“It’s a possibility. But even if that was going to be his response, I don’t think he could stop himself from taking the meeting. Just to see what he could learn.”
Jayne’s phone rang. She looked at the screen. Birdie’s picture was on it. Jayne answered. “Hi, Birdie. What did you find out?”
She listened, nodding. “Interesting. Hang on. Let me put you on speaker.” She tapped the screen and held the phone out. “Go ahead.”
“Okay,” Birdie started. “Carrie Caruthers is quite the wily one with a bit of a past. Aka Cora Bright, aka Krissy Lawton, but her real name is Carolyn Hernandez, and she’s had some troubles.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“She’s got a police record that includes charges for bad checks, fraud, and failure to appear on a shoplifting charge. Believe it or not, she did six months in a New Mexico women’s correctional facility.”
“Wow,” I said. “And Tony hired her knowing all that.”
“He might not have,” Birdie said. “All of that information was under her other name.”
“I think he knew something,” I added. “When we overheard his conversation with her, he brought up the point that he’d taken a chance on her.”
“Or,” Jayne said, “he might have just meant she didn’t have previous magician’s assistant experience.”
Birdie spoke again. “Well, I can tell you this much. She legally changed her name to Carrie Caruthers a year before she started working for Tony. Unless he paid someone to dig into her past, her record wouldn’t have come up with an ordinary background check.”
My brows went up. “This certainly makes her seem like a possible suspect.”
Jayne nodded. “We need to look at her more closely. Birdie, any chance you took a peek at her finances?”
“I did. Nothing exciting. She makes more as a magician’s assistant than I would have thought. Oh, and she did spend a couple hundred bucks at a home and garden center recently.”
I looked at Jayne, eyes wide. She looked back at me with the same expression. I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Yeah,” Jayne said. “I’m picturing shovels, tarps, rope, duct tape. We need to visit her house immediately. Lou can wait.”
I nodded in full agreement. “Thanks, Birdie. Keep digging.”
“Will do.” She hung up.
I grabbed my phone, pulling up my map app. “Babe, give me Carrie’s address.”
She read it off to me, and I plugged it into the GPS.
Thankfully, it wasn’t too far away. She lived in the kind of neighborhood I expected. Not fancy but not exactly middle class either. No guard, no gate. Unfortunately, the RV was a little conspicuous. I parked a few streets away, and we used the cover of night to walk into the neighborhood unnoticed.
At least I hoped we were unnoticed. I looked around for security cameras but didn’t see any. Didn’t mean I hadn’t missed them.
Carrie’s house took us about a ten-minute walk. It was a typical Vegas two-story cookie-cutter starter mansion. Actually, mansion was a bit of a stretch. It was a nice house, but it wasn’t exactly a palatial estate. Still, probably more house than one person needed.
The house was dark, which wasn’t what I’d expected either. After all, she’d just come from Tony’s and had been very upset. I thought maybe she’d be sitting around moping with some ice cream or something like that. Maybe a glass of wine. Maybe a whole bottle.
But the lights were off, and the house was quiet. I looked at Jayne. “You think she’s asleep?”
Her brows arched. “I can certainly slip inside and find out.”
Thanks to her uncle being Santa Claus, Jayne had the ability to squeeze through very small spaces. Like under doors. Or through a cracked window. Actually, it didn’t even need to be cracked open. Just so long as air could get through, so could she. The Saint Nick or Santa slide, she called it. That ability was how he got down chimneys and into houses that didn’t have chimneys.
I wasn’t sure if it made him dizzy the same way it did Jayne, but it usually took her a few moments for her head to stop spinning once she’d done.
Despite that downside, it was pretty handy, I had to say. But handy or not, I didn’t like the idea of putting my wife in danger. Just because the house was dark didn’t mean the house was empty. “I don’t like you going in there if someone’s home.”
Jayne shrugged. “What other choice do we have? Besides, I have magic. Which I won’t even need because I can take Carrie. She’s a twig with fake boobs.”
My wife had such a way with words. “How about we take a walk around the house first? See what we can see? Then maybe you go in from the back so I don’t have to stand here on the sidewalk looking like I’m waiting for someone in the middle of the night in a neighborhood I don’t live in.”
“It’s too bad we don’t have a dog. No one would question you if you had a dog on a leash.”
“Yeah, it’s also too bad cats don’t work that way. Although this is Vegas, and weird stuff usually gets overlooked.”
“Should we go get Spider? He would totally walk on a leash if we asked him to. And promised him treats.”
He’d probably bark if there were treats involved. “Not now. Come on, let’s have a look at the rest of the house.”
We walked around the side. There were parallel grooves in the grass and dirt.
Jayne pointed at them, keeping her voice down. “Something heavy has been carted through here recently.”
I nodded. “Definitely. What, though? They’re too narrow to be car tires.”
“Maybe a wheelbarrow? Or one of those dolly things.”
“Wheelbarrow.” I didn’t add what else I was thinking, about how a wheelbarrow would make carting a body easier.
We followed the lines all the way to the backyard, where it became clear a major remodeling job was underway. Bags of mulch and stones, a variety of potted plants, larger ornamental stones, and a pile of split timbers that would probably be used for outlining paths all waited to be put to use.
“I guess we know what she spent her money on at the home and garden store.”
Jayne nodded. “I’m kind of glad. Better than finding out she’s burying a body.” She looked at the house. “I still think I need to get in there.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think Carrie is responsible. I would like to know for sure, though.” My phone vibrated. I pulled it out and checked the screen. “Forget that. My dad just got a ransom note.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jayne
Sin drove faster than was probably wise, but I didn’t say a thing. We both wanted to get back as quickly as possible. A ransom note was a big deal. I was so glad Birdie was there. She would know what to do as far as keeping the note safe and clean for things like fingerprints and any other evidence that might be collected.
If Anson ever decided to get the police involved. Otherwise, I wasn’t sure fingerprints mattered. Unless Birdie could pull them. She probably could. There wasn’t much Birdie couldn’t do when it came to this kind of stuff.