by Terry Spear
“Yeah, and bottled water.”
“Okay, well, if they leave anything behind, just don’t touch it,” Blake said.
“Okay. Yeah. All right. I can do this.”
Nicole was sweating it out. She was afraid the young woman would give things away. But then Minx stiffened her shoulders and walked back to the kitchen, order pad in hand.
Fifteen minutes later, Blake said, “Minx just dropped off the sacks of food and bottled water. She was all smiley, as if she were acting in a school play. She seemed to overcome her nervousness.”
“Good. I’m not entirely surprised that they got food to go. I haven’t seen them eat here since I arrived last night. I came down early for breakfast and hung around most of the morning but never saw them.”
“They might have gone into town to grab something from the grocery store or somewhere else. Maybe even brought some food with them.” Blake straightened a little while they continued to eat but kept his gaze mostly on her. “They’re leaving the restaurant with their sacks of food in hand.”
“If we could follow them and find where they dump their trash, we might get something,” she said, hopeful.
“We’ll certainly watch for that. Are you done eating?”
“Yeah, thanks for lunch.”
Blake left a tip on the table. “Meal’s free. Courtesy of ownership, but we always leave good tips for the servers.”
“That’s good.” She watched the guys leave the restaurant and sit at an outdoor table to eat their meals outside on the deck. “Okay, they’re settling down again.”
“What do you want to do now?” Blake asked.
“I can see them from here. We can just wait and watch. If they leave their trash in the bin, we can grab it.”
“What else can you do to learn who these men are?” Blake asked.
“I’m continuing to monitor their Facebook and Twitter postings and reporting them to the insurance company.”
“You would think they’d keep the secret.”
“You’d think so. But you know what? Everyone is just a friend on their accounts. I believe they are showing off that they got away with it, thinking no one will ever look at the social media sites to see what they’ve done. Sometimes surveillance like this can make or break a case. In the case of a guy who claimed back injuries and said he couldn’t even drive a vehicle after an auto accident, I took video recordings of him walking around with a rifle, getting ready to go on a hunt. He obviously had no trouble walking or driving. No limp or anything.”
“And?”
Minx came back and asked them if they needed anything else.
“Coffee?” Nicole asked.
“Yeah, me too.”
She left to get their coffees.
“The guy was charged with fraud, served a short term in jail, and is on probation. Plus, he had to return the money. In another situation, the guy was bragging on Facebook about the ski trip he took. He had taken workers’ comp, claiming he was bedridden. Skiing?” She shook her head.
“A lot of dishonest folks out there.”
“Yeah. A lot of honest ones too. Some feel that they’ve paid premiums to an insurance company for years and never filed an insurance claim, and they’re owed a little money back. But it’s still wrong. The rest of us who are paying insurance premiums end up getting the increased rates for it. I know of a case where the family moved a lot of their nice things into their grown son’s home, then torched their house. Claimed everything had been destroyed in the fire.”
“I would think the insurance payout wouldn’t be enough to cover everything.”
“It was for them. He was the insurance agent who insured all that stuff. I look for a lot of things though. If a person dies and a beneficiary is getting a big payout, when did they get the insurance? Often, they take out the policy, and then it’s not long before the person suddenly dies. Or the house or car is torched. Have they taken out other policies? In one case, the wife had died ten years earlier, then her widower married a woman whose first husband had died the year before. Then the current husband and his son took out three life insurance policies from different companies on the current wife, unbeknownst to her or the other insurance companies, and guess what?”
“She died.”
Minx brought their coffee, and both Blake and Nicole added sugar and cream to their cups.
“Yep. Karma for her, since her former husband died falling off a bridge, and then she died in the same way. Oh, and she had spent all the proceeds from her husband’s life insurance policy in a matter of months. Now, police are looking into the death of the guy’s first wife to see if he received a payout for her death.”
“You have an interesting line of work.”
“Yeah, sometimes. Not that I always want to find people who are trying to defraud the insurance company. I’m happy when I see a case where the policyholder is legitimately owed the money and receives his insurance check to cover his expenses. Hey, the cousins are on the move.” Nicole jumped off her chair and headed for the doors leading out of the lodge.
Chapter 4
Blake hurried after Nicole to catch up to her. Man, did she move fast when she was on a mission. When they got outside, he realized Rhys and William were returning to the lodge. Blake immediately took hold of Nicole’s hand, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her. “Because they’re headed back this way,” he said, even though he knew she was well aware the men were returning to the lodge. He just was glad he could kiss her again. His mouth against her mouth, he pressed kisses on her lips and cheeks, then moved lower to her jaw and neck, not wanting the men to catch on that they had been observing them.
The men didn’t dump off their trash in the can nearby as Blake and Nicole had hoped. They headed back inside the lodge through the lobby and walked in the direction of the elevators. He figured they were returning to their room. “Do you think they know someone could be trying to grab a sample of Rhys’s DNA?”
Nicole let out her breath, forming a white puff of frosty air. “Could be. Or they are being careful, just in case.”
