Chapter Six: Subvert The Dominant Paradigm!

Ever want to know what it's like to govern a small town? Throw a party for a kid with lots of friends. Lots of friends.

When Ducky first suggested the party weeks ago, Charlie was scrupulously polite. "How many friends may I invite?" (After all, he was throwing the party and paying the piper; she didn't want to be rude.)

"Why, all of them, of course," was his answer.

The wince from Lily should have given him a clue. "All of them?" Charlie repeated.

"If you're going to invite more than two or three, it would be hurtful not to invite them all, wouldn't it?"

Just to be on the safe side, she gave him a list. Friends from regular school. Friends from summer school. Friends from gymnastics class. Friends from the neighborhood. Friends from our neighborhood. Friends from her offshoot-SCA group. Friends from—

"Is this a going-away party—or a state reception?" I looked over Ducky's shoulder, awed. This kid has more friends at nine than I had my entire K-12 career. I'm not sure if she's impressive or I was pathetic. Or both.

"I must say, it is quite a list… I know you had promised to make the cake, dear—"

"And I will. I had already figured on doing a plain chocolate cake and plain vanilla cake to go with the chocolate-peanut butter-banana-strawberry-caramel-pecan cake Charlie wanted—not everyone is going to want that," I said while Ducky shuddered faintly. "But I think I'm going to cheat and hit Costco or BJ's for the extra cakes. I don't even own enough pans to bake for a crowd this size!" This was giving me a sudden vision of our wedding—if we invited all of his friends, we'd need to borrow the National Mall. Was it too late to consider eloping…? I looked at him in horror. "Omigod. I mean—Gibbs is good, I'm sure, but how will he keep up with—"

"Actually, Anthony has volunteered to assist in the 'flaming of dead cows,' as he put it." I stuck out my tongue and made a face. "Yes, well—you know Anthony," he laughed. "He gets along fairly well with children—just not in such a large number. So I think he'll be using the grill as a barrier of sorts."

"Ducky—" I chewed my lip. "I got out of teaching because, well, to be honest—I couldn't stand kids."

"Oh, sweetheart, you'll be fine. There's a wide difference between a room full of semiconscious teenagers being forced to read Hamlet and a garden full of children playing games and stuffing themselves full of food."

"Yeah. Back then, you could still beat them," I muttered.

Ducky laughed and gave me a peck on the cheek. "You'll be fine," he repeated.

/ / /

It wasn't so much a party as it was like hosting a famine.

Suzy—who had overseen more parties for her children and grandchildren than I cared to think of—suggested we take both my van and her station wagon for the crack of dawn shopping. I tried to convince her one would be fine—I was sure we wouldn't need that much room. Boy, was I wrong. As it was, we had to jam and cram stuff into every nook and cranny, and it was a good thing neither of us had brought any passengers. Two husky young lads helped us load flats of soda, bags and bags of chips, a hundred or more pounds of hamburgers and hot dogs, prepared salads, fruit trays, veggie trays, frozen hors d'oeuvres and nibbles, cakes—

"I hope we have enough," Suzy murmured while the umpteenth box of individual ice cream cups was forced under the back seat in my van. (I had memories of changing a flat and discovering that the bolts slammed on the tire with an air wrench were not capable of being removed by hand using a tire iron. If we couldn't find someone as strong as the kid cramming the ice cream in place to wrestle the ice cream out again we'd just have to let it melt.) She caught my dubious look. "Pre- and sub-teens eat like birds—namely, they can put away what looks like their body weight in food in a given day. And if they aren't vidiots, they'll burn it off and come back for more."

Ducky had come up with a brilliant idea. As the pond no longer housed goldfish (and he wasn't overly interested in replacing them), a few days before he had drained it and scrubbed it down with bleach; while Suzy and I were helping the economy at one end of town he was accepting the delivery of something close to three hundred pounds of ice brought over from the other end. A third or more of it was dumped into the empty pond and when we returned he set Charlie to adding sodas to the pond full of salted ice. (The beer and adult drinks were stashed in three or four coolers that would be kept near the grill area—under the watchful eye of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. No underage drinker would dare sneak a Sam Adams with him on duty.)

Abby was the first to arrive. "I figured you might need extra hands." I wasn't that surprised to see Geoff in tow—it was his day off. Most of the employees at the store—including Valerie—were young enough that the idea of attending a party for a 9 year old wasn't very appealing, even if she was Ev's sort-of stepdaughter (there had been repeats of "I'll help cover the store, you need to be there…")—but Abby could probably get Geoff to go bowling with her and the nuns. (I would pay to see that.)

"I won't say no." I was a little disappointed—instead of wearing a short-short dress with a low back (I was looking forward to seeing a heart attack or two from the in-laws), Abby was dressed for a garden party. She wore a black lace dress that barely skimmed her knees and had long sleeves that came to a point on the back of her hands. Black lace leggings, lace-up high heeled low boots (is there any other kind of heel in Abby's closet?) and a black lace parasol completed her ensemble. "Before I forget to mention—you look great."

"Thanks!" She gave me a sunny smile. "I used, like, SPF-zillion, so I should be okay outside—oh, Sandy," she said in shocked tones at my "oops" look. "Don't tell me you don't use sunscreen?"

"Um—sometimes?"

"I'm shocked. Really shocked. I would have thought Ducky would take better care of you!"

I winced. Ducky was hovering like crazy as it was (I figured the novelty would pall just a little over time—I didn't want it to fade completely, mind you)—and he always made a point to remind me about sunscreen if we were going to be outside for the day. (What 'remind'—he just tosses a bottle at me and figures I'm smart enough to follow the directions.) "He does, Abby. We've just been running around like crazy this morning—'

"Well, let us do some of the running around." She reached out and patted my cheek. "You look tired, Pookie."

Uh-oh. Abby sifts through forensic evidence for a living (and did it as a pastime while growing up, I heard). Until we make an official announcement, I'm going to have to be on the top of my game around her. "We've been planning this shindig for a couple of weeks. Now that it's showtime—it's a little daunting."

She glanced around and leaned down so she was closer to my level. "Ducky told me about Charlotte's grandmother," she said in a low tone. She looked disgusted—and angry. "That was just awful what she said and did! I don't blame her for thinking she shot Lily!"

It took me a moment to sort out that "she" was Mrs. Kemmelbacher and "her" was Charlie. Too many pronouns. "Yeah, she's a real piece of work."

"I was going to say piece of something else," she grumbled. "Well, don't worry. The NCIS special security detail is going to be on top of things."

"You're not going to—you know—take her out or anything?" (One could hope.)

"Oh, no, no," she assured me. She made a face. "Darn it. Well, Ducky made us promise," she added when I snickered. "Don't worry. She won't get a chance to spoil the party!"

After Mother's mini-meltdown, Ducky and I had discussed what might—god forbid—happen during the party. Victoria has her up and down moments; considering she's going to be one hundred next spring (and will make it, by gum; she is already working on her party plans) and sometimes even forgets she's living in the U.S., it's a game of 'who knows?' as to how she'll fare on a given day. So we were a little concerned the party might be too much for her.

