Sugar Mama

She died recently.
I heard about it about from a mutual friend. She had been dead for almost two years and I didn't know.  Even though she was a client of mine once, my work for her had long been done and we just went our separate ways.
I usually work directly for attorneys who are hired by regular folks like you and me who need help.
I tend not to work directly for regular people because attorneys afford their investigators a certain protection... one being attorney/investigator confidentiality.
What that means is, the confidential memos and reports I write to the Attorney about the case are not "discoverable"  by the opposing side in a legal action or trial.
This allows me, an investigator, to travel under the radar and often go undetected in certain legal proceedings.
Which always comes in handy when you are going after a bad guy.
So this former client of mine, I accepted her case under one condition. We bring in an attorney.
It was a big case, it was dangerous and it needed the protection of an attorney... and  possibly, the police.
It was started as a civil action. She just wanted her money back. It ended up with her in intensive care.

She a beautiful, wealthy, white woman from the "Eastside" of town, across the bridge where the software companies and some very wealthy folks live.
She was one of those gorgeous women married for decades who found herself in a angry, heated divorce after she found her husband in bed with his secretary.
Washington is a "no fault" divorce state and it sure wasn't her fault anyway... so the divorce went smooth as sandpaper. Which is smoother than most.
She ended up financially diminished, albeit fine. She got the house, about a million dollar nest egg, and since their one child was grown and married, custody was no issue.

She became single... though never adjusted to it.
She felt she she needed a man.
And that's where the trouble and I came in.
Because the man she picked was a very handsome younger  black man who picked her golden haired head and Chanel dress and Jimmy Choo shoes out of the crowd during an art show.
She found him enchanting, she told me.
"He was in Armani" she added.
She said he spoke eloquently about art and music, was quite amusing and quite profund all at one.
He was 15 years younger than her (she was 48).
He was a musician she said. "One of those struggling types" she told me, "Though he is very good. I heard one of his raps."
He said until he got "picked up by a label", he was working as a handy man and offered to help her ougt around the house.
She needed the help most certainly, changing lightbulbs, weather-poofing the deck,clearing the gutters, taking the garbage to the end of the long driveway. He was eager to help.
She paid him well.
And.... she told me, he was drop dead gorgeous.

I have no issues with co-mingling of races.
I do however have issues with liars and thieves.
So to make this potentially long story quite short...
Dude was a hustler who made his money meeting rich white women at piano bars and museums and in the upscale supermarkets where they shop.
He insinuated himself in their lives like a pimp.... only he didn't pimp her out, he pimped himself in.
And she became his Sugar Mama.

All said and done, by the time we got him extricated from her life, she had given him $650,000 for a new business he convinced her to invest in. The money is all gone, much of it, up his and others noses.
She drank alot, which altered her personality and made her feisty and volatile.
She had an air of self entitlement, which pissed him off. She had a mouth that wouldn't quit.  They fought all the time, until the final round.
It was then that she spit and and hissed the "n word" and suggest he move back to his ghetto.
His response was instantaneous.
He punched her smack in the nose, broke it, dropped kicked her in the stomach, and got it a few more stomps to various body parts after she went down.
The next day he had flowers sent to her hospital room.
The card said, "I'm so sorry. Take me back."
We needed to extricate him from her life which meant restraining orders, background work, surveillance, selling the huge house she didn't need anymore and moving into a secure new residence where she could not be found.
We got the police on him and found out there were were warrants all over the place for this guy and his many aliases.
The problem was no one could find him.
And that's what had us so concerned.
Sugar Mama had a very sour baby on the loose.

This is one of those stories with a confusing ending.
Allegedly, he never harmed her again.
The police never found him and she never got her money back.
Yet one night she was found dead alone in her home.
I didn't know this until we parted ways and until a mutual friend told me.
The death was called a suicide.
No sign of a struggle,
They found a two empty bottles of powerful pills prescribed to her and an empty bottle of vodka layed on the pillow next to her.
Tox levels were enough to kill a small army, yet consistent with the medication around her.
She also put a plastic bag untied over head.
She was fully made up underneath.
No signs of foul play, no discreetly hidden needle marks anywhere.
Even so, I think he killed her.  Albiet indirectly.
I also believe she was implicit in her own demise.
The moment she let an unknown into her life, then started lending him money, she signed a potential death sentence.
As a P.I., I have discovered a sad universal truth. Some people feed off  others.
Some are parasites, like plankton on the back of a whale.  They have a function (to clean the whale) and they also eat. It appears to be a mutually parasitical relationship.
Other people are more like ticks, they burrow in and suck money and energy out of their victims.
That's why we all have to be very careful who we allow into our lives, doors, homes and confidence.
A measure of protection/self preservation is always in order because really.... you never know who is a parasite or predator.
Everybody thought Ted Bundy was a charmer.... once.