“He is. Sports. Games. He’s pretty handy too. He gets that from my father.”
“Your family sounds really close.”
“We are. If you aren’t doing anything at the holidays you should get Randy to bring you over for Thanksgiving. I’m cooking this year. Would love to have you join us. We always have enough to feed an army, and it’s fun to have someone new for Dad to tell all of his old stories to.”
The batter hit a home run, and Natalie and Courtnie leapt to their feet, cheering.
Randy’s team won by a landslide and as the guys came off of the field one of the players pointed at her. “You! You better plan on coming to all the games. We haven’t had this kind of luck since Caldwell washed his lucky socks.”
“Not my fault,” Caldwell said. “Tess didn’t know that was bad luck. I always did my own uniforms. She thought she was helping.”
“Doesn’t matter. Now we have a new good-luck charm. You hear that, Randy? You have to bring her to every game.”
She was blushing, her cheeks burning from all the attention.
“Works for me,” Randy said.
Chapter Nineteen
IT HADbeen nearly a week since the night Natalie had gone to the softball game with Randy, and the guys weren’t letting him live it down. Randy found himself working overtime and off-hours, trying to find some connection somewhere that would give him a reason to call her again.
Nothing this well thought out could have been someone’s first con. This guy was making a pretty good living just from what he’d gotten away with of Natalie’s. No telling how many others he had on the line at the same time.
How did someone store and get rid of that much stuff?
It was a lot to manage.
He’d requested call logs from Swindell’s phone number months ago.
In this morning’s email, he’d finally received the cell phone data. After hours of review, Randy had revealed the possibility of multiple other targets even while he was with Natalie. The phone had been issued to Mike Connors.
Connors? Con? Again with the telltale name? Got to love the audacity of this guy to dangle his ill intent right out in the open like that.
Randy remembered joking with Natalie early on that the guy was probably going by the last name of Conway. That hadn’tbeen so far-fetched after all. He’d been closer than he thought all along.
Ballsy. That’s what Marc Swindell-Connors-whatever-name-he-borrowed-now was.
This kind of criminal really crawled under his skin. And that he’d target recent widows just made him madder. Was that part of his pattern?
Randy wrote the word “widows” with a question mark next to it on the blotter where he scribbled thoughts and ideas to follow up on.
It would’ve been unlikely she’d escape the con on a good day, but to reel her in when she was dealing with grief and pulling herself back together? That was just low in anybody’s book.
Randy had come up empty looking for a Mike Connors fitting the description Natalie had provided.
He jotted down the counties in Virginia where he’d found touchpoints, then sorted all the phone calls to see what other states were being called with any frequency.
Mostly it was here on the East Coast. Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, then two in Texas, and one in Tennessee. He circled Tennessee. Maybe he’d get lucky and find a family member who wasn’t a fan of this guy who was ready to share something.
“Hey, aren’t you coming to the baby shower for Caldwell and Tess?” Hutchens was the oldest detective, more grandfather age than father.
“Yeah, hey, thanks for stopping. You headed that way now?”
“Sure am. Want to ride with me? I have to come back this way on my way home.”
“That’ll be great.” Randy shut down his computer, lockedthe screen, and picked up a box wrapped in white paper with a springy pink, blue, and yellow ribbon.
“Tell me you didn’t wrap that yourself,” Hutchens said.
