Chuback unlocked the door and ducked inside. Kat followed, her eyes scanning ahead. Gerard Remington’s home was indecently neat and clean and organized. It looked more like something behind glass—something for show—than a true human habitat.
“What are you looking for?” Chuback asked.
It used to be that you would start opening drawers and closets. Now searches were often simpler. “His computer.”
They searched the desk. Nothing. They searched the bedroom. More nothing. Not under the bed or on the night table.
“He only has a laptop,” Chuback said. “He may have taken it with him.”
Damn.
Kat started going old school—that is, opening drawers and closets. Even they were impossibly neat. The socks were rolled, four sets in each row, four rows. Everything was folded. There were no loose papers or pens or coins or paper clips or matchbooks—nothing was out of place.
“What do you think is going on?” Chuback asked.
Kat didn’t want to speculate. There was no actual evidence that any crime had been committed, other than maybe fuzzy monetary laws on moving sums of money to a foreign account. There were oddities, of course, and activities that one might deem suspicious, but right now, what could she do with that?
Still she had some contacts at the FBI. If she learned a little more, she might be able to run it by them, get them to take a more serious look into it, though, again, what would they find?
She had a thought. “Mr. Chuback?”
“Call me Chewie,” he said.
“Right, Chewie. Can you e-mail me that picture of Vanessa?”
He winked. “You into that kind of thing?”
“Good one.”
“Lame, right? But hey, he’s my cousin,” he said as though that explained everything. “I’m weirded out here too.”
“Just send it to me, okay?”
There was only one framed photograph on Gerard’s desk. A black-and-white shot taken in the winter. She picked it up and took a closer look.
Chuback came up behind her. “The little kid is Gerard. And the guy is his father. He died when Gerard was eight. I guess they liked to ice fish or something.”
They were both dressed in parkas with big, fur bomber hats. There was snow on the ground. Little Gerard held up a fish, a huge smile spread across his face.
“You want to hear something weird?” Chuback said. “I don’t think I ever saw Gerard smile like that.”
Kat put down the photograph and started checking the drawers again. The bottom drawer contained files, again neatly labeled in a handwriting that could have been a computer font. She found the bills for his Visa card and pulled out the most recent.
“What are you looking for?” Gerard asked.
She started to scan down the row. The first charge that stuck out was for $1,458 to JetBlue Airways. The charge gave no further details—where he planned on traveling or when—but she could trace that back pretty easily. She snapped a photograph of the charge and e-mailed it to Chaz. He could look into it. JetBlue, Kat knew, didn’t offer first class, so odds were, that amount was for two round-trip tickets.
For Gerard and the buxom Vanessa?
The rest of his charges seemed normal. There was the cable company and his cell phone (she might need that information), electric, gas, the usual. Kat was about to put the bill back in the drawer, when she saw it near the bottom.
The payee was a company called TMJ Services.
That didn’t strike her as anything unusual. She probably would have passed it by except for the amount.
$5.74.
And then she thought about the name. TMJ. Now reverse the order of those initials. TMJ becomes JMT. How discreet.
JMT billing for $5.74.
Like Dana Phelps, like Jeff Raynes, like Kat Donovan herself, Gerard Remington had been using YouAreJustMyType.com.
? ? ?
When Kat was back in the fly-yellow Ferrari, she called Brandon Phelps.
He answered with a tentative. “Hello?”
“How are you, Brandon?”
“I’m okay.”
“I need a favor.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m driving back from Massachusetts.”
“What’s up there?”
“I’ll fill you in in a little while. But right now, I’m sending you a photograph of a rather robust woman.”
“Huh?”
“She’s in a bikini. You’ll see. Remember that image-search thing you did on the pictures of Jeff?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to do the same thing with her picture. See if she’s online anywhere. I need a name, address, whatever you can get on her.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. Then: “This doesn’t have anything to do with my mother, does it?”
“It might.”
“How?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Because if you’re still looking for my mother, I think you should probably stop.”
That surprised her. “Why?”
“She called me.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
Kat pulled the Ferrari off onto the shoulder. “When?”
“An hour ago.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that she’d just gotten e-mail access and saw all my e-mails and that everything was fine. She said that I should stop worrying, that she was really happy and might even stay a few days longer.”
“What did you say?”
“I asked her about the money transfer.”
“What did she say?”
“She kinda got angry. She said it was personal and that I had no right to be poking through her stuff.”
“Did you tell her that you’d gone to the police?”
“I told her about Detective Schwartz. I think she called him after me. I didn’t tell her about you, though.”
Kat wasn’t sure what to make of all this.
“Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“She said that she’d be home soon and that she had a big surprise for me. Do you know what it is?”
“I might.”
“Does it have something to do with your old boyfriend?”
“It might.”
“My mom asked me to leave it alone. I think maybe what she’s doing with the money isn’t completely legal and that asking around will get her in some kind of trouble.”
Kat sat in the car, frowning. Now what? There had been so little evidence of any wrongdoing before. Now that Dana Phelps had called her son and probably Detective Schwartz, there was literally nothing here but a bizarre paranoid conspiracy theory coming from an NYPD detective who had recently been given a leave by her superior because, well, she had voiced another bizarre paranoid conspiracy theory.
“Kat?”
“Will you do that image search for me, Brandon? That’s all I’m asking right now. Run that search.”
There was a brief hesitation. “Yeah, okay.”
Another call was coming in, so Kat said a quick good-bye and took it.
Stacy said, “Where are you?”
“I’m in Massachusetts, but I’m heading back home. Why?”
“I found Jeff Raynes.”