Snow Blind - Lori G. Armstrong [94]
My eyes went sproing. “How in the hell do you 333
know that?”
“Company policy to have a will on hand for each resident.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Nope. It’s not unusual when you consider the vast majority of the residents die at our facility. Saves time when we don’t have disputes over personal property.”
“Is that even legal?”
“Couldn’t do it if it wasn’t.”
“But isn’t that information supposed to be confidential?”
“Highly.”
“Then how’d you know about it?”
Linderman became quiet for a minute. “I shouldn’t know she’s the sole surviving heir. So I gotta ask, who else knows? Who else is sharing that information?”
“Has this been going on since LPL took over?”
“I reckon. Here’s what bothers me. The Prime Time Friends program was supposed to be strictly voluntary for residents in the hive. Not a requirement with a room rate increase straight across the board.”
“The extra ten grand per month is a nice windfall. Where does the money go?”
“Straight into the Friends account. Bradley unearthed some donors from the get-go and set it up as a nonprofit organization, then titled himself the COO.”
Nice. “How do they split the monthly income between the actual Friends employees?”
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“Near as I can figure a grand each for the four volunteers, and three grand each for Luella and Bradley.”
“Seems an unfair split. They do the shit work and the COO reaps the benefits.”
“Something you gotta remember. These women
are retired. They work two twenty-hour weeks out of the month. Their wages aren’t reported because they’re part of a volunteer organization and no one’s expectin’ them to get paid.”
“Okay. Still not seeing how those workers wouldn’t be pissed about the inequity. Especially since the rumor is, Bradley is never there. I mean never.”
“And that’s where Bradley sweetens the pot. If any of the volunteers get a resident to bequeath their estate to Prime Time Friends, she receives five percent off the top.”
“You’re kidding.”
He studied me. “I thought maybe your client suspected the administration was siccing the Friends on residents who have a substantial estate, which was why she’d hired you to investigate.”
Should I hedge? Nah. Linderman shared more information than was wise. Who knew what else he’d tell me if I appeared to divulge secrets of my own.
“No. She was more worried about the large amounts of money her grandfather was withdrawing from his bank account on a regular basis that couldn’t be accounted for.” But Amery had pointed out influence being leveled on him from someone.
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“How did this come to your attention, Bud? If you just became interested in the business again, I would think the information would be hard to find.”
“That’s the thing. It should be.” A sad, bitter look crossed his face. “Dee lets me have access to everything. See, she thinks she’s humoring me, that I’m just another worthless old man trying to relive his glory years. My kids are tryin’ to muscle me out of all of the businesses I’ve spent my life building. After the office staff goes home for the day, I come in and poke around through the files and the computers and whatnot.”
I had no idea on whether Linderman’s kids were justified in taking over his business interests, and it’d be easy for me to get sucked into his well of pity. I focused on the facts. “Does Dee know how Prime Time Friends operates?”
“Yep. She gets a quarterly bonus for ‘joint administrative duties’ to the tune of a coupla thousand bucks. So, I was snoopin’ and I found that two residents who had recently died bequeathed the bulk of their estate to the Friends program.”
“Big amounts?”
“Eh. Just a coupla hundred thousand.”
Linderman made it sound like small potatoes, but that was a lot of money to a lot of people, me included.
“Which Friend received the kickback for bringing in the loot?”
“The program director, Luella Spotted Tail.”
“What do you know about her?”
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“Not much. She was a holdover from the previous owners. We initially kept her on in a transition position.”
“Long transition. It’s been what, a year?”
“Not quite.