I’d been right about her not being married, but apparently, she had been engaged. There wasn’t a ton of information about her fiancé though, at least not through official channels. The most I could gather was his name had been Kevin Smith. Feeling frustrated, I resorted to social media. After some digging, I found an old inactive Facebook page made by Geraldine. She’d never been hugely active on Facebook, but there were some personal posts in the months before her death. She’d posted some memes about love and how finding someone who really understood you was worth risking it all.
The photos on her Facebook page were mostly of cats and food she’d eaten. There was also a half dozen photos of her with a guy. I assumed he must have been her fiancé because when he began showing up in photos, she was suddenly wearing a ring on her left hand.
As I studied the photos of her with her fiancé, it nagged at me that there was something familiar about him. He was a nondescript-looking person with black hair and an average build. Most of the photos were couple selfies, but there was one close-up of her fiancé alone that she’d probably taken. As I stared at that photo, trying to figure out why he looked so familiar, the sprinkling of ruddy freckles across his nose suddenly clicked in my brain.
It was Archie.
My mouth fell open as I recognized the face. The black hair had thrown me at first, plus he’d been much thinner and a decade younger. But the more I scoured the photo, the more positive I was that it was indeed Archie.
I leaned back in my chair, trying to understand all the confusing facts. One thing was for sure, Archie had obviously had more false identities than we’d originally uncovered. Archie had received a big lump of money when his wife, Kimora, had drowned. Had he somehow benefited financially from Geraldine’s death too? I’d need to figure that out.
But then again, Geraldine isn’t dead.
Not if she was leaving her fingerprints behind. Had Geraldine helped kill Kimora for the insurance money? Had she been in on a scheme to swindle Janelle? But if Janelle had been the mark, why was Archie dead? And why had Geraldine gone to see Thomas? Did she not realize the police knew about Archie’s past? How could she not know we’d have found that out? Was she extremely naive or not very bright? Perhaps she was simply desperate. That was worrisome because desperate people were dangerous.
The door to my office swung open, and Deputy Sam stood there looking excited. “Boss, a security guard at the R&D Credit Union grabbed some person trying to use Archie’s ATM card,” he rasped.
“Seriously?” I stood, and my chair rolled across the floor, banging into the wall behind me. I raced out of my office and down the hallway. “Are they holding them there?”
“Yep.” He sounded breathless. “Should I come too?”
“No. Stay here.”
I slammed out through the double glass doors and ran to my car. Once inside, I started the engine and drove to the R&D Credit Union. Out front, there was a crowd gathered. There was an older man wearing a security uniform standing over a long-haired high school–aged kid. The boy was sitting on the curb, scowling.
I stopped in front of the security guard. “Hank, what happened?” I asked gruffly.
“I caught the kid trying to get money out of the ATM machine.” Hank shook his head. “When the machine took the card, he started hitting and kicking the machine.”
I studied the boy, confused about why he’d had Archie’s ATM card. All the attempts before had appeared to be from a girl. “Where did you get the card?” I asked the boy.
He gave me a dirty look. “I found it.”
“Is that right? Where?”
He sighed. “Behind the Pancake Cottage. It was just lying there on the ground.”
“And you just thought you’d use it instead of turning it in?”
He shrugged. “I thought maybe the person who’d had it didn’t want it anymore.”
“Right. And somehow that made it yours?” I shook my head. “What’s your name, son?”
“Troy.” He looked less angry now and a little more worried. “You’re not going to tell my parents, right? I didn’t get any money.”
“It’s still attempted theft,” Hank grumbled. “You knew better, kid.”
Sighing, Troy said, “I didn’t mean any harm.”
Waving his hands, Hank said, “You were hitting and kicking the ATM machine. Those things cost a bloody fortune.”
Troy held up his scraped knuckles. “I’m the only one that got hurt here. The machine is fine.”
I knew Troy wasn’t the person who’d been trying to use the card recently. If the person who’d had the card first had discarded it, that was disappointing. Apparently, they’d given up trying to get the card to work. That meant we’d lost our chance at grabbing them in the act and the connection they’d had to Archie.
I returned to Troy. “Using someone else’s ATM card without their permission is fraud, Troy. Did you know that?”
His eyes widened. “What?”
