by Terry Spear
Wanting to explain Roxie’s animosity about the case to Nicole, Blake said, “Roxie was afraid she’d run into the MP at some other time while she was on active duty. She’s not afraid of much, but that really spooked her. Especially since he had a badge and a gun. When she called us about it, Landon and I were there in a heartbeat and stayed with her for a couple of weeks at her apartment, just in case the bastard returned. We were running the ski lodge in Vermont at the time. We were glad when she got out of the service and joined us to help with the lodge. Had you seen him here, and that’s why you kissed me?” He suspected she was a PI or undercover cop, FBI maybe.
“Larry and I are investigating a case of insurance fraud. We’re independent private investigators working for an insurance company. I need to check on my partner and make sure he’s all right. He’s from Kansas and can’t take this high altitude. He’s human, not one of us. But the situation is this: we’re looking for two men—Rhys Hanover and William Kovac. They’re cousins, and Rhys is dead. Supposedly dead. Rhys’s real name is Oscar Kovac. He was the MP who tried to steal from you, Roxie.”
“Hell. I’ll kill the bastard. So what are they doing? Looking for a big insurance payoff and this is a case of pseudocide?” Blake asked.
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is,” Nicole said.
“I don’t believe this,” Roxie said.
“We’re talking about a five-million-dollar life insurance policy. The problem is that he could see you here and realize you’d know who he is. He could worry you’d heard of his death but realize he is alive, and the gig is up. I know he’d run. Trying to track him down again could be impossible. Even though we couldn’t get him for the earlier crime perpetrated against you, we want to get him for this one. Right now, he thinks no one knows him here and that he’s perfectly safe.”
“What about you? Wouldn’t he recognize you if he sees you?” Roxie asked. “You said you’d seen him at the police department.”
Blake was thinking the same thing. Nicole must have dealt with the police from time to time while handling her CID cases.
“I never had any dealings with him directly. He was never at the police department when I was there after the one time I saw him. He didn’t see me. Thankfully, he’s not a wolf or he might recognize me by scent.”
Roxie’s whole posture changed from highly irritated to excited. “I want to help catch him.”
“No,” both Blake and Landon said. Blake knew his sister would get involved if she could. Now he wished she had stayed in Vermont until this situation was resolved with Rhys, when before this, Blake had been hoping she and Kayla would hurry up and arrive in Colorado. Not only were they a great help to one another, but the family was close and enjoyed doing things together. Their new life was here.
“Nicole’s right. If he sees you, even if he believes you don’t know that he faked his death, he could still worry you might recognize him from the time he stopped you for your expired safety-inspection sticker,” Blake said.
Roxie bit her lip. “Okay, but I want to do something.” She eyed Nicole as if she thought she might be able to give Roxie a job that would help Nicole catch the bastard.
Blake knew his sister wouldn’t be able to sit still when she wanted to help run the lodge, see the sights, visit with her new pack members, and adjust to her new home. He could see Kayla hiding away in the office, busy creating all kinds of plans for holiday specials, like a website that would feature all the fun folks could have at the lodge. They had to dig her out of the office just to get her out to socialize a bit. But Roxie? She was always out and about, greeting people, making everyone feel welcome, social to the max. If she was sick or needed to sleep, that was when she went home. Otherwise, she loved being with others. Confine her to house arrest? She’d go batty.
“I know it might seem boring, but if you could watch the security monitors and alert me where he is when you see him, that would help,” Nicole said.
Roxie scoffed.
Blake knew Roxie wanted to be a whole lot more active than that.
“What are your email addresses? I’ll send everyone a picture of what Oscar looked like before he had some plastic surgery done, grew his hair and beard out, dyed his hair, and started calling himself Rhys. I also have some pictures of him and his cousin now and what they’ve been wearing for skiing while here.”
Once Nicole had their emails, she sent them all the photos.
Blake was amazed at how different Rhys looked from Oscar’s earlier photo. He didn’t think he would have made the connection if he’d only met the man once before, when his hair was dark brown and cut short, military style, as a military police officer.
“Wow,” Roxie said. “If you had a close-up photo of his eyes, I would have recognized him. But I wouldn’t have known him if I’d seen him wearing the long, blond hair and the brown beard. I can’t tell about the plastic surgery. I think his nose looks a little different. But the hair and the bushy beard really would have thrown me off.”
“It appears he staged his death for the insurance money. Did he really have the accident and then hatch the idea? Or had he planned it all along? It really doesn’t matter how it all came about. He didn’t die, his cousin received the money from the life insurance payout, and that makes it a crime. Since they’re together, I have to assume they both got part of the proceeds,” Nicole said.
“And you think they’re dangerous.” Unless Nicole was being melodramatic… She had mentioned it could mean her life if Blake didn’t pretend to be her lover. Rhys had threatened his sister with a gun when they were in the army, so he could understand Nicole’s concern.
“Yes, if the men had anything to do with the last investigator’s disappearance—which is why they sent two of us as a team this time. And knowing Oscar was armed the time he confronted Roxie, we have to assume Rhys is armed now.”
