“Of course.” Lane smiled suavely. “Such a big group.”
“It was a big crime,” Grimaldi said. “Five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. And of course, now that the case includes a murder...”
She let that hang there for a moment, while Lane turned pale and while the receptionist squeaked and covered her mouth with her hand. Her nails were long and pink, and her eyes above them looked ready to pop out of their sockets.
“Murder?” Lane repeated, and his voice had lost most of its oily slickness in the surprise. “Who’s dead?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you that.” Grimaldi gave him a tight-lipped smiled. “Suffice it to say, it’s someone with a background in information technology, and someone who’s attached to one of the companies involved. Or was attached, I should say, since he’s now attached to a toe tag in the morgue. Permanently.”
“Urk,” Lane said, or at least it sounded that way.
Grimaldi nodded. “As you can imagine, we’re taking this seriously. If you don’t mind, the TBI part of the task force can take a look at the email while I ask you some questions. Will that be all right?”
Grimaldi can be quite scary when she’s all cop. She’d certainly scared the crap out of me when I first met her. Lane looked like he was ready to pee his pants.
“Yes,” he managed. “Of course. If you’ll... um... why don’t you come up to my office. Molly—” This was addressed to the receptionist, “why don’t you switch the phones off and go to lunch.”
Molly blinked. “But... it’s only ten o’clock!”
“Long lunch,” Lane said, with a look that sent her scurrying for her bag. “This way, Detective.”
He steered Grimaldi back toward the stairs. She gave me a sort of significant look over her shoulder. It took me a second to figure out what she wanted, but when she abandoned subtlety and nodded at Molly, I nodded back.
Rafe and José waited for Molly to make her way out from behind the desk before they moved in. José arranged himself in the chair and Rafe leaned over his shoulder with one hand planted on the desk. It was a very nice position to show off the muscles in his very nice arm, and Molly made a sort of little sigh.
“I’ll walk you out,” I said.
She gave me a startled look. “Oh, but...”
I gave her a friendly smile. “I’m just here to represent LB&A. I don’t really have anything to do. And I want to ask you a question.”
Molly nodded, but not without a worried look over her shoulder at the staircase to the second floor, where Lane DeWitt and Grimaldi had disappeared.
“It isn’t anything to worry about,” I assured her, as I closed the outside door behind us. “I just wanted to know if you knew anything about this email. Did it come in to your mailbox, or Lane’s, or someone else’s? Was there someone already assigned to the Houston/Harper closing, and the email went to them?”
Molly shook her head. The rest of her was shaking, too. Her voice was so soft I could barely hear it. “It came in to the general mailbox. No one had been assigned to the closing yet. On closing day, it just depends on whoever is here and available. We can’t really plan things like that in advance. Closings run over, you know: go long, and then people sit and wait...” She trailed off.
“Was there anything unusual about the email? Did you notice anything about it?”
“Nothing,” Molly said, quivering like an aspen. “I saw it. It looked like it came from Tim. I forwarded it to Lane. And that’s all I know about it.”
“When did you realize what had happened?”
“Not until Monday,” Molly said. “Tim called and asked to be put through to Lane. Then Lane came running down the stairs and wanted to see the Houston file. And everything went crazy from there.”
She glanced lovingly at the sidewalk. Probably wanted to get away from me and my questions.
“Did you submit the claim to the insurance company? You’re insured for things like this, aren’t you?”
Molly nodded and lowered her voice another degree. I could barely hear her. “They won’t pay. They say Lane should have double-checked the email before he wired the money.”
I nodded. I thought he should have, too; not that I was about to say so. “I’m sorry to kick you out of your office. This probably won’t take long, and then you can go back to work.”
“It’s all right,” Molly answered. “Lane said to take a long lunch. So I will.”
She hopped down the front steps without so much as a goodbye, and scurried down the walkway to the street. I took a seat on the porch swing and waited for the others to join me.
