For Love of Money (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

The clatter of a dozen conversations filled the restaurant where Holly was meeting a friend for lunch. The newest restaurant in town, Fat Olive was doing a brisk business. She bypassed the hostess and slid into a seat facing a rangy blond man. “I’m buying, since you’re about to give me free legal advice,” she declared without preamble.

Walt laughed. “Consider it payback for the client you sent me last month.”

They’d gone out twice before deciding they made better friends and business colleagues than a couple. After ordering—calzones and a Coke—Walt asked, “What am I giving you free advice about?”

“Divorce.”

He raised an eyebrow, questioning, since
she
clearly didn’t need the advice. A moment later he said, “Ah, your parents.”

Her parents. Marcy and Lee. Take your pick.

He sipped his pop, then continued, “It’s called dissolution of marriage in Washington. I’m surprised your parents don’t already have temporary orders in place.”

“Temporary orders?”

“For starters, either of them could’ve filed a motion to keep the other from cleaning out their investment account or changing beneficiaries on insurance policies or retirement plans.”

“I’m not sure Mother knows to do that.”

Walt shrugged. “If she has halfway competent legal counsel, they would’ve taken care of it. Who’s representing her?”

“I don’t know.” She pulled out her phone and made a note to find out.

Had Marcy put anything in place? Was that what had angered Lee? She really needed to talk to Yessica.

Their food arrived and they ate while continuing the conversation.

“As far as living expenses go,” Walt said, “both your parents are capable of working.”

“I don’t know what my father’s situation is. Job-wise. Could he really ask for alimony?”

“It’s called maintenance here.” He tapped his finger on the table, thinking. “He can ask. If your mother disagrees, it’ll be up to the court.”

“Wait a minute.” Holly laid down her fork. “You mean I could be over here, busting my butt, and end up having to support him while he’s playing Downward-Facing-Dog?”

He fought a smile and lost. “Never heard it described in quite those terms.”

“Yoga. Instructor.”

The smile changed to a grimace. “Ah.”

Her mother had ducked the issue for too long. As much effort as Holly was putting into growing Desert Accounting, she wanted to know where her parents’ marriage—and company—were headed. “What about their assets? Will Mother have to give him half?”

“Washington’s a community property state. At least in theory, everything either spouse earns while they’re married belongs to both of them.”

“What about the new business I’ve brought in?”

He rocked his hand in a
maybe
motion. “Ultimately, the division’s up to the courts. Your mother could claim it’s separate property. But both of them worked there and it sounds like the company grew while they were married. She might have a hard time making that stick.”

“But he cheated on her and walked out. That doesn’t seem fair.”

“‘Fair’ doesn’t matter. The court doesn’t have to divide things fifty-fifty. The judge tries to be equitable.”

Holly wanted the information about her parents, but Marcy and Lee faced the same challenge. Devon said Lee had sold his company for twenty million. Could a guy like Lee really fork over ten million? “It doesn’t matter who actually did the work?”

He shook his head. “It’s all community property.”

“What if one of them wasn’t working while they were married?”

“If one spouse stays home and takes care of that side of the couple’s life instead of holding an outside job, the courts take that into consideration.”

Holly made another note to contact Yessica. If Marcy had a good attorney, most likely Lee would’ve had to pay her alimony or maintenance and a substantial settlement. Both would’ve been next to impossible for a wife-beating, control-freak to agree to.

With Marcy dead, he wouldn’t have to give up anything.

“How are
you
doing?” Walt asked. “Doesn’t matter how old we are, parents splitting up is hard.”

She was tempted to unload her worries, but innate caution held her back. Instead, she escaped the personal questioning with a woman’s all-time favorite excuse. “Excuse me a minute. I need to use the restroom.”

The restrooms were located down a short hall behind the reception area. As she angled across the seating area, a woman called, “Holly.”

