Page 70 of Devil in the Details

“They do in a sort of lip service sort of way. But that’s not the same thing as knowing it deep in your gut, of acknowledging it like you would that the sky is blue or the sun sets in the west every evening. Right now, it’s not anything a person can see with their own two eyes.”

Because she didn’t respond right away, Caleb could tell she was pondering what he’d just said, doing her best to square it with her personal experience.

“Okay,” she said at length. “I suppose I can see your point on that one. So I also can understand why demons wouldn’t want anyone to know they really exist. I suppose that’s why they’re so into disguising themselves and doing their best to conceal what they are.”

“Exactly,” Caleb replied. “Also, coming up here is kind of like a vacation for them. Sure, they get up to all sorts of mischief when they’re topside because that’s what they do, but they’re also doing their best to enjoy themselves.”

Delia gave a disgusted shake of her head and reached for her wine. Just as her lips parted to respond, however, Caleb’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

Under normal circumstances, he would have ignored it and let the call go to voicemail. However, since there were only two people he could think of who might be calling him at this hour, and one of them was currently sitting across the table from him, he figured he’d better pick up.

“Hi, Jim,” he said after a quick glance at the screen. “What’s up?”

Delia straightened, her face now bright with interest. Like Caleb himself, she’d probably realized that the private detective wouldn’t be calling in the middle of dinner unless he had a damn good reason.

“I found something sort of strange,” Jim said. “You know how it seemed as if Paul Reeves’ carpet cleaning business was some sort of front?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it turns out he actually has been servicing some properties. I did some digging, and it turns out they’re all owned by the same company.”

For some reason, tension knotted in Caleb’s stomach.

When Jim spoke again, his words weren’t entirely unexpected.

“Those properties all belong to an outfit named Aegis Holdings.”

Chapter Eighteen

Delia didn’t know why she was surprised that Aegis Holdings was involved in all this. Even though she hadn’t been able to fully figure out the pattern yet, she still knew the company was rotten.

But that private detective Caleb had hired was damn good. Not only had he unearthed that little factoid about Aegis being Paul Reeves’ sole client, but he’d also emailed a list of Aegis’s properties to Caleb later that evening just after she left to drive home.

Now they were tailing Paul Reeves’ work van as it headed into a neighborhood where she’d sold a property only the week before. It was a nice area of homes built about fifteen years earlier, just old enough that a lot of them still had wall-to-wall carpet, unlike newer houses that almost universally had either tile or wood or luxury vinyl plank floors.

Delia was driving her Kona, just because she and Caleb had both agreed that it was less conspicuous than his new Mercedes, especially after she removed the door magnets advertising the Dunne & Dunne real estate agency. And once Paul had pulled into the tract, she purposely hung back and let him disappear around a corner, figuring it wouldn’t be too hard to find out where he’d stopped, not with that van parked at the curb or in the driveway of the house he was working on.

Sure enough, she spotted the van after they turned down a street located in the middle of the housing tract. And since it was pulled into the driveway rather than sitting on the street, there was absolutely no question as to which house he was inside.

“Hang on a sec,” she said after she parked her SUV a couple of houses down, then undid her seatbelt and pulled out her phone.

“Need to make a call?” Caleb asked, only half-joking. After all, she’d hastily canceled her morning appointments so they could play amateur detective, so he probably thought she needed to handle something before they went in to confront Paul Reeves.

But that wasn’t why she’d gotten out her phone.

“No,” she said. “I want to Google the address of the house Paul Reeves is working on. If it’s owned by Aegis, then it’s probably just a vacation rental, but in case it’s a long-term property, I want to make sure it’s unoccupied. You don’t want us to go busting in there if there are any renters around, do you?”

“Probably not,” he admitted.

It didn’t take very long to discover that the house was currently up for rent — a standard year lease, and not just for a week here or there. Most likely, the HOA in this neighborhood had banned short-term rentals.

Which kind of begged the question as to why Aegis had bought the property in the first place, since they seemed to be focused on vacation homes.

Then again, the condo Aaron Sanchez was renting definitely wasn’t an Airbnb.

Delia wasn’t going to get bogged down in the whys and wherefores, however. No, the important thing was that the house was currently unoccupied. Maybe Paul had come here to get it ready for some new tenants, since the first of April wasn’t too far off.

“Okay, looks like the coast is clear,” she said as she returned the phone to her purse.

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