On January 1, 2001, Larry paid Greg Whalen $12,500 for an 8-month-old sorrel colt with an impressive pedigree. This was Justa Lotta Page, offspring of Page Impressive and Justa Janie. Bred by a California rancher, William McCrain, the colt was acquired first by Whalen and then sold to Larry on New Year’s Day as a “halter horse,” that is, a quarter horse bred to be shown by leading it around a show ring.

According to some in the American quarter horse industry, a champion “halter horse” stallion is a rare item, and can bring up to seven figures, depending on his “conformance,” that is, the size, color, muscle shape and tone. Part of the Whalens’ job was to train the horse—in other words, work it out—so that the horse’s muscles stood out, much the same as a human body builder’s.

“They’re buffed up,” notes one expert “You have to breed a lot of halter horses before you get a good one. They’re like a work of art.” If the horse’s offspring are also of championship caliber, such an animal can be worth several tons of money.

The halter competition at horse shows was relatively simple, but required a substantial amount of practice by both the horse and its holder. The exhibitor had to lead the horse into the ring, then bring it to a stop, making sure it took a straight-up stance, without acting nervous or distracted. Then the exhibitor had to lead the horse around a small circuit, demonstrating walking and trotting gaits. At the end, the horse had to stop once again—almost like taking a bow—before exiting the arena. A horse that appeared to be too spirited lost points; so did a horse that didn’t seem alert and responsive to the exhibitor’s commands.

Beginning in late January, when Justa Lotta Page was just 10 months old, Larry, Elisa and the Whalen clan began traveling to horse shows throughout the West, exhibiting Justa Lotta Page, as well as a gelding horse that Whalen had leased to Elisa. These shows often featured up to a hundred quarter horses, or even more—almost all of them owned by wealthy people who hired people like the Whalens to train their animals. The shows were as much a social event as a competition, in which people gathered for cocktail parties, barbecues and the like, to dress up, be seen, and share gossip. Later, as police investigators dug into the cultural milieu that formed the backdrop of the McNabney mystery, they would be astonished by the amount of posturing—“showing off,” as one detective put it—that the exhibitors displayed.

“It was all about money,” one detective observed. “You had to have the best clothes, the best truck, the best trailer, the best horse, the best boots, hats … and you had to make sure everyone else knew what you paid for them!”

That was probably a harsh assessment, coming as it did from a workaday cop who probably lived, like most people, from paycheck to paycheck. But there was still some truth to the observation, as there was to an analogy offered by one investigator: the horse show business, it was observed, was like a gigantic fish—as the horse-owning leviathan swam on his lordly way through the small pond of fellow horse fanciers, the “pilot fish,” people like the Whalens and others in the service industry behind the horses, such as trainers, blacksmiths, vets, insurance brokers, trailer dealers, feed sellers and the like, gathered around to pick off the crumbs of wealth spilling from the mouths of the monsters—fees for training, feeding, boarding, grooming, transporting, insuring, shoeing, doctoring, photographing … the list of enterprises capable of cashing in on the horse-owners’ largesse was limited only by the imagination. As one trainer put it, owning and exhibiting an American quarter horse was not “for the faint of heart or weak of pocket.”

From this perspective, it was in the economic interest of the industry—the professionals who serviced the horse owners, like the Whalens—to have as many shows as possible, and to dress the whole thing up in as much hoopla as could be arranged. It was, after all, a “show” in every sense of the word.

The main event, the one most people pointed for, was the so-called “world show,” or AQHA World Championship in Oklahoma City every fall. Several hundred quarter horses would compete in this show, as horse fanciers from all over the country gathered together for the better part of a week, exhibiting their animals by day and partying by night. If an owner’s animal won the championship of a particular class, the value of the horse was likely to skyrocket. That, it appears, was what Larry had in mind when he began the last year of his life by buying Justa Lotta Page.

As he acknowledged later, Greg Whalen liked both Larry and Elisa. While it was true that they were his “clients,” as he put it, he also felt friendship for them. To Whalen, Larry seemed entirely normal, apart from his habitual drinking, and indeed likeable. For a rich guy, Larry seemed down-to-earth, readily willing to listen to Whalen’s expert advice. One reason he suggested that Larry concentrate on the halter events, Whalen said later, was that Larry tended “to be better” in the morning—meaning that in an afternoon event Larry was likely to be somewhat drunk.

By April, Justa Lotta Page was 1 year old, and Larry and the Whalens had shown him in Scottsdale, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Central Point, Oregon; as well as Rancho Murietta, Santa Rosa, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield and Elk Grove, all in California.

