She blew out a dramatic sigh. “Fine. I live at The Haven for two reasons. One, I wanted to be closer to work. I’m a workaholic. And a control freak. I wanted to be sure everything was done and that I could be on-site whenever needed. I don’t think it was a bad idea for a while, but that phase is over. If I don’t lose my job, I’ll make changes.”
He didn’t make eye contact but waited for her to continue.
“You already know the second reason. There was no way I could build a house here, right across from you, when we weren’t speaking to each other.”
She’d been brave enough to say it. He’d be brave enough to ask the next question. “And now?”
“Now? This has been the most intense week of my entire life, and it’s only Thursday. I have a home. It’s lovely and comfortable. So while I’ll be moving off the property sooner rather than later, it’s not a priority. My current future planning is limited to tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Finding the bylaws and figuring out what Grandmother was talking about.”
He gave himself an internal pat on the back. “Do you want to wait until tomorrow?”
“No, but...” She looked at the laptop. “Do you have them?”
“I do. I can print them now.” A few keystrokes and a notification on his screen told him that the printer was at work. “I’ll keep going through the files I downloaded. You can search the bylaws. And we’ll enjoy the peace and quiet until Eliza arrives.”
She only made it through half a page before she requested highlighters and Post-it flags so she could mark problematic areas. Every now and then, she’d mutter something about “control freaks” and “morons,” and once she looked to the sky and said, “Lord, you are testing me.” An hour later, Bronwyn was only halfway through the pages he’d printed for her.
For his part, Mo had brought out a second laptop and had moved away from the firepit to a shady area where he could see his screen.
And what he was seeing was not making him happy. He’d had a few programs running in the background since he first accessed the files. These programs were designed to look for anomalies indicating money laundering, embezzlement, or other forms of criminal financial conduct.
He hadn’t been surprised that while a few red flags popped up immediately, they’d been nothing more than smoke screens. The best financial criminals knew how to hide the actions that could send them to prison behind sketchy behavior that was more likely to earn them nothing more than a slap on the wrist or maybe a note in their file, along with a reminder about professional ethics.
Catching those red flags left most accountants satisfied that the accounts were otherwise clean. Not that he was slamming accountants. It wasn’t their job to dig deeper. They had their hands full and weren’t equipped or expected to find the devious machinationsa skilled and motivated individual could put in place to hide their thievery.
Mo had been careful not to do anything that could get Bronwyn in trouble. The programs running now were running in the background on The Haven’s system.
But they were sending him reports, and those reports were problematic on many levels.
It would take him another day or two to hunt it all down, but if what he was seeing was correct, someone in the Pierce family had been blackmailing a politician and had used The Haven to launder the payments. Mo could track three payments a year going back at least four years. And another annual payment that went back a decade.
And there was one alarming payment from thirteen years ago that could be unrelated to anything else. Or it could be a sign of a very deep rot.
Based on the track record, the second payment due this year should have been made sometime in the last two weeks, but Mo couldn’t find any record of it.
Had the politician decided they were done? Had the person behind the blackmail made a different financial arrangement?
Mo had suspicions, but before he could approach anyone with them, he had to resolve one glaring issue.
Everything in the records indicated that the Pierce family member behind the most recent blackmail scheme was Bronwyn.
Bronwyn stared at the stack of paper in front of her. She’d tabbed it, highlighted it, and considered burning it in the firepit to cleanse her brain from the gobbledygook she’d poured through.
“I want to find the lawyer who put this together and ask if theyread any of this.” Bronwyn expected Mo to laugh, chuckle, grunt ... something ... anything.
But she got no response. He was laser focused on the screens in front of him, and he did not look happy.
She stood, raised her hands above her head, touched her toes, repeated the process three times, and still, no reaction.
Maybe she’d been reading the situation wrong, but she’d rather gotten used to having Mo’s undivided attention. Even when he was working, he was aware of her. She liked it.
But right now, he was in a land far, far away. And he wasn’t having a good time.
She had good news to share. And she wanted to share it with him first. Should she interrupt him? Go inside and wait to see when he noticed she was gone?
