For Love of Money (22 page)

She didn’t want Yessica wrapped up in the domestic violence that probably followed Marcy’s benevolent interference in Lee’s business. “Did—”

“She never had a chance—a life.” Tears thickened Yessica’s voice. “He killed my sister.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the woman’s sobs.

Holly’s fingers twisted the phone cord. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

There was a long sniffle, then silence. “Some days everything gets to me.”

“I know. Something will remind me of Marcy and it’ll hit me all over again.”

A muffled sniff came from the speaker.

They talked for a few more minutes, reminiscing, until Yessica sounded calm again. “One last question,” Holly said. “Do you know if Marcy made a will?”

“I doubt it. Who thinks about death when you’re so young?”

In Holly’s circles, wills weren’t about death. They were about power. Passing wealth to the next generation. A subtle form of immortality. “It won’t bring Marcy back, but this might make things, well, different for your family.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Marcy wrote a will when she got married, it was probably reciprocal. She and Lee most likely left everything to each other. But if she didn’t or if she made out a new will when she came back here…”

Understanding strengthened Yessica’s voice. “Then part of what that
cabrón
owns goes to my family.”

“Right. But like I said, I don’t have any idea where any of this stands—the will, a separation agreement, anything.”

“Maricella’s attorney will know.” Determination added power to Yessica’s words.

Yessica had a new mission now—hit Lee Alders where it hurt most.

In his wallet.

Chapter Thirty-five

Holly reached out to knock on Rick’s cubicle frame, remembered her injured hands, and instead stuck her head around the corner.

Rick and Sammy looked up from the file they were discussing.

“I hate to interrupt, but can I see you in the conference room when you get a second?” she asked.

“We’re at a good stopping point.” Rick set the file aside. “What’s up?”

There was a limit on how much she wanted to say about Tim, even within the walls of Desert Accounting. “We need to perform some long overdue due diligence.”

“I know you used to work for a transaction group,” Sammy said. “What does ‘due diligence’ mean?”

She considered how to answer in guy terms. “Before you bought a used car, you’d want to know it ran, right?”

Sammy gave her a look that said,
Well, duh
.

“So you’d check for Bondo, rust. Get a Carfax report to see if it’d been wrecked or trashed by a flood. Maybe have a mechanic run tests.”

“Got the picture.”

“Buying a used company is the same thing. Is the asset labeled ‘building’ an office tower in Pasadena or a burnt-out shell in Watts? Are there liabilities hidden somewhere that are going to come back and bite you?”

“And you want to look at one of our clients?” Rick’s surprise showed in his voice.

She nodded.

“Anything I can do?” Sammy asked.

“Thanks, but not right now.”

Sammy headed to his cubicle and Rick followed her down the hall. As soon as they entered the conference room, he said, “You’re better with the staff than you realize.”

A faint blush warmed her face. “Thanks.”

She closed the conference room door while Rick picked up the financial statement she’d prepared for her meeting with Tim and Alex. “Stevens Ventures. What’s bothering you?”

“I’d like to get your take on the financials first.”

She sat down and pointed at the chair beside her. They opened the report for the holding company—the parent company that owned all the operating subsidiaries—and for a moment examined the figures. On paper, Stevens Ventures appeared to be in good financial shape.

Rick pulled more folders from the stack. Opening them sequentially, he studied the report for the first operating company, then moved to a second and third entity. “The individual company increases aren’t that big, but in the aggregate, the increase—sales, profits—is impressive.”

“Business looks like it’s improving. That may be an illusion.”

“The numbers are right there. Numbers don’t lie.”

But people do. “Does the increase over last year make sense in this economy?”

He returned to the reports, studied them. Finally he said, “You’re worried the entire report is bogus.”

“Basically. I’m trying to keep an open mind, not jump to conclusions, until I see the underlying documentation.” Tim hadn’t hired them to perform an audit. Looking at the detail might include stepping into some murky, gray areas—something she wouldn’t involve anyone else in.

Rick folded his arms and looked at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. “The source documents on those construction projects will be with the project managers, or filed over at Tim’s office.”

“We usually don’t see them.”

“If we’re just doing a compilation, bookkeeping gets the downloads, filters the information to the right company, plasters ‘unaudited’ all over it, and prints the financial statement.”

