane and Pettigrew were gangsters who knew Colson, is there any reason to think that they might have had something to do with the investment scam either as investors or perpetrators. If Kane and Pettigrew were on the wrong side of the law, they might have been seeing those two attorneys for something else.

The man with the scar scratched his head. I thought of that, too, but I checked with a friend of mine back in Nashville. Bradshaw and Colson’s law firm did civil stuff, not criminal defense. That don’t mean that Kane and Pettigrew weren’t seeing Bradshaw and Colson about something other than their investment thingy, but then there’s this. He handed her a legal document.

What is this?

It’s the yearly report distributed by the FBI to the people who invested in Bradshaw and Colson’s fund. I found it in my dad’s things after he passed away. By the time the fund went belly-up, there were only seven counts left.

Counts?

Accounts… Sorry. You can keep this copy, but don’t spread the names around. People would be embarrassed to have it get out that they was duped. He watched as she looked at the names. For most of the accounts, the names are listed. For the last account, all it says is ‘K and P Investments.’ K and P. Kane and Pettigrew. It fits.

And did you tell the FBI about this theory of yours?

Of course I told them. After all, if they found Kane and Pettigrew and the missing money, some of it would go to me. My dad’s dead. My mom died a long time ago. I’m the only heir. I said that before, didn’t I? I get confused sometimes. He pointed to his head. Sort of scrambled. Sorry.

That’s ok. I’m getting the picture. But what can I do?

Well, I also got this idea about witness protection. Every year there’s a meeting between the FBI and the people who got ripped off or their representatives. Not much happens. They say they’re doing everything they can but that they got nothing. I’m not sure they’re telling the truth.

Why would the FBI lie to you?

I’m getting to that. Last year at the meeting, one of the investors got angry and accused the FBI of having Colson in witness protection. The FBI assured all of us that they would never put Colson in witness protection unless he surrendered the money. I didn’t think nothing about it at the time, but then I figured what if Kane and Pettigrew bumped off Colson and then they went into witness protection. Kane and Pettigrew were gangsters. They probably had information to give the government about other crimes. And since the government wouldn’t know that they killed Colson and had his money, the FBI wouldn’t have made Kane and Pettigrew give it up before they made them protected witnesses.

And the FBI says that isn’t the case.

Well of course they said that they didn’t have Kane and Pettigrew in witness protection. They wouldn’t exactly make that public knowledge. I got friends in Memphis. One of them is a cop. He tells me that the assumption is that Kane and Pettigrew are dead, bumped off by a rival fraction.

Caitlin realized that he meant faction, not fraction, but saw no reason to correct him.

Anyway, ma’am, Kane and Pettigrew might have all the money and the FBI may have fucked up… Pardon my language.

Not a problem… So you want me to look into it and see what I can find?

Exactly. I mean I wouldn’t know what to ask people just like you might have problems replacing an engine. I work at Carmel Valley Automotive Service a mile down the road.

Caitlin nodded. She knew that she enjoyed a reputation a competent and honest investigator, but Babson, like many of her other clients, had sought her help simply because it was convenient.

Anyway, Ms. Logan, I can pay. I mean I don’t have a lot of money, but… What do you charge?

Six hundred a day plus expenses. I don’t know what the expenses would be, but I could easily devote a week to the case and see if I got anywhere.

Great… Did I mention the reward before?

No. You didn’t.

"Do you ever watch that TV show, Bethany Fibonacci?"

"The police procedural set in Chicago? Sure. What does that have to do with anything?"

Erica Blaine, one of the actresses on the show, was Anthony Colson’s girlfriend. She had nothing to do with the scam. Colson just bragged to her about it when they was in bed one night. She was the one who tipped off the FBI that it was a… Ponzi scheme. He smiled when he said the term correctly. I met Erica Blaine when she was out in San Diego. They filmed some scenes for the show on the beach here in Del Mar. She told me that she got $600,000 when her tip led the FBI to find the six million bucks in Antigua. That was a ten percent reward because it led to the prosecution of what the feds called a ‘criminal enterprise.’ Now there’s a five percent reward put up by the investors who got screwed. There’s a website called ‘findColsonsmoney dot com’; you can check it out there. I don’t want to sound greedy, Ms. Logan, but if you get the reward, since I’m hiring you, I figure we should split it, half to you and half to me… if you think that’s fair.

