Chapter 21

Doreen walked over. "Hey, Tony," she greeted him, Mack on her heels. "What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for you. The cops told me I could find you here. I,… well,… I thought I'd better tell you something else."

"Yeah, you sure should," Mack declared, his tone hardening again.

The kid looked nervously from him to Doreen. "Will he hurt me?"

"No, of course not," she replied, "but I might, if you don't start talking."

Tony stared at her and then back at Mack, who just sighed. "Don't worry, kid. She's joking."

She turned to face Mack and asked, "Am I?"

"Yes," he declared, glaring at her.

She shrugged. "Okay, okay. I'm kidding," she muttered, "but we do need answers, and, so far, everybody is beating around the bush. So, how did you get back into town from dropping off the Jag?"

"They gave me a lift," he said, looking at her.

She stopped and stared. "You delivered the Jag to the airport, and then they brought you back to the car park?"

"Sure. How else was I supposed to get back? I started to call a cab, but they didn't want that, so they dropped me off."

"Oh." She wondered how any of that fit into this mess. She looked at Mack. "Your turn."

He shook his head, pivoting to the kid. "I would rather hear what you wanted to tell us so badly that you tracked us down."

Tony winced visibly. "I heard something, when I was in the vehicle with them. They were just talking among themselves, and I had my earphones in, listening to music, as I always do. I don't think they really thought about the fact that I was there or that I could still hear them."

"No, but it might have been part of why the driver was killed though."

Tony stared at her in shock. "You think so?"

"I don't know what I think at the moment," she muttered. "Keep talking."

Tony shrugged. "I'm not saying anything for sure, but they were making plans. The guy in the back seat mentioned something about, After talking to you, if it didn't work out, he could reverse it, but, if things did work out, still would be better in the long term."

"Did he say what it was about?"

Tony shrugged, shook his head, and added, "Something about property." He looked at her apologetically. "I thought you knew because he seemed to think it was something to do with you."

"Like what?" she asked.

Tony took a deep breath. "Something might be in your name that somebody wants, and he's trying to either get you to sign or to cancel the divorce or to get a hold of you and force you to sign."

She stepped back and looked at him in shock. "What?"

At that, his tone turned grim, yet with a hint of satisfaction, Mack stated, "Finally something is starting to make sense."

She turned to him, frowning. "Glad it makes sense to you, because it sure doesn't make sense to me."

He asked her, "Is there any property in your name?"

She shrugged. "None that I know of."

"Because you didn't know, you probably didn't have Nick do a search for it with the divorce then either."

"No, why would I? If I'd known I owned anything, why would I have come here and scraped by, living off the money Nan kept secretly hiding in my kitchen?"

"Who knows why Mathew put property in your name or even when it happened. But then, when the divorce action started, Mathew must have realized that he was possibly in trouble, once it came to light, and that you probably wouldn't just hand it over to him. Then again, it's quite possible he needed to sell it in order to get clear of some debt. Maybe Mathew had somebody who wanted it and wasn't so willing to sell it or wanted to take it in trade for some money that Mathew owed him, and things got ugly. So, he probably came down here and needed you to sign it over, and, if you didn't, then he was in trouble."

"Except that he always had a way to make it work out in the end, whether I signed or not."

"How? Why?"

"Because he just forged my signature."

He frowned at her. "You're kidding. Is that something he would do, even on a legal document?"

"Especially on a legal document. He's done it before," she stated. "I didn't think anything of it at the time, but honestly things were very different then. I was very different then. But now? All this is making me think."

"That's interesting. Maybe not a good-enough signature to get through a court of law, especially considering there's a divorce in progress, but maybe enough to fob off on these people."

"But, if they figured it out later, wouldn't they just come back to find him?"

"Maybe, but maybe by then he would have found enough money to have gotten himself out of whatever financial hole he was in."

She nodded slowly. "I remember a development that he was involved in that wasn't going well, but that was quite a while ago, right before we separated."

"Sure, and he might have held off the investors for quite a while. However, now with the divorce, if one investor got wind of it,… then every investor gets nervous," Mack suggested.

"It's quite possible that is what stirred this up into a huge issue now." She stared at him, nodding now. "In a way that makes sense, yet, in another, it doesn't."

"Tell me what's bothering you about it?" he asked.

She shrugged. "If he already had forged my signature once,… maybe it wouldn't work a second time." She thought about Mathew's hand the last time she'd seen him. "When I saw Mathew last, his hand was wrapped up."

"Damaged from something?"

"Maybe? I don't know, but Reggie mentioned something about Mathew hurting his hand too."

"Right, so in that case, maybe with a bum hand, he couldn't produce a forgery good enough to get through the legal process—at least not enough to match his previous forgery. Maybe his own lawyer wouldn't even deal with it and wanted a better signature."

"He just needed an even more crooked lawyer."

"Yeah, but Robin's dead."

At that, Doreen winced at the mention of her husband's fling and her own previous divorce lawyer. She sighed, then looked over at the kid. "It sure would have been nice if you'd told us this yesterday."

Tony shrugged. "I wasn't even going to tell you today," he admitted, "but then I got scared, when I thought about the guy in the trunk. I realized I'd been worrying about getting in trouble for the cars, but that won't even matter if whoever killed him thought I might know something more," he shared, with a sad smile.

"Exactly," she said. "Good choice."

Tony looked at Mack, then at her, and asked, "So am I off the hook?"

"Off the hook for what?" Mack asked, staring at him.

"For the rentals."

"No, you're not, and, even if you were, do you really think those car owners won't be all over you?"

Tony winced. "I was hoping maybe you could tell them it's not happening anymore."

"That's fine, but there is still the matter of a beat-up Jaguar that seriously needs its trunk cleaned. I can't imagine the owner's insurance company will let that ride."