SEVENTEEN
Rafe and José came out first, just a few minutes after Molly had gotten into her small hybrid and driven away.
Rafe came over and sat next to me. The swing rocked. “All right, darlin’?”
“Fine,” I said. “I figured the two of you were busy inside, and Grimaldi will be out when she’s ready. The weather’s nice. It’s finally getting a little cooler.”
It was. Not always the case in late August, which can be just as hot as the middle of summer, but this year—or at least this day of this year—there was a nice breeze and a snap in the air that hinted of fall. Not that that couldn’t go away by tomorrow, of course.
“What did you find?” I added.
“José tracked the email to the IP address and the final ISP. Now we have to figure out who it belongs to.”
It was like he was speaking Greek. “Could you translate that into English?”
“The email came from a webmail account,” José said. “I know the IP address—sort of a code number—for the computer it was sent from, but someone has to check with the internet service provider to see whose account it is.”
“You didn’t do that?”
“We thought that’d be better coming from the detective,” José said diplomatically, and he had a point. “It’s her case and her body. We’re just doing a favor for a friend.”
“So what do you plan to do for the rest of the day?” I looked from one to the other of them.
José looked at Rafe. Rafe grimaced. “We still gotta find Denise Seaver and that baby. They gotta be holed up somewhere.”
“I can call Sheriff Satterfield again,” I offered. “Although I’m sure he’d have let us know if they’d seen her.”
Rafe nodded. “She’s gonna need clothes. Can’t keep walking around in that prison uniform forever. Sooner or later somebody’s gonna realize she ain’t a nurse.”
“She got the diapers and formula free. And she asked at the church for money. That probably means she doesn’t have any.”
“Just whatever was in the guard’s wallet,” Rafe said. “And it prob’ly wasn’t much. Most people don’t carry a lot of cash these days. It’s mostly all cards. And Mendoza put a warning on those.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll try to use one.”
“Not if she didn’t use it to buy diapers,” Rafe said. “She ain’t stupid. I’m sure she knows we can track the cards.”
“So that means she needs to get clothes for free. Mendoza said he notified the churches and shelters and places like that. Where else are there free clothes?”
“People leave them outside thrift stores,” José said. “And there are donation bins here and there.”
“There’s a thrift store up on Main Street,” I told them both, “about two blocks north of the library. I think there’s a dumpster out back that people toss donations into. And there are donation bins of some sort outside the grocery store, too. For the veterans or abused women or something like that.”
Rafe and José exchanged a look. “Worth looking into,” Rafe said. José nodded.
“What are Clayton and Jamal doing this morning?”
“Still in Antioch,” Rafe said. “Clayton’s sitting outside Mrs. Arroyo’s house, and Jamal outside Bianca’s. I know Carmen won’t show up, but just in case Denise Seaver decides to do someone a good turn for once
in her life, and hand over that baby.”
I shook my head. “I don’t see that happening. She took it for a reason, and I don’t think it was to give it away.”
Rafe nodded, his face dark.
“Nothing from the TBI lab yet, I assume?”
He shook his head. “Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow.” He slanted me a look. “Does it matter?”
José looked uncomfortable, focusing on something beyond the porch, as if, if he wasn’t looking at us, he wasn’t really there.
“No,” I said, and I’m pleased to say that my voice was firm. “It doesn’t matter at all when it comes to finding the baby. It matters to what happens later, but right now, the only thing that matters is finding it before Denise Seaver does something to ensure we never will.”
The door behind José opened, and he looked acutely relieved when he turned to greet Grimaldi. “Detective.”
She walked over to join him. Or us. “Were you able to find anything?”
“The IP address of the user. It’s a webmail account. You’ll have to contact them to find out who owns the computer. Hopefully it’s an individual and not a library computer that anyone can use.” He handed her a sticky note.
