But at least he’d hooked up his phone to the charger. Jax never let his phone run down. Had she drained it somehow? That might have added to the electrifying experience. Evie didn’t think she’d mention that just yet.
She’d told R&R what little she’d learned from Clancy’s ghost. Roark had been fascinated and was now on the computer, digging deeper into the stockbroker’s background—and maybe even his car from twenty years ago. The professor had grunted and returned to documenting the flaws in the machine spread in pieces on the floor, in the engineering detail required of a doctorate, as far as Evie could tell.
Reuben’s document might be as close to evidence as they had, and that only pertained to voter fraud, not murder.
She sat cross-legged on the ancient sofa and opened her notebook, hoping pen and paper might help her focus.
It was three hours earlier on the west coast, probably still daylight, if not business hours. Jax poked the contact number for the man who might in some way be related to him.
“Good, they were about to run away again.” Conan Oswin’s California drawl emanated from the speaker.
“They?” Jax asked warily.
“Marge Thompson and Donna Ortiz. Marge is probably your great aunt from the wrong side of the blanket as they say in my wife’s historical novels. I’m gonna guess wildly that makes Donna your cousin several times removed.”
Evie needed to seeauras. But lacking that... “Can you make this a zoom call or whatever they call it?”
“Who’s that?” a woman asked nervously.
“My secretary. She’s taking notes.” Jax mugged at her.
Evie threw a pillow. Secretary, fat chance.
“If I’m meeting relatives, shouldn’t we do this on Zoom?” he continued in his lawyer voice.
“No,” the woman’s voice protested. “I’m still not certain—” Whispers in the background.
“Donna’s a bit nervous.” Marge’s gruff voice came online. “I recognized your father in you the moment you showed up at my door, Damon. But you were calling yourself Jackson, and I thought my old eyes were fading and my wishes got the better of me.”
Jax frowned and didn’t immediately reply. Evie knew he was too cynical to accept family just because they said so, no matter how much he wanted to know who he was.
Conan Oswin intervened. “DNA. I got Marge’s sample and Nadine ran it and it’s all right there. If you want to dig up your father’s bones, you can nail it even closer, but the relationship is strong enough for our experts. You and Marge are closely related, and she has all the family documentation, up to the point where your father took off for Vegas under an assumed name.”
Official verification! Evie grabbed her phone and hastily called Ariel while Jax questioned his previously unknown family. She knew Ariel didn’t like talking, but a text simply wouldn’t work. When Jax’s sister hit ANSWER without saying anything, Evie barged right on. “Jax is talking to your great aunt and a distant cousin. You need to hear this. I’ll just leave the phone here so you can tune in.”
She put her phone next to Jax, and he nodded gratefully.
Marge’s voice emerged over Oswin’s. “Your grandfather was an odd duck, liked to keep to himself, said people got in his face. So he found a few lucrative lodes in those mountains, bought the ranch, and lived out there by himself for a long time.”
Sounded like Grandfather Ives was a bit reclusive—like Ariel.
Marge continued. “My mother cooked for him. I don’t claim to know about their relationship, but he gave her this spread I’m living on when she had me.”
“How does my father enter the picture?” Jax asked warily. “Did my grandfather find another cook?”
Marge chortled. “No, when I was a teenager, and he was old enough to know better, he fell for a pretty face. They got married and had your father right off. They doted on him, but your granddad got snake bit and died when Aaron was just a kid. Your grandmom lived out there in the middle of nowhere until Aaron was in high school, but she was always puny. She died before he graduated. He pretty much raised himself anyway. I was out making my fortune and wasn’t around enough. I made a lousy half-sister.”
Evie was beginning to think they all needed to clear out and leave Jax to deal with his newfound family, but when she gestured at the door, he shook his head vigorously. He was probably still skeptical and would demand Oswin send him DNA results, signed, sealed, and certified.
“You don’t know why Aaron changed his name and left home?” Jax asked, sounding more like a lawyer than a newfound family member.
“Not for certain sure, but we know a little bit. Donna, you want to jump in here anytime soon?”
Donna cleared her throat. Evie called up her memory of the friendly receptionist in Pendleton’s office who had once worked for Franklin Jackson and who thought Jax didn’t look like his father—back when they thought his father was Franklin Jackson.
“Hello, Damon. I didn’t know Aaron Ives well,” she said nervously. “He didn’t come into the office much. Up until I had Teddy, I lived in LA, so I didn’t really know Marge or anyone.”
Jax frowned impatiently. “You told us Jackson gave you your first job.”