By this time Larry and Elisa had acquired their own horse trailer, a long red-and-white caravan that contained luxury living quarters for the people as well as the horses. Larry and Elisa bought the expensive trailer on credit, using Joe McNabney’s name. Elisa was later to say they had put the trailer in Larry’s son’s name to help Joe establish his own credit history. It seems likely that this financing scheme was done without Larry’s knowledge. Certainly, it came as news to Joe, months later, to find that he was the one who owed the balance due of over $60,000. The outside of the trailer had the printed legend “Larry McNabney and Associates, Attorneys at Law.” Larry also traded in his nearly new black pickup truck for a red diesel Ford “dually,” similar to a white truck driven by Greg Whalen, which was powerful enough to pull the trailer. Once he’d bought a collection of hats, jeans, boots and shirts, Larry was all set, all ready to join the American Quarter Horse Association parade.

By the same spring, Larry had almost completely stopped coming into the law office. Elisa was virtually running the whole show—processing the complaints, making sure they were typed correctly and filed, that the correct legal notices were served, the doctors contacted for their medical evaluations of clients’ injuries, the settlement conferences scheduled—in short, doing everything a lawyer had to do to move a tort case through the pipeline. All Larry had to do was sign the paperwork. At the end of every workday, Elisa would bundle up a stack of papers and drive south to Elk Grove, where Larry would sign them. Elisa had a secretary to help her with the paperwork, along with her daughter Haylei, who worked part-time at the law office when she wasn’t in school, and was paid a salary from Larry’s office funds.

Later, when all of Larry’s accounts—there were nine of them—came under scrutiny by forensic accountants, lawyers were to notice that some very obvious discrepancies began occurring in February of 2001—that is, discrepancies that were obvious to the auditors, but not to Larry. For years, Larry had insisted on reviewing all the checks issued by the firm, and Elisa had complied with this by bringing home the firm’s checkbooks, with their carbons, or “foils,” for checks issued. But in February of 2001, it appears, Elisa hit on a new scheme: when writing a check, she inserted a piece of stiff paper between the surface of the check and the carbon, so the writing wouldn’t go through; later, she used another, thinner piece of paper to fill in a fictitious payee and amount, so that the information on the carbon copy had no relationship to the check that had actually been issued. Thus, while writing a check for, say, $5,000 in cash, the record seen by Larry might say $400 for, say, car insurance. In other words, Elisa began stealing from Larry’s accounts again, and concealing the fact from Larry by means of the spurious carbons.

The accountants who later pored over Larry’s books also discovered that while Larry might not have been actively engaged in the practice of law, his firm was nevertheless doing a substantial amount of business. Of Larry’s nine different bank accounts, three were in Reno, and the remainder in Rancho Cordova, a Sacramento suburb. The Nevada accounts were largely inactive, although Larry had made a total deposit of $275,000 in one of the accounts, a business checking account, in May of 2000, and another $20,000 in a personal checking account in September of that year. But by October of 2000, all of those funds had either been spent or transferred, and the three Nevada accounts were virtually moribund.

The six California accounts included a personal checking account for Larry, a client trust account, and a general business checking account for McNabney and Associates’ new law office, all opened on January 19, 1999, just after the move from Reno. Then for some reason, eleven months later, three new accounts were opened at the same bank—a new client trust account, a new general business checking account, and a business account for an Internet brokerage business that Elisa wanted to start, huntseathorses.com. All three of the new accounts were opened on December 18, 2000—the day before Larry’s birthday, and about two weeks after Larry had been arrested for drunken driving.

The purpose of these new accounts wasn’t clear. The new client trust account was never used. The other two new accounts, however, had substantial activity in 2001, as did two of the earlier accounts, the original California business account and the first client trust account. It therefore seems possible that the parallel accounts were set up to facilitate a check-kiting scheme by someone, in which a bank is eventually stuck with paying off a worthless check. In a way, manipulating parallel accounts is somewhat like the old pea-in-the-shell game, or three-card monte. The general idea is to keep things confused.

The first client trust account, the one opened in January of 1999, had slightly over $1,000,000 deposited from that month until the day Larry disappeared, September 11, 2001. The bank records showed that $987,000 of this was paid back out, and with one notable exception, all but just over $3,000 of it was in checks. The fact that Larry McNabney and Associates had no major California cases during this time makes this something of a puzzle: where did the money come from, and who was it paid to?

One likelihood is that much of the money came into the firm from cases that had been previously filed in Nevada. As some involved in the tort litigation business put it, personal injury cases can have a long incubation. As the cases were settled and the insurance companies paid out, the money would make its way to the McNabney firm, be deposited into the trust account, and then paid out to the claimants—after Larry McNabney and Associates took its 25 to 40 percent cut, of course. That money would go into the general business account, and then out again to pay “the various liabilities of the firm,” including the office rent and other costs of doing business, including Larry’s draw and everyone’s else’s salary.