She dropped it in her jacket pocket. “Good work, Agent Garcia.” José’s eyes widened—maybe it was the first time someone had called him that—and then he grinned and looked at Rafe. Grimaldi added, “I’ll arrange for a subpoena.”
“How long will that take?” I asked.
She glanced at me, and her brow furrowed a little. Maybe she could sense the tension in the air. “Depends on the judge. Since it’s a murder case, and since there’s some circumstantial evidence that the money is connected, maybe a few hours.”
Sheesh. The wheels of justice grind slowly, don’t they? “Molly left,” I said. “It seems Lane is upset with her for not noticing that the email was fake, even though he didn’t notice it, either.”
Grimaldi nodded. “What are you two up to?” She looked from José to Rafe and back.
“Still trying to find Doc Seaver and that baby.” Rafe got to his feet and set the porch swing in motion. “At this point, I don’t know what the hell to do other than just drive around looking for her. We can prob’ly figure out where she’s been, but that ain’t gonna help us figure out where she’s going next.”
His voice had a fairly vicious undertone. It was quite obvious that he was beyond frustrated at having nothing constructive to do.
“You worked the adoption case,” I said to Grimaldi. “Was anybody else involved in that? There was the other doctor at St. Jerome’s, of course, but he’s dead. Was there anyone else? A nurse, maybe? Or a lawyer, to handle the adoption paperwork?”
Rafe looked up.
Grimaldi shook her head. “It was all done through the hospital. There was no adoption paperwork. They just took babies and sold them. And filed birth certificates in the adoptive parents’ names. There’s no record of the adoptions at all.”
“Someone must have put them in touch with the people who wanted babies, though. I mean, it’s a question of supply and demand, just like everything else, isn’t it?” I avoided looking at Rafe. “You have something to sell—in this case a baby. How do you find someone who’ll pay for what you have?”
“I imagine Doctor Rushing had something to do with that,” Grimaldi said. “He dealt with difficult pregnancies. Some of those pregnancies probably ended with women finding out that they couldn’t ever have a baby of their own.”
Possibly so. “That’s too bad.” Since he was dead. “I was hoping we could find someone else she might go to. Some kind of middle man she’s worked with before, that we could hunt up. Just in case she goes to him—or her—to try to trade the baby for money.”
“It was a good thought,” Grimaldi said. “And I wish I could think of someone. But the nurses just took care of the babies and didn’t know what was going on with the adoptions. And none of the other doctors suspected. The other practitioners in Doctor Seaver’s practice in Columbia were appalled, and couldn’t have been more cooperative when we spoke to them.”
I nodded. “I guess all we can do is drive around the neighborhood and see if she’s still around, then. Talk to people and see if anyone’s seen her.”
Rafe looked at José. José nodded, and they headed down the steps toward the truck. Rafe didn’t look at, or talk to me.
I turned to Grimaldi. “I guess it’s you and me.”
She glanced my way. “What’s wrong with your husband?”
“He’s upset,” I said.
Grimaldi scowled after him.
“It’s OK. Just as much my fault as his. I said something I probably shouldn’t have, and he took it the wrong way.” And while I was a bit hurt by that, I understood the pressure he was under, and the fear he probably felt. It was personal for him, even more than it was personal for me. Last night he’d seen Carmen dead, a woman he had smiled at and laughed with and kissed and touched. He might not have been in love with her, but it must still have been upsetting. And now her baby was out there. His baby. He probably thought of it as his baby, whether it would turn out to be or not. He probably had to think of it as his baby, because if something happened to it, and he hadn’t done everything he could, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
Grimaldi nodded when I said so. “You need to cut him a break,” she told me. “I’m sure the guilt is eating him alive.”
Guilt? “What guilt? He didn’t do anything wrong. It isn’t his fault that Denise Seaver saw Carmen as a way to get out of prison. And it isn’t his fault she left Carmen to die. I’m sure he feels bad about it, but it isn’t his fault. None of us expected it to happen this way.”