Bzzt. Wrong answer.

She was totally in her element. Over the past month, Charlie had been sharing some of the more interesting stories from Victoria's past (she was still avidly working on Victoria's biography) and her friends were dying to meet her 'grandma.' Who wouldn't want to? The woman had traveled through Africa (swimming with the hippos, no less); gone on an archaeological dig in Tunisia while in single digits (her grandfather was the sponsor, no way would they refuse his request to take his grandchildren); spent a summer, with her sisters, visiting New York relations right after the end of The Great War (and they were swept up in an arrest with their cousins Martha and Beatrice while marching for the right for women to vote—well, Mart and Bea were marching, Victoria and her sisters thought they were going to Central Park); visited (again with her sisters) their Chicago relations a few years later during the Roaring Twenties (and some of those family members turned out to be bootleggers)—

"Suzy is keeping an eagle ear on things," I reassured Ducky. (He had just overheard the heretofore unknown tale of the three sisters deciding to become circus performers and they ran away together at the tender ages of 12 (Gloria), 10 (Eugenia) and 7 (Victoria). (The ringmaster was quite amused. He managed to find performance spots for all three of them for a couple of days while his wife was tasked with tracking down the girls' frantic parents—no mean feat when probably 85% of the population still didn't have a telephone.)) "If the stories get too racy, she'll do a 'look, a butterfly!' distraction."

So Victoria sat in the shade of her 'new' magnolia, spinning tales for a couple of dozen kids sitting on the grass while others flitted about like large, giggling birds.

In addition to half the under-teen crowd in the tri-state area Charlie had a number of adult friends and the crossovers got along quite well, especially as it turned out many of them knew one another or were a degree of separation apart and hadn't realized they had a common element in Charlie. Lord Charles and Lady Marguerite of Little Scrumping on the Bay (Jim and Melanie Conover of D.C., in reality), members of Charlie's medieval recreation group The Empire of the Blood Roses, were occasional performers at the Gaslight and friends of Misty's (and, now, by association, Abby's). Some of the live action D&D players knew McGee from a local s-f convention (yep, I was right—he was a conventiongoer). And the mother of one of Charlie's gymnastics pals was the former college girlfriend of none other than Tony DiNozzo. (After running into Amy and her daughter, he stayed behind the grill and never came out again.) (At first I thought it was because she was married and, even if he was tempted, there were some lines even Tony wouldn't cross—actually she was divorced and on the hunt for the next husband (#4, I believe she said). I didn't blame DiNozzo for hiding.)

As it turned out, the front line from NCIS was unnecessary. They were still quite welcome—as guests, if nothing else—but they didn't need to run interference at all (much to our relief). Even the Kemmelbachers were—gasp—having a good time. Grandfather was a quiet fellow who gave Charlie a big hug, laughed at her, "Oh, wow!" over the gift card to Best Buy ($100—oh, wow, was right) and parked himself in a corner with a plate of food and two beers and watched the happy chaos with a bemused smile.

Grandmother got a hug as well, and a gracious 'thank you.' Charlie made sure to introduce the Kemmelbacher clan to her extended family, including the NCIS contingent. In addition to the grandparents we had aunts (Evangeline and Rachel, the two who had followed Mrs. K at the hospital, and Leah, who had spilled the beans about Lily and earned herself a one week suspension without pay for that indiscretion) and one uncle (Luke, whose tongue almost fell out of his mouth when he met Abby). (Okay, that was funny as hell. I think he peed his pants.)

Mrs. K was understandably nervous around Gibbs—their one and only meeting had been uncomfortable (understatement)—but he merely said, "Nice to see you again, ma'am," and went back to flipping burger patties. He's not gauche enough to bring up her difficulties with Charlie's moms while at Charlie's party—but she still kept toward the other end of the yard.

I wandered about the yard from group to group, pleased to discover that while Charlie was a little on the unusual side there were plenty of kids out there just as quirky. One young miss looked like Abby's little sister (or perhaps she was just dressed as Wednesday Addams); another little girl was chatting with Ziva in a language I couldn't readily identify (Ziva looked both amused and interested); and then there was the lad that had McGee cornered, trying to convince him to market the 'way cool' CD notebook he had put together as a gift for Charlie (8" diskettes with 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" and mini CDs sort of decoupaged on them and sealed in plastic made the front and back covers, with sheets of envelopes for regular and mini CDs inside). McGee actually looked like he was considering the idea.

McGee was quick to assure me he hadn't used the diskettes he was checking out for Chanda. They were extras laying about the computer reconstruction lab at the LOC, free for the taking. But as for the disks that had been locked away for over thirty years—

"—amazing amount of data on them. It really beat the odds, but having those disks in the briefcase and in a safe really helped. They were clearly handled by someone who knew what they were doing."

"So—what did it turn out to be?"

"So far—invoices. Mostly invoices. We're copying everything to a jump drive—it's easier to access, plus who knows how much longer the media will support the data? There have been some bad sectors—some of the pages have bad spots, some are totally gone. Basically they had a shell on a dumb terminal—"

The terminal wasn't the only thing that was dumb. I'm sure I had a "hunh?" look on my face; at least I wasn't drooling.

McGee noticed. "A dumb terminal is one where you can enter data and it's sent to the mainframe, it's strictly data transfer, no interaction."

I'm sure he thought that helped to clarify things. Nope. Not a clue.

"Okay. Pretend you have a pad of preprinted forms for the store. Customer name, address, the book they're ordering, the cost, how they plan to pay—just a word or sentence indicating the information you need, plus a blank space. Now, short of turning over the page and writing on the back, you're limited to those blocks of information. That's the dumb terminal. You tear off that page and hand it to someone to fill the order—that's the mainframe. For Quartermaster, the data would then transfer to the warehouse, they'd print out a daily report, pick and pack the orders and the cycle would be complete."

"Gotcha."

"All the orders were put on tape drive; Mr. Fairchild had about a thousand on the disks, he was working on a program to pull the data into specific reports. They were looking at target marketing—you know, if you like this author you might like that author—"

"I get emails from Amazon like that all the time."

"So do I. So this would be the great-great-grandfather of those recommendations."

"So it was just…accounting junk?" I tried not to sound too disappointed.

"So far."

"Why would someone lock invoices up in a safe?" (Why would someone pretend to be a nurse-companion? I'm collecting some weird "how come?" situations of late.)

McGee shrugged. "Maybe there's something we haven't uncovered yet. Maybe it was something he had in his head and hadn't written down. Maybe—" He shrugged. "I'll keep looking."

"I appreciate it. I owe you brownies."

He winced. "I love your brownies but—I'm trying to lose a few pounds." He grimaced slightly. "This party has been a test of willpower. And it lost."

"How about oatmeal raisin cookies. They way I make 'em, they're actually good for you."

He beamed. "Sounds great. Thanks!"

"Oh, Grandma! You are priceless!"