“Just so happens, I printed the registers.” She retrieved a stack of papers from the credenza.

They spread the printouts across the conference table. The schedules revealed an interlocking grid of payments. Dollars moved from company to company. Companies she’d never heard of. Companies that paid each other, borrowed cash, passed money back and forth to everyone but the banks.

She frowned at the numbers, willing them to change to something reasonable.

They stayed in nice, neat black-and-white columns, telling the same story they had earlier. Her experience was mergers and acquisitions, not forensic accounting. If she’d found this kind of mess during due diligence, she’d file a three-word report:
Walk away
.
Fast
.

“Last year, we audited the company developing Southridge,” Rick said. “It was clean. But these others…” He shook his head. “We don’t have enough information to say, one way or another.”

“All we have right now is screaming instinct. It could be sloppy bookkeeping and correcting mispostings for all we know. But those new companies…” Holly tapped her fingers on the table. “That stack of Stevens Ventures material I gave Sammy earlier this week, we need to look at it.”

Rick reached for the phone. “Should be in the file room.”

Moments later, the file clerk delivered the large envelopes. “Can’t get enough of this, huh?”

“Detail is my middle name,” she said with a smile.

She waited until the clerk left, then said, “There’s one company we can analyze. The laundromat.”

She sorted through the envelopes and found several bank statements. An amazing amount of cash flowed into the account. Several large checks had sucked out most of it. “There’s no way the laundry generated that much cash.”

Rick picked up the statement and whistled. “What in the hell is Stevens doing?”

She rose and paced across the conference room. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer and even less sure she wanted to learn Marcy’s role in the mess. “Do the math. Even if every machine in the place ran around the clock, it couldn’t produce that cash flow.”

“I know you like the people over at Stevens. But we both know what this looks like.” Rick dropped the bank statement.

“There’s one other thing we can check before we call it a day.”

Rick raised a questioning eyebrow.

“There’s a property tax notice.”

“For which property?”

“It’s TNM Ventures or Properties or something like that. I hate to ask, but would you see if you can find it?”

“Sure.” Rick reached for the pile of documents. “Have you thought about how it impacts Desert Accounting if Stevens is doing something wrong?”

“
If
Tim’s doing something wrong? This
reeks
of fraud.”

A sharp intake of breath turned their heads. Nicole stood framed in the doorway, clutching the doorknob. A kaleidoscope of emotions fluttered across her face: surprise, hurt, anger.

Oh, crap
. How much had she heard? Embarrassment warmed Holly’s face. “Nicole. I wasn’t expecting you.”

Nicole’s fingers whitened around the door handle. “Obviously.”

“Listen…” Holly didn’t know what to say. She wanted to hear Tim’s explanations first.

“I get the picture. You can’t have Tim, so you’re out to ruin him. I’ve had it with your lies.” Nicole whirled and stormed down the hall.

“Dammit.” Holly’s sore knees made running impossible, but she hurried into the lobby.

Tracey was alone. She peered over her reading glasses. “What was that all about?”

“Nicole took something the wrong way.” It was pointless to go after her and talk. She’d need to calm down first. Holly’s shoulders slumped. “The timing on this is awful. I feel bad enough for Nicole right now. Maybe losing the baby and all.”

Not to mention that Tim was planning to leave her
.

“She’s pregnant?” Tracey glanced at the door Nicole had stormed through.

“Apparently.”

Confusion wrinkled Tracey’s face. “I saw her at the pharmacy a couple of weeks ago buying Plan B.”
The morning-after pill
.

Holly returned her puzzled look. “Tim told me Nicole’s been trying to get pregnant. That she’s miscarried a bunch of times.”

He’d flat-out lied.

Or Nicole had lied to him...

Tracey raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “Plan B’s only used for one thing.”

To prevent a pregnancy.

The two women exchange glances. “What a mess,” Holly muttered.

She returned to the conference room and found Rick sorting documents. “Did you get her straightened out?” he asked.

“She was already gone. I’ll find her after I have a talk with Tim.”

A long,
long
talk.

“Going back to your question, you’re right.” She gestured toward the documents. “This could be bad news for Desert Accounting. I won’t sign off on anything, even a compilation, without figuring out what’s behind all this.”

