Rumor Mill, page 12
“Good morning,” Gary said. “How are things going with you?”
“Could be better,” I answered honestly. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“Always,” Gary replied.
A moment later, my own finance staff person arrived. I made the introductions, and we sat down to business. “Nick Pierce, the previous owner, absconded with nearly five hundred thousand dollars that was meant as payment for staff members who were laid off,” I explained.
My finance person opened her eyes wide but kept her mouth shut. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t common knowledge.
“I’m wondering if we have the funds to make the payments again,” I began, “and what the legal ramifications would be?”
“Do you have your reports?” Gary asked.
I handed over a bound copy of our last audit as well as the sales packet I had been given when I purchased the company. My employee pulled out her tablet and scrolled to the latest financial reports, pulling them up on screen. She handed them over without a word.
Gary took a few moments to study the data. “I’m not sure if you have the funds. This company is a bit of a lemon.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “I’ve done a lot of work to get it back on the right trajectory.”
“I can see,” Gary said. “But these financials that you were given were clearly inflated.”
“What?” I asked, taken by surprise. I knew that Nick Pierce was a crook, but I didn’t know he was a con man as well.
“See here?” Gary leaned forward to show me a line item in the quarterly report. “He’s claiming more than a million in tangible assets, not real estate.”
I sat stunned, upset that I hadn’t realized it myself. “The artwork?” I suggested.
“Artwork has its own line item,” Gary explained. “No, this is something else. Maybe office furniture.”
“A million dollars in office furniture?” my employee asked skeptically.
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “So what can I do about it?”
“If you make these payments, you may not have enough cash to continue operating,” Gary laid it out in stark black and white.
I cursed under my breath. This wasn’t the answer I had been hoping for. It was important to right the previous wrongs, and not to make others pay for my mistake. I could easily afford the payments out of my own bank account, but apparently Retro’s coffers weren’t nearly so full.
“What are you going to do?” Gary asked, handing me back the stack of paperwork I had just given him.
I narrowed my eyes, seeing into the distant future. “I’m going to go after Nick Pierce,” I said. It was the only thing that made sense. He was the one who had stolen the money; he should be the one to pay for it. If I had to open Retro up to financial ruin, I was damned sure going to take him down with the ship. For the first time in a long time, I felt a burning in my soul that had nothing to do with Theodora Prince.
Chapter 18
Theodora
I WENT TO WORK FEELING numb inside. It was as if the experience with Nikki on top of the decidedly unromantic coupling with Brad was a firebomb that had exploded within me. What was left was only dust and ash.
I knew I had to focus on the job while I was on the clock. I forced myself to smile and be present for Annie and her customers. It wasn’t that hard once I got going. I could even make small talk about the weather and the traffic.
We sold a few paintings and a few pieces of ceramics that day. I helped clean up the green room so that Annie could hang a new display. That activity consisted of a lot of standing around while Annie decided which paintings would look good next to whichever others she wanted to showcase.
I stood in the center of the room so that I could give her a customer’s eye view while she wandered back and forth, trying to maximize the appeal. It was a little bit boring, but I was being paid, so I didn’t mind. The more I worked with her, the more I appreciated her technique. She was much more thoughtful than I was in her aesthetic.
When I was being creative, it was a free-flowing eruption of color and light onto the page. When she painted or designed spaces in the gallery, she took her time. It was nearly five before Annie was happy with the new layout. I went back to stand behind the cash register for fifteen more minutes.
I was trying to decide what to do after work. I could call Brad, but after the previous night’s disagreement, I wasn’t sure I was up for another heated debate. I could go home, but then I would be alone all night with no one to talk to. Corey was my best option, so I texted him to see if I could pop by.
Sure was his reply.
When it was time to clock out, I grabbed my coat and my purse and drove back to my brother’s house for dinner. The girls were happy to see me, and their joyful attention took my mind off my own problems for a while.
“Look at what I made,” Chloe shouted, taking me by the hand.
She dragged me upstairs to her bedroom where a Lego dune buggy was sitting in the middle of the room. I got down on my hands and knees to examine it, picking it up and spinning the wheels. The thing didn’t feel fragile at all, and some of the pieces were so small, I was amazed that she had put it all together.
“This is awesome,” I said honestly.
“Thanks.” Chloe beamed. “Mommy and Daddy bought it for me because I did so well on my math test.”
“Very cool,” I approved.
We went back downstairs for dinner, where I accused Corey of trying to bribe his daughter into getting better grades. He reached for plates in a cabinet and pulled a small stack of them down before answering.
“Whatever works,” he said, handing the plates over.
I took them in both hands, distributing them around the table. It was nice to be involved in the family chore line. At Corey’s house, I felt safe and well loved. It would be wonderful if Brad and I could have something similar eventually, but we would have to endure the current storm.
Corey noticed the change in my expression and gave me a sympathetic look. I couldn’t talk openly with the girls around, but after they went to bed was a different story. Sunny offered me a glass of wine, and we took our drinks out onto the back porch.
