Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13)

by Jenna Bennett

  Nothing seemed too disturbed there either. I’ve had my office ransacked before, and nothing like that had taken place this time. The desktop was in a little bit of disarray, but I could have left it that way when Brittany went to lunch this morning. I couldn’t remember whether I had or not. And the top desk drawer was open a crack, a Bic pen caught in the opening... but I could have done that myself, too. There was no proverbial smoking gun here. Nothing to say with certainty that Devon had been here. He might have been telling the truth about picking up something for Brittany.

  I tried to imagine what that might have been, at close to nine o’clock at night. If they’d just waited twelve hours, she could have picked it up herself when she came to work in the morning. What was so important that they couldn’t wait twelve hours for it, but had to come over here at night?

  “I can’t tell for sure,” I told Rafe once I’d stepped through the door and was back in the lobby. “Nothing’s missing, that I noticed. And there’s no mess. He could have been in here, but if he was, I don’t know what he was doing.”

  “Prob’ly nothing much,” Rafe said, pushing the desk drawer shut before straightening. “He hadn’t been here very long.”

  No, he hadn’t. Enough time to find whatever small item Brittany had left behind—or so he said—but Rafe was right, it hadn’t been more than a minute from when Devon walked past Heidi’s office to when Rafe came into the lobby. Not a lot of time to find anything, to be honest.

  “Do you think he was lying?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. Don’t know him well enough to say. Mighta been.”

  “Can you think of anything Brittany might have left, that was important enough that they couldn’t wait twelve hours for it?”

  “Condoms?” Rafe suggested.

  Maybe. If they were that desperate to have sex, there must be drugstores closer than this, though. I had looked up Brittany’s home address earlier today, and it was in the Melrose area. Lots of stores around there. Including a Walgreens and a 24-hour grocery store, if memory served.

  “Was it José who called?”

  “I imagine so.” Rafe pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the display. “Yeah. You want I should call him back?”

  I hesitated.

  “Devon gonna tell his girlfriend we were here?”

  “Oh, most definitely.” He might even tell her—probably would—that we were skulking in the dark in someone’s office. Not necessarily Heidi’s—he might not know that’s where we’d been when he moved past us down the hallway—but he knew we’d been somewhere between the back door and the lobby.

  “You think she’d believe we snuck in here for a quickie?”

  She might. And if it came down to it, I might trot out that explanation. It would be embarrassing, but it was better than the truth. “If Heidi had something to do with the missing money, I don’t want her to think we’re on to her. Or even that I’m looking into it. Someone who’d steal half a million dollars might not be above killing someone to keep it.”

  Rafe nodded. “Murder’s been done for less. Maybe you shouldn’t go to work tomorrow morning.”

  “I have to go to work. If I don’t, I won’t know what they’re saying.”

  He shrugged. It looked like capitulation, but I figured we’d probably have this conversation again tomorrow morning. He was just abandoning it now because he had something else he wanted to talk about. “You still wanna try to get into Heidi’s computer?”

  I hesitated. If Devon told Brittany we’d been in the office at night, and Brittany told Heidi, and Heidi had something to hide—or for that matter if Brittany herself had something to hide—I could be in trouble.

  Then again, the damage was already done. We’d been caught. Might as well do what we’d come here for. And finish the job.

  “We’re here. Let’s just get it done. It’s too late to worry about getting caught anyway.”

  Rafe was already dialing. “Gotta minute?” he asked when, presumably, José had answered. “I need some help tracking an email.”

  The phone squawked, and Rafe shook his head. “This is something else. Nothing to do with work.”

  José must have wanted to know what it was about, then, because Rafe glanced at me and said, “Something my wife’s looking into.”

  “Just tell him,” I said. “But without using any names, please. Just the situation.”

  Rafe laid out the situation in a nicely condensed manner. “Someone was buying a house. Money was wired from the buyer’s account to the closing company and from there to the seller’s representative. But he never got it. Turns out someone sent the closing company an email telling them to wire the money somewhere else. I’m looking for that email.”

