Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set by Nanci Rathbun (surface ebook reader TXT) 📗

need much sleep, so I can pull night duty. Except for the actual feedings, of course. Magda is adamant that she can breastfeed two.”

As promised, I alerted Bobbie to the happy news. On the drive to the office, I began to plan a shopping trip for baby things. With a singleton already in the family, they needed at least one more of everything. This would be fun!

I got to the office to find Bobbie at my desk, reviewing the files we pilfered from Padua Manor. He rose when I approached. “Susan has a client in the conference room,” he told me. “Do you need some privacy? If so, I’ll walk over to the coffee shop.”

“No, don’t go.” We three really need to rethink the office situation, I thought, with a twinge of guilt at the idea of leaving Susan. After the usual handling of winter wear, I placed my briefcase on the desk and Bobbie settled in the side chair. “The task at hand,” I said, “is to figure out where Jorgensen is now. You can use the laptop to run a reverse query on his phone and dig for information on the area he gave as an address. Quite often, a person on the run resorts to things that seem familiar. Not smart, but understandable. File whatever you find out on the shared drive.”

While Bobbie handled the routine queries, I did a more thorough background check. Karl Jorgensen was a cipher, a non-entity. He had no Wisconsin driver’s license, no voter registration, no income tax filing, no Stevens Point library card and was not listed in the Wisconsin Nurse Aide directory. Hiring an unlicensed person to provide care for the frail souls at Padua Manor had to be a violation of state regulations. I would definitely report Mrs. Rogers and the facility when this investigation ended!

When I glanced up, Bobbie handed me a couple of printouts. “No Eames Street, as you found out last night. Eames Court and Eames Road are in the city center, a couple miles from the U. Lots of student rentals there, so lots of transients, but not much crime. Perfect for a guy who wants to keep a low profile and not engage the police.” He paused while I skimmed the data. When I looked up, he said, “The phone number is still registered to Karl Jorgensen.” With a serious look, he asked, “Should we call it?”

I shook my head. “Based on the nursing home ID, Jorgensen and Wagner are the same person. If that’s so, Hank’s not dead and I don’t want to alert him. He might go into deep cover again. And even though Hank hasn’t done anything violent that we’re aware of, there’s still that body from the Manor. I doubt it was his, not with the way he orchestrated the obit and the private message to Marcy. So if he was indeed Jorgensen, the only aide on duty the night of the death, he had access to patient medication. Did he help speed up Beltran’s departure from this life? And if he’s starting to feel cornered, who knows how he’ll react? No, we need to approach this from another angle.”

“Obbo?” It was British slang for ‘observation.’ Bobbie was a fan of BBC mysteries.

I nodded. “That’s probably a good move, but it will have to be you, Bobbie. Hank might recognize me.”

“You’ve met?”

“Well, no, but … uh … he might have run a search on me.” I sighed. Time to ’fess up. “After we read Hank’s S-Mail message to Marcy, I decided to send emails to other ISPs, using the S-Mail ID. They were all undeliverable. But I was frustrated and sent a new message to Hank via S-Mail,” I confessed, slightly ashamed of letting my emotions overcome common sense. “I guess my own experience with a cheating husband, combined with all the years I searched for Hank, got the better of me. I can usually set aside my personal feelings when I’m on a case.”

“Don’t beat yourself up for being human, Ange.”

“I suppose. But let it be a lesson to you. Business and emotions don’t mix well.”

“I’ll do my best to keep them apart,” he told me. “So what did the message say?”

I opened it from my Sent Folder and let Bobbie read it. Henry Wagner, James Beltran—who are you and what made you run? “I sent it from contact@AB-Investigations.com. Once he had that, he could go to our website and find my bio. I deliberately chose to not include a head shot, but he could run a search and see news reports that contain a photo. The Belloni and Johnson cases brought a lot of unwanted publicity.”

“That they did! I bet the truck stop video is still out there.”

We were able to laugh, now. At the time, our lives hung in the balance as we raced to evade a murderous war criminal by scrambling into a load of huge pipes on the trailer of a semi making for I-94. Bobbie repeated his favorite line. “Good thing your assets weren’t exposed when you made the leap, Angie.”

“Well, you can see why I’m not the right person to run obbo.”

“Right. But I’m not on the website or on the news, other than a poor surveillance camera picture of me helping you into the pipe. I can dress like a student and walk around the area, maybe talk to some of the locals and show the picture. What if I drive up there tomorrow? Maybe Spider can give me his digital fingerprint device and I can meet Augusta. Her checkbook statement should have Jorgensen’s prints and I can get hers for elimination.”

“Good idea. Let’s call Augusta and I can introduce you on the phone.”

“Sounds great,” he replied. “Her help is what got us this far. I’d love to meet her.”

I selected Augusta from my contacts and placed the call on speaker.

“Hello, my dear Terry,” her sweet voice said. “I trust you’re well after your little episode yesterday?”

What a great undercover agent she is! “I’m