28. Margeaux
28
MARGEAUX
All is right with the world.
Okay, that’s a lie.
But my soul is at least a little more at ease now knowing that Gus and I are okay. That we’ve survived our first bump in the road. And this is a hell of a bump.
“So, Margeaux, how was your day?” Anton asks, shit-eating grin in place.
Gus glowers at his younger brother over my head, the hand that is settled on my lower back as I sit on a bar stool tightening. I lean into it, trying to settle him, but it’s no use. Milo slides a drink across the bar, shaking his head, muttering something I don’t quite catch, but know it’s directed at Anton.
“My brothers are jackasses,” Gus says, shifting his stance next to my stool.
“Just wait ’til you meet mine,” I tell him, leaning in. “You’re kidding yourself if you think David and Louis are going to make it easy on you. And Papa Duck? Pssssh…”
“After this lot?” He nods in the direction of his brothers. “I think I can take them. ”
I shrug, confident he can, but not willing to let him have it. Just like I can handle Anton.
“Oh, you know, pretty normal. Meetings, contract reviews, administrative leave. You?”
“Err…we’ve had really good early results on a new peach crossbreed,” he offers, clearly caught off guard by my answer. “December is kinda our downtime.”
I nod, accepting his answer. I know very little about the agriculture side of the business. It’s not exactly an area that has a whole lot in the way of trademark and intellectual property, unless you can somehow trademark a fruit. I’ll have to look into that. Oh wait, nope. I probably won’t be working for Hayes long enough to see if that’s another loophole we can try. Well, damn.
Gus presses a kiss to the top of my head, as if he senses my thoughts, my heart squeezing, warmth spreading through me. There is no way around it, this still sucks. But being here with him, knowing that he is by my side and that we are in this together, makes it bearable. We’re a team.
“I’m sorry this is happening,” he says, quiet enough that only I can hear him. “I should have handled things better.”
“How?” I spin on the stool, facing him. Placing my hands on his hips, I wrap my legs around his, pulling him into me. “We knew the risk. We were in this together. Are in this together.”
“I just should have.” He shrugs. I can see the weight of everything bearing down on him, like Atlas shouldering the globe. Grumpy Gus. Such a misnomer. Solemn, earnest, sometimes humorless, sure, but not grumpy. He’s too busy worrying about everyone and everything else to be grumpy. “I know how hard you’ve worked. Everything you’ve put into your career and what it means to you. It was part of what drew me to you that day at JFK.”
“Because you took one look at me from across that crowded bar and went, ‘ah yes, now there’s the MBA wielding, law-degree toting, Cajun food cooking, Southern belle I’ve been waitin’ for’?”
“I said part,” he defends, and I laugh. “That empty chair next to you was the real clincher.”
Rolling my eyes, I pull him in for a kiss. I let my lips linger on his, enjoying the taste of him, the butterflies in my chest going wild.
“Well, the next time we decide to knowingly break Hayes policy, make sure your crystal ball isn’t in the shop?” I quip, trying to make light of it.
I unwrap myself from him, turning back to the bar and taking a sip of my drink. For a second, I wish that I’d brought the tacos with me that Gus had with him when he stopped by earlier, my tummy grumbling despite all the ice cream I consumed. Maybe I can convince Gus we need to stop for more on the way home. So what if it’s all kinds of out of the way.
“Ha. Well, maybe it’s time to invest in a new one. Could have used a heads-up on both this and the Sapphire Sands hemorrhage.”
“Sapphire Sands?”
That name sounds familiar. Really familiar. Where the hell have I heard that name?
“Yeah, that’s the vendor contract we connected the weird payments to. That’s why I was talking to Teresa, since she wrote up the vendor establishment contract. When we asked her about it, she lost her shit and made the accusation. Were you not told this?”
I shake my head. The details of the when and where of the complaint weren’t something I was concerned with as I was being told I was under review. However, now I’m starting to think that maybe I should have asked for particulars about how it all went down, because this is making even less sense.
Teresa’s specialty is taxes. Although, maybe because of tax identification numbers, vendor establishment contracts are part of what she does sometimes?
“What kind of weird payments?” I ask, my mind working overtime. He’s mentioned it a couple of times. At Drafts and Dig In and then again the other night. Both times I blew it off because I knew he was sharing more than he really should. Just like now. Except now, it’s potentially the key to all this.
Gus tilts his head to the side, brows knitting together in confusion. “For starters, no one has ever heard of this vendor. We have no idea where they came from. And all of their invoices just say ‘services rendered,’ so we don’t know what kind of services that is. They started out being filed under Hayes Gives, which is why Chris asked Willa, but then they started getting filed under general overhead. And it’s a lot of fucking money for general overhead. Especially when no one has ever heard of Sapphire Sands.”
Sapphire Sands…Sapphire Sands…why the fuck do I know that name?!
“Sapphire Sands—y’all workin’ with Bea?” Dustin Wild stops, looking at us with mild curiosity.
