I gave him a few minutes to fire up his phone and tablet, then finished wiping down the counter, put my elbows on top of the shiny surface, and stared at him. “Tell me what you found out. I want to hear everything, no matter how small the detail.”
Silvio blinked, not used to me being so interested in our morning briefings. He pulled his tablet a little closer and began swiping through screens. I grabbed a knife and started slicing tomatoes while he filled me in.
“By all accounts, Deirdre Shaw is a wealthy Ice elemental who hails from a prestigious Ashland family,” he began. “We’re talking old, old money and a lot of it. She’s the last of the Shaws, although she hasn’t lived in Ashland in years. She has a number of homes around the country where she divides her time, including a summer cabin in Cloudburst Falls, a town house in Cypress Mountain, and a penthouse in Bigtime.”
“Let me guess. Deirdre spends her days flitting around the country on her private jet, staying in her swanky pads, guzzling champagne, and spending all of that old, old money.”
“Naturally,” he replied. “But she also spends quite a bit of time raising money for charity. Supposedly, one of the causes near and dear to her heart is an after-school art program for kids from broken homes.”
I snorted. “I just bet it is.”
Silvio arched his eyebrows at the sarcasm in my voice. “Actually, her charity work is where it gets interesting. Ms. Shaw is involved with numerous charities, but they all fall under one corporate umbrella, Shaw Good Works, which she heads up. Other people actually run the charities so that Ms. Shaw can spend her time fund-raising and then deciding where to put all that capital. So, really, she’s an investment banker, just like Finn.”
I’d always thought that Finn must take after his mom, since he wasn’t all that much like Fletcher. The old man had been perfectly happy to bury his money in tin cans in the backyard, instead of buying and selling stocks, investing in bonds, and all the other financial shenanigans that Finn engaged in. Finding out that Deirdre was in the same business as her son was a bit disconcerting.
I didn’t want to think that Finn was anything like her. But at the party last night, Deirdre had basically been an older, female version of Finn—suave, flirty, boisterous. It had been a little jarring just how much the two of them were alike. I supposed that nature had won out over nurture in this case.
“Now, before you go and start thinking too highly of Ms. Shaw, you should know that not all the money she raises and then recoups from her investments goes into her charity foundation,” Silvio said. “In fact, a great deal of it—tens of millions a year—goes down the rabbit hole for expenses, operating costs, and the like.”
I realized what he was getting at. “You think her charity, Good Works, is a front for something.”
“Absolutely. There’s no way those charities have that much overhead. But she’s clever, and she moves the money around faster than a street hustler doing a card game. I’m still researching, but I’ll figure out where all that money is going and exactly who’s getting it.” His gray eyes gleamed with excitement. There was nothing Silvio loved better than untangling puzzles. I supposed it fit in with his detail-oriented personality.
I frowned. “Wait a second. Someone else is getting the money? Who? It sounds like Deirdre has a nice little scam going. Why would she want to share the money with anyone?”
“I don’t know. Ms. Shaw might have come from old money, but she burned through it all years ago. Homes and private jets and champagne fountains cost money, you know. She started her charitable foundation about the time she was scraping the last few nickels out of her original trust fund. Even then, someone else bankrolled her and got her started.”
“So maybe that’s where the money is going,” I murmured. “To pay back her investors, whoever they might be.”
Silvio swiped through some more screens on his tablet. “That’s my theory. I’ll keep digging.”
Maybe this was all about money. Maybe Deirdre had heard what a financial whiz Finn was and had come to Ashland to get his expertise to help increase the profits from her charity scam, without letting him know what a crook she really was. Finn had said that he’d been working on her portfolio. It made sense, but I still felt like something else was going on, something far more sinister than skimming money from good causes.
I finished with my last tomato, grabbed a red onion, and started slicing it. “What about Tucker, her assistant?”