Page 33 of The Wives of Murder Club
“We’ll do both.” All the life had been sucked out of Bernie’s father’s voice; he sounded flat as a crumpled juice box. “The priest can come tomorrow. Today, we do it my way.”
That’s how Bernie ended up getting her first psychological evaluation. They never could prove that she’d meant to do it. She wasn’t so stupid, even at seven, to admit to anything. But her parents knew. Even before the diagnosis, before the slew of tests and therapy the psychiatrist prescribed for Bernie, before science provided a name for what was wrong with her, they knew. Her mother, especially, never believed that it had been an accident, and Bernie hated her mother for not giving her the benefit of the doubt. They never would have treated Rusty like this, Bernie was sure of it. They would have believed him if he’d told them he was only showing her how to climb like SpiderMan and that he’d specifically told hernotto jump off the roof.
That summer, Bernie’s parents sent her to a special camp for other children like her. She didn’t know that it was a special camp at first, as her parents had told her she was going away to learn to swim and do crafts and play nicely, but she figured it out pretty quickly. The mandatory group sessions were a pretty big giveaway, as were the attitudes of the other children. Normally, Bernie would have had no trouble manipulating the other girls and boys, but her fellow campers were different. Her parents were relieved when she came home better behaved, and she let them believe that camp had fixed her.
Bernie gently placed the blue toy car back into the treasure bowl and gave up on watching the window. She flopped back into her easy chair and pulled out her phone to see if there had been any more updates in the neighbourhood Facebook group—the one she’d never paid much attention to before now. Since the raid on Imogen’s house, the chat had gotten much more exciting; what was normally gripes about bins left too long on the sidewalk after garbage pickup was now gossipy tidbits about Imogen and the ITFF. Bernie was surprised to see how many of her neighbours had invested with Imogen, the large sums of money they’d entrusted to the ITFF. Did nobody do the bare minimum of due diligence? Bernie snorted, self-satisfied, as she dipped her hand back into the treasure bowl. She fingered Harry’s wedding band, then landed on the purple vibrator she’d liberated from Imogen’s bedroom several months earlier.
The sex toy gave her pause, and she thought back to the other items she’d spotted in the cluttered drawer. Bernie squinted out the window at Imogen’s house—which remained stubbornly dark—and wondered whether the investigators knew about the passport.
40
MARTA
The sickness that took root in Marta’s gut when she listened to Detective Ramirez’s voice mail was a hard, writhing thing that burrowed deep and took up residency over the following days. Marta should have put it together faster, should have realized what was at stake, but somehow she hadn’t twigged to the fact that her own investment could be affected. She’d been too focused on what it all meant in terms of Celeste.
But then, the raid. The arrest. Marta had been watching the morning news as she made breakfast, and she dropped her bowl of oatmeal on the floor when she heard Imogen’s name. She wiped up the gloopy mess as she listened to the reporter detailing the charges against Imogen, then wrote down the phone number flashing on the TV screen—a hotline for potentially affected clients of the ITFF.
Marta remembered the day she’d approached Imogen about investing with her, bracing for her to say no. Imogen’s whole brand was that she was very selective about her investors, all of whom had to commit a significant sum in order to be taken on as clients. Marta pleaded for the privilege of investing with the ITFF. Imogen surprised her by giving her a maybe, telling her that theremightbe a spot opening up and, if one did, she’d make an exception to her standard minimum for the initial investment. Marta was ecstatic when, almost four months later, Imogen called her with the good news. That was years ago. Since then, Derrick (who managed all their finances) had received quarterly statements from Imogen, showing that their investments with the ITFF were consistently outperforming the market. Every time Derrick updated Marta on their progress, she felt like punching the air with excitement—they were beating the system.
But apparently, it was all a lie.
Marta was shocked when, later that evening, Imogen called to reassure her that the situation was under control—there had been some problem with early withdrawals or something like that, but the whole thing was fixable if the investigators would only let her do her work and stop focusing on red tape bullshit. Imogen swore up and down that it was totally overblown, and for a couple of days Marta lived in hope. But then Imogen stopped taking her calls, andFilthy Fundsreleased their second episode (what a surreal experience, listening to Claudia and Leo talk about Imogen!), which peeled back the skin to expose the rotted core of her best friend’s identity.
TheFilthy Fundsepisode that deconstructed Imogen’s career was shattering. Marta could still remember the envy she’d felt when Imogen first messaged her about the part-time gig she’d landed at the RWL Foundation, a registered charity with a focus on adult literacy. Marta, who was working a café job at the time, was jealous that Imogen had found something so meaningful fresh out of school. But Imogen only stayed with the foundation for about six months—she told Marta that she needed full-time work and better pay.
One of Imogen’s former co-workers at the RWL Foundation contacted the hosts ofFilthy Fundsto anonymously report that Imogen, in fact, did not leave her role voluntarily. Although she wasn’t exactly fired, she was forced to submit her resignation when the executive board discovered that she’d been accessing private contact information and making calls to solicit off-book donations . . . which she then diverted to a personal account. The former co-worker explained that the RWL Foundation’s board was embarrassed that they didn’t have proper oversight in place, and was worried that it could harm future donations if the truth came out. Marta’s blood boiled as she listened to Claudia and Leo describe how Imogen leveraged her misconduct to get a leg up, the RWL Foundation acting as a reference for her next job, at Convexical Finance.
