“Excuse me?” What did that have to do with his delinquent grandson status?
“You asked why I worked for the law firm instead of going into law enforcement. It’s because I went to law school at Georgetown and got hired by Fleming, Roth, and Schill.”
I knew who they were. I’d even had some dealings with them in my old job. Ian must have been top of his class to get hired as a first-year associate.
“But you don’t work for them as a lawyer, so...”
“I discovered the part I liked best about the job was the research. I didn’t like having to recruit new clients. I hated preparing briefs and motions. But the research? I could do that all day. And the most fun was when I got to work with the firm’s investigator to track down reluctant witnesses or clear up fuzzy details in their statements. So I decided to do all the fun parts of the job and skip the paperwork.” He tilted his head and met my eyes. “Did I mention I’m very good at what I do?”
It sounded less like a brag and more like...a warning? I had no idea what he was trying to warn me against, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t interrogating me anymore, and that was all I’d been after.
A grunt from Ian drew my attention as he bent down and fished something from beneath his foot. “Found it,” he said, straightening and holding it up, a slight wince on his face. I onlysort ofhoped it had found the soft part of his sole.
“Thanks,” I said, going to fetch it from him. “I’ve got it from here. I could point you to my first-aid kit, but I have a feeling Miss Lily would enjoy fussing over you, so why don’t you go on back and let her take care of your foot?”
I stooped to secure the new sandpaper to the sander. He was silent for a moment, then offered a quiet, “Bye” as he fetched his shoes and socks and padded out the front door. I didn’t answer him.
It was a poor demonstration of the manners my mother had drilled into me since childhood, but his explanation of his job had finally clarified the uncomfortable feeling I’d had since he’d shown up: he was part of the establishment machine that had chewed me up and spit me out, broken, two years ago.
I’d left people like him behind for a reason, and I didn’t like him popping up in my peaceful Creekville bubble. Since moving in, I’d wished for Miss Lily’s sake that the prodigal grandson would drag himself home, but now I couldn’t wait until he disappeared again.
He’d have to head back tomorrow, probably after Sunday dinner, if Miss Lily could convince him to stay that long. Miss Lily and I had taken to eating Sunday dinners together with Mary lately, but I would plead a headache tomorrow and make it up to Miss Lily later. It wouldn’t even be a lie, because that’s exactly what Ian was: a headache I couldn’t wait to be rid of.
Chapter Five
Ian
Ihobbled home, gavemy foot a good wash, and dabbed on some antibacterial junk. I’d gotten some interesting wounds “in the line of duty” as an investigator, but I wasn’t so sure this one would pay off in the end like others had. I’d gone over to Brooke’s this morning with a determination to fill the giant gap in her online history, and I hadn’t left with any more information than when I’d arrived.
I settled back on the guest bed and pulled out my laptop to review her file, a list of links to all the places I’d found her digital footsteps. Her social media hadn’t told me much. The last few months, she’d mostly documented her renovation and gardening projects, no mention of anything personal. Even prior to that, her pictures were largely of places and things, not people. She took pictures of buildings she found interesting, sunsets, and lots of plants and flowers.
Her Linked-In profile told me far more, but mostly because of what it left out. I’d started at the beginning, which was simply a mention of high school. Based on her graduation date, I was correct about her age. She was thirty. It didn’t take long to find a copy of the yearbook one of her nostalgic classmates had scanned into a McClean High School Class of 2009 Facebook group. McClean, Virginia was one of DC’s most affluent suburbs with McMansions occupied by top military brass and actual mansions owned by foreign ambassadors and DC lobbyists.
So she had come from money. Or at least from a solidly upper middleclass upbringing. Interesting. How did she go from that to scamming?
Her senior portrait listed her activities beneath it. Model UN, Key Club, class secretary, National Merit Scholar, president of Girls in STEM. I traced her to college at UVA. We would probably have overlapped on campus by about a year. Not that I expected to have crossed paths with her at a college of 21,000. She’d been in a sorority, one more noted for service than partying. She’d taken an extra semester to graduate then joined a public policy think tank in DC. She’d stayed there a year then worked as a staffer in the office of her representative to the Virginia legislature for two more. Next came her credential program and her new job as the biology teacher at Lincoln High School.