She leaned back in her chair. Well, Babson, even if the amount of missing money is just forty million, I think I could manage quite well with a million dollars.

Wait. He started to move his fingers as if doing a math problem. Yeah. That’s right. Ten percent of forty million is four million. Five percent would be two million. We would each get a million dollars. How did you do that so fast?

Well, I…

No. It’s me. I’m just slow since the accident.

No. You’re not slow. I’m good with numbers. But, as it is, I suspect that other people have been looking for Colson’s millions for a long time and since they haven’t found it, I doubt I’ll solve this mystery.

Well, you never know. I’m willing to pay half of your fee in advance. How about I pay you for four days and also stake you to a thousand in expenses? That’s… He paused to do the math in his head… I have no idea how much that is. Can you help me out?

It’s thirty-four hundred dollars. Four days at six hundred a day is twenty-four hundred, and a thousand for expenses is thirty-four hundred.

I followed that. He opened his wallet and counted out thirty-four one hundred dollar bills.

As she picked up the cash, she asked, Is there anything else you want to tell me about the case? Is there anyone else you suspect other than Kane and Pettigrew?

He wrinkled his brow and appeared to be deep in thought. Did I mention Jonah Aaron?

You mentioned the lawsuit over the painting.

Well, he’s on the list of investors. At the end there were five doctors who had accounts. K and P Investments had an account. That’s six. Jonah Aaron was number seven. Well the doctors didn’t have nothing to do with Tony Colson’s disappearance, and I already told you about Kane and Pettigrew, but I don’t know about Jonah Aaron.

Before we talk about Mr. Aaron, why do you say that the doctors had nothing to do with what happened to Tony Colson?

In an adamant tone, he said, Because they didn’t!

Caitlin sat up straight in her chair. Excuse me, Babson. You’re paying me to look into the case, and I’m going to want to look into all the possibilities. I understand that your father was a doctor. If you feel that doctors wouldn’t have done anything like that because physicians just wouldn’t, you might be a little biased. A lot of money was involved, even for a group of doctors.

I know, but that’s not why I said they couldn’t have done nothing ma’am. It’s because they was in jail. He lowered his gaze for a moment before he looked up and continued telling his story. See the night before Colson was supposed to surrender to the authorities, the five doctors figured that he was going to make a break for it. They felt it might be their last chance to find out where their money was, so all five of them, including my dad, drove over to Colson’s place planning to break in. The FBI was waiting to see if anyone showed up to bother Colson. All five doctors ended up spending the night in the Belle Meade jail. They couldn’t have had nothing to do with it. Colson was at his house when the docs was arrested and carted off to jail. He even came out on the porch and waved goodbye to the five of them. But he was gone in the morning before my dad and the others was out of jail.

Well, that is a good reason to rule them out. And Jonah Aaron?

My dad told me that when the group of doctors told Jonah what they was planning and asked him to come along, Jonah told them they was being idiots and he wanted no part of it. Anyway, like I said before, Jonah Aaron is in the entertainment business. He’s basically a promoter. I trust him less than I trust lawyers. He has lots of money. If he got Colson’s stash, it wouldn’t change his life style. He might have had something to do with it. At least that’s what some people say.

What do you say?

I say you’ll never get in to see him, so it don’t matter. Jonah don’t see no one without an appointment, and he don’t make appointments to talk about Bradshaw and Colson’s investment scheme. I went to his office once and his security people tossed me out. The only way I know about the paintings from the movie is that I talked to Jonah at one of the yearly meetings that the FBI had for investors and he told me the story of the lawsuit. He seemed like a nice guy, but that don’t mean nothing. According to my dad, Tony Colson seemed like an even nicer guy.

Just a minute. You said that Jonah Aaron was in the entertainment business in Nashville? Is he connected to Brandenburg and Aaron Entertainment?