“But not about their social media.” He led her back inside, and they went to the office to talk.
“You’re right,” Nicole said as they entered the office. “I suspect these guys think they’re protected on social media. Totally unseen.”
Roxie was watching the security monitor and glanced at them. “You’re back.”
“Yeah, they took their lunch trash to the room,” Blake said.
“That’s not good,” Roxie said.
“Or maybe they have leftovers to snack on and were taking them up to their room,” Nicole said.
“That could be,” Blake agreed.
“You’ve been investigating these guys for a while. What have you learned? Any dark secrets?” Roxie asked.
Nicole sat down on one of the office chairs while Blake sat nearby. “I’ll say. When I investigated Oscar’s background, I learned a lot that might indicate he’s dangerous. He was in debt and had a string of girlfriends, but none of them lasted long. He has a short temper, and they called it quits when he got violent. His cousin William was at Oscar’s funeral, playing up the grief-stricken close relative. Oscar’s mother and dad had died a couple of years earlier. William’s parents, Oscar’s aunt and uncle, are still living. Oscar’s brother, Eli, died in a drowning accident when the boy was twelve and Oscar was sixteen.”
Roxie shook her head.
“That doesn’t sound good. In Oscar’s parents’ case, did he receive an insurance payout?” Blake asked, even more concerned about this guy now.
Nicole smiled. “Now you’re thinking like an insurance fraud investigator.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Not only did Oscar inherit everything, but he received money from their life, house, and car insurance policies since he was the only surviving son. He couldn’t access it until he was ei
ghteen, but he didn’t have too long to wait before he could get to all that money.”
“Did he have an alibi for the time they died?” Blake asked.
“That’s what I was going to ask,” Roxie said. “And to think this guy threatened me with a gun.”
“I know. His brother’s disappearance and his parents’ deaths change everything. Even though he might not have had anything to do with any of it, it’s possible he did. It just seems like too much of a coincidence that everyone in his immediate family died in accidents.”
“I’ll say. Would you like some water?” Blake asked Nicole and his sister.
“Yeah, thanks,” both said.
Blake brought out bottled waters from the office fridge for each of them.
“Thanks.” Nicole took hers and removed the top and sipped some of the water. “During the fire, Oscar was out partying with his friends and came home to a burned-out house. Everyone had seen him at the party—he made sure of it—but no one remembered the exact times. You know, drinking and drugs at one of those wild parties makes it hard for anyone to remember anything clearly. He could have been there the whole time, or he could have been there and gone and returned and nobody would have known the difference.”
“Sounds to me like he has a history of making money off insurance policy payouts. Why the hell would he have gone after Roxie’s coin collection when he had all that money?” Blake was still angry about that. Of course, he, Landon, and Kayla had scolded Roxie for not just handing over the coins when she’d risked her life by keeping them. Though she’d made the valid point that handing them over didn’t necessarily mean he would have let her live.
“Maybe he thought it would be easy money? Thinking it was a win-win situation?” Nicole said. “Maybe it was the excitement of doing something illegal and getting away with it?”
“I agree with Nicole. He must have seen the coin books and coins in special plastic containers sitting on my passenger seat, and he thought it could be an easy heist,” Roxie said.
“Exactly! Lots of red flags popped up when I learned all this stuff about his past. He went to live with his cousin and aunt and uncle.”
“No one could prove the house fire was a case of arson?” Blake lifted his bottle of water to take a drink.
“They couldn’t determine if it was arson. The house was older and had a couple of smoke detectors, but the batteries had been removed. Some people remove them because they don’t want to have to change them when they stop working. There may have been nothing sinister in that, unless they told the insurance company they had working smoke detectors to receive a discount on their house insurance policy.
“The dad stored all kinds of gas tanks in the garage for his lawn-mowing business. That’s where the fire started. But they couldn’t determine whether it was an accident or someone had set it on purpose. Without being able to pin down Oscar’s whereabouts during the time the fire occurred, and since no one had witnessed anything suspicious at the house, they really didn’t have enough to go on. Except that Oscar received so much money from their deaths.”
“Was there any question of his cousin’s involvement?” As close as William and Oscar/Rhys seemed to be, Blake figured he could very well have had a hand in it too.
“William was at the party, and the party house was only a couple of blocks from Oscar’s home. He could have easily walked there, set the fire, and returned to the party with no one the wiser. His cousin could very well have helped him. When I asked the police for details about the case, trying to learn more about Oscar, they said that the guests who had been at the party gave the same statements concerning William’s whereabouts. Yeah, they saw him there, but no one could say when. Nobody actually saw them leave. All everyone else knew was that they stayed at the house party until they heard the fire trucks. It sounded so close by that several of the kids walked out to see what was going on.”
Blake thought there were way too many coincidences. “What about the younger brother? Was there any question that Oscar was involved in his death?”
