At Fault (Southern Fraud Thriller) Read online

  Speaking of naughty thoughts.

  Though I didn’t like to admit it, Vincent was actually the genesis and focus of a whole string of naughty thoughts. And why wouldn’t he be? Tall and broad, he had just the right amount of pathos in his blue eyes to make a woman wonder what kind of life he had led.

  At least, he made me wonder.

  I hated that I was wondering, especially at this point in my life. I ought to be a focused professional, but he tended to reduce me to thinking of heated caresses instead of fraud cases.

  I backed away from Vincent’s overwhelming presence, and we did that awkward hallway passing dance that people do when they don’t know which side of the path to take, managing to bump into each other a few more times. This only doubled my frustration level, but now for an entirely different reason.

  I unpeeled myself from him for the third time, determined to storm past.

  “Wait a second,” Vincent said, grasping my arm firmly as I plowed by.

  I stopped and glared at him, hoping he’d take my hint and get out of my way.

  Of course, being Vincent, he didn’t do that. He stood there like a rock wall and studied my face with a little wrinkle of concern deepening between his eyes. I tried to stare him down, but I felt my anger melting away under his honest concern.

  His head tilted to the side as he examined my injury. With deliberation, he lifted his right hand toward my face as if to brush a thumb across my cheekbone, but he stopped when the pad of his finger was a whisper away from my skin.

  I remained stock still, trying to keep my breath even.

  “Looks like you’re going to have quite a shiner,” he said, dropping his hand. “I’m sorry.”

  I lifted my own hand to my face.

  “It’s not your fault. Everything went exactly the way we planned it, but the car’s air bag had a hair trigger. I’m glad you weren’t driving it,” I said, thinking of his shoulder.

  He glanced down at my empty hands. “Where’s the ice pack the medics gave you?” he asked.

  “Oh,” I said, realizing I didn’t have it with me. “I must have left it in the car.”

  “I’ll get it,” he said, handing me the papers and food he carried. “You take these into your office, and we’ll go through them together. I got lunch.”

  Equally grateful for the food and for the moment alone to gain control of my shifting emotions, which I would blame on adrenaline and lingering frustration, I took the stack and did as he suggested.

  Sliding into my chair, I set the food aside and dumped the forms on the desk in front of me. Then I rested my head against the chair’s cushion and considered my day so far.

  At work on a Saturday.

  Staged car accident.

  Black eye.

  Ridiculous citation from two even more ridiculous deputies.

  And a lead on Slidell that I couldn’t follow.

  Could my life get any more absurd? I laughed aloud and then regretted it when I realized the black eye and the stress of the morning had degenerated into a headache, which was becoming more pronounced by the minute. I reached up to massage my temples and fancied I could feel the throbbing of the veins beneath my skin.

  Best not to laugh until I get the jackhammer out of my brain, I thought.

  Still, the situation was funny and pretty standard for me of late, unfortunately. I may not be Turbo Cop, but I was a competent professional, so why did it seem that all my recent cases involved elements of the absurd?

  Bad luck, I guessed.

  Still, despite the morning’s unplanned hitches, Vincent and I were on track to break the fraud ring wide open, and Tripp had a good lead on Slidell. Those facts should be enough to calm me for now.

  I glanced at the ceiling and sighed, realizing that, along with my headache, my swollen eye was starting to throb. It was torture just to lean over for the bottle of pain reliever I kept in my desk drawer. And then, I had the misfortune to catch a glimpse of myself in the dark, reflective screen of my laptop.

  Holy Jesus!

  I looked like hell: disheveled hair, black eye, and more than a hint of swelling spreading across the bridge of my nose.

  With a hopeless groan, I hit the power button on the laptop, and the machine chugged to life, obliterating my painful reflection in the process.

  Vincent came back as I popped a couple of pills into my mouth and washed them down with bottled water. He walked in grinning as if I were the cutest thing he’d ever seen, which was incomprehensible.

