Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (54 page)

"None of her effects have been released so we have the key at the
precinct
. Maybe she was after the money too?"

"I don't know, maybe. Maybe Dean told her to hide it, and she never knew what it was for. She might have been threatened
and told
to get it
,
or maybe she thought she was getting a share once she handed over the key."

"But she was killed anyway."

"Yeah."

“The key wasn’t a high priority item.”
Maddox
took
out his cell phone and placed a call, instructing someone to pull the keys and find out what they fitted. And fast.

I
yanked
my notes and the book out of my purse
, settling
in the corner of the sofa adjacent
to
Maddox. I started with the first number I'd identified and checked my notes on the corresponding page. I sighed and
ticked
off a four
-
digit number. It was so obvious, it hadn't even
occurred
to me to check.
The first set was the policy number
, the second the policy date
.
The
third
set of numbers
, which varied between three and six figures, was the claim amount;
in this case eight thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars.

"What's the sigh for?"

I held up my hand, my eyes focused on the sheet. "Do you have an account at Montgomery Bank?" I asked.

"No. Why?"

"Do you know if the account numbers have any pattern?"

"I can find out
,
if you tell me why."

"I'm not sure yet
,
but I think I found something. Hang on." I moved to the next number on my list. The claim amount fitted there too. Just to be sure
,
I checked the next three. All matched up. I moved over to Maddox,
snuggling
on the sofa next to him.

"Don't get mad," I said, "but I found something that belonged to Dean. I wasn't sure what it was at first. It just seemed like a random list of numbers." I flipped to the first page and pointed to the numbers. "They're all like this. A series of numbers then a slash
,
a shorter series, another slash
,
then another series of numbers.” I explained the significance of the numbers. “I don’t what the final set of numbers mean
,
bu
t I think it's probably the fake bank account." I moved my list to the front. "And see here
?
Most of these claims say Boston Test Group or BTG. The test group Scott in t
he call center told me about is really
a front for the fraud op
. It was
a way for Dean and the others to bypass the claims inspectors and make sure they got their money. It's no wonder it looke
d like it was all streamlined.
It was all fake."

"Where did you find this?"

"Um...
at Dean's," I said
vaguely
.

"His office?"

"Not exactly."

"His house?"
Maddox pressed.

"Well..."

"Please tell me you didn't tamper with a crime scene."

"I didn't tamper with a crime scene," I said solemnly, and with the exception of removing two important clues, I hadn't. Besides, the police had already been through Dean's house
before me
,
so really
,
I was in the clear. "Anyway
…
Dean is hardly going to come back from the dead and say
,
‘H
ey, that was in my house
’
."

"I didn't hear that." Maddox studied the list, cross-referenc
ing
it against my notes. "You know what you've got here, right?"

"Yes
," I said, a smile spreading over my face. "The master list of the whole scam."

"
I can’t believe we missed it.
I have to take this to my boss. It's key evidence."

"But, there isn't going to be a trial unless Ramos turns up."

"And when he does, we have enough to put him behind bars for years."

"Awesome."
Since no one else was going to say it, I would. I was good at this.
Really good.

Maddox placed a call to Solomon
,
but evidently
,
he didn't answer
.
Maddox said, "I have to take this in right away. You'll be okay here by yourself. I'll lock up. Just stay away from the windows and don't answer the door."

Panic gripped me. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Isn't it safer
if
I go with you?"

"No. I don't want you seen. Plus
,
your family is ready to lynch me."

"Seriously?
"

"I told
Garrett
you were in my custody until this was all over
,
and he threatened to do scary things to my nuts."

I warmed with pride. My brothers always took it upon themselves to gang up on my boyfriends when I was younger
.
I found solace in that the older two ended up with no-nonsense women, and if Jord got his head around it, he'd complete the set with Lily, who wouldn't put up with any macho shit either. None of us had any choice about Ted, so I was pretty sure my brothers wanted to make sure that I got someone better. Their concern ran side
-
by
-
side with interference and self-preservation.
My future husband would have to a pretty awesome guy to pass their roadblocks.
Clearly
,
Maddox hadn't been warmed to yet.

I wondered what they would think of Solomon.
Solomon could probably take all three of them without breaking a sweat.

"Fine. But hurry please, because if anything happens to me, they'll never find your body." I was p
r
etty sure this was true.

