“Knew it. Was I right, or was I right?” Garret said, laughing.
“You were right,” he said. “Jesus, the things these guys think are important. That kills me.”
“He’s probably young and trolling for chicks with it,” he said.
“God, whatever. How about your list? Anything?”
“Only one of interest to me,” he said. “The boss has been married three times, so the alimony payments are killing him. His house is mortgaged to the hilt, and his car is leased, probably because the last one was about to get repossessed, so he surrendered it.”
“So his financial pressures make him susceptible to bribes, payouts, and blackmail.”
“All of the above and more,” Garret said, nodding. “You know what? It seems they’ve always been one step ahead of us. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had another party in place here as well.”
“Yeah, they’ve always got another hand to play. At some point soon,” he said, “we have to get closer.” Eton stood to stretch.
“No doubt, and it could be anyone really.”
“No kidding. After what we found in Sicily, it’s shocking to think what people would do for a little bit of money.”
“Right, those people were something, weren’t they?”
He just shook his head. “I feel bad for Petra,” Eton said.
“I do too. She just lost her father and her sister, and now her aunt and uncle are being charged with multiple offenses, many of them against her. That’s pretty sick,” Garret said. “At least she’s financially stable though, so that’s one good thing.”
“Yeah, but that’s what made her a target in the first place. No doubt she’d rather have her father.” Eton paced the room. “Money. It’s so easy to look at anybody and think they are involved somehow. If they have money, or if they don’t, we assume they are guilty of something.”
“It’s the job. It makes us jaded.”
Eton chuckled. “Petra kept pointing that out. Cain’s got his hands full with that one.” Returning his attention to the list, Eton frowned. “We need to broaden this, maybe start with the spouses and other family members,” Eton said.
“Yeah, I was hoping we wouldn’t have to, but we might as well. At least if we don’t find anything interesting, we will have cleared it.” They quickly started with the names of anybody attached to an employee who was over eighteen. When Eton came to the punk with the sports car, he realized the kid had no steady girlfriend, but his parents were wealthy. “This punkhead with the car is just trying to keep up appearances,” Eton said. “His parents have money.”
“He probably crashed every car his parents ever gave him, so they cut him off and told him to go get his own.”
Eton laughed at that. “Unfortunately that’s all too possible, and having to drive what he could afford was too much for his ego.” Heading to the motor vehicles and insurances databases for Switzerland, Eton quickly confirmed that Garret was correct. “You are almost magical,” he said jokingly. “You nailed it.”
“Nah, just basic young-man mentality.”
“Well, I need to get past the young-man mentality and get into something much darker.”
“Don’t write him off though,” Garret said, looking at him. “If you think about it, he has a lot of reasons to do something for money.”
“True, and showing up every day to earn a regular paycheck probably isn’t his style.”
On a hunch, Eton buckled down and hacked into the security company and checked the personnel records. “Not only are his wages only average but he’d been written up several times for insubordination and insolence. I’ll have to run some of this through a translator to be sure, but it looks to me like he’s even had his pay docked several times.”
“Which all makes him pretty high up in my mind,” Garret said. “Want me to check out the parents?” Eton nodded and read off their names. Garret set to work and soon had a start. “Well, the parents used to work for the military.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes, in the Swiss military.”
“Well, I suppose the Swiss guards could have their bad apples, like everybody else,” Eton said. “Though it doesn’t mean that they are of the same ilk as these lowlife bastards who are after us.”
“No, doesn’t look like it. Several commendations are in both files for good behavior. Several awards as well.”
“Complete opposite of their son then. Everything I find makes it appear that he’s an only child and that they’ve doted on him since birth. Looks like they’d finally had enough with that last crash.”
“Why is it that parents can’t handle their kids?” Garret said. “Somebody’s got to do it.”
At that, Eton let out a bark of laughter and started digging into the rest of them on his list. He shoved his laptop away two hours later and said, “I didn’t find anything much, did you?”
“Well, I’m still working on the boss.”
“Why is that?”
“Wife number two, she skated on blackmail charges.”
“What?” Eton sighed, leaned back, and looked at Garret; then he reached for his laptop. “What’s her name?” With that, he quickly entered the name Garret provided. Marielle had been wife number two for a whole fourteen months. “Who was she blackmailing?”
“The boss who became her hubby.”
“He turned her in?”
“Yes, and charges were filed, but he dropped all the charges because he didn’t want to go to trial. He bought her off instead.”
“He bought her off? How is that fair?”
“The reason for the divorce was because he was flirting around.”
“Wow,” Eton said, chuckling. “So, chances are it’s not related to this?”
“I highly doubt it, but I’ll pursue it a little further,” Garret replied. Frowning, he pushed his chair back, shook his head, and said, “Outside of that, I’ve got nothing.”
“So, we’ve got a boss mortgaged to the hilt with ex-wife troubles, and we’ve got a twenty-three-year-old kid trying to live beyond his means. Other than that, nothing’s popping,” Eton said, scratching his head.
“But that’s just a start,” Garret said.
Eton nodded. “Did you shop for food?”
“Yeah, the fridge is full,” he replied. “I took steaks out for dinner.”
At that, Eton’s stomach sang out, and he said, “Hallelujah! I think I can smell those grilled steaks already.” He walked into the kitchen, took one look at the steaks marinating, and sniffed the air. “They look good. What did you use, a garlic marinade?”
“Yep,” he said, “salt and a garlic spray. Not too fancy.” Garret looked at him. “I guess you didn’t eat much the last couple days, did you?”
“No. Not much at all. Just as needed.”
“We’ll fix that here,” he said. “I figured, after we eat, we should do a night trip over the hill.”
“Works for me,” Eton said.