  I now had proof of how horrible I looked. I set the bottled water down with a thunk and tried to narrow my eyes at Vincent.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said as I smoothed the hair that had escaped from my ponytail. “Leave it to me to safely execute a low-speed collision, infiltrate a fraud ring, and yet still manage to sustain an injury in the most convoluted way possible.”

  Vincent’s grin only deepened as he leaned over the desk to hand me the ice pack. “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t have to,” I said, as I applied the cool compress to my face, effectively blocking my view of him.

  Before Vincent could respond, Ted Insley knocked discreetly on the doorframe.

  “Afternoon, Julia…Chief,” Ted said, nodding at the two of us in turn.

  He liked to call Vincent by his military rank, although I’m not sure why because Ted is about as civilian as they come. Middle-aged and middle-management material, he likes his life neat and ordered, and that means doling out the hard cases to us grunts while he Scotchgards his trousers or whatever he does to keep himself looking so tidy and wrinkle-free.

  Vincent and I echoed his greeting, and only then did Ted notice that I was holding an ice pack to my face.

  “Something you want to tell me, Special Agent Jackson?” he asked, considering me warily.

  “Just a little memento from our operation this morning,” I said, lowering the ice pack.

  Ted’s eyes widened. “Something go amiss?” he asked. “Was there more damage to the vehicles than you expected?”

  Knowing that Ted felt more concern for the DOI-requisitioned vehicles than the health of one of his supposedly cherished employees, I almost smiled. It was so typical of Ted to think of numbers over personnel. He was, after all, a political appointee and not a seasoned law enforcement officer. He subsisted on numbers and statistics; he couldn’t help himself.

  “Everything went according to plan,” I said, rushing to allay his concern that we had somehow botched the mission, “but my air bag deployed. Hence the black eye.”

  I returned the ice pack to my face to hide the damage, hoping that it might turn the conversation to more relevant topics.

  “Air bag did that?” Ted asked, giving me another cursory glance and then peeking over my shoulder out my office window toward the DOI vehicles in the parking lot. “That’s an expense we didn’t expect.”

  I nodded gently so I wouldn’t hurt my eye. “Couldn’t be helped, and believe me, I would have preferred that it hadn’t happened.”

  “Yes,” Ted agreed, “I imagine you’re in a bit of pain.”

  “It’ll be worth it if we can put these fraudsters away,” I said.

  Vincent grunted his assent and added, “Based on what we uncovered this morning, the ring may be bigger than we anticipated.”

  I slid aside the pile of paperwork and plunked two business cards on the desk between the three of us. One was from Allred Racing and Repair, and the other from the Accident Care Clinic. Vincent added a third card, which advertised the services of Gina Cattaneo-Segretti, attorney at law.

  Oh, goody! A personal injury lawyer too. I hadn’t heard about her yet.

  Ted leaned over the cards, a smile stretching his polished cheeks.

  “That’s quite a list of suspects for one Saturday morning at the office,” he said, his eyes bright as he fingered the business cards. “There are auto and legal fraud components to this too?”

  “Well, everything’s likely connected,” I c
onfirmed. “Surveillance told us the identities of the runners—or some of them, anyway—and we anticipated that they would be the link to our tipster, Dr. Keller. But the runners didn’t even mention the clinic. A paramedic by the name of Kitto suggested that I visit the Accident Care Clinic. She said she has a nurse friend who works there, and she made it clear that the clinic would handle my insurance paperwork without any hassle.”

  “She mentioned a nurse?” Ted asked, rubbing his fingers along his smooth jawline as he paused to think. “Did the paramedic give you a name?”

  I nodded gingerly.

  “Mary Fallsworthy,” I said. “She’s a nurse practitioner.”

  “Great. Maybe Mary Fallsworthy will be able to tell us something additional about the fraud ring. So far, Dr. Keller has been unable to give us any names of people who might be part of it.”

  “How does he get his marching orders, then?”

  “He said he’s been contacted by phone, unknown number.”

  Convenient, I thought. We had a source who knew next to nothing about the actual criminals.