“The younger brother, Eli, was with Oscar and William and three other teens when they were out swimming in a nearby lake. He was twelve. Oscar and William were sixteen. One of the other boys was sixteen, and two had just turned seventeen. Oscar and Eli’s parents had insisted Oscar take his brother with them. I’m sure Oscar resented being saddled with his kid brother when he wanted to be with his older friends. Anyway, again, all the boys told the same story. They were all swimming, the brother too. They were diving and coming up, but after some time, they realized Oscar’s brother didn’t surface. He’d just…vanished. Everyone but Eli was playing with a ball and roughhousing, so they really hadn’t noticed what he was doing for a while.”
“Convenient,” Blake said.
Roxie shook her head. “I can’t imagine doing that to a brother.”
“Neither can I,” Nicole said. “They never found his body either. That made a lot of folks suspicious. But none of the kids had any defensive wounds, like you might expect if they had purposely tried to drown Eli. According to Oscar’s friends, Oscar got nothing but grief from his parents over it. Until his parents died. With his parents and brother gone, he inherited everything.”
“Since his parents held a grudge against him for the death of their younger son, that could have been another reason to eliminate them,” Blake said.
“Right. The more I dug into Oscar’s background, the more I felt he could have found the perfect way to make a living.”
“Except that he was in the army for a time,” Blake reminded her. “Why go through basic training and get a real job if he had all that money to live off?”
“He spent all that money, which amounted to $750,000, in three years on fast cars—wrecking two of them—trips, jewelry, and a house he lost due to not paying the taxes on it. Easy come, easy go. He joined the army to earn an income for the first time in his life. He had an eight-year service obligation, a minimum of two years on active duty. After that, he was required to be in the National Guard or the Army Reserves for at least two years. The rest could be spent in the Individual Ready Reserve.
“He took out a life insurance policy on himself, the beneficiary being his cousin. Then he left active duty. He’d taken the policy out about three months before his supposed accidental death. He served four years in the army, which was a surprise to me. Seemed like a long time to wait. Maybe he hadn’t even had the notion at first, then he and his cousin hatched the idea. It’s even possible that he tried to fake his death through an accident before this, experimenting to see how they could stage it to make it look realistic.”
“Then he had no more military obligation either, once he was dead.” Blake leaned back in his chair. “Oscar is just lucky his cousin didn’t off him and keep all the money, since Oscar is supposedly already dead.”
“Too bad he didn’t,” Roxie said.
“I agree with you there. What do you want to do now?” Nicole asked Blake.
“Do you want to sit in the lobby for a while and watch for them?” Blake finished his bottle of water.
“Nah. Let’s grab our skis and hit the slopes.”
Blake smiled. “All right.”
“It will help us to keep some distance from the suspects for a while. If it appears we’re always where they are, they might get suspicious.”
“I agree with you there.”
“Have fun,” Roxie said, still monitoring the security videos. “They haven’t left their room. I’ll text you when they do.”
“Thanks,” Nicole said.
Blake got his skis and poles out of his office and put on his ski boots. Then they retrieved her equipment from her rental locker, and he crouched to buckle her boots. Afterward, they headed for the slope, their ski boots crunching in the snow as they made their way to one of the ski lifts. Everyone who worked at the ski resort was a wolf w
ith the Silver Town pack. It was a way of keeping their own people gainfully employed. But it also meant everyone knew Blake was with a new she-wolf.
“Hey, Blake,” one of the bachelors said, smiling at Nicole and waiting for an introduction.
Blake didn’t give him one, smiling and moving Nicole toward the ski lift.
“Is he a friend of yours?” Nicole asked.
“He’s one of the pack members. I don’t know him that well. We just moved here ourselves, but everyone’s been really friendly. All the people who work at the ski resort love our lodge and restaurant, now that they can get meals up here and take breaks while they work.”
They put on their skis and skied the rest of the way to the lift. The two male-wolf lift operators smiled at them. “Hey, Blake.” Both guys glanced at Nicole and smiled.
“Nicole,” she said, since Blake wasn’t volunteering her name.
“She’s with me,” Blake said. “We’re in a relationship. Facebook, you know.”
The guys smiled and shook their heads.
She laughed at Blake. He was glad she didn’t seem perturbed by his wolfish need to stake a claim to his territory, even if she really wasn’t his to claim.
Then she and Blake got on the ski lift and headed to the top, the wind whipping about them. In the snow, not as many other scents could be smelled, which was why snow made the air seem more…purified. He loved the winter weather.
“What are you going to do when I leave here after the job is done and you’ve got to explain to potential girlfriends in the pack how we weren’t really in a relationship?” Nicole asked.
Blake wrapped his arm around her. “I’ve been on an undercover mission, providing you with backup. I’m sure everyone will be quite impressed.”
She laughed. “So this is a way for you to earn some brownie points.”
He just smiled at her. He only cared about earning brownie points with her.
Before long, they had reached the top and skied to an intermediate run Nicole said she wanted to go on. “I need to work up to the expert slope. I haven’t skied this season at all. I hope that’s okay with you.”
