by Diane Capri
“That’s what I have you for, number two.” She returned to the screen, absorbed again.
After a while, enticing aromas. Her nose began to twitch. Stomach flip-flopped in happy anticipation. But she didn’t look away from her work until he put two plates on the table, refilled her coffee, and sat down beside her.
“I hate eggs,” she said.
“No problem.” He picked up her plate and scraped the eggs off onto his own, barely stopping the shovel to his mouth. “How’s that?”
She grinned. Snatched up his toast in one hand and hers in the other. Put the ham between the buttered bread. “Excellent. You’re a good cook.”
“I have many talents you’ve yet to discover,” he said between bites. He polished off the entire batch of eggs and returned to the fridge for more ham. “Tell me while I cook.”
“For starters, Sylvia’s prior name was Kent. Not the one she was born with, maybe. I’m running that down. And Mr. & Mrs. Harry Black’s joint tax returns are beyond silly. They even filed the short form because they didn’t have enough deductible expenses to itemize. Claimed only themselves as dependents.”
“Which means?” He remained at the stove, pan frying ham and eggs and working the toaster.
“Harry and Sylvia are practically begging to be prosecuted. Handing the IRS such an obvious fraud case doesn’t make sense.”
“Not everything makes sense, Sunshine. I’ve told you that before. Even when the crooks are cops, they’re not as rational as we give them credit for.” He winced slightly.
“You’re not listening. Harry and Sylvia, like all smart crooks, filed tax returns because they knew not filing is the quickest way to jail.”
“I’m aware. So what’s the problem?”
“Second quickest one-way ticket to Uncle Sam’s hotel-for-life is filing fraudulent returns. Might pass undiscovered for years. Harder to prove when suspected.”
“As I said, I’m aware.” He narrowed his eyes, watching something outside the bay window, but Kim barely noticed.
“Smart tax evaders make a plausible attempt to avoid obvious fraud so they can pay the fines and stay out of prison longer and maybe forever, even if they get caught.”
“I’m not sure how smart Harry was. He’s dead, right? Most of us smart people try to avoid that condition.”
She said, “He and Sylvia were clever enough to collect sixty-seven million in counterfeits and move them out of that house right under everybody’s nose.”
He moved to the window and lowered the translucent shades; stood to one side, lifted the shade from the frame slightly to see out. “So they laundered the Kliners somehow. We figured that.”
“Not as easy as it sounds. Especially for that much cash. Our financial world is too complicated. Computers make tracking and reporting too easy. Ever heard of Superdollars? The best counterfeits ever? Even better than the real thing?”
“I work in the Miami Field Office, Sunshine. We get briefed there, too.”
“Well, thousands of Superdollars have been snagged through mundane paperwork.”
“You bean counters are gonna kill us all.”
“Basic money laundering usually requires three pretty complicated steps because you’ve got to get the bad money out there, pass it through several legitimate places to clean it up, and then get it back and do something with it that makes the proceeds look legitimate so you’ll have ready access.”
“Right.” Preoccupied.
“But I’m thinking Harry just found a good placement exchange plan and stopped there. In other words, he places the Kliners into the financial system somewhere and takes back genuine money which he stashes someplace else. Not in his closet hidey hole.”
“That’s the simplest plan.”
“But impossible for Harry to execute.” She noticed he hadn’t moved from the window. “What are you looking at?”
“Maybe nothing. Keep going. Why couldn’t Harry execute the simple plan?”
“He couldn’t place the old bills here in Margrave or anywhere close. Everybody around here would at least suspect they were Kliners, like your waitress. All the usual options for moving small amounts of money would take the rest of his lifetime to complete, given the volume. He’s got a job, so he’s not free to be traveling around the state or the country to buy a little of this and a little of that and get real money in change. No bank is going to take them. Any business that takes in a lot of cash, like a horse track or a theme park or casino, is going to have good anti-counterfeiting procedures in place.”
“So what’s left? Offshore banking?”