  “Not only did Dr. Keller provide us with a long list of his patients who were involved in car accidents on Polk Highway,” Ted said, “but he recently delivered this list of new patients whom he believes may have been referred by the fraud ring.” He placed a file on the corner of my desk.

  “He doesn’t know for sure?” Vincent asked, sounding skeptical. He picked up the file and thumbed through it before handing it to me.

  “I’m afraid not,” Ted said. “Special Agent Jackson, you follow up with the Accident Care angle, check out this Nurse Fallsworthy. See if you can’t uncover a link between her and the fraud ring. Something concrete. I don’t like leaving my source vulnerable.”

  “I’ll make an appointment and see what I can learn from the inside as a patient.”

  “Yes,” Ted agreed. “Dr. Keller is running the clinic just as he had before he contacted me.”

  Translation: he was padding the insurance claims on the back end, adding a few charges to the claim, and billing them for a few extra supplies. That was apparently the extent of the doctor’s scheme.

  “So if one of the known runners didn’t send you to the clinic, what was their role?” Ted asked.

  I tapped the card for Allred Racing and Repair, drawing my boss’s sharp eyes toward it.

  “Eddie Wohl recommended his repair shop, said they’d treat me right.”

  “Ah,” Ted said. “That will bear deeper scrutiny.”

  “Meanwhile,” Vincent said with more than a hint of disgust in his tone, “Tammy Wynn, the other runner, advised me that Ms. Cattaneo-Segretti was the woman to see about suing the at-fault driver.”

  Ted rocked on his heels, his shoulders thrust back in pride and his expression positively gleeful.

  “Then that’ll be your job, Chief. Check out the attorney. See how deeply she’s embedded in this scheme. Meanwhile, I’ll be in Atlanta for meetings all next week. I’ll brief them on our progress,” he said, his tone holding undisguised self-congratulation. “Looks like Dr. Keller is turning into a more valuable resource than even I anticipated. If we’re talking automotive and legal fraud in addition to the medical components we were already aware of, this could bring some real attention to our branch.”

  I almost laughed at the idea that the Mercer, Georgia, branch of the DOI needed additional attention. We had seen our fair share of media in the past few months. Life at the DOI had been chaotic ever since the failed attempt to abduct me during the summer, and it had stayed that way through to the early fall with the death benefits debacle. Both fraud cases had degenerated into murder investigations and ended with the justified use of lethal force.

  The DOI had been all over the news—both statewide and national—and Ted had apparently been taking some flak for fostering a “culture of violence” in the workplace.

  Apparently, my thoughts registered clearly on my face because Ted looked pointedly at me.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Jackson, and you know what I mean: positive attention. As in, we close a case without having anyone shot. We can’t have people associating the DOI with the use of lethal force. It isn’t good for public relations, you know, even if it is justifiable.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t sure it really mattered. Public relations in the insurance world is a problem with or without the use of force thrown into the mix. But we could only improve from where we were currently positioned in the realm of public opinion.

  Naturally, Ted was hoping for much more.

  “A big bust with no collateral damage,” Ted continued, “is exactly what we need. So far, no one associated with this case has died; let’s see if we can keep it that way.”

  Six

  After a long Saturday at the DOI, which included an intimate lunch with Vincent over paperwork and one excessively draining call to Assurance Insurance to report Janet Aliff’s accident, I sped off the main thoroughfare out of Mercer proper and headed onto the quieter back roads that wound their way to my own little refuge.

  My Tudor house welcomed me in the way that only one’s home can. As I stepped through the door, I felt a portion of the day’s strife dissipate, and when Maxwell, my tuxedo cat, twined himself around my ankles, the rest of my tension seemed to glide away with each brush of his fur against my trousers.

  I dropped my workbag onto the kitchen table and thought about booting up my laptop to try to locate Marnie Jacobs, but I was mentally exhausted. Opting for comfort over more work, I picked up Maxwell, who mewed in surprise and then settled into the crook of my arm as I stroked between his ears. His eyes closed in delight, and he began to purr loudly.