I glanced toward Victoria's corner; she was still surrounded by a crowd of children (and a number of adults). Charlie had her arms flung about Victoria's neck and was laughing uproariously. Suzy was still right by Victoria's side and was shaking her head in mild disbelief. (Hope she got a chance to censor the story.) Charlie had one of her aunts in tow—Leah, the ER nurse who (according to Charlie) had honestly been coming from a place of concern when she called her mother the day Lily came in after having been shot. Charlie bore her no ill will; neither would the rest of us.

I was a little startled when she looked up, caught my gaze—and looked shocked. No, not shocked—scared, almost terrified. Flat-out terrified, for just a split second, turning absolutely dead white. She turned away, smiling hesitantly as Charlie introduced her to Victoria and Suzy.

Huh. When Charlie had introduced us earlier, she'd been quite cordial. No reason I could think that she'd be scared of me—unless she thought I was going to go to the hospital and demand she be fired. Her mother was probably of the opinion I was a vindictive bitch; I made a mental note to seek her out and make friendly chitchat with her.

As I swung my gaze back toward McGee, I passed by Mrs. Kemmelbacher—who liked like she had been pole axed. Ducky was standing near her; he touched her arm and she started, looking at him. He spoke to her a moment and they walked off to a corner of the yard. I was willing to bet Charlie's "Grandma!" had hurt like nothing else could—and my second bet was that Ducky was gently pointing out how her prejudice and hate was just pushing Charlie further and further away. If anybody could make her see reason—Ducky would be the one.

"What do you know about Quartermaster?" McGee asked.

"Just what I heard the other day. I kind of recognized the name. You find out anything?"

"Not a lot. They have a website—they're still local, just one central warehouse. Company was started by a supply sergeant after his hitch during World War II. At first they specialized in military contracts, branched out to businesses in the late fifties. With the way the supply chain now works in the military, all they do is private sale."

"I'm surprised they're still in business, what with BJ's, Costco, OfficeMax—"

He shrugged. "Enough customers who don't want to drive out, shop, drag the stuff back. Enough that want centralized billing—one company to provide everything. Or maybe they're the only resource for certain products."

"True," I admitted. "We use some obscure things at the store—I must had half a dozen companies I deal with who are the only supplier for this or that."

"Try finding ribbons for a manual typewriter," he muttered with a small laugh.

We wandered back toward the tables of food. "My best friend in grade school had a grandma who made the most awesome Italian caramels. Family recipe, handed down mother to daughter for over a century. She never gave out the recipe but swore she'd leave it in her recipe book for her daughter and granddaughter. When she died—it wasn't in the file. She forgot to write it down, literally took it with her when she went. Gone for good. And by the way—" I scooped the last of the root beer gelatin with whipped cream onto my plate (several people had thought it was a pot luck; the extra food was not going to waste) "—I promise not to blow your cover."

He looked confused. "I beg your pardon?"

"The other day at the store, when we told you we had a mystery, you looked uncomfortable," I said, voice low. "I thought you might be worried that I'd tell everyone that Thom E. Gemcity—"

His face cleared. "Oh, no, no, that's fine." He laughed ruefully. "My sister outed me last year, everyone knows about it. No, I was remembering how I ended up meeting you officially as opposed to wandering in as a customer. I was worried you had found another body—especially after the last couple of weeks."

"Ah."

We chatted pleasurably about books for quite a while, then engaged in the social square dance that happens when you're in a large group of congenial people. Ducky was right—a crowd of kids having fun was different than captive audience for a grammar lesson. And I was delighted to discover many of them were fans of Story Time and/or big readers.

Eventually I crossed paths with Charlie's Uncle Luke, Aunt Evangeline and Aunt Rachel. Away from their mother (who was still in conference with Ducky), the aunts were pleasant, intelligent young woman. Uncle Luke had a bit of a wandering eye (mostly between the chin and navel of any female over 18; I could picture him as the loser younger brother in one of Victoria's Regency romances, seducing maids in the back corridor and gambling away his monthly allowance)—but he didn't spring at me with a giant crucifix, screaming, "Begone, heathen!" which was a start.

"Having a good time?" I gave Leah Kemmelbacher what I hoped was a genial smile as I gathered used paper plates and cups.

She gave me a hint of a smile in return. "Mm-hmm. I'm—I'm glad to finally meet everyone Charlotte—she, uh, she speaks highly of all of you."

"Thanks."

She stared at the plate of food she'd barely touched. "What—what did he say about me?" Her voice quivered a little at the end.

"I'm sorry—what did who say?"

"Thom?" She glanced up at me warily.

I did a quick sift of my conversations. Tom? No Tom in the group I could— "Thom Gemcity?" She nodded. "Actually, he never mentioned your name." I said it as kindly as I could.

"He—uh—knows me more as Lorelei Odile. From our writers' group."

"Sorry—no," I said, shaking my head. "He probably hasn't seen you. It's a big crowd."

She smiled. "That it is." Was it my imagination, or did she look relieved? "Charlotte has a lot of very good friends." She looked over to where Charlie was engaged in an animated discussion of god only knows what with Evelyn and a couple of "older" (teenage) friends.

"Good family, too. It's too bad your mother has such a dislike of Evelyn and Lily."

Her smile dropped and she looked at me with emotions warring on her face—confusion, wariness, fear… even a flash of anger. "Yes. It is," she said shortly. She abruptly turned and walked away.

Huh! What got her knickers in a twist?

/ / /

By late afternoon, most of the partygoers were gone. A couple of kids who seemed to be Charlie's closest friends were parked—with Charlie and Victoria—in front of Victoria's computer, waiting for parents to pick them up. Ducky had had a moment of panic when they started surfing the web—but they were in search of a very specific website, one he ended up approving of wholeheartedly.

"Oh, excellent, Grandma! That was hard to see!"

"It certainly was. The artist is very sneaky." Victoria's pale eyes searched the screen. "Oh! Does it have to be a real elephant? I rode an elephant in Zambia, once. Her name was Natumi—she was very sweet."

I shook my head; the things that stay in your memory…

"No—it can be a real elephant, or a statue, a toy, a picture—sometimes they blend it in with the background—"

"Perhaps—" It took a couple of tries (she was still a little shaky with the mouse) but she finally clicked on the children's book on the chair; Dumbo disappeared in a twinkle of stars and 'elephant' was crossed off the list. "I found it!"

"Can't hurt, might help," I murmured to Ducky.

"The brain is like any muscle," Abby said, voice low but still enthusiastic. "Gotta exercise it, keep it limber." She stretched expansively, just missing Jimmy Palmer's head.

"No cartwheels," Ducky admonished and she laughed.

I made a quick sweep of the living room, collecting a stack of paper plates and ferrying them to the kitchen, Abby assisting. The rest of the NCIS contingent were huddled in there: Gibbs and DiNozzo, each with a beer in hand, were at the end of the kitchen, discussing something in low voices; Ziva and McGee were chatting about a book I only vaguely recognized from their comments. Ziva broke off and gave me a warm smile. "It was a lovely party, Cassandra. I'm glad things went off without a stitch."