Marta’s memory of Imogen’s time at Convexical was fuzzy; she knew that Imogen had worked there for several years in a client services position, but she didn’t know much about her responsibilities. She definitely didn’t know that Imogen had been engaging in customer credit card fraud, or that, when she got caught, management had again quietly asked her to leave. This pattern of corporate inaction infuriated Marta. What would have happened if Imogen had actually had to face some real consequences, like criminal charges? She wouldn’t have been able to build her brand with those skeletons in her closet. Or maybe she still would have pulled it off. After all, she was apparently comfortable representing herself as a Chartered Investment Manager (even though she wasn’t) and fraudulently using someone else’s professional ID number.
The revelations onFilthy Fundsabout Imogen’s job history were illuminating, but what really gave Marta a chill was hearing people call in to the pod—she recognized some of the voices—with stories of their own past interactions with Imogen, which they were now re-examining in a very different light. There was a mom from Ari’s school who called in to say that Imogen never paid her portion of a present for their children’s teacher, a pricey spa gift card. When pressed, Imogen apparently showed the woman what must have been a faked receipt for an e-transfer. Hearing about this interaction made Marta reflect on how readily Imogen dodged bills, even for small things like coffee.
The most upsetting story was from one of Imogen’s neighbours, who called in to highlight a website that Imogen had set up several years earlier in order to raise money for her cousin’s family. Marta remembered the incident well. Imogen’s cousin Jeremy lived in Philadelphia with his wife and kids, and their house burned down when some oil-soaked rags in the garage combusted. Imogen called Marta in tears the next day, telling her about what a close call it had been, and how the kids had lost all their toys and sports equipment. Marta donated to the fundraiser, which raised approximately $40,000 toward replacing the family’s valuables that their insurance didn’t cover. Months later, Imogen emailed everyone who had donated to thank them, and attached a picture of the family’s new house.
After the news about the ITFF broke, Imogen’s neighbour went back and pulled up the message in order to run a reverse-image search. Apparently, the owners of the house in the photograph had lived there for decades and had never heard of Imogen Garron. Marta now wondered if Imogen even had a cousin named Jeremy. She couldn’t trust a single thing her friend had ever told her; everything was tainted. Between Imogen and Derrick, Marta was left with nothing but polluted memories, an oil slick of lies.
41
FILTHY FUNDSS6E03: BLACK HOLE
CLAUDIA:Welcome to episode three! Claudia LeBlanc here, joined, as always, by my partner in white-collar crime, the one and only Leo Tremblay.
LEO: Over the past week, the ITFF story has exploded. It’s absolutely nuts.
CLAUDIA:Imogen is missing! There’s no way that’s news to any of you hard-core Fundies at this point—it was on every front page this weekend and we splashed it all over our socials.
LEO:Imogen was supposed to appear before a judge on Friday for a first appearance. We were at the courthouse, ready to take notes. Her lawyer was there, but Imogen never showed!
CLAUDIA:We were planning to do an episode breaking down all the legalese of the charges and court appearance and everything, but now we’ve got something even juicier: our girl’s disappearance. It’s unclear when, exactly, Imogen went off the grid. The last date we know her whereabouts for sure is the day her house was raided—and that’s almost two weeks ago at this point. Imogen’s husband, Mark, made a public statement that the last time he saw his wife was Thursday night, the evening before her scheduled court appearance. But I have to wonder—and we’ll get into this later—how much can we trust him? In any case, Imogen has been missing for a minimum of four days at this point, but potentially much longer.
LEO:Imogen’s disappearance has the internet divided. There are some who think she’s made off with the money and there are some who think something bad has happened to her. There are also a select few, largely Imogen’s family members, who think that she must be hiding out until she can fix her mess and return everyone’s money. From this third camp, we have an exclusive inside scoop. Yesterday, Imogen’s older brother, Caleb Garron, got in touch. Apparently, his parents have been getting nasty calls—it’s been so bad they had to change their phone number.
CLAUDIA:Caleb told us that his parents invested their life savings with Imogen and, just like everyone else, they haven’t been able to access their money. He told us that he thinks this is all, in his words, “a big-ass misunderstanding.”
LEO:Her own parents! That woman truly has no limits.
CLAUDIA: In the time since our first episode aired, we’ve been surprised at how many people have reached out to us, people who have been personally affected by the ITFF scam. We’ve received heartbreaking messages from individuals who’ve lost their life savings in what I think is safe to describe as an elaborate Ponzi scheme, orchestrated by Imogen Garron. Um, allegedly.
LEO:One of the first people to contact us was Gisele DeSantis, a secretary at the Academy, a local private school. She’s given us permission to share her name and her story. Gisele had been planning to retire at the end of this year to spend time with her grandchildren. That plan, however, has now been delayed indefinitely—possibly forever—as Gisele had invested the entirety of her savings in the ITFF.