"Point taken."

Maddox walked the house, inside and out, before
showing me how to operate the controls for the cameras on his laptop, and finally
locking up
. He left
me with a key
,
but
gave
firm instructions not to go anywhere
, w
hich he repeated four times, just in case I didn’t get it.
He was gone a total of forty-three minutes, not that I was clock
-
watching,
and returned
just as my mind started to taunt me with every strange creak and groan in the house.

I pounced on him as soon as I opened the door.
"W
hat did your boss say?" I asked.

"Matt
's happy that we have the list. He's passed it onto our tech guys to crunch the numbers. We should know exactly how much the scam is worth inside a day, plus
,
we'll be able to build a paper trail of every account, who opened it
at the bank
, what addresses were used. Maybe
find
a digital
trail
too. The techies are thrilled. They had too much information to wade through before, hundreds of thousands of policies. You blew the case wide open." Maddox hugged me, the clinch lasting a little too long to be friendly, but just as I thought about standing on tiptoes and kissing him, his pants started to vibrate, which, I have to say, wasn't an altogether bad feeling
,
but there was the possibility I'd been indoors too long.

"Solomon," said Maddox,
suddenly attentive
. When he hung up, the news wasn't good.
“
Hector Ramos' body
was
found in a dumpster th
is
morning, and only just identified. To m
ake matters worse, his thumb was
cut off.
”

“He was tortured?”

Maddox nodded. “The coroner thinks it was p
re-mortem.
”

"That's all four of the gang dead," I said, my heart sinking. "Five if we add Dean's girlfriend." Seven
,
if I added Twinkles and Knuckles to the list.

Maddox hugged me tighter
. He didn't need to say it. We were both thinking the same thing. There was definitely someone else out there.

And I really didn't want to make eight.

Chapter Seventeen

I had
been counting
on puzzling through the notebook as my entertainment in the absence of anything, oh, like fun. Instead, Maddox laid his own sanity on the line and played game after game of Twenty
-
One with me with a pack
of cards
he produced from his
laptop bag
.

"What do you normally do with witnesses?" I
asked as I added
another game to my winning streak. "Is there a section in the PD handbook with a list of entertainment
suggestion
s?"

"Nope. I just have to hope that they
stay
more scared of
living
outside than in
,
and that usually keeps them put."

"Even bored rigid?"

"Sorry that you're bored."

I produced the lamest line in the handbook. "It's not you, it's me."

"I get it. It's okay. It's no fun being a witness."

"Too right. Have you heard from Lily? Is she okay?"

"She's fine."

"What about my family?"

Maddox shuffled, cut the deck, shuffled again and dealt.
"
Garrett
is making sure your parents don't know anything."

"Good." I was
anxiously concerned
about my parents being worried. My dad had been a cop for more than thirty years when he retired
,
and he and my mom were finally enjoying a
more quiet
life. Well, for my dad
, anyway
. Life
remained
busy for my mom. I wondered if my dad still kept a gun in the house. "Will the...
whoever it is, go after my family?"

"Unlikely."

"How so?"

"Too many of them. Where would they start? Stop worrying, okay
? W
e'll catch him."

"You have new leads?"

Maddox studied his cards, placing them flat on the counter. "Yes," he said, but I think he was lying.

"Excellent," I lied
,
toss
ing
my cards down, winning
another
game.

I poked around the house while Maddox checked in with his team
. I
found a paperback lodged
and perhaps
forgotten, at the back of
a
cupboard. It was a sappy romance, but given the circumstances, beggars couldn't be choosers. I took it to the living room and curled up
,
reading about heaving bosoms and rakes in frock coats, while Maddox watched reruns of a game on the television.

"What happens if he isn't found?" I
asked, folding
the corner o
f
the page and plac
ing
it on the
couch
next to me.
Paranoia was
creeping
in
the longer I waited
.
"How long do I stay in the safe house?"

"We'll do a risk assessment. If
nothing happens and
it appears
danger-free
, we'll let you go back to your normal routine. Maybe we'll keep an eye on you, just in case, maybe not."