“I’ll bring the tax notice to your office,” Rick said.

“Thanks.” She glanced at her watch. “I need to make a few phone calls. It looks like Tim and Alex aren’t going to show up for our meeting.”

She moved to her office. She wasn’t surprised Alex ditched the meeting after their confrontation in the parking lot, but Tim’s failure to arrive concerned her. He might’ve seen her in his office that morning, talking with Lillian, and guessed what they were discussing.

Holly dropped the financial statement on her desk. Should she tell JC about Stevens Ventures’s financial problems—or lack of them? Things didn’t look good, but she didn’t have anything concrete.

Rick hurried through her office doorway, a property tax notice in his hand. “This is a lot of land.”

Tim had mentioned water rights. Nobody bought blocks of land on the eastside without access to water. “Let’s see where it’s located.”

Turning to her computer, Holly opened a property tax website and typed in the plot’s coordinates. Within seconds a map of Walla Walla County appeared, the relevant parcel shaded a soft gray.

Shit
.

Icy fingers trailed down her spine.

The land sat on the Snake River.

Upstream from Big Flats.

Where they’d found Marcy’s body.

Chapter Thirty-six

Friday evening

With a groan, Holly looked at the living room walls, the paint cans, and finally, the ladder-scaffold thing. A pair of boards rested between upside-down V-shaped metal supports. It looked like a giant caterpillar had swallowed an oversized tongue depressor. The guy at Home Depot insisted it was the greatest for overhead painting—
You don’t have to constantly move it like a regular ladder
, he’d said
.
She could walk down the narrow platform as she painted around the windows and next to the ceiling.

Home Depot guy had carried the package to her car and, with an inviting smile, offered to set it up. Figuring she had enough complications in her life, Holly had thanked him and driven home alone.

Her neighbor had helped wrestle the package into the house, but she’d set it up herself, following directions that could’ve been written in Sanskrit. She gave the contraption another doubtful inspection and hoped it wouldn’t collapse when she climbed onto it.

Why had she taken on this project?

Because it had to be done and she couldn’t afford to hire someone else to do it.

Moving right along
.

She dropped an angled paintbrush onto the platform.

You can do it. It’s just the edges
.

If she did the detail tonight, she could use the roller to paint the walls tomorrow, and be done with the living room. The carpet guy would come on Monday and then she could think about furniture for the room.

With a loud “Ouch, dammit,” she wrestled the paint bucket onto the platform and then climbed the scaffold. Upbeat 80s-era music pulsed from her iPod.

Consider it exercise.
Bend and dip. Reach and paint
.

Ignore the bruises. Ignore the stiffness.

She’d plastered Band-Aids on her less-damaged right hand. After a little experimentation, she found a way to hold the brush that didn’t pinch her scraped palm.

She concentrated on painting and ignored the buzzing questions about Tim and Stevens Ventures. She still couldn’t believe Tim and Alex had blown off their meeting that morning. Alex letting personal crap interfere with business didn’t really surprise her, but was Tim suffering from a guilty conscience?

Part of her wanted to call JC, but she could envision the way the conversation would go.

Holly: There are these companies, lots of them.

JC: And?

Holly: They’re incorporated in Wyoming.

JC: And?

Holly: Okay, so you can incorporate anywhere, but there’s something that’s not right. The companies don’t do anything except move money around.

She could hear JC’s derisive snort, his snide comments about civilians and investigations.
Stay out of my investigation unless you have something tangible to add.

All she had was suspicions and theories.

If she was going to talk to JC, she’d better have something real to tell him. Unless and until she had conclusive proof Tim was doing something illegal or illicit, or even that he was having an affair, she wasn’t going to say a word about any of it to Detective JC Dimitrak.

She’d painted a wide strip next to the ceiling and had almost finished the wall around the windows when the doorbell sputtered.
Thank God
. Gwen and Laurie. Reinforcements to help her move the blasted contraption.

She hesitated at the edge of the scaffold. She knew she ought to go peek through the side window and personally open the door, but it was her friends, right on schedule. “Come in.”

The bell
britzed
again.

She rested the brush against the scaffold crossbeam.
Dammit, don’t make me climb down
. “It’s open.”

