Every Kind of Wicked (A Gardiner and Renner Novel Book 6)
Every Kind of Wicked: Chapter 9

Friday, 2:30 p. m.

All four detectives went together to speak to Jennifer Toner, a joint effort that appealed to exactly no one. But their investigations had dovetailed, and they needed answers. Now that Jennifer had her brother back, she didn’t need to be forthcoming with them and instead had the incentive not to be—especially if she’d somehow been involved in Evan Harding’s death.

So now all four of them smelled the jasmine tea and climbed up the worn steps. Roofers were hard at work and Jack felt a prick of amusement when the boom of falling shingles falling echoed up and down the stairwell, making Rick start. He wondered if he shouldn’t be so petty. Rick might be lazy, but nothing worse could be said about him. Then he remembered that the guy had cheated on Maggie, and that made it not petty at all.

Besides, he could handle Rick Gardiner.

To everyone’s relief, Jennifer Toner had remained at home and answered the door, albeit with an unenthusiastic expression. “You brought reinforcements?”

No coffee would be offered this trip, either. She sat in an armchair and let the men form a semicircle around the other side of the room. Will and Rick sat on the sofa, Riley pulled over a kitchen chair, and Jack leaned against a windowsill, caught between chill coming off the glass and heat spilling from the radiator.

As they had agreed before driving over, Rick and Will went first, asking if she knew a man named Raymond Winchester (no), if they could speak to her brother, who was not in any trouble (she’d ask him to call them, but professed no knowledge of where he might be, where he slept nights, or who he might hang out with), or where he found this doctor who didn’t have an address listed on the Internet (she didn’t know).

It took about twenty minutes to exhaust their reexamination, and then Will sat back into the overstuffed sofa and turned it over to Jack and Riley.

Riley said, “Do you ever use check cashing services?” Her expression seemed so baffled at this change in topics that Jack thought perhaps they had all been mistaken, that Jennifer Toner only bore a resemblance to the woman at A to Z. “No. Why?”

“Not even one on Bolivar?”

No, Jack thought, they weren’t mistaken. Jennifer Toner went still from scalp to toes.

They waited.

“What’s this about?” she asked, her voice low and tightly controlled.

Riley spoke with equal calmness. “Were you at A to Z Check Cashing last night?”

Jack saw her calculating chances, weighing possible scenarios in her mind. Then a deep breath and maybe the realization that she hadn’t done anything wrong—at least on camera—prompted her to tell what sounded like the truth. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“That’s where he cashes the checks.”

“Marlon?”

“Yes. That’s why he doesn’t ask me for money—he’s getting checks from Medicare to pay for these medications. Big checks. He told me so to prove to me that the prescriptions are real, it’s a real doctor giving him real meds, and so that’s why I shouldn’t worry about him.”

Riley took his time to formulate a question. “So he’s getting checks you think are for a fraudulent claim.”

“I don’t think. I know. Marlon turns into an addict and then he winds up with a boatload of cash as well? There’s something way shady going on here, more than a doc selling pills on the side.”

“Yes, I see. But what does—what did you say to Evan Harding?”

“Who?”

“The cashier. The guy behind the counter.”

“The cashier? Why, he complain? I didn’t yell at him. I didn’t use any bad language . . . well, not really bad. I mean, seriously—”

“What did you say to him?”

“I asked how they could cash thirty thousand dollars in checks from a drug addict! They had to know they were fake. Did they get a cut or what?”

“Thirty thousand?”

“That’s what the receipt showed—he came ’round here waving bills, acting big. He knew I suspected he was dealing so he showed me the receipt, that it was for medical reimbursement. Nothing to worry about. I said he should take that money and pay for the best rehab facility we could replace. He walked out and wouldn’t pick up the phone for a couple days. It made me so mad, I went down there—last night.” Something occurred to her. “How’d you guys know?”

“You were on video.”

