“I need to check on Marie. She’s probably sick with worry. So please, if you want to talk later, call me and I promise to make the time, okay? I know your family is close to the Millses, I get that you’re just trying to help. But right now you’re stirring everything up. Maybe you should just let things settle down and it’ll all work out.”
No comment at all about Stan being blackmailed or threatened. No reaction.
He knew.
Because Stan told him? Or because Mitch was behind it?
Earlier today, Simon had been in complete disbelief that Stan had been threatened. He thought it was a ploy, and maybe it was.
Maybe Mitch helped Stan come up with the ploy. After all, he visited him in prison several times.
And Simon visited him twice.
Max rose and so did Mitch. In her heels, she was as tall as he. She used her height to her advantage—it seemed to intimidate some people. She extended her hand; he shook it. Damp, but soft. He didn’t do a lot of manual labor. She considered when she saw Stan—he had callouses on his hands. From working in the yard or working out at a gym or what she didn’t know, but he used his hands. Mitch didn’t. Not that it was a bad thing. Just interesting.
At the door, Max turned and Mitch almost bumped into her. “Who’s Harrison Monroe?”
He stared at her. He was trying hard to keep his face impassive, but his pupils widened and a small tic jerked the side of his mouth up.
“I don’t think I know anyone by that name,” he said.
“Why are you lying?”
She might be playing with fire here, but she was really enjoying how easy Mitch was to rattle.
“I—I’m not. I might have heard the name, I don’t know, I really don’t. Are you always this suspicious of everyone?”
“Not everyone,” Max said, and walked out.
Chapter Fifteen
TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON
Lucy got off the phone with Sean. Nate frowned.
“You didn’t tell him about the accident?”
“He doesn’t need to worry about me when he is dealing with the shooting,” she said. “He’s tracking someone for Max, he didn’t give me the details. He was clipped.”
“Did he get checked out?”
“No.” Which irritated her, but she didn’t really have the right to complain. She hated going to the hospital, too. “I’ll look at it when I get home. Grant’s on life support, and the prognosis isn’t good.”
They were in a small conference room going over all the files from the Denise Albright case from three years ago, waiting for Laura Williams, the White Collar Crimes agent who had originally been assigned the embezzlement case. Lucy was looking through photos of the Albright house, but nothing was jumping out at her.
Rachel Vaughn walked in. “I just read your report, Nate. What happened?”
Nate told her about being followed yesterday but unable to verify the tail, then being followed today and run off the road. “It was a tag team. We’ll be prepared next time.”
“If you’re being followed, that tells me this isn’t a simple homicide.”
“It’s never been simple,” Lucy said.
Nate said, “Lucy and I don’t think they left the country. That tells us that more than one person was involved—likely several people. To stage the house so it appeared that they’d left, to drive the car across the border, to bury the bodies. Honestly, it sounds like organized crime.”
Rachel looked surprised at Nate’s comment, then said. “I’ll reach out to headquarters. We’re going to need more resources if this is organized crime. Denise Albright was an accountant—could she have been working for a criminal organization? What about Kiefer, the company she embezzled from?”
“We’re looking into him, but on the surface he has no ties at all to a criminal network, and he’s the one who lost everything when the money went missing,” Nate said.
Lucy said, “We considered that Denise feared one of her other clients—that’s what we’re going over now—and took the money to run, because she felt threatened.”
“And not go to the police?”
“It’s just speculation right now, but what if she wanted to get her family someplace safe, then turn herself in? Especially if she had committed a crime. Or if she uncovered a crime but was too scared to come forward. The Kiefer money was easy for her to access,” Lucy added.
“We need more to back this up,” Rachel said, “but I’ll find out if there’s anyone or any organization we need to look at. We can compare the names and businesses to her client list.”
“That would be helpful,” Nate said.
Rachel left, passing Laura Williams as she walked in.
“Lucy, Nate, sorry that I haven’t been able to talk at all this week. This trial is insane.”
“We appreciate your time.”
Laura dropped her briefcase and coat on a chair in the corner of the room and sat down with a sigh. “Too bad we couldn’t have met at a bar. After today I need a glass of wine.”
Nate smiled. “We won’t keep you long.”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll live. I hate this part of the job. Sitting around waiting and waiting and then giving your testimony and having some jerk lawyer try to cross you up by throwing irrelevant questions into the mix. But I think we’ll be okay. Go back tomorrow.”
“Thank you for all this.” Lucy waved to the stacks of paper she and Nate had been going through.
“Not me, our analyst pulled everything out. But I read my notes when I had a break today, I’m up to speed.
“First,” Laura said, “while three million dollars is a lot of money, it’s only three million dollars, if that makes sense. We had another case shortly after this that we needed all hands for—a graft and corruption case in Austin. Took down three corrupt officials and a half-dozen employees in a kickback scheme that ultimately cost hundreds of senior citizens their homes when they couldn’t pay fees they should never have been charged. These were things you and I might not notice—but someone on a fixed income, they get slammed and then threatened with levies and fines and it adds up. I wish I could prosecute those bastards all over again.”
“I take it you won.”
“Damn straight. But it took over a year of my life. I was practically living in Austin. And we had the photo of Albright and her family crossing the border. We sent out BOLOs, sent the file down to our legal attaché in Mexico, but there’s not much we can do until they’re spotted, and then we have to play jurisdictional footsies to get them back. Not for a minute did I think they were dead. What do you think happened?”
“We believe they never left the States,” Lucy said.
Laura frowned. “I didn’t make that up. We had the photo. It should be here.”
“It was their vehicle, but they weren’t driving—that’s our theory. Based on our interviews and the timeline, it simply isn’t plausible that they left and returned a week later. Possible, but unlikely. Their vehicle was found dismantled in Mexico, so they’d have to find other transportation—they couldn’t fly because their passports were flagged. So Nate and I think they were killed the day they disappeared. Buried, and someone tried to make us think they left the country.”