She scanned the restaurant, then zeroed in on a well-dressed blonde. Nicole sat with several of her friends—polished women who looked as though their only job was the care and feeding of their husbands’ careers. She’d been vaguely surprised to find the type on the east side of the Cascades, but then again, it did tend to be conservative territory over here. Except the way Nicole blew through money—and given the way they were dressed, apparently her friends did too—could hardly be called conservative.

Holly approached the table. One of the women looked familiar, but she couldn’t place the other two. Tim’s wife wore wool slacks and a cashmere turtleneck, but under-eye shadows marred her usually flawless complexion.

Should she offer congratulations? Tim said they hadn’t told anyone yet about the pregnancy. If Nicole had previously confided in her, Holly would’ve mentioned it, but she didn’t feel close enough to the woman to bring it up.

Nicole didn’t bother to introduce the other women. Instead, she asked, “Are you seeing Walt Chambers? I thought you and Alex were exclusive.”

“Walt and I are discussing business.” Not that it was any of Nicole’s business.

“Ah, your parents’ divorce. How are you handling that?”

This conversation—even if Nicole were a friend, which she wasn’t—wasn’t one Holly would ever have at a restaurant in front of strangers. “It won’t affect business.”

“Wow. You need to stop obsessing about work.” Nicole smiled at her friends. A smile that added,
Can you believe this?

“When it’s something you enjoy, it hardly seems like an obsession.”

“Is that why you give your clients such…personal…attention?” Nicole again glanced at the other women. “Aren’t your husbands her clients?”

She turned back to Holly. “Do they get the same kind of ‘handling’ you give Tim?”

Bitch
.

Even Nicole’s friends looked startled. The brunette Holly sort of recognized gave her an appraising look.

Damn if she’d let Nicole run off business she’d worked so hard to bring in.

“My clients respect my business ability.” Holly walked away with her head held high, but the restroom mirror confirmed a deep blush colored her cheeks.

When she returned to the table, Walt asked, “What was that about?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Nicole seems to like rubbing my nose in the fact that I’m not married or part of the pampered crowd.”

Walt gave Nicole an assessing inspection. “She’ll be singing a different tune when she gets served.”

“Served? You mean divorce, er, dissolution papers?” Holly’s mouth dropped open. She turned and stared at Nicole before remembering she should be discreet. “Tim’s divorcing her? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

“Tim isn’t my client.” Walt shrugged. “Another attorney delivered the papers to the service at the same time I dropped some off. I don’t know if he’s served them yet.”

“If he has, Nicole has balls of steel. So does Tim, for that matter.” She glanced at the women’s table and found Nicole watching intently, as if trying to figure out what they were discussing. “They were doing their lovebird routine at Marcy’s wake.”

Walt shrugged. “Appearance and reality. Did you know your parents were having problems?”

She raised her hand, palm up. “I live in Seattle. Other than holidays, we talked on the phone.”

Walt shot another glance at Nicole. “She’s either taking it incredibly well or else she hasn’t been served.”

Holly picked at her calzone. “What if Tim changed his mind? Decided not to divorce her?”

“It happens. Counseling, whatever. People work things out. Sometimes it’s more convenient to stay together.”

She peeked at Nicole, rather disconcerted to find Nicole was still watching them.

What if Tim had decided to stay with Nicole because of the pregnancy?

But if he did, where had that left Marcy and
her
baby?

Chapter Twenty-nine

Tracey handed Holly a stack of pink message slips when she returned from lunch. “You had a visitor.”

Still wondering about Tim and Nicole, Holly flipped through the slips of paper. “And?”

“He was…intense.”

She shifted her attention to Tracey. “Client?”

“No. He wouldn’t leave his name, just said he’d be in touch.”

“He didn’t say what it was about? What did he look like?”

Tracey shuddered. “I’d say tall, dark, and handsome, but there was something about him that made me nervous.”

Holly lowered her hand, her fingers tightening around the message slips. She ran the Rolodex in her head. What scary guy did she know that Tracey didn’t? Creepy Security Guy? Frank? Lee Alders? “If he shows up again, call the police.”

