“Will do.”
With the sound of another car outside, he and Darcy hurried into their father’s office. The room smelled of old leather and whiskey. So like his father. “What are we searching for?” Brandon asked.
“Anything that mentions Stonefish, and I need to go over the finances to work out if we have anything we can spend.” He glanced at Brandon. “How good are you at figures?”
“I manage.”
“Then you look through the filing cabinet for taxes, balance sheets and bank statements and I’ll go through the emails and invoices.” He paused. “Keep an eye out for anything to do with Taylor as well. Or anything that could be a potential motive.”
Vague.
“Did you get hold of the lawyer about being executor?” Darcy continued.
“Yeah, I put in an application to the court yesterday. I don’t know how long it will take.” It had been easy.
“So there’s not a lot we can do until then. They’ll freeze Mum and Dad’s accounts.”
“We might be able to do something with the business accounts.” Brandon opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out the bank statements. Shit. “Not much to freeze.” He handed the latest statement to Darcy. Less than a thousand dollars.
“This is their joint account. There’s got to be a station account as well.”
Brandon dug through the files and finally found what he was looking for. His stomach clenched. It couldn’t be right. He hadn’t been involved in the financial aspect of the Ridge when he was younger, but his father had explained about the overdraft from the bank. “There’s next to nothing in here.”
Darcy swore. “Is that the most recent statement? We’ve spent the bare minimum this year.”
“Yeah.” Brandon dragged out the file and sat at the desk, flicking through each statement. “Here. There’s a loan for over a hundred grand at the beginning of the year.”
“Who to?”
Brandon read out the name.
Darcy stiffened. “Say that again.”
“Livestock and Gear.”
Darcy shook his head. “Surely Dad would have told me if he’d gone ahead.” He pulled the keyboard towards him and typed in the details.
“Darce, you want to clue me in?” While he waited for an answer, he flicked through the receipts file and found one with the company name on it. The contents made him frown. “Looks like a purchase receipt for cattle.”
Darcy swore and took the document from him. “Droughtmaster cattle. I’ve been telling Dad for years we need to switch back to cattle, but every time I brought it up he refused. This mob sent us information late last year and we had the discussion again, but he told me no.”
Brandon wanted to be sick. “You know why he didn’t want to go there.”
Darcy nodded. “But so much of our flock was being taken by dingoes or wild dogs. We had to make the change.”
“So where are the cattle?” Delivery date was last week.
“Not here as far as I know. I’ll radio Matt.”
While Darcy contacted Matt, Brandon typed in the internet address on the top of the invoice. The site no longer existed. Odd. He went to the door and called for his youngest brother.
Ed wore board shorts and had a beach towel around his neck. “What’s up? We’re just heading out.”
“What do you know about finding obsolete web addresses?”
“You mean finding who owned them? It’s easy enough.”
“Can you look up the details of Livestock and Gear?”