“Not so easy these days. Even the Swiss are turning in tax cheats now. He’d have to smuggle the fakes out of the country for starters. And how would he access the real money when Sylvia wants a new outfit?”
Gaspar seemed to think about it. “The dead Chevy guy and Reacher were in this all along. They helped Harry and Sylvia with the laundering.”
She heard inattention in his tone. “That’s how I figure it, too.”
“Why kill Harry now?” He still hadn’t moved from the window.
“That’s the sixty-seven million dollar question, isn’t it?” She looked up to receive his answer, annoyed. “And what the hell are you watching out there?”
“Headlights. Coming this way.”
Her heart skipped uncomfortably. “Roscoe?”
“Smaller car. Pulling into the driveway.”
Reflex. Hand slipped under the table to pat her gun lying on the seat next to her in its holster.
She heard the car stop out front. Car door opened. Slammed shut.
Gaspar said, “Tall male. Front door.”
Too late to turn off the kitchen lights without signaling where they were inside the house. Kim grabbed her holster and slipped into it. Stood back to the wall beside the open hallway arch.
Stillness. A key in the lock. The front door opened.
A deep voice. “I’m in! Thanks for the ride!”
Front door slammed. Footsteps approached along the carpet.
The same voice, louder. “Hey! I’m home!”
Kim glanced her question to Gaspar. He nodded. Gestured that the car had departed. She remained vigilant.
“In here,” Gaspar called out, while there was still time to appear normal.
A dark-haired boy dressed in sweats and unlaced running shoes came through the archway, tossed his backpack onto the sofa, flashed his multi-colored braces, and bee-lined to the refrigerator. The kid said, “I’m Davey Trent. You’re Mom’s friends, right? She texted me.”
Kim relaxed slightly, but her voice was stuck somewhere. Davey Trent. Roscoe’s thirteen year old. He looked like a foot-taller version of his mother. Same amazing brown eyes.
Gaspar said, friendly, “That’s right. Carlos Gaspar and Kim Otto.”
Davey collected a large bottle of blue beverage from the fridge and ducked his head by way of acknowledgement, “Mom said not to bother you. She’ll be home later. Yell if you need anything. I’ve got homework.” The kid grabbed his backpack and headed up the stairs.
Kim and Gaspar exchanged nods. For now, all strategic conversation was over. She returned to her seat, but didn’t remove her holster. Gaspar collected his cold toast. He opened up his laptop and sat opposite her at the kitchen table.
“Transfer that testimony over here,” he said. “I’ll go through it and whatever else the boss sent me while you follow up on your stuff.”
“Study the images of the fakes, too. They’re very good,” she said.
For several hours, they worked like that until finally, Gaspar stood, and stretched, and glanced at the wall clock. “I need a beer.”
Kim said, “I need a nap.”
“That, too.”
“When do you think we’ll be able to leave Margrave?”
Gaspar twisted off the top of the beer bottle he liberated from Roscoe’s fridge, took a long swallow. “Without some assistance from the boss, never.”
“I did
n’t peg you for a quitter.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Right now, I’m sleeping,” Kim said. “Roscoe comes in, you can charm the answers out of her. Maybe this stuff will make more sense later. It can’t get a lot worse.”
She picked up her laptop, gathered her scattered possessions and moved to the guest room. Ten minutes later, she’d sunk into blissful oblivion.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Margrave, Georgia
November 3
12:45 a.m.
She was submerged in deep slow-wave sleep, like a dolphin, maintaining only enough consciousness to remain wary of predators. She bobbed gently, down and up, each soft bounce tugging her higher until at one apex her eyelids fluttered. An orange glow inches from her nose showed 12:45 a.m. She’d been asleep three hours.
But now she was awake.
Because: there was hushed shouting in the house. Echolocation placed two women safely distant. One older, one younger, both angry. She recognized Roscoe’s voice.
Roscoe’s guest room was cozy. The temperature was perfect. Quilted goose down enveloped in fine cotton created a warm cocoon. She snuggled deeper, drifted lightly on sleep’s surface, still aware. She sighed.
