Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(78)

Too many, she thought, too many crossed, and that meant the killer had knowledge of both pools to fish in both pools.

And however she arranged it, she still came back to Shelby as a key.

Considering, she moved Montclair Jones from ancillary to the head group with his siblings.

It had to flow from there, she decided. So turn it all over, start again at the top.

She went to her desk to review the runs on all three. She picked apart little details, poked through on education, activities, relationships, medicals, and financials.

Then got more coffee, and did it all again from another angle.

Despite the early start, the extra work had eaten up the time. Rising, she went to the doorway of Roarke’s adjoining office.

“I’ve got to go in.”

He paused at his work on screen. “I’ll be leaving shortly myself.”

“This new place you’re starting when the building’s cleared. What’s the name again?”

“You inspired it. An Didean.”

“Yeah, that. It’ll be good works, socially conscious, blah, blah, but to some extent it has to be run as a business, right? Payrolls, overhead, job descriptions, supervisors, pecking orders.”

“It would.”

“Organized so people have schedules, duties, so bills get paid, supplies get bought and distributed. And like a home, too, with that kind of dynamic—chores, say. Somebody’s got to take care of laundry, cleaning, food.”

Interested, he sat back. “The concept is to have the residents take part in that. Assignments to cook and clean—to establish routine, discipline, and a sense of ownership.”

“And when you don’t have unlimited resources, you have to keep things pretty tight. You’d have a budget, and somebody has to keep a handle on that. And to keep within that budget, everybody has to pull weight, pull some extra when it comes down to it, and it’s going to come down to it pretty regularly without solid outside funding.”

“You run a department,” he pointed out. “And have a budget to work within.”

“Yeah, which got me thinking. I’m juggling all the time, or trying to mine what I have for a little extra. Shift this to open that, then you have to figure out how the hell to fill the hole you opened when you shifted. It’s a pain in the ass, but it has to be done. The Joneses had the same deal. This is what we’ve got, and we have to figure out how to make it work.”

Those wild blue eyes lit with interest. “Now you’re following the money?”

“Kind of. Both Nashville and Philadelphia Jones got the training and degrees for the social work and counseling aspects. The older sister—the Aussie now—she got some of it, too. Philadelphia some business management, so you have to figure she was the one with the budget headaches.”

“I wouldn’t say she did a stellar job of it.”

Eve pointed her finger at him. “That’s exactly right. They pretty consistently swam in the red, right up until they were swamped by it before Bittmore built them a big, shiny boat. Now, many people like that run on good intentions and the hope that a higher power—one with deep pockets—is going to come to the rescue. But Philadelphia strikes me as more realistic than that. When you’re the one trying to add up the columns and stretch the numbers, you have to be.”

“All right. What does that tell you?”

“You sound like Mira,” she commented. “Anyway, it makes me look at the whole production, and the parts of it. Philadelphia’s pulling a lot of weight; the older brother, he looks to be pulling pretty hefty, too—even did some outside work, part-time teaching, part-time preaching—to bring in a little more here and there.”

“And the younger? Not pulling weight.”

“It looks like he was weight. Didn’t get the certifications, so he can’t officially run any of the sessions or counsel or teach. Treatment for depression, and meds to deal with it. No specific training I can find. From my shuffling around in the financials, it looks like he had a little stipend from the mother at her death—just him, not the others—a portion of insurance there, but no stipend—which is also telling.”

“She left what she could to the one she felt needed it most.”

“Yeah. And for the rest, his siblings covered him. Even the Aussie sister sent them some money now and then,” Eve added. “They paid baby brother out of the budget for general labor, and that’s mostly a bullshit term to get around specifics when there just aren’t any.

“That goes on for years. Then boom, they get that big, shiny boat. They’re barely on board when they send him to Africa—and it wasn’t first-class travel, but it cost them. They finally have a little breathing room in the budget, and instead of absorbing him into the new place, they ship him off.”

“And you wonder, was it to just divest themselves of the weight, was it a sudden opportunity they believed would serve him, or did they get him as far away as they could because his mission wasn’t to help young girls, but to kill them.”

“That’s just what I’m wondering. He’s the one with all the loose time.”

“And it would take time to lure, to kill, to construct the walls.”

“Yeah, and where does somebody with a full schedule, with an armload of stuff to do, get that time? But he’s got plenty on his hands. What do you do with that? Maybe you hang around the neighborhood, and you see where some of the kids—like Shelby—go when they get out and around.”