Page 45 of Last Resort

Ben told Teag about Raines’s murder, the poker chips, Carr’s unexpected and questionable appearance, and the break-ins at the rental unit and Trinkets as well as their angry ghost and the reluctant spirit at the convent.

“Never a dull day with y’all, is there?” Teag replied. “Wow. Wait ’til I let Cassidy know you’re outdoing us in weird spooky stuff.”

“Pretty sure it’s not a competition,” Ben joked. “And there’s probably a shitty prize for winning.”

“Do you have photos of Tom Raines and Holden Carr? I can run them through some paranormally-enhanced photo matching programs and see if anything turns up. Give me the known aliases for Edwin and Galen Raines, and we might get some more obscure or hard-to-find matches,” Teag said.

Teag had magically-enhanced hacking skills given his ability as a Weaver witch. His expertise extended to the Darke Web, the ensorcelled-encryption online underground frequented by people and creatures with paranormal abilities. On the Darke Web, the “ghost in the machine” might really be a ghost, and the “uncanny intelligence” program could be run by a daemon that was actually a demon.

“Already loaded all of that into the secure transfer protocol,” Ben told him. “Along with pictures of the poker chips. They’ve got what we think is a code on them, and we haven’t broken it.”

“Ooohh,” Teag replied. “I love codebreaking! You know this is all catnip to me, right?”

“I was hoping so.” Ben was sure Teag’s excitement at the challenge would have him diving into the search immediately.

“Deadline?” Teag asked.

“Remember that bad-luck hotel that sits on a dark genius loci site? Our witchy friends say the energy will wax with the equinox. I don’t know if that will make things worse, but I’d rather not find out the hard way.”

“Crap. That’s coming up fast. I’ll jump on this today and keep you posted as I find things,” Teag told him.

“Thank you. Please give my best to the gang.”

“Will do. Talk to you soon,” Teag promised and ended the call.

Ben sat for a moment, staring into space as he thought. He turned back to his computer, looking to see if the tracers he had set on Tom Raines had turned up anything new. He sighed as he scanned the report and saw that, just like before, all leads ended when Raines disappeared, and nothing connected him with Maine.

On a whim, Ben turned to historical databases searching for Edwin Raines.

As a Newark cop, Ben had more up-close experience with mobsters than he ever wanted. He knew how much Hollywood embellished and romanticized the Mafiosi mythos, and understood the difference between fact and fiction.

That didn’t make him immune to enjoying a good gangster movie or rule out a secret fascination with the exploits of larger-than-life criminals, especially those from long ago.

“Did Edwin fly under Nucky Johnson’s notice because Fun Factory was small potatoes?” Ben mused aloud. “Maybe it got big enough that the Boardwalk guys wanted a piece of the action.”

His search turned up a book,Seaside Syndicate, written by Michael Castelammare, a New Jersey historian. The book went into details about the Atlantic City Mob of the early 1900s. To Ben’s surprise, one of the items mentioned in the synopsis was the unsolved “heist of the decade” involving Edwin Raines.

He downloaded the book and skimmed the contents, focusing on anything to do with Edwin. Galen and Tom fell outside the book’s timeline. Edwin was only mentioned in part of one chapter, but that glimpse still provided some interesting details.

Going with his gut, Ben went to the author’s webpage and found his contact information. It didn’t take much for someone with a PI background to find a phone number.

“Mr. Castelammare? My name’s Ben Nolan from Cape May, and I have some new information in the Edwin Raines saga you might find interesting.” Ben hoped curiosity would be enough to draw the historian out.

“How did you get my number?”

Ben couldn’t blame the guy for being cautious, especially given his subject matter. “I’m an ex-cop from Newark and a private investigator looking into the recent murder of Edwin Raines’s grandson, Thomas.”

“What do you want?” Castelammare sounded wary, but interested.

“I’d like to spitball theories with someone who knows the Raines family history,” Ben replied. “Completely unofficial, totally off the record. I’ll keep your name out of it. But you did, after all, write the book on it.”

“Ask your questions—I reserve the right not to answer.”

Castelammare sounded like a curmudgeon, but Ben wondered how many crank or threatening calls the academic might have fielded over the years. The book wasn’t a recent publication or a bestseller. But if it exposed insider gossip, Ben suspected that some individuals might not be pleased, even nearly a century after Edwin’s crime.

The Mob prized its privacy and secrets.

“Do you think that Edwin’s car wreck was an accident?” Ben led with an easy question since Castellammare had flirted with a theory in the book.

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