The front door flew open. JC’s leather-clad shoulders did an excellent job of filling the doorframe. Faded jeans clung to muscular thighs and lean hips. He stepped into her foyer. The overhead light danced across the subtle highlights in his hair and accentuated the planes of his face.

Yummy.

Her mouth went dry while other parts had a different reaction.

He propped his hands on his hips. The movement revealed a pistol-free waistline.

She unstuck her tongue long enough to lick her lips. She ought to smack herself upside the head to get her brain functioning, but given the paintbrush, that could get messy. “I take it this isn’t an official visit.”

He clenched his teeth so tightly she was afraid she might have to call for the jaws of life to reopen them—which would be a real waste of that infinitely kissable mouth.

“Let me get this straight.”

Uh-oh
. It was his cop voice. Completely cool and detached.

“Not only did you not lock your door, but without knowing who it was, you yelled ‘Come on in’?”

Oh, yeah.
This
was why she shouldn’t start dating him again.

Right
, snickered her inner teenager.

“And your point is?”

He pushed the door closed, then twisted the deadbolt. “It’s a simple process called Locking The Door. I know you aren’t stupid. What is it that you don’t get about this whole situation?”

Holly gaped at the furious man. “Which ‘situation’ are you referring to? The investigation? The unfortunate incident in the parking lot?”

Their quasi-reunion?

“You know damn well what I’m talking about,” he ground out.

Good thing the pistol had been optional tonight, given how pissed off he was.

Her hand tightened around the paintbrush. For a long second, she considered winging the brush at him, but then she’d have to climb down to retrieve the damn thing, which meant she’d have to get close enough to touch him. That could get even messier, and she had more than enough paint on her already.

He dragged a hand down his face. “Goddamn it, you couldn’t keep your pretty little nose out of my investigation and now some nutcase is gunning for you. So I’ll make it real simple. Lock your doors. Check to see who it is before you unlock one, much less open it.”

Typical. One weak moment on her part—she
knew
she’d regret leaning on him in that parking lot—and he thought he could order her around. She shook the paintbrush at him, although she really, really wanted to throw it. “Who do you think you are? What makes you think for even one
tiny
little minute you can tell me what to do?”

“You know exactly who I am.” He advanced on her like a purposeful panther, all barely restrained power and gliding athleticism. “I’m the cop who can’t keep his mind on his work because he’s worried about what some pain in the ass CPA is going to do next.”

“And this is
my
fault?” She glared at him. “No one asked you to worry.”

“That’s one of the things I worry most about.”

She straightened, stunned. His face was saying a lot more than that. It said he was totally into her. Every female part of her jumped up and down in response, going “Ooh, ooh!”

“This isn’t a game of Clue,” he growled. “Stay out of my investigation.”

“Need I remind you, you’re the one who dragged me into it?
You’re
the one who found my language skills so convenient.”

“Damn it, Holly. That’s not the point. Did you blank out the part where someone tried to run over you last night?”

“That was an accident.”

“An
accident
?” His hands swept through an exasperated motion. “What is it going to take to get through to you?”

“There’s nothing to
get through
.” She stabbed the air with her paintbrush for emphasis, which JC completely ignored.

“Someone tried to
kill
you. And what do you do? Do you take any precautions?” He threw out his hands. “Hell, no. Not only do you leave the damned door unlocked, you yell at the fucking thing for any maniac in the world to just ‘come on in.’”

“Yeah, and look at what maniac walked in.”

His eyes narrowed. “Lose the paintbrush and get down here.” He jabbed a finger at the floor. “Now.”

“No.” Her pulse pounded in her temples and her fingernails dug into her already sore palms. “I have stuff I need to do and it doesn’t involve you.”

“Like hell. You’re gonna tell me exactly what you’re up to.”

“I’m not
up to
anything. I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt me. I’m not convinced someone is.”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about.” He looked as though he was ready to pull her off the platform and shake her. “And if you halfway figure something out, would you tell me? Of course not.”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” She glared at him through the charged atmosphere. “And for the record, I am
not
messing in your investigation.”

“Well, you’re sure as hell making
someone
nervous.”

“Sounds to me like that person is you. What’s the matter? Frustrated I won’t let you make up the rules anymore?”

