“He’s French, an investment banker with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. And, he’s married.”
Marcus and Garrett were seated in a large conference room, waiting for Larrieux, who said he could only spare a few minutes to meet with them. When he finally came into the room an hour after they'd been there, Marcus wasted no time getting started.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Larrieux. I promise not to take up a lot of your time. Do you know a woman named Abril Arrington?”
“No, I’ve never heard of her. What is this about gentlemen?”
“We have information that not only did you know her, but up until three months ago, you contacted her at least twice a day,” Marcus pressed.
“Obviously, gentlemen, your information is incorrect. I don’t know who the woman you are talking about is, so there is no way that I could call her twice a day. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work attend to,” Larrieux said and s
tarted to get up.
Garrett slid a picture in front of him. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
Larrieux picked up the picture and glanced at it. When he did, his entire facial expression changed.
“You do know her then?” Marcus asked, noting how Larrieux stared at the picture.
“You said her name is Abril Arrington. This woman I know as Adina Banks.”
“Adina Banks?” Garrett questioned as he wrote down the name.
“What can you tell me about your relationship with Adina Banks?” Marcus asked.
“I met Adina, maybe two years ago while I was in Atlanta on business. She presented herself as a financial reporter from some small magazine and wanted to do a story about me. I usually don’t do things like that, but she was beautiful, so I agreed to be interviewed.”
“Did you ever see a copy of the magazine with the story she did on you?”
“No. Adina told me that her editor turned it down so she quit. She told me that she wanted to start her own magazine, and she convinced me to back her in it. For the last two years, I’ve been seeing her when I was in Atlanta. I was giving her money for her condominium and her BMW as well as the start up cost for the magazine.”
“What happened to change all that?” Marcus asked.
“I stopped seeing her recently when through methods of my own, I found out she never worked at the company she said she did, and then I discovered that there was no magazine she was working on.”
“When you found all this out, did you ever confront her about it?”
“No,” Larrieux said and his eyes drifted back to the picture. “I just stopped returning her calls. After a while she stopped calling.”
“Thank you, Mr. Larrieux. I think we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Marcus said. He and Garrett got up and were preparing to leave when Larrieux stood up.
“You never did say what this was all about.”
Garrett turned to face Larrieux. “The woman you knew as Adina Banks was murdered in Atlanta.”
As the two men walked out of the conference room they heard Larrieux say, “Am I a suspect?”
Garrett stopped and turned to Larrieux as Marcus continued down the hall. “No, sir, you're not a suspect. When the police come talk to you, then you should consider yourself a suspect. Have a nice day.”
In the cab ride to their hotel, Garrett looked over at Marcus. “So our girl was getting her hustle on to the fullest, huh?”
Marcus nodded. He knew that Larrieux’s statement improved Panthea’s chances of walking away from this murder charge. “So basically there are about five men who could be viable suspects in Abril’s murder,” he said.
“Not only them, but let’s think if they too had spouses. That just broadens the pool of suspects,” Garrett said and Marcus couldn’t imagine receiving any better news.
“Certainly makes for interesting conversation for the prosecution, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does. I’ll meet with Detective Silver when I get back, let him know what we’ve turned up.”