“These are the other accounts buying from the dealer?” Regularizing his speech, he brandished her list.
She nodded. “Once a week, excess is swept to the dealer. I don’t know how to research these companies.”
“I can do that. One of them on this list saysSunshine Services. Any chance they’re connected to the retirement home?”
Ariel nodded. “Address in Savannah.”
Roark whistled. “Eh, bébé, sounds like Evie got herself mixed up in money laundering. Jax ain’t gonna like dis atall.”
Twenty-eight
“What do you mean,your father’s scammers are connected to Sunshine Healthcare? He’s a two-bit phone grifter in the Louisiana swamp. Sunshine is a perfectly legitimate nursing home in Georgia apparently into ripping off employees, patients, stealing identities...” Jax caught himself. “Stealing identities, damn.”
“Exactly,” Roark said cheerfully from the other end of the line. “We got a federal operation across state lines. Get Fuzzy Gump on this. Get my da sent up the river big time.”
“That’s a stretch.” Jax ran his hand over his hair. He hadn’t had it barbered recently, saving dollars and blending in. He grabbed a hank and yanked it now.
There was no way in hell he could tell the FBI about his sister’s propensity for hacking bank accounts.
“Diplomacy.” Roark said wickedly, reading his thoughts. “You gotta feed him just the right info so he can follow his own trail.”
“Bureaucracy,” Jax retorted with disgust. “How long will it take for the feds to connect their own data for warrants? Ariel’s hacking is illegal and not permissible in court.”
“Talk to Evie. She’s crazy, but she’s our kind of crazy. You just gotta funnel her onto the paths of righteousness before she sets people’s hair on fire.”
Evie had come pretty close to doing just that in the past. Jax rubbed his face. “Laugh, if you want, but she’ll drag you in with her if you’re not careful.” He shut off the phone and stared at his laptop. He really needed a bigger monitor.
He couldn’t afford a bigger monitor because Evie’s idea of justice didn’t pay. One of them really ought to consider consequences...
But his long buried super-idiot wanted to bring down the corrupt cretinsnow.Fraud could wait for formalities. Murder couldn’t. If they got away with it once...
Setting aside the research he’d been doing on the legality of Roark’s phone scam app, he closed up shop. It was Sunday, after all. He was entitled to a few hours with his girlfriend. His significant other.
He tried on various other descriptions of their relationship on the way back to the house. He’d never lived with any of his partners before. He didn’t know the rules.
He found Evie innocuously trimming overgrown bushes in the backyard, like any normal person on a weekend. Except Evie appeared to be leaving long, drooping branches on top that looked like dreadlocks, while sculpting holes in the middle that might well be eyes or noses.
“Want some help trimming the tops?” Jax asked warily, just in case he was wrong.
“Nah, we’re going to add blinking eyes and red lights for lips. Leaving flowers in their hair seemed reasonable.” She turned and grinned at him.
Damn, but that grin turned his insides out. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Are you using the grass-that-isn’t-there for the dance floor?”
Her smile brightened. “Reuben insisted we have planks. It’s Loretta’s party, so it’s coming out of her allowance. No idea what we’ll do with a dance floor after.”
“Party every week!” Loretta crowed from the porch, where she appeared to be planting flowers in coffee mugs. Or Toby mugs. They had faces: blue ones, red ones, black, brown—ethnically diverse Toby mugs. With flowers for hair, of course.
“You’d need heaters in winter,” Jax reminded her. “And then you’d want a barn to keep out the rain and wind. Let’s stick to just one party a year, okay? What’s with the mugs?”
“Loretta found them in the attic—with holes carefully drilled in the bottom. You’d have to ask my great-aunt what that’s about. I’m sure she thought they’d be useful someday. Or maybe one of her exes thought it funny.”
“Your family, the ultimate recyclers.” Having already learned that her wealthy great-aunt had no interest in the contents of the house,Jax examined the neglected backyard. Baked clay, overgrown mimosas and crepe myrtles, long purple flowering shrubs... That didn’t leave a lot of opportunity for the manicured garden parties his adoptive mother once held.
She laughed. “We’re not hoarders, mind you. We do actually recycle the junk eventually.”
Jax wondered if he and Roark and Reuben might be recycled junk—useful when applied creatively. He could live with that. “Should I weed whack the fence?”
“Only if you know what’s weed and what’s not. Mavis grows stuff back there. Even I don’t know what’s weed, and some of that might be of the pot variety for all I know.” Evie considered the jungle along the fence line. “I was thinking we could put lighted sticks in there and call them flowers.”