Page 71 of 3rd Tango
“Hey.”
I turn to the door where Charlie stands. After our return from Mom’s, she changed into the extra pair of jeans and a short-sleeved pullover she keeps in her office. Her feet are bare.
“No shoes, huh?”
She smiles. “Accidentally left them at Gayle’s. Mom’s got them.” She gestures to the skull. “What do you think?”
I know what she’s asking. My sister, as hard-nosed as she is, has a little desperation inside her, too. She wants to solve cases as much as I do.
“Female,” I say. “Or maybe a child. I’m not far enough into it. She’s been sitting in a morgue for twenty years.”
Charlie’s low whistle fills the room. “Have you named her?”
She often lectures me about getting too attached to cold cases. My penchant for naming the victims—in Charlie’s opinion—is a sure sign.
“Not yet.” I smile ruefully, unwilling to let her have any satisfaction. “I have ideas, though.”
“I’m sure you do. Can you take a break? Taylor just called. She’s coming over with Matt. She has info for us. About Gayle.”
A chime sounds from the back door opening and a second later Matt calls out.
“We’re in Meg’s office,” Charlie responds.
Matt appears, Taylor beside him. He’s dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt while Taylor’s suit, although lovely, carries wrinkles and creases befitting an extremely long day.
“Well,” she says, “we’d better go to the conference room. It’s a humdinger.”
At that, I snort. Weren’t they all lately?
Gently, I run my hand over the top of the skull mounted on a stand in front of me. “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Swear to God, Meg,” Charlie says. “Sometimes you are downright weird.”
This is news to her?
I follow them to where Charlie has slapped on the overhead light and we take our seats. Charlie at the end and Matt and I on either side with Taylor beside him. The arrangement has started to become the norm. Obviously, Taylor has spent far too much time here recently.
Charlie sets her right hand down and gently drums her fingers. “What’d you find out?”
“Gayle and Marie,” Taylor says. “Jan VanHolmes and Mary Rowlands. As you know, they’re fugitives. Currently using identities they stole from two people who died in the fifties.”
Nothing about that was a surprise. I’ve learned that folks living off the grid often steal names from the deceased. It’s shockingly easy—even with today’s security—to obtain a copy of a birth certificate and turn it into a new life. “Was Marie in the London Fog Gang?”
“Outside of being the girlfriend of member Henry Dieder? No. He was killed in the raid, along with Sven. She heard from Gayle the takedown had gone bad. He’d called, warning her the feds would be knocking on the door anytime.”
“She ran,” I say.
Taylor gives a definitive nod. “She did. Svenson hid the money under a loose floorboard in their apartment. Evelyn found it one day while cleaning, and when Henry and Marie broke up for a stint—they did that a lot, from Marie’s confession—Marie stayed with her. Evelyn showed her the stash.”
“And they left it there?” I ask.
“Yep. Evelyn was afraid if Sven knew she’d discovered it, he’d move it. And Marie? Not stupid. She and Evelyn knew if the relationship ever went bad, Evelyn needed to know where it was. Just in case. When Evelyn’s so-called beloved died, she grabbed the money and ran. Marie went with her. They paid Gayle to set them up with fake identities and went their separate ways.”
I take a second to ponder this. If Gayle and Marie separated, why were they living together?
Charlie gives Taylor her puzzled face. “How does Al play into this? Based on what Meg told me about him showing up at Gayle’s earlier, they seemed to know each other.”
“This is where it gets good,” Matt says.
