So About the Money (37 page)

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 area, 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 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 Tim apparently owned. 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.”

She remembered the new Southridge hires Lillian had mentioned. “Have we started on this year’s audit?”
 

Rick shook his head. “I don’t think Tim’s signed the engagement letter yet.”

She wondered if Tim would sign—or if she’d accept the engagement with everything she’d found so far. “All we have right now is screaming instinct. It could be sloppy bookkeeping and correcting miss-postings for all we know. But those new companies…” She ran her fingers through her hair, tested the bandage at her temple. “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. “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 most of it back out. “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 more 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 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’ 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 for the land he’d purchased. 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 bordered 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 while 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 finished the detail work 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 tried to ignore 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 their personal conflict interfere with business didn’t really surprise her, but was Tim suffering from a guilty conscience?
 

She reached up and glided the brush across the wall. Would Alex’s restaurant show the same level of inflated cash flow as the laundromat?
 

Did she really want to know?
 

And then there were Tim’s phantom companies. What was that all about?
 

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?