“He warned me that your family are tigers, and I could get my head bit off. Oh, and your father is in construction and knows the mayor.” He shot her an inquisitive look from beneath heavy eyebrows.
“He’s no more than a sperm donor as far as I’m concerned. He’s never been part of my life.” Evie had resented that when she’d been younger. She understood more over the years, as she’d watched her aunts wash recalcitrant men out of their hair, as the song went.
Apparently not too interested in her absent father, he returned to tapping at his keyboard. “Does your family always gather here to eat? I need to provide a grocery allowance, and I’m not sure how much to cover.”
“It’s why Val left the house to me. I don’t have a regular job, I can cook, and this is the best place for gathering. The house has been the heart of the family since before Letitia married a Post.”
He nodded, sat back, and sipped his drink. “Looking through my biological father’s files, it seems he handled a lot of small lawsuits like that twenty-year-old one against Blue Construction. I don’t have all the data, of course, but between the names we took down today and records online, it looks like construction and mining lawsuits were his specialty.”
“Can’t be a lot of money in that. Most contractors I know operate on debt and half don’t have bond insurance.” Evie lowered herself to the floor, not daring to get closer.
He scoffed. “How many contractors do you know?”
“I’ve been working since I was a little kid. I’m good at juggling lots of tasks. I’m curious. If you haven’t noticed, I also listen well. If I have to hire anyone to fix this house, I know who can do the job right, and who’s skating on thin ice and can’t be trusted.”
“And you read their auras.” He hit a few more keys, apparently employing a search engine.
“That, too. Probably the reason I turned out so curious. If I see someone with an unusual aura, I want to know more. I’m better with people than computers.”
“If I give you a printout of all the names and companies I’ve found so far in my father’s old files, will you be able to remember ones you’ve heard about?”
“You have a printer?” Evie studied his laptop setup on Aunt Val’s vanity and shook her head in amazement. Even as she asked, he was printing a page from a tiny machine on the floor. “You need to set up in the library.”
“You have a library?” He pulled the sheet from the machine and held it out.
She reached over and grabbed it. “The room with the books all over the floor. Val never had shelves installed. But there’s an old library table.”
“Right, and probably a desk chair from the fifties. Better than that basket chair in your front room, I suppose.” He stretched his back and rubbed it. “Check the names you recognize.” He flung her a pen.
“These are all from your father’s files? Their addresses are all over the Southeast,” she complained. “Just because I know a George Thompson here in South Carolina doesn’t mean he’s the one in Florida.”
“We can work that out later. Just tell me if any of them sound familiar.”
“Why do you want to know if I recognize the contractors your father took to court?” Evie check marked several names.
“Bear with me. Franklin Jackson didn’t always take the lead in these suits. Most belong to my adoptive father, Stephen Stockton. But for some reason, my biological father had those files in his office when he died. Some of the cases had been closed years earlier. All settled for substantial sums. Lots of rotten construction companies around twenty or thirty years ago.”
“I hope they had good insurance.” She started to hand the sheet back, but he already had another one printing. Wide-eyed, she waited for it. “More?”
“Lakeland investors. Match the names to the ones you see on your sheet. Sometimes, it helps to touch and see everything physically.”
Evie whistled as she compared the papers. “Every contractor I checked is on the Lakeland list. How big is Lakeland anyway?”
“It’s registered as a corporate cooperative—some fine legal maneuvering there. Basically, they’ve gathered all the contractors needed to rapidly throw up an entire development. That way, they have dedicated contractors who can hit the ground running as soon as the first bulldozer moves in. My suspicion is that everyone in that firm has invested in buying the land as their share in the business. If Mayor Block owns all those sheep farms surrounding your land, he stands to make a substantial killing.”
Titan Surveyors wasn’t on the old list from his father’s files. Emmitt Blue was. She’d not heard of Titan before she’d met Emmitt at the lake, but they were on the Lakeland list.
“Do all these companies know they’ll be buying the land by any means necessary? I’m not liking the looks of this, and I only understand about half of what you’re implying. Stephen Stockton is listed as an investor. Your adoptive father is not a contractor. I guess he brings his legal services to the table?” Evie watched Jax’s aura as she handed back the papers.
It was still red but not as tightly controlled. He was reaching explosive. She thought that, for a change, she wasn’t the reason.
“And he could be bringing the land in Loretta’s inheritance to the table.” He looked grim. “How did the kid take the news about needing her DNA to identify bones?”
“She was interested in the process, but I found her crying in her room. Her aura is almost the exact opposite of yours. She’s open, caring, honest, generous, communicative, and more clairvoyant than her bubble-detector indicates. I think she enhances our gifts, allowing me to see her father even when he was disconnected from his remains. I don’t think she’s crying for herself so much as for her parents, who may have suffered and will never grow old. I’m pretty sure she’ll do whatever it takes to find their killers, so DNA is no problem.”
Jax wrinkled his nose, presumably at her woo-woo description, but he didn’t argue with her conclusion. “I want to believe if those are their remains in the lake, that they accidentally drowned at an inconvenient moment. It’s bad enough that we’re looking at fraud in the deed books. Imagining a killer on the loose... seems far-fetched.”
“We might never know.” Evie wanted to leave it that way, too, but if the town harbored a killer... he might strike again. She changed the subject. “What about Ariel’s belongings? Does someone need to fetch them?”