Page 27

By Wednesday noon,Ida Belle, Gertie, Ronald, and I were all in my hot tub, trying to recover from our adventures. Carter was down at the sheriff’s department, putting together the documentation surrounding Holly’s arrest and all the subsequent fallout. Merlin was in the living room, sitting in the middle of the floor, pouting because the rug was gone. Ronald had found a new dress for his party that he could wear with flats, and Sinful had returned to normal.

“Ally told me Celia went to NOLA yesterday to talk to an attorney about suing Skinny, Flint, the hounds, and the chickens,” Ronald said.

Well, Sinful normal.

“Boy, Easter was rough this year,” Gertie said as she tossed back a shot from a flask. “Anyone want some of this? It’s Nora’s latest painkiller.”

“No!” We all answered at once.

“Suit yourself, but when you’re still sore tomorrow and I’m skipping, you’ll wish you’d tried it.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said, but I noticed Ronald’s eyebrow had lifted at the word skipping.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “You’ve got to walk down stairs in a dress tonight.”

“Another round of champagne then,” he said and leaned out of the hot tub to start the refills.

He’d just gotten the champagne distributed when I heard laughing and looked up to see Detective Casey rounding the corner of my house.

“This is what you people do in the middle of the day on a Wednesday?” she asked.

“It is when you’ve had the week we have,” Gertie said.

“Fair enough,” she said and dropped into a patio chair. “I was at it until late last night, went home long enough to shower and change, and went right back at it this morning. But boy, have we unraveled a mess. I’m dead on my feet and probably should have called, but I wanted to tell you everything in person.”

“We definitely appreciate it,” I said. “And I owe you big for all your help. If your daughter hadn’t come up with that employee and if she hadn’t called, we would be having an entirely different conversation today.”

“Don’t remind me. She’s been crowing around the house ever since I told her about it. That girl’s ego doesn’t need more stroking.”

“You know you’re proud of her,” Gertie said.

Casey grinned. “Got that right. So I’ve got a doozy of a story to tell you, and it goes back almost fifteen years. I’m speculating on some of it because Devin isn’t talking, but between questioning other people and information from the Spaldings and the FBI, I think I’ve got it all worked out.”

“Holy crap, this sounds good,” Gertie said.

“First off, Devin Roberts isn’t Devin Roberts. His real name is Devin Porter. His father was the groundskeeper and handyman for the Robertses, and his mother was their maid. His father died saving Mr. Roberts’s life. They were installing a statue in the front yard of the Robertses’ house when a drunk driver jumped the curb and ran into the yard. Devin’s father pushed Mr. Roberts out of the way, and he was struck by the car and killed.”

“That’s horrible,” Ida Belle said.

Casey nodded. “The driver had no insurance and no money, so there wasn’t going to be a payout to make up for the financial loss. They lived on the estate, so housing wasn’t a concern, but the Robertses felt horrible about it and wanted to do something more to help. Devin had been desperate to attend St. Marks, figuring if he graduated from there, he could get a scholarship to a good university, so Mr. Roberts agreed to cover the tuition if he was accepted.”

Ronald whistled. “That’s a good 50k a year.”

“And that’s when Devin Porter became Devin Roberts,” I surmised.

“You got it,” Casey said. “He knew Devin Porter didn’t stand a chance of acceptance, but Devin Roberts would be guaranteed entry as a legacy. So he faked some documents and got his pricey education.”

“Wasn’t that risky?” Ida Belle asked. “Seems like it would have been easy to get busted.”

“Not necessarily. The Robertses were already in the process of buying vineyards in Italy and they were only maintaining a residence in the US long enough to sell their other businesses, which was going to take about three years.”

“Which just happened to correspond to Devin graduating from high school,” I said.

“Exactly. The Robertses were always out of the country. St. Marks is a boarding school, and when Devin wasn’t living on campus, he was living on the estate. So if friends came by to pick him up, he came out of the Robertses’ house. If the school called, they got his mother, who pretended to be Mrs. Roberts.”

“And he made friends with Brett Spalding,” I said. “Another young man with part-time parents and who didn’t live flashy. That way, Devin wouldn’t be pushed to spend money he didn’t have. Brilliant.”

“I wondered about that part,” Casey said, “but that makes sense. If Brett Spalding was a low-key spender, then latching onto him was the perfect play for Devin to maintain his cover. After graduation, the Robertses moved to Italy, Brett went off to Harvard, and Devin claimed he went to Oxford, but obviously we know that was a lie. A smaller university in the Midwest gave him a full ride and that’s where he went. The interesting thing was he was actually accepted to two Ivy League schools but with only partial aid. LSU offered him a free ride as well, but he turned them all down.”