  José spoke. At length. After about a minute, Rafe must have realized that it would be better to let me listen to what José had to say, than for him to try to paraphrase it later. “...compromised,” was the first word I heard, “the email should be in sent mail or deleted mail. If it’s been deleted from deleted mail, especially if it’s webmail, it’s hard to get it back. Easier if it’s a desktop program.”

  “Can you unpack that a little more?”

  “Gmail is webmail,” José said. “Outlook Express is a desktop program. If you have OE, and you leave your computer, you can’t access your email. But you can access Gmail from anywhere.”

  I nodded. I might not know much, but I did know that. “This email came from the LB&A email network. Or so I was told. I haven’t seen it. But my broker said it came from his email address.”

  “That sounds more like someone spoofed it,” José said. “It’s easy to do with a server and a little knowledge. And you don’t have to be onsite to do it.”

  That sounded promising. Or maybe not, since it sounded like anyone in the whole, wide world could have sent the email.

  “It wouldn’t show up in sent mail or deleted mail?”

  José said it wouldn’t. “It wouldn’t have gone through the company servers. It would have been sent from somewhere else, but when it got to where it was going, it would have looked like it came from you.”

  “But if it wasn’t actually sent from here, we can’t find who sent it?”

  “Not from your end,” José said. “If I had the email, I could maybe backtrack and find where it originated.”

  That would mean getting DeWitts onboard. If they even had the original email still. They may not. Although it was worth trying to find out. If José could track it back to where it had come from, we’d have a pretty good idea who sent it.

  “How close could you get to him?” Or her.

  “The sender?” He sounded amused that I asked. “His living room. Or bedroom closet. Or basement. Wherever he keeps his server.”

  “You’d be able to find his address?”

  “Should be,” José said. “It might take a couple minutes.”

  I nodded to Rafe. “We’ll get back to you,” he told José. “Thanks for your help.”

  José said it was no problem, and hung up. Rafe dropped the phone in his pocket. “Still wanna check Heidi’s computer?”

  I shook my head. “If it’s that easy to spoof an email address from somewhere else—and that’s what he said, right? That it was easy?”

  Rafe nodded.

  “Then I don’t think we have to. Whoever did it, probably didn’t do it from here. And anyway, Heidi isn’t stupid. Brittany might be, but I already checked her email program this morning. If Heidi sent the email, she would have deleted any evidence of it.”

  “So we’re done here?” He looked around.

  “I guess so.” I did the same.

  “Wanna have that quickie, just in case someone asks?” He quirked a brow.

  “I appreciate you trying to help, but that would be weird.”

  “I don’t see why,” Rafe said, but he followed me to the door and out into the night.

  SEVEN

  Dix called just as we pulled up in front of the house on Potsdam. I’d forgo
tten all about him in the excitement. “Sorry,” I told Rafe. “It’s my brother.”

  He glanced at me. “Go ahead and talk to him.”

  “I called him earlier for an update about Mother.” I pushed the appropriate button on the phone. “Dix?”

  “Sis.”

  “Rafe’s here, too.”

  Dix sighed. “Collier.”

  Rafe’s lips twitched. “Martin.”

  I sighed, too. “The two of you are family. Why do you keep calling each other by your last names?”

  “Habit,” Dix said.

  I glanced at Rafe. He shrugged.

  “Fine. What do you want?”

  “You called me,” Dix reminded me. “For an update about Mother.”

  “Let me guess. She’s drunk again.”

  “Not today,” Dix said. “I think she probably learned that lesson yesterday. She felt pretty sick at the end of it. Although I think she’s spiking her tea with whiskey.”

  Rafe made a noise. I think it was amusement.

  “Of course she is.” Although that was better than chugging brandy straight from the bottle, so it seemed like a step in the right direction. “I assume she hasn’t spoken to Audrey?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Dix said. “I was afraid it would set her off. But I assume not.”