Return to nirvana demanded a glass of water and a pee. She listened, heard no silenced screaming, concluded quick stealth was now possible. Where was the bathroom? Down the hall, she thought, near the kitchen.
Vision limited through eyelids too heavy to lift, she moved toward the door, turned left, and shuffled along the carpet. A computer screen’s soft night-light glow guided her progress. There were warm aromas she couldn’t identify. Wood smoke, maybe? And something sweeter.
She reached the archway and stepped into cold open space. She recalled the kitchen on the left, a den on the right, the guest bath straight ahead.
Then the whole room lit up. Instant blindness. Kim’s forearm flew up to shield her eyes. A tall, slender blonde girl had opened the refrigerator door. That was the light. The girl was holding a bottle of beer. She turned, saw Kim, and cocked her wrist, ready to throw the bottle.
“Who are you?” she asked. “And what are you doing in my house?”
The girl was very pretty. She was dressed in ragged jeans and a sloppy sweater and heavy mud-covered boots. She was backlit by the refrigerator. She was a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than Kim, and she looked very capable. Kim figured the bottle would hit her dead center in the head, if the kid got around to throwing it.
Then from the shadows on Kim’s right, Roscoe said, “Cut the drama, Jack. Does she look like a home invader? Bare feet? Red silk pajamas?”
The girl didn’t stand down even a smidge.
Only one choice.
Kim prepared to run rather than hurt the girl.
Roscoe said, “Kim, this is my daughter Jacqueline, known to all as Jack for short, which as you can see, she isn’t.”
Jack? Kim felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Reacher’s kid?
#
“Jack, this is my friend, Kim. But you’d know that already if you’d met your curfew.”
Still Jack didn’t stand down.
Roscoe said, “I’m sorry we woke you, Kim. We don’t normally assault our houseguests. Jack apologizes as well. Don’t you, Jack?”
The girl relaxed, loosened up, shrugged, and put the beer back on the shelf.
“Whatever,” she said, like a fifteen year-old.
She closed the refrigerator door.
Darkness.
Instant blindness.
“Another friend is sleeping upstairs,” Roscoe said. “Don’t wake him. Or your brother.”
The girl said nothing.
Roscoe said, “Goodnight, Jack.”
The girl walked upstairs with a heavy tread, grinding mud into the carpet. Roscoe must have been too exhausted to notice.
A door opened. A door closed.
The house went quiet again.
Kim shivered. High-tech microfiber pajamas packed flat for travel, but were not warm enough for November in Georgia.
“Hot chocolate?” Roscoe asked.
“I’m fine,” Kim said.
“Translation: You’ve got questions and I can’t sleep.”
“I’m dead on my feet. I won’t be very good company.”
Translation: Or sharp enough to learn anything from you that I don’t already know.
“Archie Leach wants to question you. I held him off tonight, but I had to tell him where you were. I’ve had other calls, too. This may be the last chance we get.”
Kim dropped into an oversized chair and tucked her bare feet beside her on the seat. Roscoe handed her a mug. Kim recognized the sweet aroma unidentified during her somnolent wandering. Sipping chocolate, spiked with something stronger. Whiskey, she thought.
“Jack’s a pretty girl,” she said, after the silence stretched a while.
Roscoe smiled. “You didn’t see the sign out front flashing ‘smoking hot girl inside, bad boys wanted?’”
Kim smiled too. “My dad threatened a ten-foot fence around our property to keep the boys away when my sister was about Jack’s age.”
“Did it work?” Roscoe sounded hopeful.
Kim sipped the warm chocolate, laid her head back against the chair. “Keeping the boys out wasn’t the problem, actually. The problem was keeping my sister in.”
“Exactly,” Roscoe said. “She misses her curfews. She doesn’t return my calls. She texts until all hours. She won’t get up for school. Her grades are a mess.” She ran splayed fingers through her hair cut. “And now she’s sneaking out in the middle of the night.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could lock her in a closet until she’s twenty-one. You could hire a crone to bring her bread and water.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. When Jack was born, every moment away from her was torture. And now, after five minutes in the same room I want to slap her. But what would I do if she hit me back?”
