Page 61 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

It took a while before she got past all the hugs.

I noticed Dale hung back, apparently awed by her. She did look more polished, more grown-up.

As her path took her past him, she gave him a quick one-armed hug.

He turned brilliant red.

Poor guy.

As she reached the door to Mike’s office, Diana moved in for a hug, followed by me.

“I had my parents drop me off here, so I’ll need a ride home,” she said.

“We’ll get you home,” Mike said.

“Your parents must be thrilled to have you come here first.” As the parent of a daughter going off to college in the fall and a son who’d follow in a few years, Diana empathized with the Lawtons.

Those words and thoughts seemed to come from a long distance.

“Elizabeth? Where’d you go, Elizabeth?” Diana asked.

“Ah. Sorry. My mind wandered.”

“The wedding?”

“No. The phrase Occam’s razor, except I suddenly had an image of the swinging blades in an old Indiana Jones movie.” Brought on from my interrupted re-reading of my notes, I thought.

“Also known as the circular saw trap.” In response to the looks her comment drew as we all sat in Mike’s office, Jennifer added, “Varieties show up in fantasy role-playing games, video games. They’ll slice you to ribbons if your timing’s off.

Don’t need death by a thousand cuts when the first one will get you. ”

“Fun,” Diana said.

“Maybe I was thinking of the wedding. Anyway . . .” I searched for where the conversation had been when my brain detoured to potential destruction, Hollywood style.

“Some guy’s razor,” Jennifer prodded.

“Occam. That made me think about looking at this the most straightforward way. Start with the idea that Nance was the intended victim—”

“Didn’t know we weren’t starting there,” Diana said.

“We were keeping open minds. Okay, yes, the possibility that Frank Jardos was the intended victim was dwindling, but we hadn’t eliminated it. Anyway, we — at least, I was thinking that Nance had issues, mental health issues, that might be at the bottom of this.”

“Agreed,” Diana said.

“But there were other aspects to him—”

“The FMT stuff,” Jennifer said.

“Exactly. Financial. That directed us toward the group of vets again. Can’t help wondering if his involvement with the group soured, caused conflict. But there was another aspect of the financial set-up.”

“The registered agent business.” Triumph radiated from Jennifer. “I’ve got stuff to tell you.”

“Since we talked this morning?”

“Did research on the plane.”

“That wi-fi’s not safe,” Mike inserted.

She smirked. “Got safeguards. Let ’em try. I’d found a couple interesting things before I left and wanted to check more. From what Elizabeth said . . . well, I called Tom—”

“My Tom?”

“Yup. Called him while I was waiting to board. For more names of vets.”

“Why?” Diana asked.

“I’ll get to that. First, Sherman isn’t Sheridan, with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of businesses listed with registered agents, but there’s been a big jump here lately.

“I found what Nance could have found, too. Especially with his finance background and going to the library and his vehement conversation with Sergeant Jardos, most likely trying to figure out if the sergeant knew about it, or—”

“Knew about what?” Diana demanded.

“Someone using the vets’ names as registered agents for multiple companies.”

* * * *

I demanded. “How?”

That covered both how she found out and how it was done.

“You had me checking on the vets, remember, starting with Victor and Zeke. Was digging for last names and connections. I hadn’t found much. But then, when I switched over to looking into businesses registering in Sherman, pay dirt.

“Other than a few stray single ones, there was a streak of registrations to a guy named Victor, then another bunch to Zeke, and another bunch to a guy named Malden, and another to — yup — Ron Sam Preet. I didn’t recognize the other last names, but I sure did recognize that one.

That’s why I called Tom. To see if the last names for these supposed registered agents matched the vets he knew and they did.

“Each name had ten companies listed. No more, no less. Exactly ten.”

“Avoiding even the modest scrutiny a commercial registered agent gets while maximizing each name,” I said.

“Yup. And I only had time to dig into a few of these companies that are registered under the vets’ names, but they are not good people.”

“You didn’t leave any cyber trail for them to follow back to you—”

“Of course not.”

I’d insulted her, but she rose above it.

Diana cut to the core, “Who? Who’s behind this?”

“I don’t know. Yet. I’m working on it. Nance would know how to pull it off. Maybe he used his own name, then got the idea to expand. But I also found, a little earlier, a batch of companies registered to Jay Haus and—”

That drew short sounds best translated as it figures.

“—I already tracked most of those companies. Nasty, definitely nasty. I’ve started the guys tracking the companies listed under the vets’ names. As for the address used—”

Mike’s curse under his breath stopped her.

“Listen, there’s something . . . I wanted to check first. Make sure.”

He had our attention.

“I told Elizabeth a while back about our head advertising guy being excited about a potential client. An account with a lot of potential, he said. It didn’t feel right.

I don’t know why, because our guy’s okay.

I know he is. But there was something . .

. The account has to do with registered agents. ”

“Oh,” came from Jennifer.

“As I said, I wasn’t sure. He was vague the first time. Don’t think he even knew himself. But what Elizabeth shared from Needham about registered agents made me go back and ask our guy to find out . . . Upshot is, the potential client is—”

“Nance?” I asked.

“Nope. Kam Droemi.”

* * * *

“Kam Droemi?” Diana repeated.

“I never liked her.” Jennifer was having all kinds of triumph today.

She was up and commandeering Mike’s keyboard, typing away. She turned the screen to us. “It’s her address. The address used for all the companies listed under vets’ names.”

I was busy rearranging pieces I’d thought were creating one jigsaw puzzle into an entirely different picture.

All the pieces hadn’t fallen into their new places, but I could see its general form, like a figure coming toward me out of the mist.

“Nance wasn’t part of the scam,” I said. “He figured it out. He stayed in the separate camp so he wasn’t as associated with the others while he researched.”

“Trying to protect his fellow vets?” Jennifer looked around at the rest of us. “Or blackmailing Kam and Haus?”

“Let’s go find out.”