“I didn’t do it,” Colleen said. “I don’t know what is going on.” There were tears running down Colleen’s face. “They are questioning me for fraudulent purchases and said it’s a felony. That I spent over forty thousand dollars. I don’t have that kind of money. Tell them I don’t, Ava.”
Her heart was going out to the woman that she thought she knew. “Someone stole my identity. They took out over forty thousand in credit card debt in my name. They got my social security number and all my personal information to do that.”
“It’s not me,” Colleen said, pleading. She looked at Penelope. “Please don’t fire my husband over this. We didn’t do anything. How could I even get that information? Those cards were a gift to me. I was annoyed they didn’t work and was lucky I had the cash to pay for my groceries.”
Ava turned to look at Jarrett and then Griffin.
“Who gave those cards to you?” her husband asked.
“Tracy. I mean they weren’t a gift. I bought them from her.”
“Why would you buy gift cards from her?” Ava asked.
“Because she was moving. She said she had a bunch of them and there wasn’t a grocery store she could use them at. She said someone gave them to her and she offered to sell them to me for half price. I thought it was a good deal.”
“Tracy who?” Jarrett asked.
“Tracy Rogers. She worked with us. She was fired months ago and then got another job out of the area finally.”
“Fired?” Ava asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“That’s why I gave you that funny look when we saw you months ago out at the restaurant and you told Tracy that the office was going to miss her. She’d been gone at that point for months.”
“Why was she fired?” Jarrett asked. “Do you know?”
“She never said. I think she just wasn’t doing her job,” Colleen said, wiping her hand under her nose. Penelope handed her a tissue. “Thank you.”
“Do you know where she lives?” Griffin asked. “Or how she would even have access to personal information?”
“She worked in patient services,” Ava said. “I’m a patient at the practice too. She’d have access to that.”
Could it have been this easy all along? The question was why her though? Or was it more than her?
“Do you know where she lives now?” Jarrett asked after Griffin hadn’t been answered. “We need to question her and we ask you don’t tip her off. You aren’t being charged now, but until we speak with her, you are still a potential suspect.”
“She’s on Cape Cod,” Colleen said. “I’ve got her address in my room. I have it written down. I won’t tell her anything. I can’t believe she did this, but it wasn’t me. I swear to God it wasn’t me.”
Ava wanted to believe her. She really did. But she still didn’t know why Tracy would have done this. “Do you think she did it to more than me?” she asked Jarrett.
“We’ll find out,” Jarrett said. “Don’t leave the island,” he told Colleen.
“I won’t,” Colleen said. “I just don’t want anyone to know about this.”
“We’ll keep it quiet,” Ava said. “Right now only family is aware and if you are innocent, no one will know.”
“What do you think?” Seth asked her when they were driving back to the casino to get Adele.
“I couldn’t believe it was Colleen. I don’t know Tracy as well, but Colleen I did. It didn’t seem to fit.”
“She seemed sincere,” he said.
“Because I think she is,” she said. “But boy, would it be nice to finally put this all behind me.”
“I think we are close to doing that. Not much longer,” he said.
And once it was over then she was going to take one more step that had been holding her back.
37
Finally End
Seth couldn’t believe that this might finally end. That it could actually have been a personal attack on Ava and not random.
When they got back to the casino, he found Eli with his daughter, who didn’t want to leave. She said she was having too much fun watching people pull the slot machines in the security room on camera.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he told her. “You’re too young to gamble.”
“Eli let me try one,” Adele said, causing Ava to laugh.
“Shhh,” Eli said. “That is our secret. And it’s not one on the floor, but in storage. It was broken and we needed to try it out to see if it was working again.”
He supposed that was better than nothing. “We’ll keep this to ourselves,” he told his daughter.
“I can. Thank you, Eli. I had fun today. Coming to the casino might be my new favorite thing.”
Seth rolled his eyes. “No,” he said, then narrowed his eyes at a man that was probably worth damn close to a billion dollars. If not him, then his family. He didn’t care. The Bond family seemed pretty down to earth to him and had taken him and his daughter in like they were one of them.
And that meant that he was going to give the man grief as he would his own brother.
Eli laughed. “I know that look well.”
“He isn’t intimidated by you,” Griffin said to Eli. “I thought that was only reserved to family and me.”
“No reason why anyone is intimidated by me,” Eli said. “I’m just a regular old Joe.”
“Yeah right,” Griffin said. When his phone rang, he answered it while they waited to see what was going on. It was easy enough to guess it had to do with Ava. “Jarrett said that the State Police in Cape Cod are trying to locate Tracy. They will let us know when they do. For now you might as well go home and try to relax.”
“Relax?” Ava said. “Yeah, that won’t be happening.”
But the three of them left and went back to his place. “Why don’t you stay with me tonight?” he said. “You’re going to be too wound up at your place.”
“I can,” she
