Jasmine Cresswell - Payback

Luke turned off the shower and shook water from his body. Clearly, he didn’t have time right now for pursuing ghosts, literal or metaphorical. Nevertheless, he found himself grabbing a towel and padding wet-footed back into the spare bedroom that served as his home office. Tucking the towel around his waist, he grabbed his Palm Pilot and retrieved a phone number for George Klein, a private detective he’d hired over the summer to identify a dishonest Luciano’s employee.

George greeted him warmly, a soothing change after the indifferent cops. “Luke, it’s good to hear from you again. How are you?”

“I’m fine, but I need your help. Nothing to do with the restaurants, thank God. Either the security systems you put in place are working or I’ve managed to hire some really loyal and honest employees. I hope it’s the latter.”

“I do, too. There’s nothing I like better than to install protective systems that never get activated. So, how can I help you?”

“I’m hoping you can run a license number for me. It’s a Virginia plate, and I need to know who the car is registered to. Do you have any contacts in Virginia?”

“A couple. Hopefully, they’ll come through for me. Give me the plate number and I’ll give it my best shot.”

“I’m not sure of the final digit. I was reading the license in the dark and I couldn’t see whether it was AB7 4K3, or AB7 4K8. What I want to know is the name and address of the owner. The car was a silver gray Mercedes coupe, by the way. I don’t know if that makes a difference.”

“Absolutely. It’s a big help.” George Klein was far too discreet to inquire why Luke wanted to track down a Virginia license plate. “I’ll have both sets of numbers run through the DMV database, and if my contacts are still good, I should be able to get names and addresses for you before the end of business tomorrow.”

George called early the following afternoon, tracking Luke down at the smallest and least formal of the three Luciano restaurants, a trattoria in Oakbrook. He informed Luke that the vehicle registered as AB7 4K3 was a Hyundai, owned by a woman. Her name was Jennifer Parker and she lived in Reston, Virginia.

“Based on your description of the vehicle as a gray Mercedes, I assume that’s not the person you’re looking for,” he said.

“No, I’m trying to trace a man,” Luke said. “He’s an old friend and we…um…lost touch.”

George Klein was kind enough to ignore Luke’s lame attempt to justify his snooping. “The vehicle registered as AB7 4K8 is a Mercedes CLK 550 coupe,” he said. “The color is listed as Evening Pearl. That sounded more like the vehicle you’re looking for.”

“Yes, it sure does.”

“Apparently it was sold last week. The system caught up with the change of ownership only a couple of hours before I checked, so we got lucky. It’s currently registered to a Mercedes dealer in Arlington, Virginia. I figured you’d want to know the name of the previous owner—”

“Yes, I sure do.”

“It was a man called Stewart M. Jones.”

Luke’s breath caught at the now-familiar name. It might be sheer coincidence that Mr. Jones had sold his car right after Luke chased him down in the restaurant parking lot. But the hasty sale could also mean that Ron Raven was so determined not to be traced that he’d been willing to part with an almost-new Mercedes to avoid discovery.

“Do you have an address for Mr. Jones?” Luke asked the detective.

“I do. Mr. Jones gave his place of residence as McLean, Virginia—2737 Elm Court to be precise.”

“Thanks, George. I really appreciate the swift service. Can you do one more thing for me? Find out if Stewart Jones is still living at Elm Court.”

“I figured you might want that information.” George Klein sounded pleased with his forethought. “I already checked with the owners of the building. According to them, Elm Court is a short-term rental place but it’s pretty upscale, mostly catering to diplomats and international businessmen. Unit 6, which is where Mr. Jones was living when he registered his car, rents for five thousand bucks a month, furnished, weekly maid service included. That’s not out of sight for the D.C. area, but it’s obviously not cheap, either. Mr. Jones stayed there for only one month and left three months ago, with all his bills paid up. From the point of view of the management company, there was nothing in the least remarkable about his stay or his departure. They screen all tenants, of course, and Mr. Jones passed the screening without a hiccup.”

If Ron Raven were alive and wanted to conceal that fact, then Washington, D.C. would be an ideal city for him to hide in, Luke reflected. Nobody noticed strangers or transients in the D.C. area because the city was full of them. From Ron’s perspective, there were few cities in the United States that would offer better prospects for lucrative business deals, combined with plenty of comfortable places to hide.

The fact that “Stewart Jones” had passed a standard credit check didn’t surprise Luke in the least. Ron Raven had been running background checks on prospective clients for three decades and he would certainly know all the danger points he needed to protect himself against. On top of that, he’d been concealing his bigamous lifestyle for twenty-eight years. Never confiding fully in anyone, procuring duplicate documents and spinning stories to obscure the truth would be second nature to him. Now that he thought about it, Luke realized Ron Raven was almost uniquely qualified to disappear and reemerge with a new identity.

Unfortunately, the more convinced Luke became that Stewart Jones and Ron Raven were the same person, the more difficult it became to imagine how he was going to track the guy down. On top of that, he would soon have to consider the issue Anna had raised last week: Would he be doing the Raven family any favors by telling them he’d seen Ron? Or would he be heating up an emotional pot that had just started to cool down from the traumatic news of Ron’s death?

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that Mr. Jones left a forwarding address,” he said to George Klein.

“He left an address, but it’s in Australia. In Adelaide, to be precise. I haven’t followed up. I figured I’d talk with you first before going to that expense.”

“Stewart Jones’s forwarding address is in Australia?”

“Yes. You sound surprised.”

“I am.”

“I take it you didn’t know that Mr. Jones is an Australian diplomat?”

“An Australian diplomat?” Luke stared blankly at the contract with a seafood vendor that he’d been reading before he picked up the detective’s call. Ron Raven clearly had acting abilities his family didn’t know about if he’d managed to pass himself off as an Australian.

“Luke? Are you there?”

“Sorry, you surprised me, that’s all. I assumed…Mr. Jones…was an American.”

“Perhaps he is. If you’re a person trying to hide, adopting a foreign identity is a great first step.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because superficial identity checks in the States are all set up around social security numbers. An Australian diplomat doesn’t have an American social security number, meaning that credit checks are a lot more difficult. Not to mention more expensive.”

“And that would make it harder for somebody to identify Stewart Jones as a fraud,” Luke said.

“Absolutely,” George agreed. “But if Stewart Jones isn’t really Australian, we can soon find out. Do you want me to check the Australian address he gave the rental company?”

Luke’s first instinct was to stop this investigation right now. What the hell was he trying to achieve by chasing a chimera across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean? In the end, though, he couldn’t quite let go.