I returned his stare. “What?”
“You’re getting good at this.”
Heat raced into my cheeks. “Shut up.”
“Whenever you two are done flirting, I’m here,” Jacko quipped.
Nick thought for a minute. “Austin still has the house, the furniture, and his Merc, which tells me that whatever promises he’s made to the Crows about repayment of his debt, they have to believe he can deliver on them.”
“Chloe,” I breathed Nick’s mother’s name, horrified. “Getting control of her and her money is his golden ticket out of trouble.”I shared a look with Nick that needed no interpretation. Austin Pattinson wasn’t going to know what hit him.
A thought occurred to me. “But a power of attorney can be challenged if someone suspects it’s being used for personal benefit, right? It’s not a slam dunk for Austin to simply drain Chloe’s accounts.”
“But who exactly was going to challenge him?” Nick raised an important point. “Until I came along, Chloe had no known relatives that Austin was aware of. She’d kept me and her past quiet. With the diagnosis of Parkinson’s kicking in, and the Crow brothers breathing down his neck, he probably thought all his Christmases had come at once.”
“But she’s going to need care,” I protested. “And a rest home is going to suck up a lot of that money.”
Nick said nothing and I finally got it.
“Shit. She was never going into a home, was she?”
Nick shook his head sadly. “I think he intends to move her into that granny flat where he can draw down on her accounts for a ton of expenses that may or may not be valid, like the renovations. He’d be able to rifle her accounts that way to pay off the Crow brothers, fudging the numbers with very little oversight because she had no other relatives. He’s already successfully gaslighting her doctor.”
Anger simmered under my skin, threatening to boil over. I raged in silence, thinking of Shirley, and the idea of someone fucking with her in the same way. It had a name. Elder abuse. A name that didn’t begin to encapsulate the scope of the cruelty. Financial. Physical. Spiritual. Social. I just couldn’t get my head around somebody doing that.
“What about Belinda?” I blurted. “Do you think she knows what he’s up to?”
Jacko sighed. “There wasn’t much to find but she seems legit. Divorced fifteen years ago stating irreconcilable differences.There were no kids. Austin and she run completely separate bank accounts. Belinda puts money into his on a regular basis, presumably her share of the expenses. She has a small savings account, nothing much to speak of. Taxes are paid up. She’s clean as a whistle. She moved around a bit after the divorce, but her job as an ER nurse is flexible and in demand, and she didn’t have a family to tie her down, so no red flags there.”
“And likely no idea the shitshow she’s signed up for,” Nick concluded. “The Crow brothers won’t think twice about putting the screws on her if Austin starts fucking them around. Poor woman.”
“Is this enough to go to Wright with?” I checked.
“Only in general terms. You can tell what you’ve learned only as word of mouth from a confidential source,” Jacko was quick to remind us. “You can’t use my name or any copies of what I found. I’ve given you what you need, now it’s up to you to get things done the right way. Convince the police to get a search warrant on this guy’s accounts and you’ll have it all. If you don’t, he walks. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yeah, I know.” Nick blew out a long sigh. “Thanks, Jacko. I owe you.”
“No, you don’t,” Jacko corrected. “But we’re quits now, okay? Good luck and let me know what happens.”
Jacko ended the call and I eyed Nick across the car. “And how exactly do you propose we convince Wright to try for a search warrant to officially dig into Austin’s financials?”
Nick closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Fucked if I know. We’re gonna have to dig up something more concrete on Austin’s gambling and drug debts.” He glanced back along the street toward the thoroughfare. “There must be something in that house. Drugs, if nothing else. Maybe we can get Wright to start there under the pretext of Chloe’s disappearance.”
It was a good idea but, “How? It’s all so vague.”
Nick’s eyes flashed. “I don’t know, all right? I don’t fucking know.” He slammed his closed fist on the steering wheel.
When I said nothing, he dropped his head and sighed. Then he turned and cupped my face. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I know I didn’t.” I rested my hand over his. “But don’t apologise. Strategize. We’re in this together, remember?”
Nick pulled me closer until our lips met. “Together,” he breathed the word. “Yeah, I remember.”
He smelled of rain and perspiration and something uniquely him. I inhaled deeply and slowly sat back. “All right. So, we might not have enough to convince thepoliceabout the need for a warrant just yet,but...” I left the sentence hanging and a slow smile spread over Nick’s lips.
“But—” His eyebrows bobbed comically up and down “—that doesn’t mean we can’t use what we’ve learned to rattle a certain arsehole’scage until his eyeballs fall out and he shits his pants wondering just how much we really do know.”
A grin split my face. “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
