Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle Pauline Jones (the red fox clan txt) 📖

“Damn.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Nothing made any sense! Somewhere, somehow, it had to be about money. With Dante involved, it couldn’t be anything else. But how? Where was it?

All paths led to Reggie, but he was such a nowhere kind of guy it didn’t help much. Easy to speculate that he was working some kind of scam when he was executed, but difficult to figure out what that scam might be. How had a man who screwed up scams managed to put together something that netted enough money to interest someone like Dante, or his murderer—always assuming that’s why he was murdered? And if Reggie had come up with something so successful, how had he managed to do it without leaving any noticeable trace of it except for three dollar bills?

Mickey pulled out the bagged envelopes with the dollar bills. The post marks put one from New York, the other from Idaho, the third from Puerto Rico.

Mickey frowned at the list, managing to produce two rather meager conclusions. First, that this wasn’t Reggie’s main residence but a stopping over place. He hadn’t even left a pair of pajamas here. And second, a scam that netted single dollar bills, if that were the scam, couldn’t interest Dante. It had to be something else. Of course, he’d talk to a postal inspector. Mail fraud, no matter how petty, was their bailiwick and might produce a real clue.

Mickey made a note, then looked at the list again. One final question teased his mind. If Reggie didn’t live here with the Seymours—

“Then where does he live?” Mickey muttered aloud to the empty room.

“Talking to yourself now, Ross?” Delaney growled from the doorway. He hunched his shoulders and stalked further into the room, gloom riding heavy on his brow. He dropped into the chair across from Mickey, his face daring Mickey to ask about his thwarted love life.

“Just thinking out loud,” Mickey said,. The sick dog look in his eyes made Mickey uncomfortable. What do you tell a buddy who’s hot for a ghost? At least Mickey’s love life involved a living, breathing human being, even if he did sometimes long to make her a ghost. “I—was looking over this list of items you guys found when you searched Reggie’s bedroom upstairs.”

“And?”

“Well, he’s getting mail here, but there’s no real sign this was his home base or what was his means of support. No clothes, just personal items you’d leave, say, at a girlfriend’s apartment where you sometimes stay over.” Mickey flipped open Reggie’s police file. “Yet this address is listed on his parole record as his last known. And he gets some of his mail here. If this address is the correct one, and not a smoke screen, where is his stuff? Because it’s not here.”

“It’s probably in Cleveland.”

Mickey flipped through the files. “No report from the Cleveland guys yet. I wish—” he stopped.

“What?”

“I wish I knew if it were urgent that we find out where he used to be. But we have no way of knowing if Reggie is connected to the threat against Luci.”

“We’ll have to assume there’s a connection for now,” Delaney said, a hint of grimness in his voice. “At least, that’s what the Captain said just now.”

Mickey shifted. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” Delaney gave a halfhearted grin. “At least he isn’t talking involuntary retention at a state facility for both of us.”

“Oh?” Mickey wasn’t sure if that was good or not. A padded cell sounded pretty good right now. Be a relief to spend some time with people who were less crazy than the Seymours.

“Gracie was still with me. He got to meet her.”

Mickey looked up from the clutter of paper. “Oh.”

“He agrees with our decision to not officially include her in the investigative record. Particularly after she confirmed that the reports of her death haven’t been exaggerated.”

“Is that the bad news?”

“No. The bad news is, we’re not suspended yet.”

“I suppose he can’t afford to lose anyone else right now,” Mickey said glumly. “It’s been a bad couple of months for everybody.”

“Yeah.” Delaney’s second attempt at a grin was less strained. “And looking to be a bad couple more unless we can figure this case out. Only way we’re getting out of here.”

They worked until lunchtime, making notes, occasionally bouncing ideas off each other, but mostly working in silence as they went over the accumulated information.

Finally, Delaney threw down his pencil and leaned back in his chair, stretching. He didn’t look at Mickey when he said, “You know we’re going to have to talk to Unabelle again. If she’s our gambler—” He hesitated. “We’ll have to question Eddie, too.”

Mickey nodded. “I know. I put it at the top of the list of unpleasant things we’re going to have to do. We’ll have to pay Dante a visit, too.”

“Yeah. Rack up some billable hours for his lawyer.”

“I wish we could figure out what the shoeboxes are—”

“Or why Dante wants them?” Delaney frowned. “Obvious answer would be drugs, but Dante’s never done the drug route. And if he did change his mind, Unabelle’s hardly the logical outlet for that. I mean, she looks like she’s on drugs, but—”

“Yeah.” Mickey gave a rueful grin as he shoved his hands through his hair, then he frowned. “You found the mail, didn’t you? Any thoughts on why Reggie would be getting dollar bills through the mail?”

Delaney was silent for a moment. “I suppose it could be some kind of scam. But it’s a pretty pathetic effort. How far can you get with a dollar a pop?”

“Seems to have gotten Reggie only as far as the bougainvillea,” Mickey said.

Luci needed to think, had needed to since Boudreaux’s revelation in the garden that there might be another body, but it was hard with Mickey turning up here and there in the house and her father turning up where Mickey wasn’t. The