  “And she hasn’t spoken to Darcy.”

  “No.”

  “What about Bob? Do you know if he’s had any contact with her? Or is she shutting him out, too?”

  Bob Satterfield is the Maury County sheriff, and my mother’s gentleman friend. They were friends when their respective spouses were alive, too, and Bob’s son Todd has been Dix’s best friend since before kindergarten. Just one big, happy family, in other words. Until it came out on Monday morning that Bob knew that Audrey had been in love with my father before he met my mother, and had had a child by him. Now Mother felt betrayed by both of them, and who could blame her?

  “I haven’t spoken to him,” Dix said. “I haven’t seen him, either. He wasn’t at Mother’s either time I was there. And he hasn’t stopped by the office.”

  Chances were she was still angry with him, then. He had known about it—Audrey’s feelings for Dad, anyway; if not the pregnancy—and Mother probably felt betrayed by him, too.

  “Should one of us call him?”

  “I’m sure he’s trying,” Dix said. “More than likely, it’s Mother who won’t have anything to do with him.”

  Probably so. And it wouldn’t do any good to tell him to contact her if she was the one who refused to see him. Dix was right: the sheriff was probably doing his best to talk her off the ledge.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Dix said there wasn’t. “I’ll check on her again tomorrow. If you want to come down this weekend, you can.”

  “I don’t suppose she’s mentioned me?”

  Walking out had seemed like a fine idea on Monday morning. But now that things had settled down, I was a little worried that I might not be welcome back.

  “No,” Dix said.

  “I guess that means she’s still angry?”

  “You did take Darcy’s side.”

  “So did you!”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “She isn’t trying to get you to fire her or anything, is she?”

  “She’s not talking about it,” Dix said. “She hasn’t mentioned Darcy. Or Audrey. Or Bob. Or even Dad.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Maybe I will drive down this weekend. We can stay with you if we need to, right?”

  “Sure. Or with Catherine and Jonathan. Or Darcy.”

  My other sister. Right.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “Call me tomorrow, OK? And let me know what’s going on.”

  Dix said he would, and we hung up. And sat for a moment, still in the car, while the cicadas kept up their racket in the trees on the other side of the driveway.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Rafe said eventually. He hadn’t been in Sweetwater with me when all this went down, so he had it all second-hand.

  I shook my head. “Really not. I’ll probably have to drive down there this weekend. If for no other reason than to show solidarity with Darcy. And to show my mother that I’m not afraid of her.”

  “Better you than me.”

  I glanced at him. “You could come, too. She likes you.”

  My mother, who had been against my relationship with Rafe from the beginning, had had a change of heart just before the wedding. Now she seemed to like him better than me.

  “Unlike you,” Rafe told me, “I am afraid of your mother.”

  “Really?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe we can take David with us. She seems to like him.”

  “What’s not to like?” Even if, honestly, it had been a little surprising how quickly my mother had taken to Rafe’s biological son, who lived with his adopted parents on the other side of Nashville. He looked pretty much just like Rafe did at that age—thirteen—and I had thought for sure that Mother would be rude to the boy, but instead she had taken one look at him and melted. It was seriously weird, and not like her at all. Not that David isn’t adorable; I just wouldn’t have thought Mother was susceptible.

  But Rafe was right. She did seem to like David. Maybe seeing him would make her happy.

  “Can you call Sam and ask?”

  “Sure,” Rafe said and opened his door. “Ready to go in?”

  I guess I was. It had been a long day.

  “So tomorrow you’ll get Carmen’s blood sample to the TBI lab, so we can start the process of figuring things out?”

  “Bright and early,” Rafe confirmed as he put his hand under my elbow to give me a boost up the stairs. “The doc at the clinic said she’s got her checkup first thing in the morning.”