Babson’s tone became somewhat belligerent. Do you know him?

No, but I’m a fan of Amibeth, the psychologist who has that show on talk radio. The sign-off always mentions Brandenburg and Aaron Entertainment.

The man with the scar scoffed. Jonah Aaron is the Aaron of Brandenburg and Aaron. Anyway, I won’t hold it against you that you like Amibeth. He managed a slightly crooked smile. She don’t have nothing good to say about men so I don’t listen to her show. Amibeth, known as The Queen of Talk Radio, had a regular feature on her show entitled, Not All Men are Idiots, Only Most of Them.

Is there any reason that you suspect Jonah Aaron had something to do with Tony Colson’s disappearance?

He could have gone along with my dad and the other guys. And I always wondered if he warned the cops about what was going to happen.

Caitlin saw no point in arguing. It sounded like Jonah Aaron, unlike the physicians involved with Tony Colson’s Ponzi scheme, had some sense. Then again, he had invested in the program, so he couldn’t be that smart. She thought it over and began to wonder if Jonah Aaron might have been planning some action on his own the night that Colson disappeared. I try not to pre-judge anything. Despite the fact that I’m a fan of Amibeth, I’ll consider Jonah Aaron a suspect in whatever happened.

Good. Give me a call in a couple of days and let me know how things are going and if you’re going to need more money. He picked up two of her business cards from the desk, put one in his wallet, scribbled a phone number on the back of the other card, and handed it to her.

I’ll do what I can, Babson.

Thanks. He took a piece of paper from his wallet. It’s not for me to tell you how to do your job, but if you need a place to start, here’s Erica Blaine’s phone number. When I met her, she gave it to me more out of sympathy than anything else. I ain’t never gonna call her but it was nice of her to give her phone number to a wreck like me... She can probably tell you more stuff about Colson. Maybe it’ll help you get an idea about what happened.

Caitlin stood up, reached across the desk, and shook his hand. She smiled as she realized that she and the man with the scar were both exactly six feet tall. Thanks. I’m not sure where I’ll start, but I’ll be in touch.

Great. He paused and looked at her for a second. Don’t be so sure you won’t find the money. Someone’s got it and someday it’s gonna get found.

She said nothing as she realized that she was staring at his scar.

Rodeo. It was a bull called Widowmaker. Six broken vertebrae in my back, too. They told me I might never walk again, and I’m doing fine… Good luck, Ms. Logan.

As she watched Babson limp towards the door, she realized that his idea of fine and her idea of fine were hardly the same. As soon as he left, she picked up her phone and called James Blanton in the San Diego office of the FBI. She and Blanton had once worked together on a fraud case that had led to three arrests and he was the only person in the FBI whom she felt comfortable asking for a favor. During their time working together, he had twice asked her out. She had politely declined the offers, using the excuse that she didn’t date people who had anything to do with law enforcement or private investigations. That wasn’t the real reason she had turned him down, but it had sufficed.

As she waited for Blanton’s return call, she looked up the Colson and Bradshaw investment fraud on the Internet. There were thousands of articles, including scores from the Nashville papers and a few in the Wall Street Journal. All of them confirmed exactly what Babson had told her. Two attorneys had committed financial fraud; Bradshaw had gone to prison; Colson had vanished, presumably with the missing money. The consensus estimate of the amount was between thirty-nine and forty-five million dollars. Nothing that she found mentioned a tie to Herbert Kane or Robert Pettigrew.

A brief Internet search confirmed that in March 2010, around the time Colson had disappeared, both Kane and Pettigrew had vanished. She easily confirmed Kane and Pettigrew’s alleged associations with organized crime in Memphis.

Jonah Aaron was, as Babson had claimed, an entrepreneur active in the field of artist’s management. However, his major source of income was his majority interest in Ojliagiba Films, an independent film studio based in Music City. Caitlin recognized the titles of all four of his films having seen three of them.

She was about to leave the office when Special Agent Blanton called back and agreed to meet with her in the morning. For the first time in weeks she was excited about her work.

She began to shut down