"Hitch," DiNozzo called out and she rolled her eyes.

"Nice lack of drama," Gibbs said with a quirk of a smile.

"You helped with that, I'm sure," I said. "Thank you. And thank you—both of you—for a yeoman's job on those grills."

"It was fun," Tony grinned.

"Charlie's a nice little girl. Ducky talks about her a lot. She's like the kid he never had."

I tried not to blush. "Yeah." I was pretty sure Ducky hadn't spilled the beans (strike that—positive), but Gibbs was giving me a speculative look. I dumped the debris in the kitchen bin and as I turned back the sight of McGee made my brain dredge up a memory. "Hey, Tim, did Leah Kemmelbacher ever catch up with you?"

He looked mildly confused. "Who?"

"Charlie's aunt. She's in your writing group?"

He frowned more deeply. "Sorry—I didn't meet with anyone—"

Her AKA popped to mind. "Lorelei Odile?"

He looked startled. "Lorelei Odile?" he repeated. I nodded. "She is Charlotte's aunt?" I nodded again. "Mrs. Kemmelbacher is her mother?"

"Yeah. Why the stunned look?"

"She's just—not at all like what I've heard of her mother," he said slowly. "Not at all."

"She's not a bigoted religious fanatic? Good." There was a tiny snicker from Abby behind me. "What?"

"Nothing. Just—" She looked over at McGee, who shrugged. "Well—Tim and I met Lorelei at a poetry night thing and she ended up joining his group."

She chewed her lip, thinking. Finally I prodded, "And…?"

"Sandy—the girl lives in Narnia."

"She lives in DC," I corrected. The only one to move out of the house, Charlie said.

DiNozzo came to my rescue. "Sandy, Abby is saying this Lorelei chick is so far in the closet, she's living in Narnia." Trust DiNozzo to understand an oblique movie reference.

I let out a whoosh. "Oh." Pause. I looked at McGee. "Oh. No wonder the poor girl was scared spitless when she saw me talking to you. She probably figured I was going to run and rat her out to—hey, how the hell would her mother not know?"

"You don't acknowledge what you don't want to know." McGee exchanged a look with Abby; this time she shrugged. "Let's just say there's a lot going on in that family."

"And… it's a good thing Charlie lives where she does?" I said slowly. Abby pursed her lips and nodded. Okay; pursue that later. "Well—on to happier topics." I looked around the kitchen expectantly. "Who's staying for dinner?" There was a general oh-no-overstayed-my-welcome-shouldn't-need-to-get-going muddle of voices. I raised my own voice just a hair. "Okay, let me rephrase this. The popular entrée was hot dogs, we have about twenty pounds of hamburger patties, I'm making spaghetti for dinner, you are staying—yes?" I gave Ziva and McGee a firm look.

"I would love to," Ziva said quickly. She has the most charming smile; I find it hard to believe that she used to be a Mossad assassin. Well—sometimes I find it hard to believe.

"My pleasure," McGee chimed in. Abby nodded enthusiastically and whispered, "I'll go tell Jimmy and Geoffster," and slipped from the kitchen.

"I love spaghetti," DiNozzo said with a show of his pearly whites. "I'm Italian. It's in the rules."

That left their fearless leader. "Someone else cooking my dinner? No argument from me."

"And we still have plenty of cake," I said, pulling cans of tomato paste and crushed tomatoes from the pantry. "Plain chocolate and vanilla," I added as Gibbs smiled in amusement. "I figured that chocolate banana mishegosh was going to be with us forever. Never thought it would be the first to go."

"Never underestimate kids," he said.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Ziva offered.

"I'm good. But thank you."

"Perhaps staying out of your way would be the best assistance," she laughed, dodging me as I opened the fridge.

"It is a small kitchen," I admitted. "Usually Ducky and I are the only ones waltzing around together."

"Why don't we leave you in peace?" McGee suggested. "But if you need help, we're ready and willing."

"Hey." I dropped my voice. "You guys gave up your Saturday because Ducky asked you to run interference at a kids party. You've done plenty."

Gibbs shrugged. "Family."

"You're marryin' into a weird one," Tony cracked, doing his Jack Nicholson voice.

"Huh." I grabbed flats of burger patties, bags of mushrooms and onions and a jar of crushed garlic. "Wait until you meet my side of the family at the wedding."

I started browning meat in one pan, onions and garlic sautéing in another, and generally flinging ingredients with great abandon. To my surprise, Gibbs stayed behind, sitting at the breakfast table, sipping his beer. After a while, he said, "Smells good."

"Thanks."

I'm used to an audience while I cook—if not one of the four-footed members of the family, Victoria will frequently help or just sit at that selfsame table and talk to me. So it didn't bother me (well, not much) to have Gibbs just sit and watch. "That's a lot of sauce," he said after another long pause.

"Not really. We've got an even dozen people, pretty much equally divided between who likes mushrooms and who doesn't." I pointed to the two pots.

"Why not just tell 'em to pick 'em out?" he asked with an amused look.

"Victoria doesn't like mushrooms. If I'm going to make one pot of sauce for her, I may was well make a bigger pot for all the non-fungi people in the house."

He nodded wisely when I mentioned Mother's name. "Mrs. Mallard is a—very special lady," he said carefully with an understanding smile.

"And she has quite the crush on you." He rolled his eyes slightly. "At least she's not taking the Metro to the Navy Yard, trying to get you to go out dancing."

He gestured with his beer. "That was scary," he said solemnly.

"Yeah." Victoria—with the aid of helpful Metro agents—actually made it as far as the Navy Yard. She was stopped at the guard shack (thank heavens they didn't toss her against the wall and put her in an armlock). Fortunately Jimmy Palmer and Abby were walking back from lunch and rescued her. Abby then drove her home, discovered the day nurse passed out in the living room, called CompanionAbles and raised holy hell. With Gibbs' approval, Victoria was a fixture for the duration of Ducky's and my trip to Book Expo—even though she drove him batshit crazy, I'm sure.

"I'm glad Duck has you on his six."

I almost dropped my knife. "Th—thank you."

"Been friends with Ducky for a long time." He looked reflective. "I remember when she knew me as Jethro Gibbs. Now she barely knows me as Matthew."

Wow. Like his kindness to Charlie, this softer side to Gibbs threw me a little.

"Ducky loves his mom. It's nice that he found someone who fits in, who's okay with her—" He smiled. "Who makes spaghetti sauce without mushrooms just for her."

I laughed. "Y'know, if it were reversed—if she were the only mushroom fan in the house—I probably would just tell everyone else to pick 'em out."

He saluted me with his bottle. "Fair enough."

/ / /

Victoria and Charlie were both done in pretty early. By 8:00 Charlie was snug in her sleeping bag, Victoria on her daybed only feet away and snoring like crazy. At Suzy's suggestion, we brought the lingering-over-cake-and-coffee-or-tea NCIS crew into the loop with regard to the Neoma Keithley/Shelly Romero mystery. "Granted, there are no Marines or naval officers involved—but they investigate crimes on a daily basis. Maybe they'll see something we haven't."