"On the off chance that he shoots me in the head?" I gulped. It seemed pretty risky to let me go back to my life with a murderer out there, even if
they
thought it seemed safe. If the mystery man truly thought I was after the money, or
knew
how to access it, I could be picked off any time.
He might just be waiting for me to surface.
The alternative
neither of us wanted to broach
was
the possibility
of
never seeing my family again. Never seeing Lily again
…
never meeting my new baby niece or nephew.
Starting new, alone, in some distant town where nobody knew my real name. And if I w
ere
really unlucky, filing in crappy offices for the rest of my life.

I wondered if Maddox would miss me,
or even
think about me.

"It's not gonna happen," said Maddox
, passing the cards to me. I
shuffled and dealt as he said, "If Ramos was alive, we'd have picked him up
,
and you would have been home free by now. We just have to wait it out a little longer. This person is desperate,
assuming there really is someone other than Ramos
.
H
e's close to the cash
,
but he can't get it. He's going to make a wrong move."

"And you'll be there to catch him?"

"You bet."

"Will I see you again after this is all over?"

"If it goes to trial, we'll both have to testify." That wasn't what I meant
,
and Maddox knew it, but
if he w
ere
n’t going to say he hoped to see me again,
I
wouldn
't
be the one to
press the point.
I had some pride.
Instead
,
I won the game and Maddox declared himself out.

I picked up my book and read a while longer until Solomon turned up with some take
-
out cartons
,
a box of breakfast cereal,
and
a bag with orange juice and milk. They conferred for a while and didn't seem to mind that I eavesdropped
,
seeing as I learned that little had happened
.
T
he techies had located all the accounts in the notebook, crunched the numbers and estimated that the fraud
now
stood at a cool three point nine million.

"That's not a lot to split between four people," I pointed out, calculating each share. "Not even a million each."

"Sounds
like
plenty to me," said Maddox a
s
Solomon shrugged, apparently not willing to commit to a price. "It's a lot for one person."

I got plates and
forks
from the drainboard
, feeling oddly domestic
. "Are you staying?" I asked Solomon.

"Not tonight. I'll swap shifts with Maddox tomorrow."

"You're going to stay with me?" I said,
taken aback
. Somehow
,
being alone with Solomon hadn't fit into my freaking out schedule yet.

Solomon smiled.
Oh boy
. I tried not to imagine being alone with him, in an isolated house, with nothing to entertain us
,
but each other. Instead, I tried to focus on
feeling
safe with Maddox
and
reminding myself
that another night in the safe house meant another night closer to home
.

I knew Solomon would protect me, but
given the way he kissed
,
I wasn't too sure of my personal safety with him. There was a good chance he could charm me into anything, and, come to think of it, it wouldn't take
much
charming.

I figured a night with Solomon would be wildly entertaining
;
but come the morning, he would just be an indentation in the
pillow and
mattress.
He intrigued me. I knew he could make the perfect shot and drive a motorcycle. I knew he was smart and I knew his name. I suspected it would be fleeting and brilliant, but e
xciting and untamed didn’t stick around.
I wasn't sure that was what I wanted.

Maddox, however, seemed like a man who would happily wake up with a woman, snuggle, make breakfast and
do
the whole nine yards
. I knew plenty of cops like him. I understood his life. I understood that type of man.
T
hat’s
what I wanted
. I had thoroughly enjoyed waking up with him this morning
,
even though it had only gone two yards.
I w
ould have enjoyed it a lot more if Solomon hadn't arrived
.
My
resolve weakened a little more
. I wondered what Lily would say about my predicament. She would
have
love
d
it
.

"We need to rotate shifts," explained Maddox. "We don't get a lot of sleep doing this."

I nodded,
collecting
plates from the drainer, passing them around
,
though I suddenly d
idn't feel hungry at all.
Solomon didn't eat with us this time
,
but he stayed a while, then left, saying something about
needing to
sleep before getting
an early start on the mounting
evidence. I was still picking at dinner when he left, wondering how much
punishing
exercise I would need
just
to work off all the fast food.

"You're quiet," remarked Maddox. "Should I be worried?"

"No."

"Will I have to handcuff you to the bed tonight?"

I looked up. "Kinky."

"To stop you from running, but now you mention it..."

"I don't think there's a headboard."

"Too bad."

"Should I be worried about you?"

"No, my intentions towards you are very, very good."

"What a shame," I said,
leaving
the room to go splash some cold water on my face.