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He drank a pot of coffee and kept digging. He spent all night picking through the files and unraveling the web of corruption. At just past 4:00 a.m., with his desk cluttered by computer printouts that carefully detailed the financial fraud and the way it had been covered up, he hit pay dirt.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered, staring at the computer screen with bloodshot eyes.
Despite the obnoxious hour, he picked up his desk phone and punched Sandy’s number into the keypad. Sandy answered on the first ring.
“Anything?”
“Everything,” Preston said. “I know who’s skimming the money.”
PART V
Into Focus
Chapter 48
Cedar Creek, Nevada Thursday, August 1, 2024
AFTER SLOAN LEFT THE CEDAR CREEK INN, SHE DROPPED ERIC AT the sheriff’s office. Margot Gray couldn’t have gotten far. Eric would put his deputies on the lookout for an older model Mazda and alert the Nevada Highway Patrol. If Margot was still in town, they’d find her. If she were on the road, they’d bring her in. Eric also planned to run the phone number Margot had provided that belonged to Guy Menendez.
In the meantime, Sloan knew it wouldn’t be long before the press found her rental house. She’d accepted Eric’s offer to lay low at his cabin in the foothills. She needed to pack a few things first, so she headed back to her rental house with a heavy mix of disappointment and frustration. As she pulled into the driveway, the sun was setting, lighting the clouds above the Sierra Nevada Mountains in an eerie glow of crimson that screamed to Sloan that the opportunity to unlock the secrets of her past was bleeding away.
Inside, she grabbed a Diet Dr. Pepper and sat at the kitchen table. She found Special Agent John Michaels’s card and called him. Over a fifteen-minute conversation, she told him about Margot Gray, aka Wendy Downing. She gave him Margot’s description and the make and model of the car she was driving. She read off the phone number that was believed to belong to Guy Menendez and answered a slew of questions from Agent Michaels.
“Stamos is the sheriff out there in Harrison County?” Michaels asked.
“Yes,” Sloan said. “He and I have been . . . not exactly working together, but in close contact since I’ve been out here.”
“Something I need to know about?”
Sloan thought about Eric’s father and the mysterious link between Baker Jauncey’s death thirty years earlier and the disappearance of her and her birth parents. She wouldn’t know where to start.
“Maybe at some point,” she said. “But let’s concentrate on Margot Gray for now.”
“Give me the day. I’ll be in touch in the morning. Anything else?”
“Yeah. How did my story leak?”
“I’m launching an internal investigation to figure that out. But right now I’m going to run with the leads you’ve given me.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
Sloan ended the call just as she heard a car door slam outside. She went to the living room window and peeked through the plantation shutters.
“Shit.”
A CBS Channel 4 news van was parked outside. The back doors were open, and a man pulled equipment from the van. Before Sloan could look away, another news van pulled down the road and parked across the street. A reporter opened the door and hurried across the front lawn. Sloan snapped the shutters closed as the woman reached the front stoop and knocked on the door.
“Shit, shit!” Sloan whispered to herself.
“Sloan Hastings?” the reporter yelled. “Monica Campbell with NBC News. We’re hoping to speak with you about the alleged connection to baby Charlotte Margolis and her parents, who are still missing.”
Her phone buzzed in her hand and startled her. She looked at the screen and saw that Nora was calling. She walked into the kitchen and answered in a whisper.
“Hello?”
“I just spoke with Tilly. News vans are parked outside her house and reporters are milling around.”
