“I know.” Josh sighed. “That’s the damn point. Someone used our name. Or worse. Are these even legitimate invoices?”
Jenn set her mug down too hard, starling everyone. “Did we do something illegal?”
“Not yet,” Gabe said.
Brian sighed. “The aggressive emails from Sugar Moon’s legal team aren’t helping.”
Josh grunted. “And those fuckers at Evergreen are sniffing around again.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Gabe groaned. “They can smell blood in the water.”
Over the years, Evergreen, a big ag company in the area, had made several offers for our land. They seemed to be buying up all the mature maple stands in the region. Why, I had no idea. But our trees were not for sale.
And these corporate fuckers did not like hearing the word no.
“So it’s fraud?” Jess asked.
Gabe shook his head. “We don’t know. Could be simple errors.”
“Simple errors happening again and again? No,” Josh snapped. “We do not make paperwork errors.”
I believed him. My brother was meticulous. A person doesn’t make as much money on Wall Street as he did without superhuman-level attention to detail.
He buried his head in his hands. “Are we being set up?”
I pulled up a chair next to Brian and passed Vincent to Jess. Then I leaned in, studying the documents.
They looked like our standard records, the familiar columns consisting of dates, gallons, IDs, and time stamps. Except the tiny handwritten initials. The unfamiliar “J. Lawrence.”
It made my stomach clench.
Josh dropped his hands and straightened, looking older and more tired than I’d ever seen him. “I should have triple-checked everything. And I shouldn’t have trusted the seasonal help.”
“That isn’t realistic. This isn’t on you,” Jenn insisted. “You’ve been killing yourself keeping this place running. We know what you do for us.”
Josh dipped his chin.
He’d taken all of this on. Continuing the family legacy, caring for our childhood home, integrating Ed and Suzie’s farm. And he’d made it profitable. He’d made sure each of us was a shareholder, that we all received a portion of the income, and he worked seven days a week to ensure things never got off track.
“Our name is on every barrel. My signature on every paycheck. This is my fuckup.” He admitted.
Outside, a tractor rumbled past, only punctuating the stunned silence in the room.
Vincent fussed in Jess’s arms, so I hopped up and dug out a bag of milk so I could make a bottle for him.
Gabe tapped the papers in front of him. “We don’t have all the information yet.” He took a deep breath. “But keep your mouths shut. No statements, on or off the record. No gossip. We’ll gather our intel, cooperate with authorities, and ignore all the noise.”
“Easy for you to say, Mr. Mayor,” Jenn hissed. “You’re not the one making latte art while the people in line whisper about your murderous family.”
Bottle ready, I frowned at my oldest sister. “Who is saying that?”
She shook her head.
“The town is turning on itself,” Gabe grumbled. “I thought things were improving. The Founder’s Festival brought in a decent number of people, and it seemed like a success.”
Josh huffed. “Until the CEO of the state’s largest maple syrup plant was arrested in the middle of it.”
“Now it’s open season. Bitsy Bramble is probably texting her Maple Street Mafia counterparts about this. That woman can smell scandal like syrup boiling over.”
