Page 13 of Den of Iniquity

Talking about cases is easy. Talking about cases involving family members is not.

“She’s my soon-to-be-former son-in-law’s current girlfriend,” I told him, “and her first and last names are all I know. I suspect she may be somewhat on the sketchy side, but I’d like to know that for sure.”

“I don’t blame you,” Todd said. “I’ll look into this, but I won’t be able to get to it until later this evening.”

“That’s great,” I told him. “No rush.”

When Kyle came home from school, I asked him how it went. “Okay, I guess.”

I would soon learn that was typical Kyle. He wasn’t a big talker to begin with and the current complications in his life were wearing him down. In hopes of raising his spirits we ordered pizza for dinner. After that, he once again disappeared into his room and wasn’t around when Todd called back later in the evening.

“When you said you thought Caroline Richards was sketchy,” he said, “you certainly called that shot. I was able to locate a Caroline Louise Richards all right, one whose date of birth is the same as the one on Ashland Caroline’s driver’s license. The problem is, that first Caroline Richards was born in 1996 in Salem, Oregon, and died a year later of natural causes—some kind of heart ailment.”

“So who she really is and where she’s from is anybody’s guess?” I asked.

“Looks that way,” Todd said. “How’d your son-in-law hook up with her?”

“I’ll give you two guesses,” I replied. “A dating app.”

“Which one?”

“I believe it’s called Alone in Jackson. Why?”

“I’ll take a look at that one and see if her profile is still there. If it is, that might give us some clues. And since I’ve located her driver’s license, once I’m back home on Friday, I’ll be able to run her photo through some of my facial recognition databases to see what turns up. Clearly she’s gone to a lot of trouble to conceal her true identity, and it would be helpful to know why.”

“What?” Mel asked when the call ended. She had been privy to my side of the conversation but not to Todd’s.

“The real Caroline Richards was a year old when she died in Salem, Oregon, in 1997.”

“So now Caroline is not only a possible sexual predator, she’s also an identify thief?”

“Apparently.”

“People don’t go to the trouble of changing their identity for no reason.”

“My thoughts exactly,” I agreed. “It’s usually because they’ve done something wrong and don’t want to be caught.”

“Are you going to tell Kyle about this?”

“Not for the time being. The poor kid’s got enough on his plate right now. Let’s wait and see what else Todd can dig up.”

A few minutes later a text alert came in on my phone. Todd had sent me a copy of Caroline’s driver’s license photo. She was good-looking, all right, with fine features and a thick mane of blond hair. It takes something for someone to look that good in a driver’s license photo. In the old days, I would have referred to her as a blond bombshell. I was beginning to understand how Jeremy might’ve fallen for her, especially if the rest of her body measured up to her facial features.

I passed my phone to Mel. She took a look and whistled. “She’s gorgeous.”

“Isn’t she just,” I muttered, “but as my mother used to say, ‘Pretty is as pretty does.’”

Later, after we were in bed, Mel snuggled up to me and asked, “So how’s this second gig at parenthood going for you?”

“So far,” I told her, “it’s not exactly smooth sailing.”

A week earlier, Kyle had stayed awake all night, worrying about Caroline Richards. That night it was my turn to lie awake worrying about the same thing. What kind of a mess had Jeremy Cartwright gotten himself into? Because now the rest of us had been dragged into it, too.

Chapter 6

Bellingham, Washington

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

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