They all turned.
Elizabeth saw Clarissa heading her way. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Littlemoon momma bear. It’s been some time.”
Clarissa grinned at her. “You come here and let me hug you.”
She listened.
Clarissa gave her a kiss on the cheek.
Then she shook her head. “You look like shit, girl. Who ran you over?”
Elizabeth wasn’t going there. “Yeah, well, I love and missed you too.”
“Tonight, you come here. I’m going to make dinner. You’re skin and bones. No man likes to bounce on a skeleton.”
Callen started laughing.
“If you say a word, you’ll be a skeleton before you ever get a chance to bounce on me again.”
He zipped it, but the smile said it all.
His wife was coming back. The texts from their other spouse had helped, and so had Chris returning.
“Okay, Clarissa, I’ll be here, but only if there’s frybread. Nothing puts meat on your bones like deep fried food.”
The woman put her hands on her hips. “Really? You don’t respect me enough to use my name?”
Elizabeth handed her the baby and winked at her. “Yes, Mom. I will be here, and I like strawberry with my frybread.”
“I think I can make that happen. Now, all of you dead beats get to work.”
She took the baby and left.
Julian was grinning, and so was Justin.
“She loves you.”
Elizabeth loved her too. “I’m fabulous like that. Does anyone have a coat hanger?” she asked.
“Uh, no,” Tori stated. “Why do you need a coat hanger when you aren’t wearing a coat?”
“I have an itch and this damn cast is keeping me from getting to it. Next step is to gnaw through the plaster with my teeth. No one wants to see that.”
Chris raised his hand.
“Shut it, Doc.”
He laughed.
“Bethany!” Tori called.
There was a cool breeze around the room, and Tori’s hair swayed in it.
“What the hell is going on?” Chris asked, looking around in concern.
Then he jumped. “Someone grabbed my ass!”
Julian laughed. “Welcome to the family. That was Bethany greeting you.”
“Who is Bethany?”
“She’s my spirit. My head is haunted.”
He stared. Honestly, he thought Elizabeth had been yanking his chain. She was known to do just that, but this…
He’d been groped.
“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “I have a million questions.”
They didn’t have time.
“Tori, I don’t need games,” Elizabeth stated.
“Just watch and learn,” Tori stated. “Bethany, can you do me a favor?” she paused. “Scratch her arm.”
Elizabeth stared at her in horror. “What? Did you just sic your dead girl on me? Really?”
“Watch,” she said.
Elizabeth held out her arm and stared at it. She swore she could see finger indentations on her hand, and it felt like someone was holding it.
Then…
Sure enough, the itch was gone.
“I don’t know whether I should be happy or scared shitless,” she stated.
Julian laughed. “The latter. Definitely the latter.”
Then he yelped.
“STOP grabbing my ass! The doctor liked it. Aim for him! It’s always polite to worry about guests.”
“HEY!” Chris said. “That’s really okay.”
Elizabeth didn’t know what to think. This was all insane. “Uh, maybe we should start to work.”
That was probably a damn good idea.
Julian took over.
“Team, to the conference room. We need an update, and then we’re heading out.”
They all followed, like baby ducks to the pond.
It made Tori laugh.
Her life was insane.
And she wouldn’t change it for the world.
Chapter Eighteen
I t was time to catch everyone up to speed. Elizabeth didn’t want to take control, since this was Julian and Tori’s domain, but she felt the need to go with what she knew. There was one thing she excelled at when it came to work.
Leading.
Being bossy.
Tracking a killer.
This was her thing, and while both Julian and Tori were excellent investigators, she knew how to deal with death, local investigators, and this kind of shit mess.
This was her daily life.
Well, until she walked away four weeks ago.
“Why don’t we start with the bar interview?” Elizabeth asked once they were all seated. “And if you feel like I’m overstepping my boundaries and begin to take over, tell me to step off. I’m just accustomed to running things. It’s not something you can easily pull yourself from when it’s work. I’m on autopilot most of the time.”
They all got it.
“I’m okay with you leading this,” Tori said. “You came here, you brought us excellent equipment, and are helping pave the way. I’m accustomed to working with your style of ass kicking. Besides, this isn’t about our ego. This is about Beau being exonerated from this mess.”
“I’ll save his bacon. This is my thing,” she promised. Then she got down to it.
“What did y’all find?”
“Other than that Leon Brewer, the bartender, is an asshole?” Tori asked.
“Yeah, other than that. Most suspects are assholes,” Elizabeth clarified.
“Well, we all know from Detective Woods that he admitted to a one-night stand. It was more than that. He was involved with her, and I don’t doubt he was her partner in crime.”
They heard it in her voice.
“What else?”
“I know he’s guilty.”
“How?” Callen asked. “If he didn’t come right out and say it, then we need to do the legwork to find out for sure.”
She smiled.
