One of her mother’s regulars came in for her hibiscus tea, and Evie forgot about hair.
She had the shop dusted and a few more dollars in the register by the time Mavis returned. Her phone rang at the same time—coincidence or Pris? Evie checked the screen—Pris. Her cousin was too spooky. Heading for the door, she pushed answer.
“We need all the phones you can find,” her cousin announced without preface.
“And hello to you too.” Evie waved at her mother and headed home. “How you doin’? I’m thinking about cutting my hair.”
“Phones, lots of them.” Pris ignored the pleasantries. “You should have at least four at your house. Iddy can offer two, plus her mother’s. I don’t suppose Aunt Mavis has entered the twenty-first century yet?”
“You don’t suppose correctly. Will land lines work? What about City Hall? I’m sure this is for charitable purposes, right?” Evie knew better, but her cousin needed to visit Planet Earth occasionally.
“City Hall will let us use their lines? This isn’t your idea of a joke?”
“We used them to raise funds for the school’s robot team last year. Our charming ex-mayor has an entire phone bank in the conference room. Tell them it’s a non-profit fundraiser and you’re in. No one really cares anymore. No mayor and no city council chair and old Hank running the show—they’re all still in shell shock.”
“PTSD,” Pris corrected. “Call them, will you? The more phones we have, the faster we can shut down these scammers.” She hung up.
Evie called Jax. “Stopping thieves is a charitable event, isn’t it?”
“Sure, why not? Are you making enough money to need a tax deduction?”
“Ha, very funny. My radar says Pris is trying to rein in her crazy mother. Pris talks to Ariel. Do you have sister radar? Or do we just assume Roark is somehow involved?”
“If anything is going on, blame Roark. He can’t be left unoccupied for two minutes. Need any more legal advice?”
“You are the bestest, most loveliest, most special lawyer in the universe. I may even fix you supper. How’s your day going?”
“I shipped the ring to its rightful owner, maybe picked up a new client who wants to sue former Mayor Blockhead for investment fraud, and had an interesting encounter with a fellow attorney who thinks I should butter my bread on the other side.”
Knowing the town’s infrastructure, Evie processed that easily. “Ted Turlock wants you to drop the Block suits and help him work for the defense.”
“You are positively uncanny. Are the smoke signals saying that your former mayor came into money? I might sell my soul if the price is high enough.”
That’s what worried her occasionally. Jax was used to an expensive lifestyle involving Jags and yachts and country clubs. No sense worrying about what she couldn’t change. “No smoke signals that I’ve picked up. There’s rumors Block is selling off property to cover his legal fees. You just want to know what’s making the other side nervous. I don’t understand politics, but I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”
“I’m picturing that position and thinking lewd thoughts. Talk to you later.” Jax cut the connection.
Evie laughed. Reaching the house, she trotted down the cellar stairs where Loretta played Pac Man on an antique machine. Reuben, on the other hand, had set up a space-age command central in a U-shaped desk covered in electronic equipment.
The desk didn’t hold her interest, but her eye caught on a new wall of suspects. She stopped to study the lists of names. “Maybe I should pick a few of these people and study their auras.”
“You’ll be lucky to find a clean one in the bunch. That’s Sunshine’s entire residentandemployee list, including the ones they call independent contractors. Management has surrounded itself with suspicious black knights and helpless pawns.”
Evie wondered if the residents were all pawns or contained a few of the black knights. “If you can determine all that with computers, that renders me useless. Should I just go bake a pie?”
Disappointed, she studied the connections between the Sunshine employees. Her team was good at following the money. People wereherspecialty. Well, and observation, maybe, and pies. And driving, if she had a car.
“Nah, we’re being methodical, building lists first, looking for weak links. Fewer people we have to interview, the less likely we’ll be noticed. I took a look at Stacey’s finances. They’re pretty clean. Good size student loan but daddy’s paying on it. Her free-lancing pays the bills. No Jimmy Choo’s on her credit cards.”
“So she probably can use cash, but she’s not desperate enough to kill her grandmother, we hope.”
Reuben shrugged. “About the size of it. Now, your Mr. Charles may be a person of interest. He appears to be related to one of the managers and has occasional large deposits from various people unconnected to anything we can find. Nothing major though.”
“Maybe he sells dead people’s stuff on eBay too.” Evie studied the index cards with red stars inked on them. They all appeared to be managers of some sort. “What’s with the stars?”
“Roark determined they took large payoffs in the form of down payments on their houses. Makes for interesting bookkeeping which might matter to the IRS. Ariel is running down the sources of the funds, but they’re buried deep in cashier’s checks from years ago. My theory is that they’re laundering money from the account where they stash their ill-gotten gains from underpaying taxable W-2 wages and whatever other scams they have happening.”
Money and banks flew right over Evie’s head. She’d never had any until recently. She focused on the index cards, looking for the people behind the money. She grinned hugely when she found a connection she liked.