Bea. Bea Kennett. Country music legend, one of the all-time greats, and a household name regardless of what genre of music you listen to. The woman who my mother says rounds out the Holy Trinity of female country stars—Loretta, Dolly, and Bea.
I stare at Dustin for a second, blinking hard, my mind racing to process what he just said, balancing it with the fact that he is the one that just said it. A country star in his own right, with his recognizable voice and even more recognizable smile, Dustin looks between us, still waiting on an answer .
“Bea Kennett,” I mutter out loud.
“Yeah, you mentioned Sapphire Sands, so you must be doin’ something with Bea. She’s a sweetheart.”
“Bea Kennett is attached to Sapphire Sands Restoration?” Gus asks.
“Restoration? Naw, she swore to never rebuild. Said the last thing this country needed was another house.”
“I’m confused.”
My pulse jumps, energy flowing through me like sparks off a live wire. Puzzle pieces are clicking into place, a fog lifting allowing me to start seeing what’s right in front of us.
“Sapphire Sands was the name of her compound that burned down in the late eighties. It was named after one of her really early songs, built by her late husband. No one was there when it burned down, thankfully, but she’s held fast to never rebuilding it, putting it in her will that after she passes, the property is to be turned into a camp for kids with disabilities.”
“You know your Bea Kennett, impressive,” Dustin comments.
“My mom’s a fan,” I say, almost dismissively. Because that’s not why I know this. Nor is it the important part. “She owns the trademark.”
Click.
That’s the missing piece. Sapphire Sands is Bea Kennett’s trademark. Her very beloved and well-protected trademark.
Dustin and Gus exchange a look, then turn back to me.
“I really do love that mind of yours, but at some point, you’re going to have to let me in and explain to me what goes on in there,” Gus comments.
“The company is fake. Sapphire Sands Restoration doesn’t exist,” I tell him, the words rushing from me like water over Niagara Falls.
“And you know this how? ”
I look at him, incredulous. Like he hasn’t listened at all when I’ve talked about what I do.
“It’s trademarked,” I repeat. “That’s the whole thing—Sapphire Sands is part of her brand . Song titles, much like recipes, can’t be trademarked or copyrighted. That’s why you can name books and movies after them. That’s why they can name that Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line and it’s totally fine. But brands , like Hayes Rifles, can absolutely be trademarked. Which is what Bea Kennett did. To the point where she had a whole lawsuit with this casino in Vegas to try and get them to change their name. But it didn’t work.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard her mention that a couple times,” Dustin chimes in, taking a sip of his drink. “That was a long time ago, though, wasn’t it?”
“The suit was decided on in 1991. It all came down to when the casino was built and when she filed the trademark, trying to prove that it was named after her estate that had burned down and her song. On what she had partially built a career on. She technically filed the trademark after the casino had broken ground, although it hadn’t publicly been named. But, because of the timeline, she couldn't prove in a court of law that they built it and named it with the sole purpose of riding the coattails of her brand and the news story,” I ramble.
I suck in a breath, not waiting for either of them to start asking questions.
“Personally, I think it’s obvious that’s what they did, but they couldn’t prove it in court.”
“I take it you studied this in law school?” Gus asks.
I shake my head. “Dexter Wynn. It wasn’t his case, but he talks about it like it was. It’s a weird little hobby of his to go back and look through the details of a case to see if he can find something that someone missed, so he can somehow prove that yes, they violated the trademark. Like, he can do it when nobody else can, as a point of personal pride or something. And the Bea Kennett Sapphire Sands case? That’s his favorite. He’s probably re-reviewed it a hundred times looking for something.”
“So, what does this have to do with y’all workin’ with Bea?” Dustin questions, bringing us back to the original point.
“We’re not,” Gus answers.
“The company is a fake,” I add, staring at Gus. “But how do you prove that?”
“Right, I’ll just see myself out then,” Dustin says, walking back toward his friends at the end of the bar.
“If I still had access to my laptop and Hayes systems, the first place to look would be the accounting records. Tax ID number.”
Taxes.
It all comes back to taxes. And we all know who specializes in taxes.
A zing rushes through me, a whole new energy taking over. I don’t have proof. But I’d bet anything that once we start looking, we’ll find it. In fact, I know we will. Down deep in my bones. The same way I know Gus is my forever.
We simply have to prove it.
“We need your sister.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s the most devious person I know.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Gus mutters, before leaning over around me to angle himself toward his sister at the end of the bar, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Willa!”
“Milo! I need a pen,” I tell him, grabbing a Pour Decisions coaster from the stack in front of me. This is going to take research, and there is no time to waste.
My hand flies across the small piece of cardboard, my heart beating so fast that I think it might break through my rib cage, but I don’t stop. I write as fast as I can, not wanting to lose a single thought.
I might be new to Hickory Hills, but the Hayes family has welcomed me as one of their own. Thanks to them, I’m learning a new game.
Small-town subterfuge.