  I sighed in return.

  If I couldn’t come home to the husband and 2.5 children my mother dreamed I would have, at least I had Maxwell.

  And lord, how pathetic did that sound? I might as well go to the pound, adopt a few more felines, and become a crazy cat lady.

  “You wouldn’t like that, would you?” I asked Maxwell, who responded with a louder purr. “You’re a confirmed only cat, aren’t you? Besides, I don’t think I’m at crazy-cat-lady stage yet. I still have a chance at a normal life. Whatever that is.”

  Heck, I’d just settle for not coming home from work with bullet wounds or black eyes.

  That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

  I plopped down in a kitchen chair, and after a nice long cuddle with Maxwell, I deposited him in front of a bowl of his favorite canned cat food and decided to face myself in an actual mirror, a chore I’d avoided after seeing my reflection on the laptop screen.

  I figured that if I couldn’t see the black eye, maybe it would just go away. Because denial always works so well.

  I trudged upstairs to the master bedroom and continued through to the bathroom, determined to get it over with.

  Truly, I’ve never been the type of person to avoid unpleasantness. In fact, I’m usually much the opposite. I tend to fling myself headlong into difficulty in order to face it down and conquer it before it can destroy me and those I love. I’ve always believed that facing problems is better than ignoring or avoiding them like Tricia does.

  Ignore and avoid. Tricia had done both with stunning success, and now that the police were so close to arresting her probable rapist, I feared she might redouble her avoidance efforts and return to her faithful friend: the bottle.

  But it was too late for second thoughts. Well, at least too late to change the course of things. Second thoughts are human nature, aren’t they? And you can’t fight human nature.

  Besides, I’d already flung myself headlong into the search for justice, and I wouldn’t stop now.

  The monster who had violated my sister and destroyed my family deserved to pay for what he’d done. He should not be able to roam free while his victims were imprisoned in the past and tortured by his actions. He had to face the inevitable.

  And so did I.

  Bracing my hands on the cool porcelain surface of
my vanity, I took one long, deep breath and was about to look at myself in the mirror when my cell phone rang.

  Pulling it from my pocket, I turned away from the mirror and leaned my hip on the counter.

  After glancing at the screen, I lifted the phone to my ear and said, “Hey, Hels.” Helena St. John is my best friend who happens to live right across the street.

  “I saw you drive in a while ago,” she said, and I could hear baby Violet chortling somewhere nearby. “You haven’t forgotten about our date tonight, have you?”

  Yes, I thought.

  “No,” I said, finally turning to look at myself in the mirror.

  Ugh. It wasn’t pretty.

  Even though I’d applied ice off and on all day, the bruising and swelling had migrated steadily across the bridge of my nose, and now the deep purple coloration stretched across half of my left eye. My nose looked bigger too, but rather than bruising, it remained a most delightful shade of bright red.

  “I just need a few minutes to, uh, change.”

  And see how much makeup it would take to tone down the Elephant Man-like face I was sporting. As if that were even possible.

  “Well, hurry up because I’m in the mood to celebrate.”

  “Oh, really? What are we celebrating?”

  “You’re talking to the newest member of the fraud and public corruption section at work,” she said, laughing. “Doesn’t sound very exciting, but you never know. Maybe I’ll get to take down a corrupt politician like in the movies.”

  “So you’re a fraudbuster too?” I asked, almost laughing at the idea but quickly sobering at the thought of Hels on the hunt for corrupt public officials.

  “I know. You do the job every day, so you think it’s not very glamorous.”

  “Yeah, glamorous isn’t the word I’d use,” I said, poking gently at my swollen skin. “Interesting, maybe.”

  And dangerous.

  “Well, whatever adjective most aptly describes it, I realized something by watching you all these years at the DOI,” she said. “It’s a good fight, and one that needs good fighters. Maybe I’ll make some enemies when we start prosecuting corrupt officials, but everyone deserves justice.”