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She couldn’t agree more.
They got up and headed back to their desks. Rutledge dropped by her desk about an hour later and said he’d see her in the morning. “Don’t stay too late.”
She nodded at him but didn’t bother to respond. She had just started to dig into Owens’s financials. It all looked aboveboard. He wasn’t driving a flashy car. Didn’t live in a big house. His life was modest and what she’d expect on a Senior Chief salary. But then there was the boat. That was a little bit pricey, but if he’d saved, it was a possibility.
She leaned back in her chair. What about his wife? She started digging into Alanna Owens’ financials. That’s when things started to go trigger alarm bells.
They had two kids in private school. It was a catholic school that collected a hefty tuition fee. Alanna didn’t work. She had a Mercedes SUV that was newer than Mac’s own BMW. According to Alanna’s credit cards, they’d booked a stay at Aulani, the very expensive Disney resort on the island and charged quite a bit in the way of food and drink, not to mention toys for the kids.
She leaned back in her chair. He was definitely into something illicit. Alanna’s credit card bills were larger than they should be, and they were paid off in full every month. They were living beyond their means for sure. Not majorly, and not super obviously, but yeah, the money was there. But was it enough evidence?
Mac massaged her scalp in hopes of relieving a blooming headache. Food was a necessity, and not the stuff from the vending machines. She pushed back from her desk and took the stairs down to the café on the first floor. They were closing but the manager let her buy a sandwich and a soda. She went back up to her desk and sat down to eat.
At this point, she was the only one in the office and liked the solitude it offered her. “If I was going to risk it all and run drugs, how much would make the risk worth it?” She asked her question out loud and then took a bite of her sandwich. It was roast beef and was damn tasty.
She looked at Alanna’s credit cards again, tallied up the expenses in her head, and then compared those against the man’s annual salary. “Yeah, no. Not enough. Craig Owens had to have more money coming from somewhere. The amount they were spending, at least on paper, did not appear to be enough to risk everything. He had to be hiding it somewhere.
Rutledge had dropped off the box of Owens’s personal items that had been collected from the dead man’s locker. He’d signed them out of the evidence locker earlier to take a look and she’d signed the form saying she had received them from him. The chain of evidence was very important. She finished her sandwich and lifted the lid off the box. Clothes and toiletries, some bits of old mail, but nothing that jumped out at her.
She picked up a couple of pictures. One was of the power boat but it had no writing on the back. The other was a view of a beach and a street taken from high above, maybe from a balcony. There were people on the beach and in the water, but it was way too far away to identify any of them. It sort of looked familiar. She flicked the picture over. The wordCandylandwas written on the back.
What the hell did that mean? She studied the picture again but couldn’t place it. Putting the picture aside, she went through the rest of the box. There was nothing else of any interest. She set the box on the floor and went back to the picture. It would come to her eventually but she was coming up dry at the moment.
The sound of footsteps startled her. She looked up. “Hey, Manu. What are you doing here?”
“Hey, Mac.” The kid smiled. “My cat chewed my phone charger cord, so I came to get another one.”
He had a cat? That was a bit unexpected. She shrugged. “Ah, well, have a good night.”
“What are you doing here so late?” he asked as he disappeared behind his cubicle wall. He popped back up, charger in hand.
“Just working a case. Hey, can you come here for a sec?” Manu walked over to her cubicle. She pointed at the picture on her desk. “Do you recognize this beach?”
He gave her an uncertain smile. “Are you kidding? That’s Waikiki Beach by the Hilton.”
She smacked her forehead. “I must be losing it. I knew it looked familiar. Thanks, Manu.”
“No problem. Have a good night,” he called as he made his way back toward the elevators.
“Yeah, you, too,” she murmured absently.Candyland.What the hell did that mean? Wasn’t there a kid’s game by that name? As she stared at the picture, the more certain she became that it was a clue to Owens’s secret life. He kept a picture of his boat and this. Did that mean he owned this, too?
She sat back in her chair, startled at the thought. An apartment on Waikiki Beach would be damn expensive. No way could he afford it on his salary.But.But, if like she suspected, he had more cash on hand, then where better to hide it than an apartment in an expensive area of town? That made total sense to her.
It couldn’t be in his name, though, or his wife’s. She’d run both for real estate holdings as well as financials, but nothing had come up. Digging through the records she pulled both sets of parents’ names. Nothing in Oahu under those names either. A company name? That could be anything.
Maybe she should look at it from a different perspective. Maybe she needed to find the address of the building and look at who owned each condo, see if any name jumped out at her. With that in mind, she started clicking away at her keyboard. Suddenly she realized she was going to have to do the same for each member of the team. Maybe they were all laundering their cash with real estate. It was going to be a long night ahead, but she had a gut feeling this trail was going to get her some results.
Fingers crossed they would be positive ones.
CHAPTERNINE
Dane leaned against the mirrored back wall of the elevator. His black T-shirt wasn’t warm enough for the level of AC the building had pumping. It probably wasn’t warm enough for the night itself, considering his back. A cool breeze had come up, and the temperature was dropping. Funny, he never used to think seventy degrees was cold on the east coast, but here, it was sweater weather. He was glad he’d gone for black cargo pants instead of shorts. He and his damn back hated being cold now.
Koa was beside him, wearing the same black T-shirt, but he’d opted for jeans. Probably a good thing. They looked more relaxed that way. All black tended to draw attention. He hadn’t thought of that when he’d gotten dressed.
“You look like you’re going to break into a place,” Koa said as they rode up to the twentieth floor.
Dane grinned. “My sartorial choices were solely based on my lack of clean clothes.”