“Why wouldn’t he go to LSU instead of some lesser university?” Gertie asked.

“Because then he wouldn’t risk running into anyone from St. Marks,” I said. “Kelsey said Devin and Brett kept in touch all through college. Devin had already planned to return to NOLA and hit up his good friend for a job. But if anyone from NOLA saw him at school, he couldn’t pitch the Oxford lie.”

“Jesus,” Ida Belle said. “Talk about running the long con.”

Casey nodded. “He even had his name legally changed, which makes sense, of course, but he did it as soon as he turned eighteen, so I think Fortune called this one correctly.”

“I wonder what his mother thought about that?” Gertie said.

“We’ll never know,” Casey said. “She passed several years back from cancer.”

“And the aunt?” I asked.

“I talked to her and asked about it,” Casey said. “She knew about the high school thing, but when she noticed Devin’s last name was still different on the Spalding website, he’d told her that he had to enter university with the same credentials he’d used in high school, which meant he needed to continue to be Devin Roberts so employers could verify his education. His aunt figured they owed him anyway and there was no real harm in it, so she just accepted it.”

“Did she just accept him stealing her employee pass to gain entry to the locked-down wing where Holly was?”

“Definitely not. When we finally got around to explaining all the details of what had happened and all the things we believed Devin had done, she broke down. I felt sorry for her. She was sobbing and praying and thanking God for taking her sister before she’d seen what Devin had become.”

“That’s rough,” Gertie said.

Casey nodded. “So this is where things start to get really interesting. I’ve been chatting with our friends at the FBI, who were exceptionally forthcoming now that we’ve figured out what was happening. Here’s the deal—after college Devin started up at Spalding, got his first taste at making good money, and developed a gambling problem. He owed some bad people a chunk of change, got desperate, and figured out a way to skim money off client accounts.”

“I thought he wasn’t talking?” I asked.

“He’s not, but the FBI’s forensic accounting and IT people are incredible. They found the skimming right away, and it had been going on for years. They also found a keylogger that he’d installed on all the computers in the company. Did I mention Devin got a dual major—finance and IT?”

“So he was smart but dumb,” Ronald said.

“Educated fool,” Ida Belle agreed.

“Let me guess—you think Lindsay discovered he was skimming the money,” I said. “He tried hitting on her, hoping she’d quit, and when that didn’t work, he logged into her account and made a bad trade, hoping she’d be fired.”

Casey grinned. “You’re quick. But then Brett didn’t fire her, and Devin was getting desperate. He had some of the skimmed money in offshore accounts but not enough to bounce and live well in another country. His spending habits had gotten the better of him. So he moved on to some bigger, older accounts, shooting for a larger payout. And that’s what alerted the FBI.”

She leaned forward and I could practically feel her excitement. “The Spaldings had been laundering money for bad people, but they were FBI informants.”

“What?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Holy crap!”

Ida Belle, Gertie, and Ronald all sounded off at once.

“They were in Aruba when they were approached by a drug cartel about laundering for them,” Casey said. “They went straight to the FBI. Spalding had a friend who worked there that’s since passed away. The FBI asked them if they’d be willing to handle the transactions so that the Bureau could figure out all the different branches of the organization. Once they were established with one cartel, they got the same request from another.”

“Then one of the cartels killed the owner of another investment firm,” Casey continued. “When the FBI told the Spaldings, they said they wanted out. They’d had a kid—something they hadn’t planned on doing given what they were involved in—and now that Brett was getting older, they were worried about his safety.”

“Well, that explains all the traveling,” I said. “And the absentee parent thing. Did Brett ever know?”

“He had no idea. The Spaldings were out before Brett graduated from Harvard. They didn’t want him to have any part of it. The FBI filtered a story through the criminal community that they were sniffing around Spalding Financial so the rats mostly abandoned ship. The Spaldings told the shady clients that Mr. Spalding was dealing with health issues, and they were turning the business over to their very young and inexperienced son. The crux of it being that Spalding would no longer be handling certain types of accounts. All the cartels took their money out except for two who were heavily invested in businesses with really high returns. The Spaldings didn’t like it, but the FBI told them to just let the accounts sit rather than raise eyebrows by insisting they remove the funds.”

“If they’ve been working with the FBI all this time, then why were they arrested?” I asked.

“Because there was recent activity on one of those dormant accounts. And then the Spaldings showed back up in NOLA. The FBI detained them for their own protection until they could sort out exactly what was going on. And they had to detain Brett as well in order to shut down Spalding and figure everything out.”

“So why did the Spaldings come back?” I asked.

