Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

When I reached the table, Wukowski pulled out a chair and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then whispered, “Missed you.” Holy PDA—and in front of his partner! Iggy grinned.

I wore a deep emerald green wrap dress made of clingy silk jersey. The overlapping neckline revealed a bit more cleavage than the average dress and the fabric clung to my curves. Wukowski got an eyeful as he helped me off with my coat. His hands briefly caressed my shoulders as the coat sleeves fell away. I couldn’t wait to get home.

A tall iced glass of beer sat in front of each man. Must be off-duty, I mused. The server came over to get my order. “Any chance you have a Riesling?”

“No. We got red, white and rosé.” She pronounced the last “rosy.”

“Make it a whisky sour,” I said.

“Cocktail?”

“On the rocks.”

“Gotcha.” She walked away.

Wukowski handed me a laminated menu card. Burgers, brats, hot dogs and pizza, with sides of fries, onion stacks, deep-fried cheese curds and cole slaw. Iggy leaned toward me. “Ix-nay on the pizza, Angie. It’s frozen. And the last time Marianne ordered a salad, Barb—the waitress—just laughed. This is no low-cal joint. But the burgers are good and the onion stack—mm-mm.”

Until we got Petrovitch, Bart’s security guys probably would “ix-nay” my morning run. I’d pay for this meal with time on the treadmill in the condo exercise room.

Barb came back with my drink and took our orders: cheeseburgers and onion stacks all around.

While we waited for the food, Wukowski cut to the chase. “That attack on you was too close for comfort.”

“I agree,” I said. “Bart Matthews is setting up personal security for Adriana, Bobbie and me.” He started to object, but I interrupted him. “He has pros, Wukowski, former government special ops guys. I’ll be fine, really.”

“You’re not going to walk away from this, are you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not with Adriana in jeopardy. Let’s move on. Bart has given me permission to share some information on the case with you.”

“Nice of him,” Wukowski responded sarcastically. There was no love lost between them.

Iggy jumped in. “Whatcha got, Ange?”

“Three things: property ties to Petrovitch, financial information from the Johnsons’ U.S. bank accounts and a possible second home for Petrovitch. It comes with a price tag,” I told them. “We need to see records on Petrovitch’s bank accounts and any other financial information you can garner.”

They perked up immediately and Wukowski extracted a small notebook and pen from his inner suit coat pocket. “Fair enough. What’ve you got?”

I pulled out the copies of the bank records from my briefcase and handed them over, keeping one set for myself. I gave them several minutes to glance over the pages.

“What’s your take on this?” Wukowski asked.

“Bart is pretty savvy financially and here’s how he sees it. The accounts were all set up at the same time, with identical deposits of eighty million. The Johnsons owned the accounts, but the Serbian Society is a signatory on all but the small one for Adriana. The only officer of the Serbian Society is Herman Petrovitch. There were no withdrawals from the Chicago account, ever. The others all have regular withdrawals via checks made out to Cash, but no individual withdrawal is big enough to trigger a report to the IRS. It can’t be money laundering because there’s no money coming in, except for interest accrual.” I paused. “We don’t have information yet from the offshore accounts.”

“So what’s the scheme?”

“Damned if Bart or I know.”

Iggy jumped in. “Big deposit, lots of payments, all to Cash, right?” I nodded. “He’s paying somebody off.”

“But it’s been going on since 1999,” I objected. “A blackmailer wouldn’t be that patient.”

“Naw,” Iggy said. “But a partner would. Somebody who has as much to lose as the guy who owns the accounts.”

As Barb approached the table with our food, we set the papers aside and switched to innocuous conversation about Iggy’s kids and the Packers.

The burger was big and juicy. The onion stack was a mini-loaf of deep-fried onion shreds, delicious but greasy. There was a small mountain of used paper napkins next to my plate when I finished. “There must be two thousand calories in this meal.”

“Mine was a double burger. Add another five hundred,” Wukowski responded. “I’ll need a good workout later.”

It sounded innocuous, but I read him and met his gaze. “You bet.”

He smiled, a relatively rare occurrence, but one that transformed his usual grim expression. Anticipation was killing me.

Barb cleared the table and we ordered coffee, mulling over the figures until she came back with the cups and left us alone again. “A partner,” I said, picking up the conversation from before our meals. “It’s funny you say that. Bart thinks there’s some kind of conspiracy, too, but I haven’t found any evidence that supports it. Petrovitch is the sole officer of the Serbian Society. He runs a solo legal practice, and his secretary is now dead. He isn’t married, no steady woman—or man—in his life. No children. His only friends, if you can call them that, were the Zupans and the Johnsons, and Josif is the only one still alive. Petrovitch is a loner.”

I pulled out more printouts. “I ran a property search on ‘Serbian Society.’ The Johnsons’ rental house and the front house on the lot, the empty apartment above their hardware store, Petrovitch’s legal offices and the offices on each side,” I said, “were bought by the Society in ninety-nine, the year the Johnsons emigrated from Serbia, and are all vacant. It’s like the Society—Petrovitch—wanted to build a buffer zone.”

“Nice catch, Angie,” Iggy told me.

Wukowski nodded. “Real nice. But it doesn’t help us understand what’s going on.”

“There’s more.” I put my papers aside. “You know my friend Bobbie, who helped in the Morano case? Well, he’s pretty hyped about becoming a detective.”

“Police detective?” Wukowski asked, his face carefully neutral.

“No, private. He’s been after me to let him help on the case. I wanted to see if he could