She had enough other things on her mind to put off asking why they’d reviewed the A to Z security tapes in the first place. “How’d you get from a video to—did that guy complain about me? Remember my brother’s name?”

“You told him about your brother?” Rick asked.

She glanced at the detective as if he might be a bit slow. “Yes. That’s why I was there. I wanted to know why they kept cashing checks for a Marlon Toner that they had to know were not right. Mostly I wanted to know who issued the checks.” She rubbed her forehead. “I wanted to work backward to Marlon’s source of the pills. I also thought maybe he had to give an address to cash the checks, and that would tell me where he’s staying. But he, the cashier, didn’t tell me anything.”

“So you didn’t know Evan Harding previously?” Riley asked.

Clearly all four of them were a bit slow. “The cashier guy? No, of course not.”

“Had you ever been to A to Z before?”

“No,” she said, then added, “I have direct deposit.”

“Where do you work?”

“The library. Downtown branch.” Their emphasis on the check cashing store instead of her brother confused her, and they kept up the questions to keep her from pondering the connections. If she had killed Evan Harding, this would be the best way to trip her up. If she hadn’t, she’d stay perplexed.

“What did Ev—the cashier say?” Riley asked.

“He played dumb. Didn’t know who I was talking about, they cash checks, they wouldn’t cash the check if it wasn’t good because they all know what government checks look like and they have lists of what the address should be and the numbers that are supposed to be in the routing, blah, blah, blah. No matter what I asked—what I really wanted was this Dr. Castleman’s phone or address or anything—he kept saying he didn’t know, didn’t have any information about where the checks come from, they won’t know anything about the claims that prompt the payments, he just works there, more blah. I wanted him to replace the check so I could see if it had the doctor’s address, or an account number or patient number or anything, but he insisted he couldn’t do that. First, he said it would be impossible to replace it in all the checks that had come in, especially if I didn’t know the exact date and time cashed, and even then the memo information would be confidential, and so on and so on. I finally gave up. I didn’t hit him or anything,” she added. “No matter what he says. Well, if you’ve got the cameras, you know.”

“He looked awfully worried. Are you sure that’s all you said?”

She straightened her spine. “I didn’t threaten him.”

But her face didn’t seem as certain.

“Are you sure?” Will pressed, his voice gentle but implacable. Jack saw how Will was clearly the people person in that partnership, as Riley took that role in theirs. The idea that he, Jack, might have something in common with Rick messed with his world a little bit.

“I said I would call the police. That could hardly be considered a threat.”

“Was that all to the conversation?”

She considered this. “Yes. Obviously he wasn’t going to tell me anything, so I left.”

“You gave up?”

“I’d never give up on my brother,” she declared with grave dignity. “I thought I would contact the medical license board, the A.M.A., whoever might be able to give me contact information on this Dr. Castleman. I was going to start on that today, but—then you guys showed up.”

A pause. Jack felt pretty certain that this woman had nothing to do with Evan Harding’s impalement in the Erie Street Cemetery, but he couldn’t be 100 percent certain. He had been fooled by an innocent expression before . . . albeit not often.

Will said, “Evan Harding was murdered last night.”

The slightest hesitation while she recalled his name once more. “The cashier guy?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, how awful.” Instantly her face lost its angry cast and turned to deep sympathy. “Somebody shoot him? Rob the place?”

“No.”

That caught her up short. The vulnerabilities of a cash store open during the late night were easy to picture. “Then what happened?”

“It’s an open investigation,” Riley answered without answering. He asked if she had seen anyone or anything suspicious during her visit, not necessarily in the store but on the street, if Evan had said anything to indicate he expected either company or trouble, how long she had been in the area afterward. A chorus of nos; she had left the street immediately.

Jack moved away from the radiator, now scorching his thigh. A bizarre coincidence that two deaths in one night seemed to be vaguely connected by one Jennifer Toner, but that had to be all it was. A coincidence. They did occur, even in police work.

Just not often.