The men had seen it before. Elizabeth often got that feral look before she dropped one hell of a bomb.
“What did you do?” Elizabeth asked.
Tori laughed. “I set him up, and he walked right into the oldest FBI trick in the book.”
“You trapped him, huh?”
“Yep. He brought up the ‘B’ word, not me. So, I think it’s safe to say he’s involved in it if he knew about all the blackmail.”
She’d bet that too.
“He got belligerent, and that’s always a good sign that he was involved. Leon is getting his stories mixed up. When you lie, you trip yourself up, but he had help from a nice patron who reminded him that he had an ongoing thing with Shelby.”
Well, that worked for Elizabeth.
“Add him.”
Tori, in triumph, went to the board and wrote his name under suspect list. Granted, it wasn’t a huge list, especially since people were dying, but it was still a decent place to start.
As an ex-Fed, she’d worked with less.
“I think we should clear the other people,” Elizabeth began, “and then we can hit him again, but this time, I’ll tap dance all over his liver.”
That worked for both Tori and Julian.
“If the other people on Shelby’s list hung out or went there, that’s making him one hell of a suspect to cover his tracks. Blackmail is still illegal, and if he is involved, he’s going to go down.”
Tori took that moment to admit something.
“Um, team, I did something I’m not proud of,” she stated.
They all stared at her.
“Victoria, what did you do?” Julian asked. The tone in his voice was between fear and worry.
“Well, I did something illegal.”
Elizabeth had forgotten about it. With all the chaos, she’d let it slip her mind.
“Well, don’t look at me,” she said, when Callen was staring at her.
Julian didn’t like the sound of tha
t.
At all.
“Spill it.”
She pulled a cell phone from her pocket.
“I may have had a moment of weakness and ‘borrowed’ this from Fredrick Raymond’s crime scene.”
There was a gasp.
It was from Elizabeth.
Callen leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Nice try. I hope you didn’t think that was realistic enough to make me believe it.”
“That was me being sarcotic.”
Callen stared at her. “What the hell is ‘sarcotic’?” he asked. “Or don’t I want to know?”
“It’s sarcastic and psychotic all at once. The gasp was sarcasm, and the psychotic is because I lost my mind to be part of it.”
His mouth hung open. This was a little game they played, but still…stealing evidence?
“Callen?” she asked.
“Yeah…no, I got nothing.”
That made her laugh.
“What? I’m on the injured list. My morals are sketchy at best when I’m on duty. You see who I’m shacked up with. My husbands…”
Plural.
That one little letter caused so much pain.
Chris patted her leg from the spot beside her.
Even Callen shared a look of sympathy.
“I’m okay,” she said, fighting back the tears. Telling Ethan to finish his three weeks and to fix his shit had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.
And she was suffering for it.
Tori heard it.
She knew her best friend. “Tonight, after dinner, how about I ask Nyx to play channel?”
She blinked back tears.
“Can we?”
It was clear, from that response alone, that Elizabeth was close to losing it. Before, she’d scoff.
Now she was practically begging.
“We can.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed on. “What did you find on that phone?”
“Well, I was a little busy with Nyx and Beau last night.”
They told the team what had gone down, and no one looked shocked.
Except for Callen, Elizabeth, and Christopher.
Elizabeth whistled. “I know nothing about busting no ghosts. You guys are on your own for that one. I chase killers not spooks.”
She snorted. “Yeah, great. We’re winging it.”
“You handle getting Beau off, and we’ll handle the dead,” Julian offered.
That worked for them.
“Back to the phone,” Callen stated, getting them to focus on what mattered.
Tori slid it across the table.
Elizabeth pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket. Then slipped them on with a snap.
“That was hot,” Justin teased.
“I’m glad you think so. I’ll be checking that tattoo you’re supposed to have on your ass next.”
Justin swallowed.
He knew he was screwed if she did that. It looked like someone had a date with a sharpie.
Crap!
Elizabeth turned on the cell and stared down at it. She was going to break the law.
Oh, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
“Have they noticed it’s missing?” she asked.
“Not that we heard. Don’t you think Detective Woods would have showed up and asked since we were the only ones there with it?” Tori asked.
She had a very good point.
“Cover me, I’m going in,” she said, right before she began flipping through the contraband.
“Wow!”
They were all curious.
“What did you find?” Callen asked.
“He likes sex and women in latex.”
“Who doesn’t?” Callen asked.
She stared at him.
“Really, Callen James? Do you really think that wasn’t all kinds of inappropriate?”
Tori was laughing.
“You helped steal evidence. I lost my mind there for a second.”
“Back to the phone,” Julian stated.
“Wait,” Justin said, raising his hand.
“Yes?”
“Can you read it out loud?” he teased.
Vivian elbowed him really hard, and the amusement stopped fast.
“Never mind.”
