“Wow,” she said. “He kept them all.”
“Of course he did. He cherished every one of them.”
“This was one of my favorites,” she said, holding up a card Olivia had created for him when she was only four. It had pink-and-purple stick figures with her Papa throwing her into the air with hearts all around it.
“Mine, too.”
And off we went looking through each of the homemade cards together.
I slowly exhaled. I had dodged a serious bullet.
But I knew I couldn’t keep doing this much longer.
TWENTY-FOUR
I stared at the bedroom ceiling for most of the night instead of sleeping. My mind was flooded with so many questions. Why had Joe kept the old newspaper clipping about the beheading of Eduardo Cortez, head of Grande Distributors? Could he have been trying to escape the same men who had killed Cortez? Was that why he had changed his identity and moved to another country? Had the money in the Cayman Islands come from Cortez?
Although I didn’t want to think about it, my mind also drifted to darker places. Could Joe have possibly committed a crime and then fled with someone else’s money? It was hard to fathom such a possibility, but then everything I’d uncovered the past two days was unbelievable. I again wondered how my father-in-law could have even done such a thing as changing his identity. It’s not like a man can stop in at his local government building and walk out a few minutes later as a new person. Joe had a birth certificate and a Social Security card. How was that possible? How was any of this possible? Around and around my mind went for hours.
So I was wide awake when my phone buzzed on my nightstand at eleven-thirty that night. With Taylor asleep next to me, I grabbed my phone, silenced the buzz, and squinted at the screen. It was not a number I recognized, but the area code told me it was Dallas. Slipping out of bed, I stepped out into the hallway and quietly answered it.
“Hello?”
“Alex? Alex Mahan?”
I recognized the familiar female voice. “Mrs. Tucker?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m so sorry to call you so late.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m up. What . . . what can I do for you?”
I moved farther down the hallway, away from the master bedroom, stepped inside my home office, and shut the door behind me.
“Well, you asked me to call you if I came across anything related to Joe, your father-in-law.”
I perked up. “Did you?”
“Yes, I believe so. Earlier this evening, the police brought me Ethan’s phone and some other personal items he had on him. I was looking on the phone a few minutes ago and came across a text exchange my husband had last night, just a few hours before he was killed. I think it has to do with your father-in-law.”
“Can you screen capture it and text it to me?”
I quickly walked her through how to do that. A text photo arrived from her a moment later. The exchange was between Ethan and someone identified in his phone as Greta Malone. This really got my attention.
Ethan: Joe is dead.
Greta: I know. I’m in shock.
Ethan: Me, too. What are you going to do?
Greta: Lay low. Protect my husband.
Ethan: Does he know about Joe?
Greta: No. I need to keep it that way.
Ethan: Okay. Be safe.
Greta: You, too. I’ll be in touch soon.
I had connected Greta and Ethan. I was not overly surprised. My gut told me the two of them had to be somehow intertwined with what happened with Joe. But I wondered what Greta had meant about protecting her husband. Was she talking about making sure he didn’t discover an affair? That didn’t make any sense to me. Why would Ethan know about it? Something else had to be in play here. I asked Sheila to give me the phone number listed for Greta Malone in Ethan’s phone contacts. She did. It was the same DC number Greta had used to text Joe’s phone earlier this week.
“What are they talking about, Alex?” Sheila asked me.
“I’m not sure. But I really appreciate you calling me.”
“Of course.”
We exchanged a couple of warm words and hung up.
Sitting at my desk, I opened my laptop and immediately typed Greta Malone into Google. It didn’t take much searching for me to find a match. Greta Malone was married to a prominent DC businessman named Scott Malone who was currently running for Congress in Virginia. A photo of them together popped up on my screen. Although she was much older, of course, I felt certain she was the same attractive blonde woman I’d discovered in the old photos with my father-in-law. According to several news articles, Scott Malone was currently in a dead heat with the incumbent congressman with only three months left until election day. I went to Scott Malone’s campaign website to see what else I could find. Scott’s software analytics company had several high-profile corporate clients including American Express, GE, and even the CIA. I again thought about the photo of Greta standing on the CIA emblem. A profile page on the campaign website said Scott and Greta had been married fifteen years. Her husband had two adult children from a previous marriage. There was no mention of Greta having any children of her own. There actually wasn’t much written about Greta at all.