I repeated what we knew, what we wondered, what I had done. (I was getting faster with every telling.)

DiNozzo was impressed. "Wow! You dressed up like an old lady, went in in disguise? You've got brass ones!"

I gave him a weak smile; Ducky's conniption fit was still fresh in my mind.

Old Ironside plot or no, killing them off for money was the first idea brought up (by Geoff) and shot down (by Gibbs—who had been listening more carefully to my recollection).

Ziva suggested identity theft, what I had come up with the day before.

"Gee, wouldn't a person notice if there was a card opened in their name and someone was charging fifty or seventy-five K—eh, McScammed?" The last was directed to McGee, who merely glowered at DiNozzo. Inside joke, I guess.

"Probably not stupid enough to put it all in one name or card," Gibbs said. He was slouched in one of the wingback chairs, feet propped on an ottoman. "How many residents you think were there?"

I held up a finger. "Hold that thought." I ran to my purse and dug out the paperwork I'd collected the day before and tossed it on the coffee table.

"Three hundred and fourteen units. Even figuring each unit has only one occupant—I'm sure plenty of them have couples—?" Gibbs looked at me and I nodded. "So if they took out a credit card and only charged, say, two hundred bucks—nice low number, something the company might write off—two hundred times three-fourteen—"

"Sixty-two thousand, eight hundred," Ziva quickly supplied.

"And a lot of identity theft goes undetected because they aren't defaulting on the cards," Suzy supplied. "My eldest daughter had her credit score improved by an identity thief. He took out three cards and made perfect, on-time payments for two years. She didn't know about it until she applied for a home equity loan to put an addition on her house."

Tony laughed. "Like that old joke—"someone stole my wife's wallet—I didn't report it because he was spending less that she did."

"Rodney Dangerfield?" I suggested.

Suzy rolled her eyes. "Probably goes back to Burns and Allen."

"But consider the statistics," McGee argued. "A minimum of three hundred and fourteen people. If they're selecting people based on income and credit scores—"

I held up the paperwork I'd squirreled away. "I didn't give this much info when I got my car loan."

He gave me an encouraging nod. "So out of three hundred and fourteen people—nobody runs their credit report? Not one?" He looked around the group. "Who here checks their credit at least once a year?" Everyone raised a hand, even Geoff. "Two or three times a year?" Geoff, Abby and Gibbs dropped their hands. "Quarterly?" Tony, Ziva, Ev and Jimmy dropped out. "Monthly?" McGee, Suzy, Ducky, Lily and I were the last with our hands up. "So in this house the only people not running a check at least once a year are the little kid and the 99-year-old lady."

"Actually—I run Mother's credit as well," Ducky corrected. "She still has a credit card account—and a fairly good credit score. Though I don't think she remembers she has the card…"

"Don't laugh. I run Charlie's, too," Lily said. "A few years ago, Dad got a report from Social Security—a report showing someone had been paying into the system under her number. Turns out someone had been using a fake card with her number out of Nogales, Arizona. About a year later, the same number was being used by a different woman in South Lake Tahoe, California."

"So the chances are pretty good that some of those residents are running their credit reports. My grandmother guards her credit score like it's gold—which it is. So nobody is running a credit report? Nobody?" McGee asked.

"Maybe… they wait until someone has been there a while, see if they run a report—and if they don't, then they open a card or two in their resident's name?" DiNozzo suggested.

"Possible," Gibbs agreed. "Even if only a quarter of them would bring in fifteen-twenty thousand."

"So if they do two hundred or so on the card, maybe three-four cards per person—I get three or four offers a month—" Abby started.

"But—wait." I sat up. "If they're opening these accounts to scam the companies, once they've defaulted on a couple of cards, that's it. That well has dried up, their credit score tanks. So if they have a low turnover—and they do—those sources of income end. It's got to be something ongoing."

Silence. We chewed on it for a while, then Gibbs said, "Nobody is being double billed?"

I shook my head. "Not that we could see. And you don't have to be on automatic debit, some people pay by check or money order."

"Well… maybe it's just a ten or twenty charge once a month? That's something most people wouldn't notice, and twenty a month—only six grand or so… but every month, six grand you didn't have to lift a finger to earn—" Lily suggested.

"If they're hitting all of their locations—they've got a dozen or fifteen or so," I added. "So fifteen times six grand—"

"Sixty thousand." It was a chorus of Gibbs, Ziva and Evelyn. We all laughed lightly.

"Sixty K. Every month," Gibbs reiterated.

"But, again, there's only one fee, one payment," I argued.

"Perhaps they padded the one payment by the amount they are embezzling," Ziva suggested. "If the thief is in the accounting department—"

"Shelly is trolling the waters for new blood. Her husband is the general director for all of the properties. She's not on the payroll and I don't know if he would have access to the accounting area. What I remember from my business accounting class a zillion years ago was division of responsibility. Don't have one person in charge of everything—or even too many things. The fewer the tasks, the harder it is to embezzle."

Ziva sighed. "Another brick hall."

"Wall," DiNozzo corrected. She gave him a mildly irritated look.

"Well—I don't want to be a party pooper—but six a.m. is right around the corner." Geoff looked at me. "What's the address?"

"Hunh?"

"The books we're packing from Chanda's?"

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Ducky studiously staring into his coffee.

"Should Alan and I meet you there? You renting a truck or what?"

"Renting a U-haul. Ev picked the truck up earlier. I'll text you the address and directions. I sent a delivery of boxes over, Chanda volunteered to start the packing—she bribed a couple of friends with offers of babysitting, so from what she texted me earlier I'd say three-fourths of our work is done." (Hmm. Wonder if she'd like to come back to work at the store…)

Geoff looked at Ducky and jerked his head in my direction. "So—she knows not to—"

Ducky gave his coffee a small smile. "Oh, yes. She knows."

"Are you ever going to the doctor's?" Evelyn asked in mild irritation.

"Next Wednesday," Ducky and I chorused. "I tied her to the chair and forced her to call," Ducky added.

Abby gave us a slow smile. "Ooooh. Kinky. I like it."

I started to wonder if Geoff would make it there in the morning…

/ / / / /

"You know why executions are held at dawn?"

I gave Evelyn a wary glance from the passenger side of the rental truck. "Why?

She grabbed her travel mug and took a gulp of coffee. "'cause who wants to live at dawn?"

"You said it." I turned sideways and rested my cheek against the high back of the seat. I was feeling dreadfully carsick (or maybe it was morning sickness) and I was trying to will it away.

"You okay?"

"Payback's a bitch. This is the price for all the sugar and junk food from yesterday."

"I'm surprised you're not drinking a ton of coffee to even it out."

The smell was actually nauseating. "If I'm going to puke, a rerun of half-and-half is truly ugly." Ev shuddered. "7-Up is less offensive."

"More sugar," she pointed out. I stuck my tongue out. "Oh, ma-turrre," she teased.

Chanda was up and waiting when we arrived. Up, waiting and way too perky for 0600. "I forgot. You're a morning person," I groaned.