Tracey blinked. “The police?”

Closing her eyes, Holly shook her head. “Okay, that sounded nuts. Or paranoid. Use your judgment. You read people well.”

Still clutching the messages, she wandered down the hall to her office. A messy stack of papers sat in the center of her desk. The attached message, written on Stevens Ventures letterhead, read, “I found these papers when I cleaned out Marcy’s desk. I didn’t know what to do with them.”

Holly gave the pile a disgruntled glare. What exactly was Tim paying this woman to do? Make her life miserable?

After tucking her purse—a vintage Gucci—into her desk, Holly went through the pile of papers, sorting them into company piles. Several documents concerned the four new LLCs, and others connected to yet another new company.

Why all the new companies?

She placed the operating company information aside for Sammy. Staring at the unknown entities, she tapped her nails against her desktop. She had some time before the meeting with Bruce Fairchild—assuming her mother showed up. Yesterday’s vague, “I got a phone call,” didn’t begin to explain why her mother had ducked the Zhang meeting.

Holly crossed the atrium to Stevens Ventures. An attractive brunette, the woman she’d last seen cozying up to Phoua and the Shrimp, sat at the reception desk filing her nails. A new, triangular brass nameplate sat on the desk. It said, “Kaylin.”

“May I help you?” Kaylin asked.

Holly introduced herself. “I have a few questions, if you have a minute.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.” The woman dropped the nail file in the drawer. “I found another stack of financial stuff. Do you want to take it with you, or should I drop it off?”

Was she serious? “Usually the documents are more organized,” Holly hinted.

Kaylin held up crossed index fingers, as though warding off a fate worse than death. “Tim hired me for property management. He mentioned some bookkeeping, but I made sure he only meant records related to the actual property.” She waved a manicured hand. “Rents, regime fees, the usual. I don’t mind helping out. I mean, see? I’ll sit up here when Brea goes to lunch, but I don’t do bookkeeping.”

“I’m confused.” Holly propped a hand on her hip and wrinkled her brow. “Tim told me he’d hired someone to fill Marcy’s position.”

“Marcy? Was she the woman who died?” Kaylin quirked her mouth to the side. “Poor thing. Men sure used her.”

“Used? You mean, took advantage?” Men? Or did Kaylin mean Tim specifically? “I don’t understand.”

Kaylin leaned forward. Her voice dropped to a confidential level. “Tim dumped some project management responsibility on her for the retrofit in Yakima. I hate to say bad things about someone who died, but it’s clear she didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Really?” That was strange. Holly was surprised Tim let Marcy get in over her head.

Kaylin straightened, taking on an aggrieved expression. “Half the permitting and inspection requests got rejected because the paperwork was wrong.”

Surely, Tim wouldn’t knowingly jeopardize his buildings. Why would he let Marcy take on the remodeling project if she couldn’t handle it?

“I had to redo the PERT charts, figure out what should’ve been done, and rework what
was
done.”

Kaylin rattled off a litany of woes. Holly made sympathetic noises while her mind churned. Why was Tim burying Marcy in work? Could something be happening with the Yakima project a more experienced property manager would recognize? Or was he hoping to keep her so busy she wouldn’t have time to notice the financial discrepancies? And what about the new companies?

Marcy might not have picked up on weirdness with the Yakima project, but she definitely would’ve noticed the new companies.

And asked about them.

“Even if I was remotely interested in bookkeeping,” Kaylin continued, “I wouldn’t have time to touch it. God, I hope it isn’t as screwed up as
my
paperwork is.”

“It isn’t messed up. There’s just a lot to go through before I meet with Alex and Tim tomorrow.”

Think positive
. Maybe Tim wanted to help Marcy move into a new field.

Or maybe it was simply cover for all the trips she made to Yakima. With a sinking heart, Holly wondered if Marcy actually went to Yakima, or if the trips were just an excuse to spend time with Tim?

