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The desk and all of the rest of the furniture in the room was what you’d expect to find on a Texas ranch of this size. Rustic but not cheap, with horses carved into the sides of the desk and couch.
Of course, the man had entered the room wearing a cowboy hat, though it was one that looked like it had never seen the dusty side of a pasture. The boots he wore with his suit were polished to a shine. From what Evan had read on the man, he’d bought the ranch ten years earlier and the place was prospering, but it looked like he wasn’t involved in any of the heavy lifting.
Turner Carson was a business owner. He was born into a wealthy family, inheriting several of the companies he still ran today, but also acquiring more with each year.
Evan couldn’t say he liked Turner but the man was paying him to do a job and that was something Evan couldn’t turn away. Not now.
“I think your previous PI has been chasing planted leads,” Evan said.
“Explain.”
Evan kept his face neutral at the man’s barked order. “Every time your stepdaughter pops up on any system, it’s a single credit card transaction and there’s never any sign of her in the area. No hotel rooms in her name, no one using her social security number for work, nothing.”
Evan knew Turner had paid the previous investigator to fly out to those locations the first few times they’d had a hit. The guy hadn’t come up with anything more than a waiter who vaguely remembered the woman who used the card and a convenience store clerk who remembered the woman using an ATM machine who might or might not have been Jane Walker. Not much to go on for nearly two years of work.
“So what does that mean?” Turner asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“All the hits you’ve gotten have been in major cities.”
Turner added a frown to his stance. “I’d guess cities are easier to hide out in. It’s not a stretch to think she might be there. Probably easier for her to steal to support them there. You can’t get away with that as much in a small place where everyone knows who you are.”
Evan glanced out the window. A place like the town they were in now. He had the impression Turner liked being known and revered by everyone in town. From what Evan had heard when he’d stopped for breakfast, half the town was employed by the ranch or one of the other businesses Turner owned. The other half rented space in his retail buildings or had a loan held by the bank where Turner sat on the board.
Turner Carson was a very big fish in this Texas town, and to be honest, the town wasn’t even the smallest of ponds. It was a thriving tourist town with a population of eight thousand and growing. In some ways, he was surprised Turner didn’t live in a bigger place like New York or California. But maybe the man liked owning most of what surrounded him.
“It’s possible she’s in one of those large cities where she’s popped up on the radar, but you have to realize, these cities all have sky-high costs of living. It’s much more likely that they’ve settled into something in between. Not a small town but not a major metropolis either.”
“Then how do you explain how her credit cards are popping up in cities all over the place?”
“I think she’s got help. I would guess she’s stayed in touch with some friend, maybe even a group of friends, and she has them use the cards for her occasionally. She’s not using them for anything on a regular basis so my guess is she got her cards to a few friends when they first left and she just calls and tells one of them to use it from time to time.”
“Well how the hell do we track that?”
Evan was ready with a plan. He never came to a meeting without one. “I’ll look into some of her friends on social media. She’s not active on her account anymore, but it’s still there. I’ll look through her friends list and see if I can find people in the cities she’s popped in. But I’ve also noticed the cites are all major airport hubs. So it’s possible she’s having the friends use the cards when they travel. I can check to see if any of her friends were in those cities when the cards were used. People post everything to social media. It will take some time, but I can comb through and look for details.”
Turner nodded. “Do it. I don’t care what it costs. I want my family’s property back and I want them prosecuted.”
“I also want to look into things on your wife’s end. The other detective was focused solely on your stepdaughter.”
“The other PI told me my wife hasn’t shown up in any database or any transactions from the day they vanished. That’s why he’s been focusing on my stepdaughter.”
It was Evan’s turn to nod. He’d read through the file. He knew all that. “Most people will show up somewhere in one of the search engines and databases we use eventually. But I don’t think you’re going to find your wife that way. She’s managed to slip off the radar somehow. I think we need to track her by looking at what we know about her. To do that, I’m going to need to know more about your wife’s medical condition.”
Evan knew how specialized care could be. His daughter was going to require more care than he and his wife could provide themselves soon. They’d be needing to find a home that could handle her degenerative condition. And they’d have to move to be closer to her, because no way was he going to give up seeing his daughter every day.
“How will that help?”
“You said your wife will require long term care for life at a specialized facility.”
“Yes. The injuries to her back and hips didn’t leave her paralyzed but she has a number of mobility issues and she requires physical therapy and medical support daily. In-home care isn’t feasible unless they’ve found a way to hire a home health nurse who can be available to her twenty-four hours a day. Of course, that’s what I provided when she was here, but….”
But the women wouldn’t be able to afford that, even with the family heirlooms they took when they left.
Not for the first time, Evan wondered how unhappy Turner’s wife had been to leave a place where she was given round the clock nursing care. It wasn’t like she was in a position to replace that care. Not with the prenuptial agreement she’d signed.
He kept to the job, pushing aside any speculation about Turner’s marriage. As he did with all cases where a man was having him locate a woman, he’d checked for any signs of domestic violence. There were no police reports on file for the Carsons, nothing to indicate the man would harm his wife when Evan found her. It was something he’d always done before taking a case like this.
“So we start there,” Evan told Turner. “I’ll look at cities and towns near places she knows. Where she grew up, where her siblings live. She probably won’t live right in those places, but if I can find facilities that can provide the level of care she needs and cross those with areas within driving distance of locations that mean something to her or have people she knows, I’ll have a place to start.”
