Payback. Jasmine Cresswell

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СКАЧАТЬ not cheap, either. Mr. Jones stayed there for only one month and left three months ago, with all his bills paid up. From the point of view of the management company, there was nothing in the least remarkable about his stay or his departure. They screen all tenants, of course, and Mr. Jones passed the screening without a hiccup.”

      If Ron Raven were alive and wanted to conceal that fact, then Washington, D.C. would be an ideal city for him to hide in, Luke reflected. Nobody noticed strangers or transients in the D.C. area because the city was full of them. From Ron’s perspective, there were few cities in the United States that would offer better prospects for lucrative business deals, combined with plenty of comfortable places to hide.

      The fact that “Stewart Jones” had passed a standard credit check didn’t surprise Luke in the least. Ron Raven had been running background checks on prospective clients for three decades and he would certainly know all the danger points he needed to protect himself against. On top of that, he’d been concealing his bigamous lifestyle for twenty-eight years. Never confiding fully in anyone, procuring duplicate documents and spinning stories to obscure the truth would be second nature to him. Now that he thought about it, Luke realized Ron Raven was almost uniquely qualified to disappear and reemerge with a new identity.

      Unfortunately, the more convinced Luke became that Stewart Jones and Ron Raven were the same person, the more difficult it became to imagine how he was going to track the guy down. On top of that, he would soon have to consider the issue Anna had raised last week: Would he be doing the Raven family any favors by telling them he’d seen Ron? Or would he be heating up an emotional pot that had just started to cool down from the traumatic news of Ron’s death?

      “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Mr. Jones left a forwarding address,” he said to George Klein.

      “He left an address, but it’s in Australia. In Adelaide, to be precise. I haven’t followed up. I figured I’d talk with you first before going to that expense.”

      “Stewart Jones’s forwarding address is in Australia?”

      “Yes. You sound surprised.”

      “I am.”

      “I take it you didn’t know that Mr. Jones is an Australian diplomat?”

      “An Australian diplomat?” Luke stared blankly at the contract with a seafood vendor that he’d been reading before he picked up the detective’s call. Ron Raven clearly had acting abilities his family didn’t know about if he’d managed to pass himself off as an Australian.

      “Luke? Are you there?”

      “Sorry, you surprised me, that’s all. I assumed…Mr. Jones…was an American.”

      “Perhaps he is. If you’re a person trying to hide, adopting a foreign identity is a great first step.”

      “Why’s that?”

      “Because superficial identity checks in the States are all set up around social security numbers. An Australian diplomat doesn’t have an American social security number, meaning that credit checks are a lot more difficult. Not to mention more expensive.”

      “And that would make it harder for somebody to identify Stewart Jones as a fraud,” Luke said.

      “Absolutely,” George agreed. “But if Stewart Jones isn’t really Australian, we can soon find out. Do you want me to check the Australian address he gave the rental company?”

      Luke’s first instinct was to stop this investigation right now. What the hell was he trying to achieve by chasing a chimera across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean? In the end, though, he couldn’t quite let go.

      “It can’t hurt, I guess, since we’ve come this far so quickly. Thanks, George. Some information about Mr. Jones’s forwarding address would be useful. Can you dig deep enough to find out if we’re talking about a mail drop or a residence?”

      “Sure thing. I could also check with the Australian foreign ministry and confirm whether or not they have a Stewart M. Jones on their diplomatic roster.”

      “That would be great. Although Mr. Jones passed the background check conducted by the Elm Court management company, so I’m not sure that we’re going to unearth any discrepancies without going to a lot of trouble.”

      “You’d be surprised—make that alarmed—at how easy it is to pass a standard credit check. I’ll just peel back a couple more layers and see what we uncover.” George paused. “It would help if I knew what I’m trying to find out.”

      “For now, I’d prefer just to tell you that you’re right, and I think Stewart M. Jones is a stolen identity someone has adopted.” Luke gave up on the unrealistic pretense that he was conducting a simple search for an old friend. “If the Australian authorities acknowledge they have a diplomat called Stewart Jones, could you get a description of him? That way, I can compare the man I saw with the Stewart Jones employed by the Australian government. I don’t want to make any accusations or leap to any wild conclusions until I’m sure I didn’t just see a hardworking Australian guy who happens to look like somebody else.”

      “I’ll do my best. In fact, if I tell the Aussies that I’m investigating a suspected identity theft, they’ll probably be quite willing to cooperate.”

      “Thanks for all you’ve done so far, George. I’m very grateful.”

      “Glad I could be of help. I’ll hold off on sending you a bill until I’ve contacted the Australian authorities and traced this address in Adelaide.” The investigator’s voice took on a tinge of laughter. “If I give you the damage in one fell swoop, you’ll only be shocked once.”

      

      Luke avoided thinking about Ron Raven for the rest of the night, which wasn’t hard, chiefly because the pressures of serving top-quality food in three crowded restaurants, one with an injured sous-chef, occupied every scrap of his attention. He assumed George would take at least a couple of days to get back to him and he was almost glad of the delay. However, he’d underestimated George’s efficiency. Luke opened up his e-mail the next evening and found a note from the detective already waiting for him.

      

      Thought it might be easier to put this in writing, instead of interrupting your work schedule. Mr. Jones’s forwarding address in Adelaide turns out to be for an abandoned warehouse. I’ve attached an aerial picture of the site, which as you can see is surrounded by a chain-link fence and appears deserted. I spoke to a local cop (local to Adelaide, that is) and he assures me that any mail forwarded to this warehouse from the States during the past six months would have been returned to sender or delivered to a dead-letter box, since the ownership of the site is in dispute between two companies.

      I checked again with the superintendent of the apartment building in McLean, Virginia. He has no memory of any mail either being forwarded to Stewart Jones or being returned from Australia. It seems likely, therefore, that no first-class mail for Mr. Jones ever arrived at Elm Court after he left there in late June.

      I also contacted the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C. I informed them somebody might be fraudulently using the identity of a supposed Australian diplomat, Stewart M. Jones. The embassy informed me that there has been no diplomat of that name serving in any capacity in the United States for the past two years. They wouldn’t comment on whether they have a diplomat of that name assigned elsewhere.

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