“If you’ll pack up the papers you found, I’ll take them with me,” Holly said. “We can get the QuickBooks download and pull the trial balance, but I need a starting point for the new entities.”

“I know the financial stuff is important, but you might as well be speaking Chinese. I don’t have a clue what that means.”

Holly got a sudden idea. “How about I pull the records in Marcy’s, I mean,
your
office? I can get the information on the new companies and see what needs to be filed before the end of the year.”
There. Brilliant
.

Kaylin shrugged. “Sure. Let me set the phone to auto.” She mashed a few buttons on the console and rose to her feet.

Holly followed the woman through the familiar hallway. Developers started new entities all the time. Typically there was a separate corporation for each development project. Separate legal entities shielded the rest of the business if anything went wrong. Problems at one development didn’t create a liability for the others. Maybe Tim started the new companies, planning ahead to when pent-up demand for housing and office space returned with a better economy.

With a lighter heart, Holly entered Marcy’s former office with Kaylin trailing behind. There wasn’t anything ominous about the messed-up paperwork or the volume of unfiled and disorganized documents. Marcy had simply been buried in learning a new job and got behind with the bookkeeping part.

Twenty minutes later, Holly closed the last file cabinet. “Nothing.” Damn.

The metal drawers contained only the normal information related to the existing operating companies. “Tim started five new companies. Where’s the paperwork?” she asked Kaylin. “Not the current statements you sent over. The permanent files. Incorporation. Property. That stuff.”

She glanced over at Lillian’s file cabinets but didn’t bother opening the payroll records. Drumming her fingers, Holly studied the desk Marcy had used. “Those papers you found, they were in the desk?”

“The envelopes were crammed in the top drawer. I guess she didn’t have time to file them.”

“Maybe Marcy planned to take the records to the satellite office. She used that office a lot.” Holly leaned against the file cabinet, thinking through the missing paperwork. Bits and pieces of misfiled paperwork she could understand, but the entire files? For all the new companies? The part of her that used to dig into financial statements for the M&A team smelled something that stank as bad as a dead skunk in the middle of Columbia Parkway.

Holly stepped away from the cabinets, heading for the door. “It sorta makes sense that the files are at the other office.”

If Tim—and by proxy, Marcy—was hiding something, the small, unstaffed Yakima office offered a good starting point to discover what it was. “I have to go by there anyway. If you’ll give me Marcy’s keys, I can pick up everything while I’m there.”

Kaylin hesitated. “Tim didn’t say anything about that.”

Holly shrugged and kept walking, the other woman at her heels. “You can drive over there yourself if you want. You’ll have to go by the post office and then pull everything I need from the files.”

Reaching the lobby, she half-turned and hoped the woman would take the bait.

Kaylin dropped into her chair behind the reception desk, her expression a combination of curiosity, caution, and dismay. “Where is the other office? What kind of stuff would you need?”

Holly placed a hand on the front door and spoke over her shoulder. “Yakima. I need incorporation documents, everything that was filed with the Secretary of State. Then there’s property records, loans, any operational activity. I’m not sure how file Marcy filed them, but worst case, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.” She frowned. “Maybe a little longer.”

“I don’t know what that stuff looks like.” Kaylin opened the center drawer and removed a ring of keys. “I found these in Marcy’s desk. Are they what you’re talking about?”

Holly took the keys and shuffled though them. She recognized three of the distinctive flat post office box keys. One box here, one in Yakima. Where was the third box? “These are the ones. Thanks. I’ll drop them off later.”

Tim opened the door to the building’s atrium as Holly left his office.

“Were you looking for me?” he asked.

Not really.

She didn’t want to talk to him, much less accuse him of anything, until she knew more about the new companies. It could be innocent, if somewhat messy. She glanced over her shoulder at his office. Kaylin would tell him she’d asked about the new companies. “Who is Alan Bowen?”

“Alan Bowen?” Tim looked blank. “No idea.”