Grimaldi nodded. “Of course. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What are you talking about?”
She gestured toward the car, and we started off down the steps toward the street. “You’ve already had to deal with David Flannery. Your husband’s son by someone else. And now you learn he’s knocked up Carmen. Another baby with a woman who isn’t you.”
I nodded. “So?”
“He loves you. Can you imagine the guilt he feels about putting you through this? Again?”
I hadn’t thought about it, to be honest. I guess I had been a little too busy wallowing in my own hurt feelings. “But it isn’t his fault. He didn’t plan any of it.” He’d been seventeen and drunk when David was conceived, and Elspeth had taken advantage of that, and of him. Perhaps he should have been more careful, but it was a long time ago, and not worth the trouble of holding a grudge. And he had taken precautions with Carmen. It wasn’t his fault if they had failed.
“I don’t think he’d see it that way,” Grimaldi said. “He screwed up. He’s probably worried you’re going to leave him.”
“That’s crazy.” I wouldn’t. Ever. No matter how many illegitimate children showed up.
“Not from his point of view,” Grimaldi said. “He doesn’t feel like he ever deserved you in the first place, and now he’s done something else to screw up your life and make himself look bad to your family. And on top of that he has to spend all his time looking for the baby before something happens to it. He’s probably worried it looks to you like he’s putting the baby—and Carmen—above you.”
That thought had crossed the shameful recesses of my mind last night, as I drove home from the Short Stop by myself. Like he didn’t need me or want me, and I should just go away and leave him alone.
“That baby isn’t safe out there with Denise Seaver,” I said. “She made a career out of selling babies. She’s probably planning to sell this one. And if she can’t, it’s not worth anything to her. If she can’t make money from it, it’s just slowing her down. And God knows what she’ll do with it then. Someone has to find it before that happens. No matter whose baby it is.”
Grimaldi nodded. “Leave it to them. I’ve got a job for you.”
“Really?” I’d thought she’d suggest taking me home now,
that we’d done what we’d needed to do at the office. And the last thing I wanted to do, was sit around at home twiddling my thumbs.
“I need those fingerprints checked. And I don’t want to have to stop to do it. If I wait, it’ll be five o’clock before I can get to it. Do me a favor and use the file to see if you can match them. Devon’s prints are in there. So are Brittany’s. And Tim’s and Heidi’s. And yours, from before.”
“I’d be happy to.” I took the file out of her hand and opened it. She put the car in gear and we rolled away from the curb.
“Where are we going?” I asked after a minute. We were on our way down Shelby Avenue at a good clip, and it looked like we were headed for the interstate. “The prints on my desk are mostly mine. But there’s a partial here that looks like it could be Devon’s. From the drawer, it says.”
Grimaldi nodded.
“Looks like maybe, when he stopped by on Tuesday night, he was going through my desk.”
“He’d just seen you that afternoon at the house in Goodlettsville,” Grimaldi reminded me. “You may not have recognized him, but he wouldn’t have known that.”
I nodded. “I guess that means he had something to hide. Either that he had something to do with the missing money, or just that he was involved somehow with Magnolia Houston.” Angie at the consignments store had called him her boyfriend. So maybe he was two-timing Brittany and was afraid I’d tell on him.
Although I wasn’t quite sure how that squared with them getting married tomorrow. Would he really marry Brittany if he was involved with Magnolia?
Unless the involvement was strictly platonic, of course. Platonic and financial. She had paid him to reroute her money, and that was all. No reason why he couldn’t marry Brittany then. He might even have told himself—and her—that he’d done it for them.
“I’ll get started on the prints from the window sill,” I said. “You should call for that subpoena. The sooner the better.”
Grimaldi nodded and picked up the phone. We swung onto the entrance ramp for I-24 East as I hunkered over the window sill prints and listened to her call the office and ask someone to look into a subpoena for the webmail provider José had named.
Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13) Page 19