Hidden Threat (23 page)

“
I think you may be missing the point here. Take a look at some of this.” He waved his hand across the stacks of paper on the bed. There were about fifteen different stacks, some higher than others. On the tops of several were small yellow pieces of note paper. The titles read: Medical Insurance Fraud, Denied Visitation, Child Support Payments, Court Cases, Attorney’s Fees, Life Insurance Payout, Visitation Expenses, Grandmother Interference, Parental Alienation, One Day.”

Amanda was speechless.

“
I think this is what he wants you to see,” Jake said. “It’s proof of something. Evidence.”

“
Evidence of what?”

“
Well, Amanda, all I’ve ever heard you say is that your father was a louse, you did that ‘No Dad’ poem for the school magazine and you keep saying your mother and grandmother
completely
raised you. I flipped through some of the Visitation Expenses files; your father spent over $52,000 just coming to see you over the past decade.”

“
No way.”

“
The evidence is there. Plane tickets, rental cars, hotel rooms, you name it.”

“
I can’t believe this,” she said, looking at the papers and then back at Jake. She could feel herself going numb.

“
Look at the ‘medical insurance fraud’ stack, the one that’s twice as high as any of the others.”

“
What about it?”

“
You know how you’re always going to the doctor for some reason or another?”

“
I have lots of medical issues.”

“
No, Amanda, you don’t.”

“
Yes I do. What about my bursitis? My acne? My back pain? My—”

“
Amanda—”

“
Shut up! Stop it! Just shut up!” She looked away, grabbing her bottom lip with her thumb and forefinger, squeezing off and on. Amanda looked through the large window into the backyard. Perfectly green stems of grass poked upward throughout the backyard. The grass in the back, she remembered, was different than the centipede grass out front. She and her father had dug holes and placed sprigs of Saint Augustine grass, another crawler that thrived in warm climates and sandy soils.

“
It’s called psychosomatic. You’re led to believe it’s true and, therefore, it becomes true. Your mind tricks your body into thinking you have a bad knee or back or whatever, and you can actually feel the pain. But it’s not real.”

“
What brought this up, anyway? Big deal. What can you prove?” Amanda felt herself slipping back into shallow bitch mode. She was defending her mother and grandmother, as she had been trained. “How do we know that all of this isn’t just a bunch of my dad’s creation?”

“
Well, some of it might be,” Jake replied, pointing at the stack of papers labeled One Day.

Amanda reached over and thumbed through the stack of pages. She began to read:

One Day (15 June 1999/Amanda/Brooke/Megan/Christa sleepover)

One day, Amanda and Brooke and Megan and Christa were driving in a blue car really fast along the Auto Strada near Rome, Italy. Their driver was a nice Italian man named Antonio who let them play really loud Italian rock music from the radio. The girls didn’t understand the words, but Amanda in particular was having fun shaking her hair and bouncing in the car, giggling with her best buddies. . . .

“
Oh my gosh, I remember that night like it was yesterday. My dad used to make up these stories all the time. In this one, we went to the Coliseum and there was this thief—‘the bad man’—who had stolen Caesar’s chalice and we helped the
polizia
capture him. And there was a dog. And they made us princesses of Italy forever.”

“
What’s this?” Jake asked, pointing to the bottom of the page.

(Amanda said, Good story, Dad. The others chimed in with, Yeah, Mr. Garrett, great story. I asked them what was the moral of the story. Amanda said, Even though the dog looked mean, if you were nice to it, it could help you. Brooke said, Always carry dog biscuits. Beautiful night with the girls. Remember to tell Brooke’s dad what a funny girl he has.)

“
Wow,” Jake muttered.

Amanda wiped a tear from her face. “He was always such a great storyteller. I never knew he went back and wrote all of this down. Brooke was great, too. Her dad was Army and divorced just like mine. We got along great, though her mom lived in Georgia and Brooke wasn’t here much.”

She flipped through the ream of stories
:
“German Castle,” “Bear Tracks,” “Underwater Cave,” “Beach Crabbing,” and so on. Each story, she noticed, began with the line “One Day, Amanda . . .” and would follow with whatever friends she seemed to be associating with at the time.

“
It’s like he knew his time with you was slipping away. He wanted to capture the good memories.” Again he waved his hand over the reams of paper. “As great as that story is, and what it means about your
real
relationship with your father, take a look at this.”

Amanda haltingly took the manila folder from Jake’s hand. The title on the folder read: Insurance Fraud: How it Works.

She gave Jake a quizzical stare; he simply nodded at her to continue. She opened the folder and saw both writing and calculations. She read what she presumed her father had written.

“
Melanie Garrett maintains three forms of health insurance on Amanda. First, is her own insurance through Beacham Advertising Company; that pays 80 percent of any doctor visit by Amanda. Then, of course, is her current husband’s insurance policy with Humana; that also pays 80 percent of all of Amanda’s doctor visits. Lastly, there is the military TRICARE system; that will pay 80 percent also. The insured must inform the insurance companies of the existence of other insurance. Melanie has craftily been bilking all of these companies, and Major Garrett, for many years, using Amanda as an automatic teller machine, of sorts. Whenever Melanie wants more money, she takes Amanda to the doctor and then bills all of the different insurances to include telling Major Garrett he owes her the remainder of the 20 percent not covered by the policy. For example, if there were a $100 doctor bill, Melanie sends separate bills (see enclosures) to each of the three insurance companies, who each send her an $80 check. Then, she forwards to Major Garrett one of the doctor bills telling him he owes her $20. So her gross on a legitimate $100 health insurance claim is $260. We have catalogued over 126 separate doctor visits that have been exploited in this manner for a total of $17,394 in illegally obtained reimbursements. —Insurance Fraud Division.”