“You’ve thrown that line in my face one time too many.” His chest rose and fell on sharp inhalations. His muscles bunched under his jacket, reminding her how powerful he was. “You may not like it, but I have rules for a reason, and it’s usually a good one.”

“Really.” She slammed her hands onto her hips and winced at the protest from her sore palm. “How frickin’ convenient. You have rules until they get in the way of something
you
want.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Figure it out. You’re the hotshot detective.”

He stalked across the floor, wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her off the scaffold.

“Get your hands off me.” She wiggled free, and shook the paintbrush at him.

He threw up his hands and headed wordlessly for the door.

“That’s right. Walk out. You’re good at that.” The words were out before she could swallow them.

He spun. “Wait. You blame our breakup on
me
?” He gave her an incredulous stare. “That’s rich. Since you’ve conveniently forgotten, let me remind you.
You
dumped
me
.
You
left.”

She threw the paintbrush on the floor. Paint splattered, ignored. “
Me?
You have the nerve to stand there and blame our breakup on
me
?”

“I asked you to
marry
me. I wanted to build a life, a family, but all you could see was the big city and the bright lights.”

“And like a fool, I said yes to marriage, but
after college
. I asked you to come with me to Seattle, but, no, you always had to be the one in charge. It always had to be
your
way. And in case
you’ve
forgotten, I may have left, but I came home.”

She stopped, afraid angry tears might overwhelm her. She’d come home that night to talk to him, to surprise him. Well, she’d surprised him all right. She’d walked into his apartment and found him on the sofa with Meredith.

If he’d hoped to make her jealous, it hadn’t worked.

If he’d wanted to break her heart, it was an Oscar-winning performance.

“It didn’t mean anything.” He’d clearly followed her thoughts down memory lane.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t you realize that makes it even worse?” She opened them to stinging pain. “You
cheated
on me. How was I supposed to trust you? And in case you’ve forgotten, you
married
her. I hope it meant
something
.”

“I screwed up! Is that what you want to hear?” With two quick steps, he towered over her. Anger radiated around him. “And yeah, when you dumped me, I got shit-faced drunk and turned to someone else. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and I’ve paid for it in more ways than you’ll ever know. But aren’t you forgetting something?”

“I remember every detail of that night.”
Every heartbreaking, gut-wrenching second
.

“No, you don’t. You remember what you wanted to see—me with someone else. That way you can lay all the blame on me.”

“You’re saying it was
my
fault? It was
my
fault you ran around behind my back?”

“I was with her because— You. Walked.
Out
.” His voice rose with each word until he was shouting.

“Did you come after me? Did you even try to call?” she yelled back. “Hell, no. I came home because like an
idiot
I thought we still had a chance to make things work. I’d been gone two goddamn days, and I found you screwing another woman!”

“You told me we were
over
. You threw the fucking ring at my head. I was angry. Hell, I was furious.”

“I asked for time to think and you said no.”

“Think about
what
? We were crazy in love.”

“That was never the question. At least
I
thought it wasn’t a question.”

“No,” he overrode her. “The question was, I asked you to marry me and you didn’t love me enough to say yes.”

“That’s not true. I’ve always loved you.”

Oh, shit.
Had she said that out loud?

The expression on his face—shock, satisfaction, and—
oh God
, was that a smidge of hope?—said far too much.

Her throat tightened with a strangling squeeze. She swallowed past the painful lump. “The issue wasn’t love. It was you and your damn rules.”

Just like that, the spark in his eyes vanished.

She plowed ahead. She’d waited six long years to say this, and by God she was going to get it all out. “You wanted to decide everything. Where we lived. Where we worked.
If
I worked. Everything! You never listened to my dreams. Never cared what I wanted.”

They glared at each other, bristling like a pair of junkyard dogs.

Slowly his expression changed from furious to grim, a look of raw pain in his eyes.

She didn’t know what to say. In spite of everything he’d put her through—the tears, the hurt, the loneliness, all of it—she still loved him.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, Holly. Sorry it ended like that. But you hurt me, too. I don’t think you’ve ever admitted you weren’t blameless. You broke my heart. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I was too angry at the time to see that. And then it was too late.”