“They killed the other investigator?” Roxie asked, sounding horrified.
“He vanished. We have no idea if he met with foul play. He told the insurance company that hired him that he had a lead on Oscar Kovac. He gave the insurance company Oscar’s last known address, though he didn’t have his new name. Rhys hadn’t yet hooked up with William, the cousin, and that was the last anyone heard of the private investigator.”
“So they hire a woman?” Blake couldn’t help how that sounded after he spoke the words. If a man couldn’t deal with these two men, how could a woman? In retrospect, he should have said it a little differently.
Nicole cast him an annoyed look.
Roxie and Landon were smiling as if they knew Blake had blown it. Kayla was frowning at him.
“I’m highly trained, have a double black belt in jujitsu, was weapons-trained in the military, and keep up my training. I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat and more. Usually when we’re working an investigation, we have to do a lot of computer searches, following the trail the suspect left behind, looking for them on social media sites, and conducting surveillance. So it’s not all about trying to take the men down but about proving they’ve committed a crime. As a private investigator, I’ve proven three prior cases of pseudocide and saved the insurance companies some hefty payouts. I’m good at what I do.”
“Uh, yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“Since there are two subjects involved in this, it’s better for us to work as a couple, in case the men split up. Though I’ve found that they’re sticking together. Once Larry and I got the case, we were shadowing the cousin first, since he’d received the payout, knowing if he suddenly was chumming it up with a male who fit Oscar’s description, it could be him. I really thought they wouldn’t see each other for a good long while after getting so much money. For the first two months, they didn’t have any contact. Then they must have thought they were out of the woods. Rhys and William seem to be really good friends, not just business partners. Maybe they assumed recei
ving the payout meant they were in the clear. Even after a payout, investigators will continue to search for the truth if no body is found. Or if foul play might have been involved.”
“Wait, if they got rid of the other investigator, wouldn’t these men be worried another investigator would come after them?” Blake asked.
“That’s why the cousin left Florida and they ended up here. They were trying to hide their tracks.”
“And you knew this how?” Blake asked.
“Facebook. I found the cousin’s name, to begin with. Not Oscar’s, because he had already changed his name. Rhys was a friend of William’s on his Facebook account. William had over a thousand followers, so I created a fake Facebook persona and friended several of his friends until it looked like we had a lot of mutual friends.”
“Sneaky. I’ve got to see this fake Facebook page of yours,” Roxie said, sounding intrigued.
Nicole showed it to her. “Don’t you go and do the same thing.”
Blake smiled at his sister. Nicole seemed to have her pegged.
Roxie rolled her eyes. “Your picture looks like you are fun-loving. Single. But it doesn’t look like you, exactly. Black hair? Bobbed?”
“Wig.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t been hit up a thousand times,” Roxie said, while Blake, Landon, and Kayla took a look at Nicole’s profile and Blake thought the same thing.
“I have. Anyway, once we had lots of the same friends, I friended William and he accepted my friend request. Then it was a matter of going through all the friends on his list and checking out their profiles. I narrowed it down to a guy who had just started his account a couple of months earlier. No earlier posts than that.” Nicole showed them some of the comments Rhys and William had made.
“Which means he just suddenly came into existence,” Blake said.
“Right. Luckily, no one seemed to think anything of the fact that I had started my Facebook account even more recently than that. Rhys mentioned kayaking with William. And that raised a red flag, since that’s how Oscar supposedly died. The two of them made comments that appeared to be inside jokes about ways to die a dramatic death while kayaking or white-water rafting.
“Then I began researching what I could on Rhys. He had a new driver’s license in Little Rock, Arkansas. It looked like he had moved there after the other PI disappeared in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Then Rhys’s posts were all about skiing and the places that he’d been. He didn’t mention anything about being an MP in the army. He didn’t share his birth date, but his driver’s license says he was born a month and two years later than his original birth date. A lot of times, these guys will be so arrogant, thinking they’ve pulled one over on the system, that they’ll post where they’re living or vacationing.”
“‘Skiing at the ski resort in Silver Town, Colorado.’” Blake shook his head while reading more of the comments William and Rhys had made.
“Yep. Since it’s winter, I figure that’s why he’s not kayaking, but come spring or summer?” Nicole said.
“Hopefully, he’ll be in prison before that happens,” Roxie said.
“I agree. If I get the evidence I need and have him arrested before he gets away again.”
“His Facebook profile picture is of a guy skiing, ski goggles, ski mask, ski hat, so you can’t tell who he really is,” Blake said, looking at the masked figure wearing gray and black ski pants and jacket. “Some of William’s friends might know Oscar, a.k.a. Rhys.”
“Right. But they might not know that Rhys is Oscar. Just that he’s a good friend of William. Some of the men listed as William’s friends were ones who had been at a party the night Oscar’s parents died in their home due to a fire. A lot of discussion about what had happened that night was posted on William’s page. Nothing incriminating though. Just lots of discussion how awful it was that they had died and William and Oscar sharing a bunch of wonderful childhood memories.”
“You think Oscar had something to do with their deaths?” Blake asked.