“You’re not going to believe this one. Because they met the Robertses at a party for one of their vineyards, got to talking, and realized they were speaking to Devin’s parents. Except when they asked about their son?—”

“The Robertses told them they didn’t have one,” I finished. “Over a decade of hiding his true identity, and his lies were exposed half a continent away. What are the odds? They met Devin at that hotel where they were arrested to confront him, didn’t they?”

“Yes. They wanted to tell him that they knew the truth and give him a chance to explain. He said he’d lied in order to get educational advantages that he couldn’t afford otherwise, but that he’d always been loyal to Brett and to Spalding.”

“He must have been thrilled when the FBI detained them,” Ida Belle said. “He figured even if the FBI found discrepancies, they’d never tie it back to him since he’d been using other people’s log-ins to skim the money. In the meantime, he could play the poor fatherless victim to Brett to explain all the other lies. He’d get away with it all.”

I nodded. “Except that Holly Beech started remembering.”

“Nailed it,” Casey said. “I really wish you weren’t so dead set against being a cop. You’d make a great detective.”

Ida Belle snorted. “You have these things called ‘rules.’”

“So what about Lindsay’s murder?” I asked. “Do you have enough to pin it on Devin? Holly might eventually remember, but I’m not sure her testimony would stand under questioning.”

“I think we can make the case that Devin kidnapping Holly could have been for no other reason than to silence her. And Cantrell still has the knife in evidence. There’s always the chance it will have Devin’s DNA on it, but even if it doesn’t, I think what we do have on him, even if some of it is circumstantial, is damning enough for a jury to convict.”

“Even if they don’t convict him for Lindsay’s murder, he still kidnapped Holly and embezzled money from Spalding,” Gertie said.

“Cartel money,” Ida Belle pointed out. “Devin will be lucky if he makes it a day inside.”

“Devin must have had a stroke when Ben turned out to be Ryan’s son and Kelsey hired you to investigate Lyndsay’s murder,” Gertie said.

I nodded. “I’m certain that’s why Devin was pushing Brett to shut up and write checks, and why he said he’d fund the surgery when Kelsey’s accounts were seized. He hoped that if the surgery was successful, everyone would turn their attention away from Lindsay’s murder.”

Ronald snorted. “That was never going to happen. Once you take on a case, you don’t stop until you have all the answers.”

“Sometimes I don’t have them all,” I argued.

Ida Belle shook her head. “Sometimes you don’t have all the proof. But I have no doubt you’ve answered all your questions.”

Casey rose. “I’ve turned over everything we have to the ADA. Alexander has already asked for Ryan to be exonerated. I know the ADA will have to wade through it all and there will definitely be some questions, but it looks good. It looks really good. And now that you guys know as much as I do, I’m going to head home and hit the shower and the bed.”

“Thanks again,” I said. “I owe you and your daughter dinner.”

Casey laughed. “You better pick. She’s got expensive taste.”

She gave us a wave and headed off.

“Poor Holly,” Gertie said. “She did see her sister get murdered.”

I nodded. “My guess is she went into the house after Lindsay was attacked to see if she was alive. She probably went into shock then and either pulled the knife out of Lindsay’s body or picked it up off the floor. Then she went home, and Jared found her that way.

“And with her memory gone, she’s probably spent all these years worried that she’d done it,” Gertie said. “But one thing I don’t understand—who sent that picture of Kelsey kissing Ryan to Brett?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say it was Devin,” I said. “Once a gambler, always a gambler.”

Ida Belle nodded. “You still think it was Raymond Beech who framed Ryan?”

“Yes. Remember when we asked Father Michael about staying in the hotel that night? And he said ‘Proverbs 23:4’ right before we decided he wasn’t going to spout anything but nonsense?”

“How could I forget?”

“Well, I looked up that verse. It says, ‘Labor not to be rich.’ Then I checked to see who the church held their investments with. Back then, it was Raymond Beech’s firm.”

Ida Belle shook her head. “So Father Michael saw Raymond Beech that night and somewhere in the recesses of his mind it triggered a thought of money. Unbelievable. But I bet you’re right.”

Ronald lifted his glass. “To Fortune and her constant dedication to taking on nonviable cases to save the underdog.”

“To Fortune.”

* * *

A week later,Merlin was inside, rubbing himself all over the new rug, and I was sitting in my backyard reading a book. I received three phone calls.

The first one was from Kelsey, letting me know that the surgery was a success and that everyone was doing fine in recovery.

The second was from Alexander, letting me know the ADA had started the process to have Ryan exonerated.

The third was from Director Morrow, letting me know Colonel Kitts had been assassinated.

I dropped my phone onto the ground when Morrow disconnected and wondered what this meant for the DOD investigation.

And more importantly, what it meant for Carter.

What will happen to the DOD investigation now that Kitts is dead? Will Carter put it all behind him? And what mystery will surface next for Swamp Team 3?