"And then some." The tall, lanky fellow walking out behind her was undoubtedly her husband. "Hi, Jerry Davis." He held out a hand, shaking ours in turn. He didn't look like a college prof, even a community college one. Maybe a lifeguard—tall and tan, long curly hair that was a light brown with plenty of sun-streaks, and an easy grin; I liked him immediately. "Fortunately, she had me trained before we gave birth to two human alarm clocks."

"We gave birth," Chanda repeated with a small snort. "Right."

The arrival of Geoff and Alan kept me from making any embarrassing slip of the tongue.

With four of us—frequently six—working (fortunately the girls were at grandma and grandpa's for the weekend), it only took until just before noon to be done. Of course, this was only because Chanda had pulled in every favor she could and sold her soul to other moms for babysitting in the near future. "Pfft," she said when I started to protest. "Two kids or six, it's pretty much the same mess and noise level." (After Charlie's party yesterday, I'd debate that.) "I remembered how hard it was when we expanded at Papyrus—and this is almost as many books. You said Ev would be interested in a lot of the history and biography, so I kept that out for the two of you to hash over; I figure at the worst, if I screwed up on some of the stuff that's packed, you can un-screw it up when you unpack."

"You're a doll." I gave her a hug.

"You just bought a transmission job and rebuilt engine for my car. That money was spent before it hit the bank!"

Much like our buying trip to Pippa's store, my stuff was loaded on first; anything with a red X was slated for Evelyn's store and loaded last so that it could be unloaded first. As the boxes mounted up, Ev started looking more and more worried.

"Sandy, I can't afford this," she finally confessed. "I sank pretty much all of my purchasing money into what I got from Pippa's. I'm just driving the truck—you paid for it. The state is covering Lily's medical bills—crime victim's compensation fund—but—"

"Chill your jets. I already paid for all the books. We can figure out what your share is and you can pay me back 'whenever,'" I said. Or you can work it off in babysitting, an evil part of my brain chortled. Ev looked, as Charlie would put it, "exceedingly relieved."

We swapped seats for the ride back—Geoff went with Ev and would help her unload and Alan drove us back to the store.

Valerie gave us a wary eye. (The books had been old and dusty; we did look rather disreputable.) "How many boxes?"

Alan snorted. "I'm a liberal arts major. I can't count that high."

"A hundred? Two?" she prompted when he didn't respond.

"You remember all the boxes from Pippa's?" I said.

She drew back slightly. "Yeah…?" she questioned in a suspicious tone.

"More."

She slumped in her chair. "God bless Abby for fixing up the end room. Shall I call around to anyone who's off today?"

"Well, we've got you, Geoff, Ev, Alan, me—"

"Not you," Alan corrected. "Geoff said the Doc told him you could get a freakin' hernia carrying stuff around. You don't get to carry anything heavier than a pizza box. Boss."

I sighed; Valerie gave me a "busted!" look. "Pizza. I can take a hint,"

Valerie grinned. "Marcy and Cherie are here—"

There was a "Yo?" from a far corner of the store; Marcy has phenomenal hearing.

Valerie tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. "One o'clock on Sunday. Too bad we can't actually get Linda to work for us—"

I looked up sharply. "Linda is back?" I couldn't help but grin. "Haven't 'seen' her in over a year!"

"Yep. When I came in there was a big stack of books in the trivia section, smack in front of the bookcase. A couple of piles of sci-fi at the ends of their shelves, too."

(Linda Howard had been one of my first customers. She came to the store every day—every day. At least once or twice a week she'd buy something; the rest of the time she'd find a cozy corner, sit and read. I often found her alphabetizing books just to have something to do. As time went on, I discovered she worked as a "temp;" if she had a job that day, she'd stop by in the evening. Otherwise, she'd be there all day. Health issues had caused her to lose a full-time job and her medical insurance and she discovered the lowest insurance she could get would be an eight hundred a month payment—for crappy coverage, at that. Plus, employers are hesitant to hire someone who took off time seven times in four years for surgery, radiation and chemo. I hired her as much as I could afford to—those first years were lean ones—but she was just grateful for the books.

Then one day she didn't show up.

She wasn't scheduled to work; I figured she had a temp job that had taken her into evening hours as well. But when I locked the door at nine, I had an uncomfortable feeling.

The next day, she wasn't there again.

The third day, I dug out her application (I was too scared to pay someone off the books) and called her home number. It rang. And rang. And rang. Finally the machine picked up and I remembered she was forced to live with her parents because of all of her financial problems. I listened to the message, then heard, "Tape is full. Please call back. Beep."

There was an alternate "in case of emergency" number; her aunt, I was pretty sure. Three rings, then a quiet sigh: "Hello?"

I knew. I just… knew.

It started a week after the funeral. I'd find books where they didn't belong. You get that in a bookstore—people pick something up, change their minds, set it back down. Agatha Christie ends up sitting next to Elizabeth George. Usually they stay in the same area, though sometimes you'll find a stack of a little bit of everything dumped off in an odd corner. This was the same topics, all left in a pile on one of the chairs—a chair that had been empty when I shut the doors the night before.

It took me a couple of months to figure it out. Trivia. Ancient history. Biographies of film stars. Puzzles and games. Sic-fi. Mysteries. All of Linda's pet topics, all left on her favorite chair. I stood in the middle of the store and turned around. "Linda? Linda, I don't mind you reading any of the books here. You're totally welcome to. But could you please leave them in their correct sections? It would be a big help, especially when I'm here alone. Thank you!" I waved to the air.

Behind me I heard a shocked gasp, turned and saw a middle-aged woman staring at me. "Who—who are you talking to?"

"Former customer. Our resident ghost," I said cheerfully. I felt a lot better about Linda's passing knowing that she was still with us.

She paid for her books without another word. Never saw her again.)

"Erika is gone for the summer. Beth will probably come in. Gomer—"

"Don't call him that," I chided. "His name is Robert."

"He calls himself Gomer Pyle," she said, still looking at the ceiling for ideas. (I remember reading that when fledgling actors lose their lines, they look up—as though the words are written on the ceiling.) "I think Ian is still in town… Mac should be home from church by now… Hey—you offer Tim Walinski store credit, he'll probably help, too."

"Works for me."

"Glad we got everything from The Bookie Joint priced—finally."

"Yeah, a lot of the books are going to need evals. Anything marked PB can go straight on the shelves. PB with a dollar sign or just a dollar sign goes in your office—or mine." (There were a lot that needed online research.) "Everything else gets stacked in back."

"Sandy… how many boxes are we looking at?"

"Well… um… there's a lot of paperbacks—"

"How many?"

"There's, gosh, a bunch that are golden age stuff, you can cram a hundred in a box—"

"How… many?"

"And mass market stuff, pft, that's, what, fifty or sixty per box—"

Valerie took a deep breath and huffed it out. "Banker's boxes?"

"Um-hmm."

"How many?"

"Gosh. Three-fifty?"