There was a chill in the air, but that was offset by the beauty of the moon. True to their calling, my brother and his wife had a wonderful setup on the porch. There was a circular table with an umbrella in the center and four Adirondack chairs pointed toward the forest. We all sat down in the oversized wooden chairs and leaned back.
“I’m worried about you,” Corey said.
“Don’t be.” I tried to alleviate his anxiety. “I’ll be okay.”
“How’s the lawsuit coming?” Sunny asked, ripping the Band-Aid off and getting straight to the primary wound.
I sighed. I didn’t know if I’d come to them to distract myself, or if I actually wanted to talk about it. They were just trying to be kind and allow me the space to unburden my feelings. I couldn’t very well clam up and pretend that my life was going the way I wanted it to.
“I think I’ve decided to settle with Nikki out of court,” I said hesitantly. After all my bravado with Brad the other night, it seemed safer to couch my epiphany in softer terms. By saying ‘I think’ instead of ‘I will’, I allowed myself a little room to breathe.
“Are you sure that’s the best course of action?” Corey asked.
“I think so,” I replied. “I’m not convinced that I’m innocent, and what happened really was unfair.”
“Okay,” Corey mused, swirling the wine in his glass. “As long as you’re not doing this just because you can’t deal.”
“No,” I said forcefully. “That’s not it at all. It’s the right thing to do.”
“What does Brad think about that?” Sunny asked.
On the one hand, it didn’t matter what Brad thought. Nikki was suing me separately, and I had every right to choose my own course of action. On the other hand, Brad was a party to a related lawsuit, and the outcome of my trial would affect him. Sunny knew that the two of us were emotionally linked, so it was a legitimate question.
“He doesn’t want me to settle,” I said unhappily. “We had a fight over it last night.”
“What happened?” Sunny asked.
I remembered the hot and heavy action on the kitchen table and winced. “Things didn’t go well.”
“Are you just settling to smooth things over with your boyfriend?” Corey questioned suspiciously.
“No,” I argued. “It’s not smoothing anything over. Brad wants me to fight the lawsuit, and if I still feel guilty, he said I could give the money to charity.”
Sunny looked at Corey, and I couldn’t tell exactly what was being communicated. The two of them had their own private language, sewn together by love and more than a decade in each other’s company. I wondered if I would ever have someone I could relate to on that deep a level. It seemed unlikely.
“What?” I prompted them.
“We’re talking about a million dollars here, right?” Corey checked.
“That’s right,” I agreed.
“You don’t have that money to give to charity,” Sunny objected.
“I know,” I said. “But that’s not the point. The point is that he doesn’t want me to admit guilt.”
“And by agreeing to pay Nikki, you would be admitting guilt?” Corey asked.
“I guess so,” I answered. “I just feel like I am guilty, and it would be wrong of me to say otherwise.”
“How are you going to manage that kind of settlement?” Sunny asked.
I shook my head, taking a sip of the wine. “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll have a payment plan, or they can garnish my wages or something.”
Corey gave me his big puppy dog eyes, making me fall in love with him all over again. “I feel for you, sis.”
“Thanks,” I said, reaching for his hand.
Chapter 19
Brad
I HAD NO INDICATION that I was going to see Teddy that night. Since the morning’s brief text, I hadn’t spoken with her. I didn’t know where we’d left things, but it wasn’t in a good place. I needed space from her as much as she likely needed space from me. It was getting too hot to handle, and though that made me sad, there was nothing I could do about it.
Channeling my anger toward Pierce was another story. There was plenty to work with in that corner. I kept my finance person in the office long enough to determine that if I did want to pay back the severance checks, we could technically afford it. The problem was that it would open Retro up to the possibility of fiscal insolvency. It wouldn’t do any good to make back payments if that meant I would have to let everyone else go and close down the business. It was a lose-lose situation no matter how I looked at it.
When the meeting was over, I decided to do some digging. If I was going to go after Pierce for the money, I needed to have all my ducks in a row. I called my lawyer to investigate what might be involved in filing a claim. Afterward, I spent a good amount of time trolling Pierce’s social media accounts for something I could use against him.
He wouldn’t take my phone calls. That wasn’t a new development. I hadn’t spoken to him since the sale. But Alyssa, his daughter, was a different story. She had approached me in Paris when I was there on an acquisition trip with Teddy. That was the first time Teddy and I had made love, and I remembered it like it was only yesterday.
Alyssa had been anxious to rekindle the spark between us. I’d turned her down, but not before she revealed that she was aware of her father’s shady dealings. In a previous round of information gathering, I had been able to ascertain that some of the money had gone to Alyssa. She had used it to fund her travel on several luxury cruise lines and finally at her home in Paris.
It seemed like she and her father had split the money down the middle. Pierce had invested his cut, attempting to make it grow. If I could tie the new investments to the ill-gotten gains, maybe I could force his hand.