The records of the office’s original general business account show that during the same period, from 1999 to Larry’s disappearance, $619,000 was deposited, and $604,000 paid out in checks. The most striking feature of the office account is the fact that nearly 90 percent of these transactions took place in the years 1999 and 2000—$556,000 in deposits and $544,000 in checks. Then, in December of 2000, the new accounts were opened, and the year 2001 saw a drastic drop-off in deposits into the first general office account—only $62,000 in deposits against $60,000 in checks. The parallel new general business account, however, had $171,000 in deposits, and $166,000 in checks drawn against it.

What is more, significant deposits virtually stopped in the first general business account after February of 2001. In the months of April, May and June—the same period of time that Elisa was operating her scam with the cardboard and the check register—there were zero deposits made to the first general business account. July had one deposit for $80, and August deposits of $7,500. By the time Larry disappeared on September 11, the first general business account was $348 in the red, and the balance in the new, second general business account was itself minus $200.

The meaning of this set of double books isn’t clear, although the obvious possibility is that Elisa, as the office manager and head bookkeeper, was trying to bamboozle her husband by pointing to the dwindling income totals of the office account as an explanation for why the McNabneys seemed to be short of money; or alternatively, by switching the books whenever Larry demanded an accounting, Elisa might be able to better conceal where the money was actually going.

Larry’s personal checking account may also provide some insight to what was going on. In the first year after the move from Reno, 1999, Larry made deposits of $161,000—a figure that likely represents his own draw against the firm’s revenues. Against this Larry wrote $158,000 in checks. The following year, 2000, Larry’s personal account deposits were only $41,000, and were outdistanced by the checks written on the account, $43,000. It therefore seems safe to conclude that Larry’s personal draw from the law firm, if not his actual income, took a substantial drop—actually a precipitous drop—from 1999 to 2000. The following year, 2001, was even worse: between January and the end of August, just before he disappeared, only $3,300 was deposited in Larry’s personal checking account.

Taking the total spent in both business accounts until Larry’s disappearance, it appears that the expenses of running Larry McNabney and Associates averaged about $20,000 a month: this would include office rent, telephones, salaries for the employees, taxes, and Larry’s own draw, which would have to pay for the McNabneys’ rent, their food, Larry’s alcohol, schooling for Haylei, and last but hardly least, the upkeep on Justa Lotta Page, who appears to have been purchased with a $12,300 withdrawal from the general office account in December of 2000—a transaction which put the office account temporarily in the red. The care and feeding of the horse at the Whalen Ranch was $2,000 a month, according to Whalen.

Somehow, too, the McNabneys managed to dredge up the money for the aggrieved driver, however much that was; around $50,000 for Larry’s new truck; and later, some $15,000 or $20,000 for a four-door BMW for Elisa. One of the more unusual transactions involved a $14,000 transfer from the client trust account during the month of May—the only time there was ever a substantial cash withdrawal from the trust account, at least before September 11. Where this money went isn’t clear, at least from the available records; it certainly didn’t go into the first general business account, which at that time and the following month had a balance close to zero.

Of the three new accounts, however, the most interesting one is in the name of Larry McNabney and “huntseathorses.com,” Elisa’s business venture. Later, the description of just what huntseathorses.com was supposed to do was vague. At one point, Elisa said the business was intended to sell Western wear to horse fanciers; at another she said it was to be an advertising website for those who wanted to buy and sell American quarter horses. One thing is clear, however: the business made very little money, if in fact it made any at all.

Yet, the bank records for huntseathorses.com shows deposits in 2001 of $145,000—fully half of this, or $76,000, in August of 2001, just before Larry went missing. That same month showed a total of $35,000 for checks written, and withdrawals or transfers of another $36,000, bringing the balance in the account back to near zero. In short, it appeared that Elisa had manipulated the various McNabney accounts to deliver around $140,000 into her own hands, fully half of it just before Larry disappeared.

In any event, with all this cash pouring out, it doesn’t take a certified public accountant to realize that the McNabneys’ expenses substantially exceeded their income during the year 2001. This was probably why Elisa began bouncing checks to the Whalens and to Debbie Kail, why all the McNabneys’ existing credit cards were maxed out, why Elisa began, sometime in the summer of 2001, to fraudulently and secretly obtain credit cards in the names of Greg Whalen and at least one other person, and why, in September of 2001, she began to eye the remaining McNabney assets—principally the red truck and Justa Lotta Page, as the means of raising more cash.