Her face cleared. "Oh. That's not too bad—"

"Paperbacks." She tried several times, but couldn't bring herself to ask again. Finally I let loose the bombshell. "It's a little over fourteen hundred." Her mouth fell open; no sound escaped. "For the hardbacks."

Finally: "Please… please tell me you didn't buy almost eighteen HUNDRED boxes?"

"Do I look that stu—don't answer that. No, I rented them from 4-R, same as last time. Stripped them of every one. So the faster we can swap them out or unload—"

Valerie did some fast calculations and scribbled a map of the back storeroom. "It'll work. Barely. I'll map out an area in the middle of the room so we can still have access to the shelves—by the way, your Atoz order came in, you ordered a lot of soda—if we unload and unpack some of them, it's less rental…" She grabbed a roll of duct tape from the bin under the counter. "You might want to order pizza now—and don't forget the PTA coupon book!" She is such a good manager. "Eighteen… hundred… boxes…" she ended in a mutter, striding from the room.

I knew her grousing was all bluster. She would want to check out every single book before it hit the shelf; Valerie was a born bookseller—like so many employees, she'd all but grown up at the store.

Cherie popped up seconds later, drafted to watch the front counter. "Valerie said you're ordering pizza?" The lure of free food.

"Yep. Did she also tell you you're going to be working your butt off for it?"

She laughed. "Yeah, she said something like 'eighteen… HUNDRED… boxes…' when she walked away," she said in a dramatic voice. She gave a mildly scornful snort. "As if. Come on, where—" Her voice trailed away. "Sandy—you didn't—" Her eyes widened.

"Told you you'd be earning it."

She sank into the chair. "That's one way of making sure the calories don't stick."

I scurried to my office and dug out my PTA Pals envelope. Good—not only were there plenty of pizza coupons in the collection, they didn't expire until October. I grabbed the receiver.

"—come on, not only will you get paid, you'll get fed—"

Oops. Valerie had taken the portable extension with her and was cajoling someone into coming in for the afternoon. I quietly left the conversation, hit the button for the second line and hit #9 on speed dial. "Pizza Palace! Is this for delivery?"

"Boy, is it. I'm calling in an order using the PTA Pals coupons."

"Ah—those don't include delivery, ma'am."

"I know. Last time they just charged us twenty bucks. It's a big order. Papyrus Books and Gifts."

"Oh, Sandy! Sure. You know the drill—one topping included, extra veggies are fifty cents, extra meat a dollar. What can I get you for?"

I laughed. "Bill Stewart, right?" He's yet another part-timer; he works three different part-time jobs around school and he always Spoonerizes 'get for you' into 'get you for.' Don't know if it's deliberate or by accident. "Too bad you're working today. We could use extra hands over here."

"Yeah? I get off at two, I was mostly working prep shift. I can even bring the pizza with me, bring your coupons back tomorrow morning."

"Sold. Hired. Whatever." I rattled off the order, adding cinnamon sticks and breadsticks (my way of encouraging the manager to keep with the pizza coupon program), gave him my credit card number and told him I'd see him sometime after two. Then I sat back and stared at the coupon in my hand.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATION TO THE PTA!
WHEN YOU PLACE YOUR ORDER,
REMEMBER TO MENTION YOU ARE USING A
* * * PTA PALS * * *
COUPON. (CARRYOUT OR DINE-IN ONLY. NO DELIVERY.)
GIVE THE BLUE HALF OF THE COUPON TO THE CLERK.
KEEP THE WHITE HALF OF THE COUPON
FOR YOUR TAX RECORDS.
$4 OF THIS COUPON IS TAX DEDUCTIBLE!

I grabbed the phone again, this time hitting #6. "Hey, Miyo, it's Sandy. Sorry to disturb your Sunday—do you have time to answer a hopefully quick tax question?"

"Sure. Could you give me ten seconds? I'm finishing up cleaning up a mess from breakfast."

Miyo? A mess? A mess in Miyoko's universe? Life as we know it just ceased to exist.

"The grandkids spent the weekend," she said as though I had asked. "They… helped with brunch. I've been cleaning up for an hour—just—getting—the last—bits—"

I remember watching Ray and Barb's kids for a week. It aged me a year. I pushed away the resurgence of my I can't do this! I'm too old! fear. Maybe I can't—but Ducky can. Of that I was sure.

"There we go," she said with satisfaction. "Now. Question?"

"I'm using the PTA Pals coupons. I paid five dollars per pizza coupon—but it says four is deductible. Why the difference?"

"Because you're getting something of value in return," she said promptly. "They're probably charging the PTA the cost of the pizza—a dollar. You're getting the pizza, so that's not deductible. The other four goes to the PTA, so that is deductible. It's like that 'repair the old-time movie theatre' fundraiser you went to last spring. A hundred bucks a ticket, but the cost of the dinner was listed as twenty-five, so I could only put down seventy-five as a donation. Well, a hundred-fifty, since you took Dr. Mallard with you."

"Oh. Okay. I think I get it."

"Now, if you send in a donation, no strings attached, nothing given in return, the whole donation is deductible. Like all those sucker letters you respond to for Humane Society, North Shore, SPCA. I do, too," she laughed, before I could start to bristle.

"So I have to deduct those address stickers they send?"

"Nope. You made a no-strings-attached donation; they chose to send you a gift after the fact. Or if they give you a gift in advance but attach zero value to it, then the whole donation is deductible. Most people don't keep track of the five or ten they send in because they probably won't total to the standard deduction. You, on the other hand, donate to every group that's out there, you softie. You always make more than the standard, which is why I bug you for receipts all the time."

"Hold on a sec." I dug in my purse, pulling out the papers we had looked at the night before. "Any reason a charity would only ask for five, ten, twenty bucks? Their top asking amount is fifty."

"Laziness," she shot back with a laugh. "Anything under seventy-five dollars, they don't have to provide written documentation. Now, you have to provide documentation—bank statement, receipt, whatever—which is why I've trained you to—"

"Ask for a receipt," I said in chorus with her. "But, wait—if I donate, say, ten bucks a month to the Humane Society, twelve months would make that a hundred and twenty dollars—"

"Right. But it was ten dollars at a given time. No disclosure statement from the charity would be mailed out—unless you request it. Most of them send it out, anyway."

I stared at the papers on my desk, the wheels slowly starting to grind. "Thanks, Miyo," I said absently. The wheels were picking up speed. "This has been… really… instructive."

"I'll send you a bill," she teased. "And it'll be a business expense."

I hung up the phone and let my mind tumble for a while. Then I pulled the computer out of sleep mode and wandered the internet, finding more tidbits, checking out websites—or not finding them, as the case may be—until Geoff and Evelyn showed up.

Valerie had corralled all the part-timers she had rattled off, as well as a couple more. And with the lure of free scholar dollars, Tim Walinski happily gave up his afternoon (hearing there was free food was the cherry on top). The pizza (and Bill Stewart) arrived just as everyone got the who's moving boxes to the lift gate/who's loading to the dollies/who's lugging to the storeroom/who's straightening stacks flow chart established. It was an extremely organized ant farm. Banished from actual work, I handled the rest of the business while people pulled dollies with one hand and ate pizza with the other (OSHA would have a fit; I've done it myself, so I didn't nag).

