“Jax says he’s going. We’ll see what happens.” Feeling better that her team was back together again, Evie bounced into the kitchen.
Only then did she remember the promise to find a band for Loretta’s party.
Five cowboy-hatted, denim-wearing strangers were crowded into the banquette while Loretta served them cookies from the freezer.
* * *
Jax knewhe’d walked through the looking glass when he rushed home to take Evie to Savannah on a murder case and found her serving barbecue to a boys’ band in the backyard. He grabbed a sandwich from the picnic table to steady his reeling senses and stalked Evie down in the kitchen.
“Did the party start without me?” He reached in the refrigerator for a beer.
“Loretta wanted to study their bubbles before she’d hire them.Shehired them, mind you. She’s taking this party business seriously, like a little executive. I think she has spreadsheets.”
“This is the kid who drew up forged legal papers making you her guardian that would have stood up in court,” he reminded her.
Evie rolled her eyes. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten! I still have them, in case the ones you filed fall through. Anyway, those poor boys are sitting there being interviewed by an almost-eleven-year-old, and I had to reward them somehow.” She handed him a bowl of coleslaw. “Vegetables.”
“Mayonnaise.” He slathered some slaw on his barbecue anyway. It wasn’t mayonnaise.
“Oil and vinegar, smarty. So go talk contracts with Pete. He’s the drummer and their business manager. We can talk to ghosts after dark. That’s more interesting anyway.”
“Where’s Reuben?” Jax bit off a hunk of sandwich and practically drooled at the spiciness.
“He was out there earlier, getting the group’s play list. He’s probably downstairs working out the dance routines for each song by now. His mother made him take dancing classes when he was a kid. InFlorida. I wish I could have seen it. Salsa and line dancing and a skinny Black nerd—my mind might explode.” Evie forked up barbecue and slaw from her plate rather than bother with a bun.
Jax could imagine it. Reuben had the athletic, lanky build of a dancer. He had a harder time imagining the professorial nerd performing a tango. “Is he looking after Loretta tonight or going with us?”
“He’s not happy being seen in what he perceives as a white folks’ home. He has Roark’s eyes and ears on the apartment, and he’s probably better off working through Granny’s files here than watching me go bug-eyed there. You’re the good interviewer, but you better check with Reuben to see what all he’s uncovered today. I’ve been feeding the hordes and haven’t had a chance.”
Jax was accustomed to deciding on his own tactics. Learning to work with Evie’s convoluted game plan was a challenge. But when she bumped his hip with hers and kissed his cheek, he decided the perks were more interesting than a corner office and private parking space. He went in search of Pete, wrote a contract on a napkin, and shook hands for a signature. Definitely not the legal grind he’d learned at Stockton and Stockton, or in the military.
High-fiving Loretta, who was in kid heaven with all the attention, he took the cellar steps down to Reuben’s lair.
Wearing a pen in his topknot today, the nerd had set up a story board the way they had back in the day when they were tracking terrorists. An image of Marlene Gump was in the center. A range of senior citizens from the residential home lined one side, with strings and notes running back to Marlene. On the other side were blurry photos of people Jax didn’t recognize. He studied those notes while Reuben finished on the computer.
Jax recognized the names of Mrs. Decker, Mrs. Lopez, and Mr. Wong as the identities Marlene had usurped. According to Reuben’s notes, all three had been in the same rehab center associated with the residential home. Evie had met Mrs. Decker, who had gone home with the assistance of a home nursing service. Mrs. Lopez was now in the assisted living portion of the residence, in the wing designed for patients with dementia. Mr. Wong was deceased. As best as he could tell from Rube’s notes, Marlene had been toying with various scammers by using those identities, but he didn’t know if she’d traced any bad guys.
Reuben had taped a list of former patient/residents from Marlene’s files on the wall.
Below them, he displayed employee photo ID tags—which bore the same names as the former residents. Weird. Jax didn’t think the patients were actually employees. The ID photos on the badges were all of people much younger than the ages associated with the patients.
Employees hadstolenthe names of the patients? The deceased or demented ones, anyway.
Reuben finally signed off and came over to point at the employee ID tags. “All employed by Sunshine Home Healthcare Services, which operates the residential living home and the associated nursing home and home health services.”
Jax pointed at the list of senior citizens. “And these?”
“Victims of identity theft. Some reported to police. Some victims Mrs. Gump must have dug out on her own because they’re dead ornon compos mentis. She had proof that some of Sunshine’s employees were using stolen IDs. If the thieves knew about the information she’d compiled, she had enough enemies to murder her a dozen different ways.”
“They’re all illegals?” Jax studied the faces on the employee tags. A diverse collection of ethnicities and ages, there was nothing that screamedillegalbeyond their stolen names.
“Or they have a record or a past they want to hide. Maybe they’re running from abusive spouses. Who knows? Except using stolen identities pretty much guarantees every single one of them works cheap and keeps their mouths shut if they see anything questionable.”
“Like housekeepers stealing mail with credit card and bank information? The seniors we met the other night are perfectly capable of trusting anyone who enters their apartments. They probably leave the mail on the kitchen table and their wallets at their bedside.” Jax wriggled his shoulders in discomfort as he studied faces. He didn’t like sending Evie into a place riddled with criminals or desperate victims.
“That seems to be the direction Mrs. Gump was going. She didn’t have much in the way of evidence that anyone had actually been robbed of anything except the identities regularly showing up on the darknet. My gut says she was working it from both sides, trying to infiltrate the gang and find the leader.”
“Then she wasn’t trying to steal from the demented by using all those accounts?” Jax studied the information beneath the names of the victims from Marlene’s computers. She’d had all their bank accounts, investment accounts, credit cards... She could have wiped all those people out.