Larry may have believed that he had a way of making sure Elisa kept on the straight and true as far as his money was concerned, at least at first, right after the move from Reno to Sacramento. But by the winter of 2000–2001, about the time the new accounts were opened, Larry began showing ever greater signs of drinking and drugging; indeed, some would later suggest that around that time Elisa, in order to keep Larry from tumbling to her book-cooking chicanery, began putting a drug called ketamine into Larry’s wine. True, there is also the possibility that Larry himself began deliberately using ketamine, perhaps willingly assisted by Elisa. Certainly Larry’s long history of excessive drug abuse made him a prime candidate for branching into ketamine as a new trip of choice. But being under the frequent influence of ketamine may explain why Larry was oblivious to the financial shenanigans under way in his office.

Ketamine—a horse tranquilizer known to drug abusers as “Special K”—is on the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s schedules as a controlled substance. It is a restricted drug that can only be dispensed by a licensed veterinarian. For all that, it is a drug that has seeped into illicit usage with some regularity over the past few decades, usually through thefts and diversions from veterinarians and their suppliers. One of its major conduits is through Mexico.

“Special K”—the street reference to the commercial cereal of the same name is intended to be ironic—is pharmacologically much like phencyclidine, or PCP, according to the DEA. “Like PCP, individuals anesthetized with ketamine feel detached or disconnected from their pain and environment,” observed Terrance Woodworth, a deputy DEA director who testified before Congress on the problems posed by ketamine abuse in early 1999. In addition to blocking pain, ketamine has amnesic effects—that is, people who use it sometimes have no memory of the events that took place while they were under its influence. On the street, this blank in awareness is called “the K hole,” and lasts anywhere from half an hour to an hour before the drug passes from the system. The drug can be in a powder form, snorted like cocaine, or mixed with alcohol.

Although “Special K” has been abused since the 1960s, it has gained new currency in recent years as a so-called “date rape” drug, similar in effects to GHB. It has gained favor among some in the “club drug” scene, and at so-called “raves.”

Later, Greg Whalen would say that, while he knew what ketamine was, and what it was legitimately used for, he had never used it in connection with any of his horses. His veterinarian would also say that he had never prescribed it for any of Whalen’s animals. But Whalen did have other horse tranquilizers on hand, including acepromazine—“ace,” as it is known, useful for calming fear and aggression in horses and dogs—as well as a particularly potent horse tranquilizer called xylazine. When Whalen transported horses to a show, these substances were kept in a canvas bag in his horse trailer. If, for example, a horse became agitated during the transit, “ace” might be useful to prevent it from injuring itself. Or if there were a traffic accident, xylazine might be useful to put a thrashing horse into near-sleep to prevent further injury. So sedative, tranquilizer-type drugs were fairly prevalent in the horse industry, and rarely well controlled.

With these facts in mind, it is therefore possible that Larry began using ketamine, readily available from many sources in the horse show-supporting substructure of grooms, stable hands and the like, as a kicker to his wine in the spring of 2001; and that Elisa, ever willing to allow Larry to do whatever he wanted to do, as long as he didn’t carp too loudly at her own excesses, knew very well what her husband was up to and did nothing to stop him, or perhaps even assisted him.

That Larry had some experience in mixing wine with pharmaceuticals seems clear, as Elisa herself suggested to Debbie Kail that same spring. When Debbie had been involved in a car crash and had been given a prescribed painkiller, Elisa suggested to her that if she really wanted to “get a buzz,” she should mix the painkiller with a glass of wine. The combination was extremely potent. She’d done it once to Larry’s wine, Elisa added. And while it would have dropped most people into a stupor, it had barely registered with Larry, she said; but then, Larry had far more experience with doping his wine than most people.

In May, Haylei, who had been living with friends of Elisa’s in Oakdale, California, returned to the Elk Grove house. She could see almost immediately that it wasn’t going to work out. For one thing, Elisa and Larry weren’t getting along very well with each other. “They weren’t happy,” Haylei said later.

“He was an alcoholic,” Haylei observed, with the pitiless acuity of the young. “He wasn’t a good person … He and I didn’t get along at all. Ever.”

Larry and her mother fought a lot, Haylei observed. She put the blame on Larry. “Larry was not a mentally stable man,” she said. “He was very indecisive. He had lots of alcohol problems. He had alcohol- and drug-related problems. He had been to numerous rehabs and left them.” At least five times while she had known him, she said, Larry had disappeared for a time on a bender of some sort.

So after spending two weeks with her mother and Larry at the Elk Grove house, Haylei moved into a Sacramento apartment with her boyfriend. Because Haylei was only 16, Elisa had to fill out the lease application. She filled it out under the name of Sarah Dutra, a 21-year-old art student, who would go on to become the key figure in the mystery of Larry McNabney’s murder.