“Business-like,” Reuben was insisting as Evie continued her protests. “You can’t wear ratty Keds everywhere.”
“Red and black are cool colors,” Loretta said soothingly, much as Evie had done with her earlier. “And you’ll be able to run faster in comfort soles.”
Evie almost choked on laughter. “Brat. I will not be running in Easy Spirit pumps. You just liked the name. And I’m paying you back.”
Loretta’s credit card had been maxed out with the day’s shopping. Evie’s pocket cash hadn’t extended to cover both lunch and shoes.
“Carrot top will save them for good and not wear them,” Reuben warned. “You’ll have to hide the Keds.”
They bickered like family all the way to the Azalea Garden Apartments. Evie thought Granny might be safer for Loretta than knocking on doors of strangers. “Training time, kid. You’ll have to tell me if ghosts have bubbles.”
They signed in at the lobby and took the elevator up to Marlene Gump’s apartment. Reuben had actually remembered to bring a duffel for loading up all the devices Stacey had been reluctant to let go earlier. He’d talked her into it somehow.
“If you’ve already downloaded everything on her computers, what more can you discover if you take the devices back with us?” Evie thought they probably should have consulted Jax about liability clauses or something formal when removing expensive property.
“I didn’t back up the entire system, just the documents. I should trace the history of usage, dig out passwords, see if I can trace her VPN calls. And I didn’t back up the phones.” Reuben sounded slightly disgruntled as he started to unlock the door.
The knob turned in his hand before he even inserted the key.
Urgently, he shoved Evie and Loretta against the wall. Staying to one side and looking like an action movie superstar, he kicked open the door with the side of his foot. Staying out of range of the opening, they waited. Nothing happened.
Reuben peered inside and cursed.
Evie peered around him, then pushed past.
The apartment had been ransacked. Granny’s ghost was flinging herself in and out of walls near the ceiling. And Stacey Gump screamed against a rag in her mouth and rattled the chair to which she’d been tied.
* * *
Having workedout Ariel’s compulsive schedule, Roark had a crab salad and crusty hot bread waiting for her at four o’clock. He slipped out the back door before she opened the pocket door into the kitchen.
He listened on the back step as she exclaimed in what he hoped was pleasure, before he trotted around to the front. He’d run his laptop charger through the front window to a spare outlet inside. If he had the tools, he could run a wire through the wall and add an outside outlet, but he hoped he wouldn’t be here long enough to need it.
A porch fan would be great to have, as well, but he settled for a battery operated one Evie had sent over. Her family junkyard of an attic had a little of everything.
He had to decide on an approach to shut down his father’s re-opened phone farm. It would be most excellent if he could also retrieve the money of the victims, but that was secondary. Preventing Da from robbing anyone else and keeping his siblings out of prison had priority. And then he’d figure out who at the crooked bank was laundering the ill-gotten gains because his da was a clueless loser.
The sticking point here was that his expertise was computers and the internet, not phone lines and snail mail. His da’s operation was way past old-fashioned but effective in scamming the naïve who still answered phones and believed anything anyone told them.
How had his father’s operation generated phone numbers if they didn’t access the darknet? Mail phishing, most likely. All Roark had to work with were the phone numbers of the victims and the bank account where the stolen money was funneled. He really needed to know more about the operation, but his brothers hadn’t learned much about the financial end in their brief time there.
If he assumed they were using snail mail to compile phone numbers, then Da’s crew probably stuck to simple contest and psychic scams that involved physical assets like checks and cards. Did they wipe checks to change the amounts? How were they using the credit card numbers? Buying gift cards? That and money orders were the usual. Once the thieves had those, the money was gone and there was no getting it back.
A regular deposit of money orders and suspicious-looking checks would alert any law-abiding bank clerk, but they’d obviously bribed at least one.
His da was practically running a community-wide mafia. Damn.
He wasn’t used to prioritizing. He preferred running in with guns blazing. That hadn’t worked so well this time. He should have known his da had more than one scheme running. But who knew it was illegal fireworks?
He’d already hacked the local police to see what they were making of the explosion. They had found no bodies and were calling it accidental. His grandma had probably told his ma that he was alive. No one had reported him missing. Sweet, da, real sweet. That meant they were gunning for him discreetly.
Ariel texted a politethank youfor the lunch he’d left. The kid had been brought up right, with rich adopted parents and all the education and therapy money could buy—quite a contrast to his own upbringing. But she was an even bigger mess than he was.
Before he could work out a plan of attack, his dumb phone buzzed with Jax’s number. “Yeah?”
“Evie and Reuben have encountered a situation. They can probably handle it, but I’m done for the day. You want to take a break and go with me?”
“As long as I don’t have to get near no cops.”