Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (52 page)

Maddox just shook his head and turned to Solomon. "Did the ballistics report on the Finklesteins come in?"

"No traces in the system. The
gun
wa
s probably a throwaway. The bullets in the Finklesteins
didn't match the bullets in Martin Dean."

"The Finklesteins shot Dean. They couldn't shoot themselves," I pointed out, just in case no one spotted the obvious.

"She's smart," said Solomon.
He winked at me.

I suspected he was being sarcastic
,
but I thanked him
sweetly
anyway. Two could play
at
that game.

"She's got a point,” said Maddox and I smiled at him. “
Our
perp
hasn't left any prints, his gun isn't in the system
,
and we have no idea who he is."

"And no one saw him leave the chocolates?" I asked.

Maddox shook his head. "
T
he car
watching
your apartment
left
an hour
after
us
.
We had someone do a tail
,
but they lost it.
No one was watching."
Now he sounded annoyed.

"What about Tanya Henderson?" I asked.

"What about her?"

"Did anyone cross reference the bullet in her during the autopsy?"

Maddox looked over at Solomon. "Did they?" he asked.

"I'll check," said Solomon. "No one mentioned anything."

"So what now? We wait for another body to show up?" I didn't need an answer. I just sighed. This majorly sucked.

"We have some leads to work on," said Maddox, right before he and Solomon sloped off to the kitchen. Alone, the only thing I
could
do was turn on the television. I flicked through the channels, finally
selecting
car racing. Not my cup of
tea
, but there was something soothing about watching the cars whiz around the track, one after another, time and time again, knowing exactly wh
ere
they were
g
oing.

There was something
else
about the cars that niggled at me all morning. At last
,
I
was sure
that I knew something else, something creeping on the periphery of my mind, but the thought stayed half
-
baked, just like the idea I was formulating about the policies I felt sure were fraudulent.

Finally, like a little light
bulb going off in my head, I knew the answer. "I've got it!" I
exclaimed
, racing through to the kitchen where Maddox and Solomon looked up at me in surprise as I burst in. "I've got it," I repeated.

Maddox
looked at me expectantly
. "Got what?"

As soon as I realized, all the pieces clicked into place. I knew who was involved in the Green Hand Insurance scam and how the whole scheme had come about. I knew who was after me and I knew why. And it was all down to one
casual
little photograph in the files I'd
innocently
given to Martin Dean, the same files that had been stolen, the same files that I imagined the task force perused
repeatedly, but
came up with nothing.
I knew the perpetrator had put it together too.

"Everything," I said. "
Adam, d
o you have copies of the files I worked on for Dean?"

"Yes. I have them on my laptop in the living room."

"Pull them up," I told
him
. We huddled around the laptop while the files whirred into vie
w,
with
me wedged between the men on the couch.
I tried
not
to
savor
it.

"Which one?" he asked, the pointer h
overing
over the window.

I pointed to the file in the top right. "Thi
s
one
here
." Maddox double
-
clicked and we waited for it to open. "Scroll to the second page," I told him. The page moved down and then the photograph
appeared
. Below that was the photograph that explained everything.

"It wasn't anything to do with legislature, or research or all those surveys Green Hand does. It was this silly puff piece for the feature-styl
e,
ad Green Hand wanted to place in the Montgomery Gazette. The one where Martin Dean wanted to look like every householder's best friend."

"Keep going," urged
Maddox
.

"Green Hand wanted Dean to look like your
average Joe
," I explained. "He was supposed to be the guy next door, your friend, your brother, the man you trusted to look after you. The guy you wanted to buy insurance from. The idea was to show a montage of pictures that
portrayed
that
,
alongside the
slogan of
how Green Hand insurance would make you feel secure. Here's one where he's playing basketball with underprivileged kids. Scroll down. And here's one where he's
planting a new tree in the park
at the corner of the kids' playground Green Hand helped fund. But it's this picture that tells us everything."

I took over the mouse and glided the page up until the not-so-innocent p
hoto embedded in my report
filled the screen. "This is Martin Dean at his car club.
He was
a member for years. They restore vintage cars and drive them, put on races, stuff like that. Look who he's with." Tara Henderson had even mentioned how cool her
sister thought Dean's car was.
I pointed to the man next to Dean. "That's Ron Harris. He's an award winning insurance broker. Green Hand underwrites his insurance deals. I think he wrote the fake insurance certificates, set up fake addresses, and got the fake policies into the system. All they had to do was wait it out, then
make their
claim
s
and
get
paid. He was killed recently, a hit
-
and
-
run. But look who else is in the picture."

Simultaneously, Maddox and Solomon leaned forward. "That's the mayor, Chris Mathis," said Maddox and I nodded.

"Right. Old money, you think?
T
own gossip says the family money
wa
s running out. They can barely keep the estate afloat."
Town gossip was actually my mom, but I didn’t think that lent a lot of credibility to my claim.

"How
was
Mathis
part of it?" asked Maddox.

"He
was
the money man. Well, what little he ha
d
left of it. He help
ed
create the fake policies too and fund
ed
them until it
was
time to claim. He was killed in a hit
-
and
-
run too. Kind of a coincidence, right? Three men in this picture are dead." I pointed to the fourth man. "Ten points if you guess who he is."

"Tell me," said Maddox.

I smiled. "He's Hector Ramos, president of Montgomery
First
Bank."

"Another money man," said Solomon.

"That's right, but Ramos doesn't just fund the policies. I checked a bunch of accounts
that paid out recently
,
all
paid through his bank, all fake accounts
,
I’ll bet
.
I’ve been thinking.
He could manage the
expenses
to fund the policies and
then re-
gather it when it got paid
back
, maybe transferring it to another account or offshore. This is how they
remained
un
connected, how no one
could
put the gang together. You were looking for people who knew each other
,
but on paper
,
they didn't. They didn't go to school with each other, or college. They d
id
n't particularly socialize with one another either. All they ha
d
in common
wa
s their car
club and it's not member
-
based. T
here's no register
. I
t's just a loose, informal, thing for a bunch of guys who love old cars. This picture is only around because someone snapped it randomly and it made its way into an old edition of the Gazette
, which is
where I found it."

"We know what happened to Harris and Mathis. You're right
,
that it's too much of a coincidence they were killed. My money is on Ramos getting rid of the other three," said Maddox.

I had come to the same conclusion, but now I wasn't so sure. "You think Ramos planned to take the money and run, cut
ting
the other three out of the deal?" I asked.

"No, I think Dean got cold feet when he saw your report and realized they were connected.
I bet h
e called his buddies and said he wanted out. He probably knew we were onto him, but not how or when we would strike. I suspect he wanted to take his money and split, pulling the plug on the whole operation."

"But they didn't want to." I sighed. Money made people do such stupid things.

Maddox shook his head. "No. Maybe
the other three got greedy. We'll run their financials. Maybe it was Mathis' mounting debts. Maybe they just wanted a little more. Or maybe they knew the scam
c
ouldn't last much longer. They were cashing in more and more policies. They would want as much as they could get. With Dean out of the picture, maybe they thought they could keep going
and split it three ways instead of four
."

"There's just one thing I don't get," I said. "With Dean dead, they could keep going
for a while, maybe even get someone else in Green Hand to funnel the fake claims through
. But someone killed Harris and Mathis. I can understand wanting to eliminate Dean
,
but the other two? And Tanya? And who
is
after me?"