Office Worker Dies After Being Set on Fire : Crime: Janitor allegedly lit flames in argument with bookkeeper over $150 check. He is held on murder charges.

A janitor who apparently was angry over the late payment of a $150 check doused a bookkeeper with a flammable liquid Tuesday, then calmly walked away as flames engulfed her, police said.

The bookkeeper, Karen LaBorde, 42, of Orange, died at UC Irvine Medical Center nine hours after suffering burns over 95% of her body, police said.

Jonathan Daniel D’Arcy, 30, was arrested minutes after the attack in a parking lot next to the offices of Quintessence of Building Maintenance Co., a firm that occasionally employed him as a contract janitor to clean offices. He was booked on suspicion of murder.

Police said D’Arcy--a tall, thin man with a criminal record for burglary and domestic violence--had a problem with Quintessence over “a check that had not been paid.”

Lisa Stone, a receptionist at the Tustin-based firm, said D’Arcy approached her desk on the second floor of the company’s Spanish-style office building on Irvine Boulevard about 8:30 a.m. saying, “I want to see Kari. I want to see her now.”

Stone said she went to the bookkeeper’s office and asked LaBorde if she wanted to see D’Arcy. “She waved like, ‘I don’t want to see him,’ ” Stone said.

Carrying a paper cup full of bluish-green liquid, D’Arcy pushed past Stone and went into LaBorde’s office, yelling, “I want my . . . money,” Stone said. He threw the cup’s contents over LaBorde’s head, Stone said.

The receptionist said she did not see what ignited the liquid, but suddenly there were flames coming from the room and she saw D’Arcy flee.

Detectives speculated that D’Arcy ignited the liquid with a lighter, Tustin Police Lt. Chuck Crane said.

Stone said LaBorde kept a space heater next to her desk, but Crane said that fire investigators had “all but eliminated” the heater as the cause of the flames.

A co-worker described LaBorde, the mother of two teen-agers, as an “innocent bystander” in D’Arcy’s disagreement with Quintessence over the $150 paycheck.

Police concurred that LaBorde did nothing to provoke the attack. “It was all purely his anger at the business, and he took it out on her,” Tustin Police Sgt. Mark Bergquist said. “I can’t imagine the pain” of the burns she suffered, he added. “To be burned such that there was not a spot missed--I can’t imagine the trauma.”

Quintessence salesman Robert Widaseck said D’Arcy was quick to anger. “He’d lose his temper rather quickly,” Widaseck said. He added that D’Arcy was “rather high-strung” but a “great” worker.

Widaseck said he believed that Quintessence had prepared D’Arcy’s check and that it was ready for him on LaBorde’s desk. It was “probably burned” in the fire, the salesman said.