Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

He’s on the president’s list sporting a 3.89 GPA. He also completed a two-year Mormon mission in Brazil.
    “Contrast that with younger brother Jeremy, who is a party animal. He attends Pepperdine and has been arrested twice—once for a minor in possession of alcohol, and the other, drunk and disorderly. He’s carrying a less-than-stellar 2.2 GPA and has been on academic probation twice. He started a two-year mission in Canada, but was sent home in ten months for messing around with girls. Suffice to say that Jeremy has disappointed the family on numerous occasions, while Robert gets all the kudos. Go figure.
    “They both seemed terribly distraught over the loss of their father. Neither kid has a motive I could discern—not anger, hatred, or money. There’s no pot of gold waiting for either kid from the death of their father.”
    “What about family money?”
    “Without question, family finances was the touchiest part of the interview. It was the one place where Tillman interrupted a couple of times, and Margaret, though cooperative, seemed puzzled about that line of inquiry. Here’s the really interesting part, though. Between the financial information I was able to get from Margaret and the information Vince discovered from the financial records we seized from Vogue’s home on the night of the murder, an interesting picture starts to emerge. Despite the family wealth, Levi was up to his eyebrows in debt, and Margaret, unless she’s lying, knew nothing about it.”
    “That surprises me. I would have guessed that all the Vogue children and probably grandchildren are trust babies.”
    “Here’s the deal. They are trust babies, grandchildren included. Both Robert and Jeremy are able to attend expensive out-of-state universities because Richard Vogue established educational trusts for each of his grandsons. Based on what we’ve been able to piece together about Levi’s family budget, if he and Margaret had to pay for college, both sons would probably be home working part-time and attending Salt Lake Community College. That’s about all they could afford. Levi and his two younger sisters also have trusts. The deal is, they can’t access the dough for any reason until they’re forty-five. Apparently Papa Vogue decided not to give his children large sums of family money until each of them was older and financially independent. The only exception he made was for education.”
    “Were you able to find out who administers the education trusts? Any chance Levi could have tapped his sons’ trust money to support his own lifestyle?” I asked.
    “Good thought,” said Kate. “But the answer is no. Richard Vogue must have considered that possibility. Margaret indicated, and Tillman confirmed, that the education trusts are administered by trustees selected by Richard Vogue. He didn’t come right out and say it, but my impression was that Ed Tillman is one of the trustees.
    “Here’s where it starts to get even more interesting. By her own admission, Margaret knew almost nothing about the family finances. Levi paid the bills and, in fact, had most of them sent to his office instead of home. Margaret was kept mostly in the dark when it came to matters of money. And evidently, that was all right with her.
    “When I asked her for Levi’s annual salary, she didn’t know. She cast a nervous glance at Tillman, hoping he might have the answer. When he didn’t, she finally took a guess and said she thought he made approximately $80,000 a year. She wasn’t far off. His annual salary for this fiscal year was $87,900. Now take, say, thirty percent of the gross for state and federal taxes, and consider that Margaret doesn’t work outside the home, and you’ve got net family income of about $60,000 annually or $5,000 a month.
    “Vince pulled a credit report and we compared that with the family finances contained in the Quicken program we got off his home computer. It wasn’t too difficult to piece together a family budget that would seem to suggest the Vogues were living well above what Levi was making as chairman of the Board of Pardons. It seems that Levi took out a second mortgage on their home just eighteen months before his death. He did a home equity loan with a $30,000 line of credit. At the time of his death, he had dipped into the account to the tune of $25,000,” said Kate.
    By this time, I had drained my second Killian Red and Kate had consumed a second glass of Merlot. I said, “Okay, so maybe