Amanda dropped the piece of paper on the bed and stared at Jake. “We need to go through all of this.”

“
You think you can?”

“
Let’s get it over with.”

He handed her the folder labeled Life Insurance. “Brace yourself.”

She opened the folder and saw on top the words: “$250,000 payout to Amanda Garrett will be paid instead to Melanie Garrett, based upon the legal findings of this court. Further, the court finds that sufficient time had passed during Major Garrett’s alleged death such that it was a reasonable conclusion that he was dead, and that the money shall remain paid and be considered irrevocable.”

“
This was from when we thought Dad was killed in the Philippines.”

There were other important sounding words, but it was clear to her. Her mother had lied to her. The life insurance payout from his supposed death nearly two years ago
had
been paid to her, yet her mother somehow got it changed into her own name. No wonder they could afford the house, the trips, and the cars.

Amanda’s phone began to ring and her mother’s picture popped up on the display, as if she were in the room watching.

Jake stared at the stack of papers and then said exactly what was on his mind.

“
You’re nothing but your mother’s money bitch.”

Then he made the mistake of walking downstairs.

CHAPTER 28

SANFORD, NORTH CAROLINA

Hanging up from the phone call with her mother, she ran down the steps into the foyer to find the front door open and two men in black windbreakers with NCBI stenciled on them. One man stuffed his weapon into a holster inside his jacket and walked over to her. He was about six and a half feet tall, muscular, and wore his hair in a tight blond crew cut.

“
Miss Amanda Garrett? Are you okay?”

Amanda looked at the man and then noticed that the other man was handcuffing Jake, who was face-first against the foyer wall.

“
What are you doing!” Amanda screamed, and moved toward Jake.

The tall blond man stepped in front of her, holding up a hand to keep her back. “Don’t touch me! Who are you? What are you doing here?” Her words were crashing together. “Jake are you okay?”

“
Ma’am, I have to ask you to not communicate with the suspect.” By now the tall man’s partner was escorting Jake out of the house.

“
What the hell is going on?” Amanda ran past the tall man to the front porch, chasing after Jake. The man escorting Jake was a powerfully built African American with a shaved head. “Jake, what’s happening?”

The black man stared at her with fierce eyes and then gave an annoying look at his partner.

“
Ask your mom,” Jake called over his shoulder.

“
I just talked to her. She said Nina’s in the hospital, and we need to get back right away.” She was jogging now to keep up with them as the man led Jake out of the house.

“
Well, she just reported that I kidnapped you.”

Amanda stopped, almost tumbling into the perfectly mown centipede grass lawn.

“
What!”

The black man stopped and turned as they reached the van. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to back away while we coordinate with our headquarters and prepare the suspect for transport.”

“
This is bullshit, NCBI man.” Her argument was useless. The man had already turned away from her and was ushering Jake into the side door of a cargo van. The blond agent sped past her and planted himself in between her and the vehicle.

“
Ma’am, our mission is to ensure your safety. You’re a minor and you have been reported as being kidnapped.”

“
Well, it’s a lie. I came here because my father was just killed in Afghanistan, and he wanted me to see some things. His name is Colonel Zachary Garrett, maybe you’ve heard of him.” She was being a smart-ass, she knew, but her shock had given way to anger. Then she noticed something. There was a flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes. The other agent stopped and turned around also.

“
Say again, ma’am. You said your father is Colonel Garrett . . . and he’s dead?”

The concern and sincerity in the man’s voice caught Amanda off guard. Her mind flashed back to a few days ago when the two soldiers had come to her mother’s house to inform her about her father’s death. The major had openly wept. She was getting a sense of her father’s gravitas outside of her mother’s orbit.

“
Yes. I was notified about a week ago. He wanted me to come here to his house.
Our
house. It’s in his will. Jake drove me.”

The two officers exchanged a pained glance.

***

Jake’s cuffs had
been removed, and the four of them had gone back into the house. They sat in the family room on the sofa and two leather chairs.

“
What is NCBI?” asked Amanda.

“
North Carolina Bureau of Investigation. Sort of like the FBI, but for the state,” Agent Rogers said. He was the tall, blond one. The other had introduced himself as Agent Landers.

“
How do you know my father?”

Landers spoke up first. “I was in Special Operations with him a while back, but everyone around Fort Bragg knows your dad . . . excuse me, knew him, anyway.”

“
When is his funeral, if I may ask?” This from Rogers.

“
They haven’t told me yet.”

Landers paused a second, seemed uncomfortable, and then began speaking. “Why would your mother report you as kidnapped, if you weren’t?”

Amanda hesitated, looked at Jake a moment, then back at Landers. “I don’t exactly know. Maybe she really thought I was.”

The two agents gave her a discerning look. She could tell that they knew she was hedging, protecting her mother from a counterclaim by the government of filing a false charge. It was second nature to her to defend her mother. Hell, it was her responsibility.

“
We understand.”

They sat in the room for a few minutes before Amanda bolted upright and said, “I almost forgot. We’ve got to get back now. Nina’s in the hospital, and Mom says she might not make it.”

The two agents looked at each other, and then Rogers said, “We have to file a report, but we will write it up as a misunderstanding. Everything should be okay. But we can’t leave you in the house. We’ll need the key you used to get in, and we can’t let you travel back with Jake. Or it’ll be our ass.”

“
I hope you understand,” Landers said. “We will put you on a plane to Spartanburg, Miss Garrett, and Jake can drive back in his truck.”