He moved past her. “I don’t want to be rude, but Nicole and I have a meeting with the bankers about Southridge Park. I need to prep for it.”

Holly’s “due diligence” radar pinged with his answer. Tim should’ve recognized the man’s name. “Bowen’s listed as the managing director on TNM Ventures.”

Tim pivoted toward her. A flush started at his chest and climbed his neck. “What are you doing looking at TNM? I told you that isn’t an operating company.”

Holly blinked, surprised by his anger. “Whoa, slow down. I’m confused. From the bank statement, it looked like there was substantial activity.”

“Well, there isn’t. I set up TNM for future activity. I’m considering a development in Spokane.”

Hadn’t he said it was to buy land for Nicole on the Snake River? Having trouble keeping his stories straight?

“Spokane? Then why is the company registered in Wyoming?”

Tim sighed, looking impatient. “The business climate in Wyoming is more favorable. The restrictions and regulations in Washington are out of control. The liability insurance alone is eating me alive.”

A knot of worry loosened in her stomach. She was reading something into the situation that didn’t exist. “I noticed the premium increase.”

His explanation didn’t line up with the facts, the tiny voice in her head nagged. Insurance followed business operations, not the incorporation location. “Tim, that doesn’t make sense.”

A look close to panic slid across Tim’s face, then vanished. “Maybe we should talk about this.”

“No hurry.” Holly moved toward Desert Accounting’s door, already regretting asking the questions. “I’m sure it’s just a mix up. And I can’t talk right now. I have a meeting. In fact, I was just leaving.”

“You can’t.” Tim grabbed her arm. “We need to talk. Now. Not tomorrow.”

He swung her around. Clutching her arms, he pulled her close. His face hovered inches away from hers. “You’re getting the wrong idea.”

She turned her head and strained backward in the too intimate grip. “Tim—”

He tightened his hold, grasping both her arms, nearly shaking her. “I can explain.”

“Am I interrupting?” Nicole stood in the outer doorway, a stunned expression on her perfect features.

Tim released Holly’s arms as if they were radioactive.

Nicole’s eyes flicked from Tim to Holly and back. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Tim and Holly answered simultaneously.

She spun away from Tim and headed for the safety of her own office. “Don’t be late for our meeting,” she called over her shoulder.

…

Holly’s fingers drummed a pattern on Bruce Fairchild’s conference table. Catching herself, she stilled the nervous gesture and offered the gray-haired man a smile while her gaze slid to the clock on the credenza. 2:34. “I’m sure Mrs. Price will be here any minute.”

Making excuses made everyone look bad—Holly, her mother, Desert Accounting. She had to pin down her mother—
Donna
—about why she’d been so uncharacteristically distracted this week. Groping for a topic—any topic—Holly tried to remember if the morning news offered more than the continued hunt for Marcy’s ex. Where was the guy? Outer Mongolia? The longer Lee Alders stayed hidden, the guiltier he looked.

She glanced around the conference room. Dark leather chairs surrounded the highly polished mahogany table. Slatted shades behind heavy drapes filtered the afternoon sun. Her attention landed on a pair of mounted pheasants. “Do you hunt?”

Bruce followed her gaze. With a smile, he relaxed, slowly rocking his chair. “I got that pair of roosters on the same day. I was out at Schoolhouse. You know where that is?”

“Off Highway 12, near the McNeary Refuge?”

“That’s right.” He looked a little surprised and a little pleased. He launched into one of those step-by-step reenactments that men gloried in. She pasted an interested expression on her face and silently cursed her mother. Where was she this time?

Selling Desert Accounting’s services was different than her other job. It had taken her a while to figure out how to approach people. With the Seattle-based M&A team, clients came to them, drawn by the firm’s aggressive reputation. In a smaller town like Richland, business depended on relationships. Once she had the right project, and the right opportunity to get inside the company and up-sell, her mother was supposed to pave the way. Every time she bailed, Holly was left scrambling to cover.