Instead, I grabbed Kennedy’s lead and headed outside. As we reached the door, a familiar tiny pink car pulled up in my driveway, and Sonia stepped out.
She took off her sunglasses and looked up at me. “Have you got a minute?”
“I was just off to call on Nigella.” I looked down at her from my doorstep. “Is everything okay?”
Her normally immaculate hair was a bit skew-whiff. She scrunched her face up and fiddled with the strap of her designer (knock-off) handbag. “Um, not really.”
I felt a frown form on my face. It must be bad for sunny Sonia to be feeling it. “Can you get over grass in those? Let’s walk and talk,” I said and took her elbow, giving a brief glimpse at her shoes. As usual, they were heels, five inches high and precarious. Sonia basically wore heels to bed, so she was not about to let a dirt track tell her that her life choices weren’t compatible.
She scurried along beside me and gamely climbed the stile. “So, what’s up?” I said and held her handbag while she righted her skirt.
“It’s …” She paused. “It’s hard to explain, Arden, but I thought you’d know more than I would. You know, cos you’re all wise.”
Am I?
“It’s, well, it’s Trev and Dhaps. I think they’re stealing from the company.”
Chapter 15
“Say what now?” was my reaction.
She grabbed my arm and, exhaling a huffy sigh, dragged me along the path. “God, it’s already boiling, this heatwave is a killer. But, yeah, you ’eard. I think they’re ripping off the company. Embossing—”
“Embezzling.”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Wait, why? What evidence do you have?” I leaned into her. “What’s brought all this on?”
She chewed her lip as we walked, Kennedy dancing in the fields around us. “Start from the beginning,” I said, trying to placate her.
She took a second to collect her thoughts and then launched into her story. “You know how Dad retired last year? He’s handed over the company to Trevor and me, fifty-fifty. Dhapinder was already a senior manager, and her being married to Trevor, what’s his is hers and all that.”
“Right,” I said. “Have they been freezing you out?” Sonia had always been anxious about her place in the firm. She outranked several much older and established estate agents there, who thought little of her abilities, and from what I could tell, Trevor and Dhapinder didn’t exactly have her back during these spats.
She nodded. “Always have done, nothing new. I know the areas of the business to focus on, and what I want to achieve. They have plans and the vision, so I let them get on with it mostly. But I’m not a dummy, I know the books as well as Dhapinder does, even though she doesn’t know I do. Mum used to do the books in the early days, and I learned from her. I know all the ins and outs and what everything means. I’m really good at it.”
“Good for you, Son,” I said genuinely.
She blushed. “I’ve been doing classes online. No one knows except Mum.” She frowned again. “Since the whole … Arabella thing, Trevor has been acting well weird. Like, I know he was …”
“We don’t need to say it.”
“Screwing her,” she said with a grimace. “Ugh, the bastard. Anyway, since then, he and Dhapinder have barely said two words to me, always off with their heads together in the corner. At first, I thought it was because they were having problems. But then I did some digging. Not on purpose, you know, by accident. I needed some numbers and went to the books. Well, I know what I’m looking for now.”
“What did you find?” I asked. We were about halfway down the hill now; I glanced over at Simon’s street and held in a wistful sigh.
“Do you know how VAT works?”
“Er … let’s assume that I don’t,” I said.
“Okay, well, VAT payments are separate from main transactions and are kept on their own ledger. It’s quite easy to lose track of. If you hear about a business in trouble with the taxman, well, they likely cocked up their VAT payments.”
“Right.”
“It’s also the easiest to fiddle.”
“Oh.”
