Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,69

you read the letters before destroying them?” Alejo asked, without a hint of embarrassment.

“They were a laugh riot,” Barth sneered. “Until they got too boring even for that. I just tossed them.”

Shock numbed Godiva, then fury swept through her as she thought of all those letters Alejo had written that she never saw, and would never see. “That’s mail fraud!” she cried.

“Oooh, cry me a river,” Barth jeered. “I’m terrified.”

“You should be.” One of the women, silent until now, pulled a book from her shoulder bag and held it where Barth could see it. “But not about the feds.”

The book’s binding looked like it had been stitched centuries ago. When Barth saw it, his bloodshot eyes widened and his face betrayed real fear before the smirk was back. But it looked forced. “How did you . . .”

“Get past your so-called security? Easily. Took me about a minute and a half. Didn’t anyone ever tell you in Criminal 101 that whatever else you do, you don’t cheap out on your security? Anyway, one look at this thing, and I recommend we don’t even bother with the feds, or the local police,” the woman stated with a grim-reaper smile. “This is going straight to the Midwest Guardian.”

At that, the younger woman, who looked a lot like Lance, especially through the eyes and cheekbones, uttered a deep laugh and cracked her knuckles.

Rigo leaned down to whisper to Godiva, “Alejo says that Kaydi Jackson is a knight. Same as her dad and granddad.”

Lance tipped his head toward his daughter and the older woman as he said to Godiva and Rigo, “Alejo reported in last night. These two spent the night searching Barth’s house.”

The first woman said, “Our orders are to take it from here.”

Kaydi Jackson then proved herself to be every bit as much of a badass as Godiva’s friend Jen when she hauled Barth out of the back of his van, and though he writhed in her grip, she slung him ungently into the back of another van, then slammed the door and locked it with the heavy thunk of serious security.

Alejo said to Godiva, “Barth clearly didn’t expect any trouble, so everything was right out in plain sight, both here in his car and at his place. After I called in his address and other info, I searched the car and found this ledger. I spent the night looking at it while they tossed his house.” Alejo turned the woman with the ancient book. “I know you have to turn over the evidence. But can you wait while I take a look? I want to compare the two.” He held up the ledger and nodded at the book she held.

The woman looked from the ledger to Alejo, frowning. “My orders are clear, but considering the fact that this ass-clown duped you for years, I think you’re owed. Why don’t you hold this for me while I go talk to the management here. There’s a worker who has some explaining to do. And that person, we can report to the feds.”

She handed Alejo the ancient book and walked away.

Ordinarily Godiva would be fascinated by something so obviously old, but her mind was trying to grapple with too many things at once, her overriding emotion fury. This was behind the long silence, the hurt, the wondering—a scammer?

“Why?” Godiva asked, appalled. “What did he get out it? What’s the meaning of all these letters from unknown people addressed to your birth name?”

Alejo said, “I think the letters are customers. I spent the last couple hours studying this ledger. It’s mostly abbreviations, but this much I sussed out.” He flipped it open to a page. “Date, initials—my guess that’s the customer—address, amounts of money, and each entry has a number off to the right here, in the last column.”

He pointed to a column down the right-hand edge of the page, then tucked the ledger under his arm and carefully opened the old book. “I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why the column of numbers was so random. But now I wonder if those numbers correspond to pages in this book.” He peered down at it. “Which is hand-written. In . . . I think this is Latin. Which I don’t know. Mom?”

He looked hopefully at Godiva, who had to shake her head.

Lance held out a hand, and Alejo surrendered the ancient book to him.

Lance frowned at those age-darkened pages, then pulled an expensive fountain pen from a pocket, and used it