The plan for the day was to stay home. Ronan thought he might take Everly and Ezra for an ice cream when it got hot later in the afternoon.
He hadn’t had a chance to do any research on Walt Claxton after Fitz and Jude left. Ronan had grabbed a couple of cookies and sat down on the sofa to eat them, but instead, he’d fallen asleep. The sound of Ezra chomping on the abandoned treats woke him up, and Ronan spent the rest of the day with his family.
With everyone sleeping in, it was the perfect time to get started on work. Ronan set his laptop on the kitchen table and turned it on. While he waited for it to load, he made coffee and relished his first few sips in his quiet kitchen.
Logging into his Salem Police account, Ronan searched for Walt Claxton. He wasn’t surprised at all when several results popped up. It seemed Walt was mostly a nonviolent criminal. He’d been arrested a few times in the nineties for petty theft and other property-related crimes. He’d also been arrested for assault and battery after a bar fight in Gloucester in 1999. He’d served a few months in the Essex County Jail and had been released. Time in jail must have scared him straight because after that, there were no other arrests.
Next, Ronan ran a background check on Walt Claxton. While the computer did its thing, he finished his first cup of coffee and poured himself a second. He grabbed a banana and peeled it while he read the information on the screen.
Claxton most notably worked for Fun-A-Rama from 1985 through 1999, when the park closed early after Kotter Brighthouse’s death. Oddly enough, there were no further records of Claxton being employed anywhere. Either he was working under the table, had retired, or was dead. Doing some quick math, Ronan figured the man was only in his early fifties. He wasn’t old enough to retire. Using the database, he searched death records for Claxton and got no hits.
What the hell was going on here? It was like Walt Claxton had dropped off the face of the earth.
Getting up from the table, Ronan paced around the kitchen. The answer to the mystery was staring him in the face. All he needed was one more clue, and he’d be able to put the entire puzzle together. What was he missing?
Sitting back at his computer, Ronan went back to Claxton’s criminal record. He pulled up the man’s mug shots and was struck by the photographs. The man looked familiar, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why or where he’d seen this face before.
“Morning, babe!” Ten breezed into the kitchen. He pressed a kiss to Ronan’s temple. “Why are you looking at pictures of William Conrad?”
“Holy shit!” Ronan blinked several times to make sure what he was seeing was actually real. “You just solved the case, Ten.”
“What are you talking about?” Ten poured himself a cup of coffee and brought it back to the table.
“This isn’t William Conrad. These mug shots are for Walt Claxton.” Everything made sense in Ronan’s head. “I couldn’t find any records for Claxton after 1999. He’d been a petty criminal back in the day, getting arrested for theft or breaking and entering at least once a year. In 1999, he was arrested for assault and battery. He served several months in the county lockup and then fell off the face of the earth. There were no more arrests, no speeding tickets, no job history. Why?”
“Because he changed his name to William Conrad.” Ten’s eyes widened as he spoke.
“The face isn’t an exact match, but I’m guessing Claxton got some damn good plastic surgery, which altered his appearance enough that no one would recognize the man he’d been before. Where the hell would he have gotten the kind of money for that work?” Ronan’s gut tingled. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place perfectly.
“Gee, maybe from the million dollars he embezzled from Fun-A-Rama?” Ten asked, his words tinged with sarcasm.
Ronan’s head spun with the implications. “Right. Claxton kept himself and his new face out of trouble while he built the reputation of the Conrad Group. He invested all of the money into the business as start-up capital. Maybe even under various donor names. It’s easy to set up an LLC or ten. With the money spread out, no one realized where it had originally come from. It was the perfect crime.”
“Until today.” Ten’s million-watt smile lit up the room.
Ronan typed Claxton’s name into Google. With the press of a button, another piece fell into place. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he clicked on an article from theBoston Globehighlighting opening day at the amusement park in 1994. “Lookat this.” He waved Ten over to him and showed him the picture that caught his eye.
“That’s Walt Claxton manning the Tilt-A-Whirl.” Ten paused for a moment. “That’s what Kotter meant when he said ‘tilt.’ My wife. Lost. Tilt. In other words, I lost my wife to the Tilt-A-Whirl guy.”
“That would mean Mary Lou was behind all of it. The stolen money. Her husband’s murder. She was in love with Walt Claxton, and Kotter found out about the affair.” Ronan paused for a moment. Ten had been near certain of Mary Lou’s innocence. He needed to be very careful how he phrased his next question. “When you said you thought she was innocent, was that in connection to the money or the murder?” The last thing Ronan wanted to do was doubt Ten’s gift.
“The murder,” Ten said. “Every time I’ve tried to read Mary Lou about the money, I wasn’t getting anything, which makes me wonder if she knew who stole the money in the first place.”
“Who else could have done it besides Mary Lou? She worked on the company’s books, ran payroll, dealt with all things human resources related. How convenient would it have been for her to be the one todiscoverthe missing money? Who would look at her as the embezzler if she was the one who realized the theft in the first place?” Ronan knew his theory was conjecture-based, but he couldn’t help feeling like Mary Lou was just one more piece to make up a complete picture.
“Mary Lou and Walt Claxton must have been in this together. They were probably having an affair and hatched the plan to get rid of Kotter and walk away with the money. It’s my guess that she was the one in the Ferris wheel car with Kotter, while Claxton ran the ride and gave her the Taser.”
Ten nodded. “It’s a sound theory, but how do we prove it?”
“I’ll print the photos of Walt Claxton and William Conrad, along with Walt’s criminal record and employment background showing that all instances of him end in 1999. Next, I want to do a deeper dive on the Conrad Group and see where the money came from.”
“I don’t understand how he was able to build such a well-regarded company with his criminal background,” Ten said.
“When we had the roof done last year, did you do background checks on the contractors we wanted to hire?” Ronan asked.
Ten shook his head. “We were lucky to get anyone at all and just went with the first company who could pencil us in.”
“Exactly,” Ronan said. “You build your reputation by being reliable and doing the work you’re paid for. Contractors have been in high demand, and there are never enough people to do all the work. Like you said, we took what we could get. Everyone else is the same. I’m guessing that over the years as the Conrad Group grew, they were able to make enough money to buy land and start the construction wing of their empire.”