“Possibly.”
“Do you think the discussion about how they were upset over his parents’ deaths was contrived?” Blake skimmed backward to see earlier messages.
“Faked wonderful childhood memories? Could be to show anyone who might investigate William and his cousin’s social networking sites that Oscar was the adoring son and his cousin was their loving nephew.”
Nicole was looking over Blake’s shoulder, and he loved the way her body was pressed against his. He was trying to concentrate solely on the business at hand, but she was definitely making that difficult. Not that he wanted to give that intimacy up.
Roxie was looking over his other shoulder at the comments.
Blake found the pictures of the kayaking trip where Oscar supposedly had drowned, the overturned red kayak wedged between rocks, the throw rope in the water, the men freeing the kayak, turning it over, and then realizing Oscar wasn’t pinned beneath it. “Someone was taking pictures.”
Blake looked at pictures of Oscar’s funeral that a friend had taken. William was wiping away tears in a couple of them. “Man, these guys are con artists.”
“Yeah, they are,” Nicole agreed.
Blake looked much further back on William’s page and found pictures of him and Oscar kayaking at the same location. “Okay, so this was two weeks earlier.”
“The staging operation, I figured,” Nicole said.
“Sure looks like it to me.” Blake could really get into this sleuthing business.
“You wouldn’t think they’d post all this stuff,” Roxie said. “It’s a dead giveaway.”
“I think it’s all a cover-up for when they actually did the deed. If you look further back, William posted about Oscar’s younger brother Eli’s drowning—which was real. There are pictures of Eli’s funeral on William’s page, but if you read the conversation between William and his cousin, when he was still Oscar and shortly after Eli’s death, you’ll see a lot of anger concerning the parents being mad at Oscar for allowing his brother to die.”
“Wait, the younger brother died in a drowning too?” Blake asked.
“Yep.”
Blake went back to see the comments on William’s page, referring to the brother drowning earlier on.
Oscar: If my mom hadn’t forced me to take Eli to the damn lake, none of this would have happened.
William: I agree, man. You shouldn’t have had to be your brother’s keeper. Hell, Tyson nearly broke my nose when he hit me with the ball. The ass. My eyes were swollen, and I could barely see! Let alone watch out for your brother. Besides, Eli was being a nuisance like usual and wanting to tag along. Then he sulked off when we wouldn’t include him in the game of toss.
Oscar: Yeah. It wasn’t my fault.
That made Blake want to see how many times before that they had written about Eli tagging along with them. There were no pictures of Oscar and his brother, just of Oscar and William. There was no indication that Blake could see of Oscar complaining to William about taking care of his younger brother. Blake mentioned that to Nicole.
“Yeah, I had the same thought when I was looking at earlier comments on William’s Facebook page, figuring if the parents were always forcing him to take Eli with them, he would have said something about it.”
“What about Eli’s Facebook account?”
“There is none that I could find.”
Blake handed Nicole’s phone back to her. “Great detective work.”
“Thank you. You’re not bad yourself.”
“A PI in the making.”
Nicole smiled at him.
“All right, so I’ve got video security monitoring duty.” Roxie sounded resigned to her assignment, though Blake knew she would do a good job of it. “Give me your phone number so I can contact you.”
Nicole exchanged her phone number with everyone. “
Roxie, you’ll need to wear a disguise whenever you’re roaming the lodge when Rhys is around.”
Roxie smiled a little evilly, Blake thought. “Okay, what else can I do?” she asked.
“I need his fingerprints or a sample of his DNA after he has eaten off a utensil or had something to drink. The military has been collecting DNA from soldiers since 1992, in addition to dental records and fingerprints, so if we can catch a break, we should be able to prove beyond a doubt that he is still very much alive. But he’s been really careful about not leaving any evidence lying around. And I haven’t wanted to go into his room and get caught.”
“Housekeeping service? One of us could pose as a housekeeper,” Blake offered.
“They’ve got a Do Not Disturb sign posted all the time on their doorknob. We don’t want to have someone slip in there and get caught. That might tip Rhys off so that I wouldn’t be able to find them again,” Nicole said.
“It sounds to me like he is being somewhat cautious about anyone learning he’s here.” Blake couldn’t imagine going through such a farce and getting a big payout and then being really careless about it. Mentioning on Facebook where Rhys was going to be skiing was plain dumb. Then again, he thought no one had discovered his alias.
“Right. People often go back to their old habits. Not only that, but again, there’s the arrogance factor. That helps us as investigators to catch them.”
Because Nicole was in their territory and her partner was out of commission, Blake thought they needed to contact Darien and Lelandi, their pack leaders, and get the whole pack involved in watching Nicole and her partner’s backs. Even though the lupus garous usually didn’t eliminate human criminals in their territory, instead turning them over to other authorities in the location where the crime had been committed, they protected their own kind. Well, humans, too, if they needed protection from the bad guys.
Kayla motioned to the office door. “Nice meeting you, Nicole. I’ve got to get to work on a marketing plan, and I hope you get this resolved soon. But I’ll help in any way that I can. I’m going to the house to unpack first though.”