By five it was a done deal. Valerie not only coordinated the boxes getting in and unloaded, at least a third were emptied and tossed back in the truck, ready to go back to Reduce-Reuse-Renew-Recycle. (Brilliant concept. People only need boxes for a short time when they move (other than my eldest niece—who is still not unpacked after four years). So long as you return them in good condition, you can rent small, medium or large boxes for fifty cents a day; extra large for a buck. Over a hundred boxes, half price; bigger discounts beyond that (let's just say I rented them dirt cheap). Buying the boxes from the cheapest source around would have run me more than I paid for the books—not to mention, having to store them someplace.) I was so impressed with my crew, I pulled money out of petty cash and slipped everyone an off-the-books-tax-free twenty. (Tim traded his back for extra scholar dollars.)

"When do you have to return the truck?" I asked Ev as she passed.

"Tomorrow. They close at six tonight, I figured no way would we be done before midnight, so I just rented it through tomorrow afternoon."

"Good. We can return boxes, drop off the truck, yadda, yadda, yadda." I threw an arm about her shoulders. "Come back to the break room. I want to borrow your brain for a while."

/ / /

"Brilliant." (Evelyn.)

"Devious." (Me.)

"Skunky." (Lily, back from the train station.)

"Federal crime," Mulder said, reaching for his beer. "I have a friend at the postmaster's office I'm going to call tomorrow morning."

"Simple—yet effective," Ducky said from the speakerphone.

I flipped through my Gift-o-Rama catalogue. "Page 21. 'Animal stationery—cats, dogs, birds or fish in pink, gold, lavender, blue or green, pastel with darker shadow drawings, thirty sheets, fifteen envelopes, single box two dollars, half a dozen of one pattern, ten, dozen of one pattern, eighteen or a dozen assorted—no choice of patterns or colors—fifteen bucks,'" I read. "Mary Martin got the lavender cat stationary as a thank you gift. Page 46, chunky bead jewelry—choker, three bucks, bracelet, two—" I slapped the catalogue on the table. "I didn't find Abby's dream catcher. Hopefully that was a legit offering." (Unless it was from another company.)

"But how do they do this? How do they get away with it?" Lily asked.

We were parked in the break room; Valerie, Geoff and Marcy were doing the last-of-the-day wind-down for the store; everyone else had gone home.

"Well, the charities Mary Martin mentioned were bogus. I looked up Felidae—which means 'cat,' by the way—there's a mystery movie with that title, Felidae Conservation for wild cats, a cat food by that name… but this charity doesn't exist. I remembered seeing the brochure for the group home where 'Lindy Lou' lives, the little girl who 'made' this bracelet—couldn't find that charity, either, but I did find a website selling jewelry and crap and the group home name was mentioned. If you read through it casually, it sounds like money is going to support handicapped kids. Read it more carefully, you see shades of gray."

"But wouldn't someone notice the discrepancies? Look at someone's tax returns and say, 'hey, that charity doesn't exist?'" Lily asked.

"Only if they get audited. And only if they're doing itemized deductions. If you take the standard deduction—and I'm betting most of the people there, do—the name won't come up. They keep the beg amounts low, fifty and under—thus, no tax forms." I pointed to the Felidae brochure. "The money goes to a post office box in Wisconsin. Someone probably just deposits it in a nationwide bank, one that the Romeros can access out here—banks don't care to whom the check is made out, they just process it. I screwed up and sent my check for the electric bill with the gas company stub—ended up with a credit on one and an underpayment on the other, messed me up for months."

"They probably have a different PO for every charity—smart, if they're hitting each mark for three or four charities," Mulder said. At my 'go ahead, go ahead' gesture he grabbed another slice of pizza.

"Hey, the legit charities I donate to are like four or five a month," Lily said.

"Right. Figure even ten bucks per 'charity,' that's fifty dollars a month. Even if they're only hitting half of the residents—" I punched keys on my adding machine. "Fifty bucks times a hundred and fifty is seven thousand five hundred a month. There's fifteen facilities, that's—holy crap! Over a hundred and twelve grand a month!"

"Which is why they want people who are in charge of their own finances," Ducky said grimly. "If you have someone at home going through grandmother's bills and wondering, 'hmm, I've never heard of this group'—your whole plan goes up in smoke. Plus, they control the mail coming into the facility; if a resident were to become suspicious, they could just stop mailers from that particular charity."

"Or send them a super special thank you gift. Mary Martin was thrilled to get that stupid box of stationery."

"So we know Martin and Shelly Romero are in on this for sure, right?" Mulder was scarfing pizza with one hand and making notes with the other. "Anyone else?"

I shook my head. "I doubt it. The more people who know the secret, the harder it is to control. And it would be easy to keep it to the two of them. Say they have—oh, fifty charities, one in each state. Fifty different PO boxes. There are companies that exist where all they do is forward your mail. It's popular with people who are traveling a lot or people who don't want to be found—abusive spouse situation, something like that. So they get the mail at box number one. Their instructions are to forward everything to another box. All fifty could be coming right back here to DC—or they could have the fifty go to ten, the ten go to five, the five go to a final one—just so there are more steps along the way to lose someone. Eventually it's back in Martin and Shelly's hands, gets deposited—"

"Then maybe transferred to an offshore account?" Ev suggested. I snapped my fingers and pointed to her in an 'attagirl' motion. "I mean, a hundred grand a month—"

"Is over a million dollars a year," Ducky finished. "I'd get an offshore account. I know mother has her pet charities, and every month we write out checks, but as the years have gone on, she's had more and more pleas, groups and causes I've never even heard of. She'd love to give money to them all, but if she did we'd be bankrupt in a year!"

"The elderly are too often easy targets," I said. I suddenly grinned. "I remember my mom telling me a story, some clown tried to scam my grandmother—told her she needed a new roof. Too bad she'd just gotten a new one about two years before. He did a high-pressure sell; she signed the contract—with the name of her best friend from college. He started ha-ha working, she called the cops—he was up on the roof when they pulled up, they just laid his ladder on the ground and they talked over the edge of the roof. Talk about a captive audience! Turns out he had a couple of hundred complaints against him across the country under about ten different names. Nobody screwed over my Gamma."

"And how embarrassing to admit you'd been bested by a little old lady," Ducky laughed.

"There goes his street cred," Lily said.

"So. I'll check with Owen first thing tomorrow morning. The cops would just toss the over to the feds, it's USPOD, still part of the government. We may as well start off where we're going to end up, anyway," Mulder said, wiping his hands on a paper towel.

"Hmm. I wonder if the FBI would be involved…" Ducky mused.

"Maybe," I said. "Don't tell me—you have a friend in the FBI?" I tried not to laugh.

"Well, more a friend of Jethro's. They have an ex-wife in common."

Evelyn gasped and then began to laugh. "That's one way to cement a friendship!"

6