“Shoot straight?”
Roscoe laughed.
Kim said, “Makes you want to call your mother and apologize, doesn’t it?”
“Every single day.”
“You know it’s a phase, Beverly. A necessary rite of passage.” She sighed. “If I’d gone through the bad boy thing at fifteen instead of twenty, my life would have been a lot different. I wouldn’t be sitting here now, at the very least.”
“Did he straighten up? Your bad boy?”
“You know the stats as well as anyone, chief. Bad boys get worse, not better. If you really want an update I guess I could check the prison database. Or the morgue.”
“Kids?” Roscoe asked.
Kim shook her head in horror, hard enough to make her vision swim. “With him? Tied to him forever? Seeing him every time I looked at the kid? Always, always, wondering if his sorry genes would win out no matter how hard I worked to be sure they didn’t? Definitely not.”
Roscoe stared into the fire. “Wise choice, Agent Otto. Good cop is a lot easier than good mother.”
She lifted a slim remote, pressed a button, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 filled the room.
Kim asked, “Would it be so bad? If you lose the job over the Harry Black thing? It’s not easy to be the boss, even in a sleepy small-town cop shop. You could move into something less demanding. Spend more time with Jack. Get her straightened out.”
Roscoe replied, “Don’t worry about me, Kim. Old man Kliner made my career fifteen years ago. Before that, Margrave wasn’t even on the map. But when Kliner blew up, I became a star around here. Never would have happened without him. Maybe he’s about to do it again. Ever consider that? I’ve got no regrets.” She hesitated slightly. “I just liked my kid better before.”
“Before what?”
“Before she grew boobs.”
“And she was late coming home tonight?”
Roscoe sighed again, as if she carried Atlas-sized b
urdens on a frame much too small. She folded both hands together and brought them to her chin, leaned her head forward, rubbed lower lip with one knuckle. She said, “The sneaking out started three nights ago.”
Which had been the night before Harry Black’s murder. Timing might not be everything, but opportunity leads to crimes and suspects. No wonder the momma hen was so upset about her chick. “You’re worried that Jack is somehow connected to the Black case?”
Roscoe seemed relieved that Kim had finally caught up. “I know Jack had nothing to do with what happened out at Harry’s place Sunday night.”
“How sure are you about that?” Kim’s gut said Roscoe wasn’t as certain as she’d like to be. Worried cop, terrified mom. Simple equation.
“Very sure,” Roscoe said. “I checked. Personally.”
“Gaspar thinks Harry and Sylvia were into porn. He thinks that’s how they collected and laundered the Kliners. You think Jack’s been participating in that?”
Instant alarm widened Roscoe’s eyes. “No! Of course not!”
“You think she helped Sylvia cover up the murder and escape?”
“No.”
Less volume, but more worry. Getting closer.
“You think she’s been out with Jack Reacher for the past three nights?”
Roscoe took a breath and held it. Her hands fell limp into her lap.
Bingo?
But then Roscoe relaxed. She grinned. “Of all the possibilities I considered when Jack didn’t come home the night my sergeant was murdered, Agent Otto, I never once worried that my daughter was cavorting until the wee hours with Jack Reacher.”
Kim thought Roscoe was telling the truth.
Too bad.
She asked, “How do you know?”
Roscoe actually giggled. Maybe it was the whiskey. “Honey, you are so far off the mark you can’t even see the bulls-eye.”
Kim sat straighter in her chair. “OK, I get it. You don’t think Reacher’s involved in the Sylvia Black case at all. At least tell me straight out. Why not?”
“To begin with, if Reacher was in town, I’d know it. He’d have contacted me, or someone would have seen him. He’s a big guy. He’s obviously not from around here. He’d stand out. That’s how he got arrested fifteen years ago. He couldn’t sneak in and out of Margrave without someone knowing.”