In the course of my investigation, I made several phone calls to known associates of the man. One golfing buddy was someone I knew as well. We were on friendly terms, and I suspected that our mutual acquaintance wasn’t entirely aware of Pierce’s rotten habits.
“Mark!” I said, encouraged that he had picked up the phone instead of letting my call go to voicemail.
“Brad Miller?” he responded, as if it would have been more likely to receive a call from Santa Claus himself.
“Yeah, how are you doing? Thanks for taking my call,” I replied, working my way up to the matter at hand.
“Of course,” he assured me. “I’m doing fine. About to take my wife on a trip to Athens for our second honeymoon.”
“Sounds great,” I responded. “I’ve never been. You’ll have to tell me whether you like it.”
“No problem. What’s up?” he asked, knowing that this wasn’t a social call.
“I was wondering if you had any insights on Nick Pierce you could share?” I asked.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“I bought his company, Retro,” I explained, “and I’m having some financial problems.” Without getting into the details, I hinted that Nick might be to blame.
“Ah,” Mark said, contemplating my request. “Well, he’s retired.”
“Have you seen him recently?” I continued.
“A couple weeks ago,” Mark confirmed. “He was in good spirits.”
“I bet,” I muttered.
“Look, I know I shouldn’t tell you this,” Mark began, giving me hope. “But there were some rumors a while back that he was involved in a bank fraud of some kind.”
“Really?” My ears perked up. This was exactly the kind of intel I was looking for.
“I don’t know the specifics,” Mark said, “but I can tell you who to talk to.”
I took down the name and number of Mark’s business colleague, feeling vindicated. Pierce might be good at fooling people, but I had a reputation as an honest man, and he didn’t. Uncovering prior shady deals might not help me with my claim, but it would establish a pattern of behavior that might be relevant in court.
I hung up with Mark and immediately called his friend. That man was less forthcoming, sensing the real reason for my inquiry.
“I don’t want to get involved in any legal action,” he said cautiously.
“I’ll keep your name out of it,” I promised.
“There’s not much I want to say,” he stonewalled me.
“Anything you can share would be helpful,” I responded.
“Pierce was a silent partner on a business called Drisify,” the man disclosed. “That’s all I’m willing to say.”
I thanked him for his time and hung up. Going straight to the Internet, I looked up Drisify and found a boatload of scandalous material. Their business plan was obtuse. As an expert in the field, even I couldn’t tell exactly what they did. It had something to do with financial products, though whether they were involved with mortgages, stocks or cryptocurrencies, I couldn’t tell.
The owner of Drisify had gone to jail for a few months, and the whole operation had been shut down abruptly about five years ago. Whatever it was, it was clearly illegal. That was more than enough proof for me, although I was aware that it probably wouldn’t hold up in court.
The more I learned about Nick Pierce, the less I liked him. I couldn’t believe that I’d spent so much time with his daughter. She was beautiful, yes, but mean. I didn’t realize it at the time because she turned on the charm, but with the clarity of hindsight, I could see the signs.
She and I had started a physical relationship almost immediately after we met. It was scorching hot and practically indecent. I’d fallen for her hard because that’s the kind of man I am. Once I sleep with a woman, my emotions get the better of me. That’s one of the reasons it was so difficult to navigate the rough waters Teddy and I were experiencing.
Before I knew it, the entire day had passed, and I hadn’t gotten any real work done. Clara poked her head in to let me know she was leaving. I thanked her for her work and settled down to get started on my full plate of tasks. I still had to answer a dozen emails, read a few reports, and weigh in on six or seven minor details. The job of a billionaire was never done.
At half past seven, my desk phone rang. Without Clara to answer it, I was tempted to let it go to voicemail. I didn’t recognize the number, and it was likely to be a customer or a business partner with a concern. For some reason, I picked up. Maybe it was my detective work earlier in the day that prompted my curiosity. Maybe it was fate whispering in my ear.
“Brad Miller,” I answered, falling back on my habitual response.
“Brad?” a familiar voice responded.
“Nick.” I sat back in my chair, ridiculously satisfied to hear the subject of my inquiry making himself known. “You’re a hard man to track down.”
“Not for lack of trying, I understand,” he quipped.
“You’ve been up to no good,” I accused him.
“I don’t know what you found, or what you think you found, but I want you to stop it.” There was something vaguely threatening about the simple request.
“Or you’ll what?” I demanded.
“Didn’t you get enough of a payout when you bought the company?” Nick demanded.
“As I recall, it was you who got the payout,” I countered.
“We worked in a generous valuation,” he argued.
“For you,” I insisted. “I paid what I thought was a fair market price. As it turns out, you not only inflated the value of the company, but you also stole from us.”
“That’s a serious accusation,” Nick responded.
“I have proof,” I said, though in reality all I had was circumstantial evidence at best. “You made a hefty deposit into your personal account at the same time that I cut the check for the severance pay.”