Elizabeth went back to flipping through the messages. In it, there was a hell of a lot of sexting going on, and it was to a lot of different women.
“Is he married?” she asked.
Roman scanned the files they’d made up on each one of the suspects. “Nope.”
“It’s a good thing.” She turned the phone around so they all could see the various penis pictures.
“Sexting always gets you in trouble,” Mattie stated offhandedly. “It’s better in real time.”
Roman flushed when all the women looked over at him. “Um…”
Callen saved the man.
“If I go down in the line of duty, someone had better erase all the porn from my phone,” Callen teased.
She snorted. “I am the porn on your phone, so I second that decision.”
Elizabeth dropped the cell back onto the table.
“Nothing?” Tori asked.
“Nothing but the porn. I’m thinking we’re going to have to figure out what he’s done other than embezzling money from the city if we want to chase that lead.”
Roman raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“I found this,” he offered, sliding a paper across the table.
She read it and then whistled.
“Yeah, he wasn’t just embezzling, he was really taking the city for a ride.”
She showed the rest of the team.
“He has over two million dollars in that account,” Tori stated. “Does our town even have that kind of bankroll?” Julian asked.
Callen saw it first. “Their police retirement fund does,” he offered. “Most of that money goes out at a slow rate, but comes in rather fast.”
Well.
Well.
Well.
This opened up a whole other can of worms. The police, who were desperate to close this case down, were victims to the dead man’s jackassery.
Interesting.
Now they only needed to figure out if someone found out about it, or if it was guilt that did the man in.
“If I was a cop, and I found out that my pension was jacked, I’d be pissed,” Tori stated.
They all agreed.
“If he dies, and the truth comes out, what happens to the money?” Justin asked.
Roman knew this one. “I worked a story a couple years ago. There was this rich dude who stole MILLIONS. His wife offed him, thinking she’d get away with it, and be beach side in Cabo.”
“And?” Tori asked.
“The police got wind, his assets were seized, and the wife…she accidentally outed herself in her anger.”
They all laughed.
“Poor thing,” Elizabeth said. “That’s what you get when you kill a husband. You ALWAYS kill them in bed. Then no one is ever the wiser.”
Callen wiggled his eyebrows.
“Don’t!” she warned.
“So, now the money will go back to the cops. This is pretty handy when it comes to if someone killed him or if he offed himself.”
Yeah, it was.
“This could have made someone very angry,” Elizabeth stated. “Cops are paid shit to protect and serve, and that would be a blow when they retired from the force.”
“We just added a couple new suspects,” Callen offered.
“Who?” Claire asked.
“The commissioner and our not so friendly detective. What’s his face?” she asked.
“Detective Bender,” Tori offered.
“Why them specifically?” Mattie asked.
“They want to pin this on Beau so much that they now made themselves suspects. If they have a killer, and Fredrick Raymond committed suicide, either of them could be off without anyone suspecting anything.”
<
br /> “That’s sneaky!” Mattie stated.
“Yeah, killers are like that,” Elizabeth offered.
“Do we tell Arsen?” Julian asked.
She shook her head. “Not until we run it like we stole it,” she stated. “I want to know everything in his financials. In fact, run his past.”
“He was adopted. It’s going to be short.”
“Yeah, well, that might work to his advantage, but I want to see his income ratio.”
Roman and Mattie began working it.
Elizabeth pressed on.
“Beckett, you and Claire have another angle to work,” Elizabeth offered.
“What?”
“I need you to look for any connection these people have to Shelby. If the bartender falls through, she had to have contact with them somehow.”
He saluted and got down to work.
“I have Detective Woods’s financials,” Mattie said. “They look pretty much like we thought.”
Elizabeth took the tablet.
“He has a student loan, a truck loan, a mortgage, and he’s got one credit card with a zero balance.”
“Is he up to date?” Callen asked.
“Yeah, he is, but he’s not showing signs of big influx. He still has a hefty loan for school.”
She scrolled.
“He has one savings account. It has about two months’ salary in it. He lives within his means, and he’s not rolling in bucks.”
“So, do we trust him?” Tori asked.
“What does your gut say?” Elizabeth asked, handing the tablet back to the team.
Before she could answer, the pen on the table stood, and it danced across the paper, leaving a message.
‘He’s good.’
“Does that happen a lot?” Callen asked, as they watched it happen before their eyes. It was…startling.
Tori found that amusing.
The three of them looked freaked out.
“The scientist in me just had a stroke,” Christopher Leonard stated. “How do I process this? First the ass grab, and now this.”
There was no answer for that.
Honestly, Julian and his team were still processing it themselves.
“I trust Bethany,” Tori offered. “She’s really good with judging people, and she sees things we don’t.”
Elizabeth didn’t have anything to add to that. What could she say?
“Alrighty then. How about we discuss who is left on the list?” she asked.
Kiss of Souls Page 36