  “Are you going out there to pick up the sample?” I watched as he inserted the key in the lock and twisted the knob.

  He shook his head. “Don’t want nobody to say nothing about the chain of evidence.”

  He pushed the door open and gestured me inside.

  “That makes sense.” I kicked my shoes off on the floor of the foyer again. “So someone from the prison will drive it there?”

  He nodded, as he closed and locked the door behind us. “They do that a lot anyway. Both to us and to the medical examiner’s office.”

  The Nashville medical examiner’s office is on Gass Boulevard, just down the road from TBI headquarters. I’d forgotten that.

  “And you’ll go to the lab in the morning and have your blood drawn?”

  “That’s the plan. I have to do that regularly anyhow. All of us do. Specially those of us doing undercover work. They wanna make sure we don’t get too fond of the merchandise.”

  “Drugs? You didn’t have anything to do with drugs. Did you?”

  “Hector had his fingers in a lot of things,” Rafe said with shrug. “But I’ve never had a bad drug test, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t use. Never did.”

  I didn’t think he had. He’d told me once that he’d smoked cigarettes for a short time in high school, and gave it up because he didn’t want anything to have that much power over him. These days, he’ll have a beer or two, but that’s about the extent of it. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t touch illegal drugs.

  “They probably have your DNA on file already, then. Don’t they?”

  “I’m sure they do,” Rafe said. “And have for a while. Just in case they had to identify what was left of me.”

  During the old undercover days. Yes, I could see why that might have been necessary. And I was terribly glad it hadn’t turned out to be. “But you’ll give them a new sample anyway?”

  “I’m gonna be there anyway. Might as well make sure it’s fresh.”

  Might as well.

  “I’m kind of tired,” I said. “I know it’s early, but it’s been a long day. I think I’ll go up to bed. And maybe read a book or watch some TV until I fall asleep.”

  Rafe nodded. “I’ll
be there in a minute. Just wanna make sure all the doors and windows are locked.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  He grinned. “Why don’t you slip into something comfortable?”

  “Like bed?”

  “Like that,” Rafe agreed, and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen to make sure we were safe for the night.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING dawned the way most mornings did. Rafe got up and out early, and left me to sleep, since it takes a lot of effort to make a baby. It’s a rare day that I’m able to drag myself out of bed much before nine.

  So also today. I dragged myself out of bed around nine, and made it to the office by ten o’clock or so.

  The first thing that happened, was that I noticed Brittany wasn’t at her desk. Then Tim showed up, just as I was hanging my purse on the hook by the door. “Thank God you’re here.”

  I blinked. “Is it Groundhog Day?”

  He blinked back. “What?”

  “Isn’t that what you said yesterday?”

  “Maybe.” He shook his head. “I need you to cover the front desk for a while.”

  “Again? I sat at the front desk for most of the day yesterday.”

  Tim lowered his voice, and glanced over his shoulder to make sure we were still alone. We were. “Did you learn anything?”

  I hated to admit I hadn’t. So I didn’t. “A few things. Nothing conclusive. I couldn’t find any evidence that the email originated here, but that doesn’t mean anything one way or another, it seems. It didn’t have to, to come from someone here. Or it could have come from somewhere else. Someone I talked to said that for someone with an email server, it isn’t hard to spoof an email address and make it look like it came from practically anywhere. That’s probably what happened. He said, if he can get access to the original email, he might be able to trace it back to the source.”

  Tim looked nauseous, maybe at the thought of talking to Lane DeWitt.

  “I went to Goodlettsville,” I continued, “and tried to talk to Mr. Peretti, but he wasn’t at work. The woman in the store next to his office told me he doesn’t have a computer, though. So this wire fraud business is probably beyond him. And I stopped by Miss Harper’s house. The only person there was a guy scraping paint, but he didn’t want to talk to me. Maybe because he wasn’t supposed to be there. You said Mr. Peretti told you the renovators had to cease and desist, right?”