Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(40)

I snorted. “I just bet it is.”

Silvio arched his eyebrows at the sarcasm in my voice. “Actually, her charity

work is where it gets interesting. Ms. Shaw is involved with numerous

charities, but they all fall under one corporate umbrella, Shaw Good Works,

which she heads up. Other people actually run the charities so that Ms. Shaw

can spend her time fund-raising and then deciding where to put all that

capital. So, really, she’s an investment banker, just like Finn.”

I’d always thought that Finn must take after his mom, since he wasn’t all

that much like Fletcher. The old man had been perfectly happy to bury his

money in tin cans in the backyard, instead of buying and selling stocks,

investing in bonds, and all the other financial shenanigans that Finn engaged

in. Finding out that Deirdre was in the same business as her son was a bit

disconcerting.

I didn’t want to think that Finn was anything like her. But at the party last

night, Deirdre had basically been an older, female version of Finn—suave,

flirty, boisterous. It had been a little jarring just how much the two of them

were alike. I supposed that nature had won out over nurture in this case.

“Now, before you go and start thinking too highly of Ms. Shaw, you should

know that not all the money she raises and then recoups from her investments

goes into her charity foundation,” Silvio said. “In fact, a great deal of it

—tens of millions a year—goes down the rabbit hole for expenses, operating

costs, and the like.”

I realized what he was getting at. “You think her charity, Good Works, is a

front for something.”

“Absolutely. There’s no way those charities have that much overhead. But she

’s clever, and she moves the money around faster than a street hustler doing

a card game. I’m still researching, but I’ll figure out where all that money

is going and exactly who’s getting it.” His gray eyes gleamed with

excitement. There was nothing Silvio loved better than untangling puzzles. I

supposed it fit in with his detail-oriented personality.

I frowned. “Wait a second. Someone else is getting the money? Who? It sounds

like Deirdre has a nice little scam going. Why would she want to share the

money with anyone?”

“I don’t know. Ms. Shaw might have come from old money, but she burned

through it all years ago. Homes and private jets and champagne fountains cost

money, you know. She started her charitable foundation about the time she was

scraping the last few nickels out of her original trust fund. Even then,

someone else bankrolled her and got her started.”

“So maybe that’s where the money is going,” I murmured. “To pay back her

investors, whoever they might be.”

Silvio swiped through some more screens on his tablet. “That’s my theory. I

’ll keep digging.”

Maybe this was all about money. Maybe Deirdre had heard what a financial whiz

Finn was and had come to Ashland to get his expertise to help increase the

profits from her charity scam, without letting him know what a crook she

really was. Finn had said that he’d been working on her portfolio. It made

sense, but I still felt like something else was going on, something far more

sinister than skimming money from good causes.

I finished with my last tomato, grabbed a red onion, and started slicing it.

“What about Tucker, her assistant?”

Silvio shook his head. “Hugh Tucker. I’ve just started drilling down on him,

but nothing suspicious so far. Although he and Deirdre have something

interesting in common: the Tucker family has been in Ashland for generations,

just like the Shaws, and Hugh is also the last one left of his family.”

Not that unusual. Despite the sky-high crime rate, Ashland was a beautiful

place to live, with its rugged ridges, lush forests, and mountain streams. My

family, the Snows, had also been here for generations. So had the Monroes.

Come to town, enjoy the mountains, start a blood feud with another family. It

was practically the Ashland tourism motto. Still, it was a bit odd that

Deirdre and Tucker would both be from Ashland and also be the last living

members of their families. I wondered if Deirdre had known Tucker before he

started working for her.

“All right,” I said. “Keep digging into Deirdre and Tucker. And there’s

one more person I need you to track down.”

“Who?”

“Santos. After his failed bank robbery last night, he decided to pay me a

house call.”

I wiped off my hands and grabbed a napkin and a pen. While I filled Silvio in

about the attack at Fletcher’s house, I made a crude sketch of the snake-

and-dollar-sign tattoo on Santos’s forearm.

“Here,” I said, passing the sketch over to him. “See if you have more luck

with the tattoo. People can change their names a lot easier than they can

change their ink.”