Chapter 10
IT WASN’T HARD FOR MALCOM to decide which text thread to respond to. The weekend had passed much too quickly. No word from Brandy yet on the financials. Plenty of texts had come in from Penny though—texts he was trying to ignore. But it was the texts from Lori that kept him smiling.
They were in a late-night debate of what they should do at their next “get-together.” They’d decided it would be the night before Halloween since that’s when their schedules aligned next. It felt like a long time away. But it was fine, Malcom had told himself, to miss her a little bit. That didn’t stop him from glancing across the street about a hundred times a day. He’d seen her a couple of times, coming and going in her car.
Apparently she was a night owl too, and eleven p.m. wasn’t too late to argue about their plans. She’d already ruled out hiking—a storm was coming in. And bowling—it was “battle of the leagues” this week.
Movie? he texted. Your friend Everly told me the theater in town shows a mix of oldies and new releases. Your pick .
I’ll look up what’s showing, she wrote back.
This was major progress for Malcom. Not that taking her to a movie was his first choice since there’d be more staring at the screen than talking. And the point of hanging out was to get to know her better.
A text came in from Penny. There was no good reason for her to be texting him outside of work hours or about things that weren’t work related. But he could tell it was a photo—with the message: Thought you might like this —and he was too curious not to click on it.
He opened the text to look at the photo. It was of him and Lori at the gala. Dancing, when she was leaning into him, her eyes closed. Malcom drew in a breath as the memories of that night rushed back. But then he wondered why Penny would take the photo.
Her next text arrived: Someone from the gala took these and forwarded them to our office. Maybe this brings back good memories, or bad? Have you already dumped her? Wasn’t sure if she was a one-night stand .
Penny followed up the text with a winking emoji.
Malcom wanted to ignore the text, like he’d ignored most of her other ones this week that weren’t work related. And he didn’t want to get into a texting convo with her right now. But he also didn’t want her accusing him of a one-night stand, not with anyone, especially Lori.
We’re still dating. Thanks for the pic, he wrote.
Her reply came immediately. Ooo. That’s a record for you, right? Bronson is going to lose his bet. Another winking emoji.
Malcom groaned. He didn’t want to know the details about any bet, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask Bronson about it. Or Penny. He didn’t reply, but instead saved the photo to his phone, then forwarded it to Lori.
We look cozy, she replied. She didn’t ask where the photo came from, and he didn’t offer up the information. Frankly, he was tired of talking about Penny anyway.
Another text came through from Lori: Dracula is showing at 8:00 p.m. Sounds perfect to me.
Malcom laughed and texted back. Really? Which version?
I’m impressed you know there are different versions. It’s 1958, with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
Excellent, what time should I pick you up? Dinner first?
7:30, and I’m planning on eating the overpriced food at the theater. Bring your credit card. Unless you want to go Dutch since this isn’t a date?
I’m paying , he wrote.
She sent a pumpkin emoji with heart eyes. He might have stared at it too long.
Malcom didn’t know what it was about Halloween week, but it seemed the universe was conspiring against him. Rick came down with the flu, so Malcom had to fill in on maintenance several times at the cabin community, two of their suppliers had delivery delays, and Brandy emailed him early the day he was supposed to go to the movies with Lori and said they should meet ASAP.
She was coming into town anyway that day, so what time worked?
Anytime, Malcom had texted. I’ll make myself available.
By the time she arrived at his trailer, he had been pacing so much, he felt like a zoo animal. He put up a sign on the door of the trailer that said, “Manager off site, call this number for emergencies,” then hoped there’d be no phone calls.
Brandy was her usual bubbly self, but Malcom immediately sensed that the news she had to deliver wouldn’t be good. Otherwise, why not talk over the phone or through email?
He invited her to sit at the single desk, and pulled over another chair so they could both look at the laptop screen, where he’d opened up the spreadsheets he’d sent to her.
Brandy grasped the mouse and moved the curser to the top of the first one. “Now, I want you to pay attention to the numbers in this column. You don’t need to memorize them, but look at the pattern. It stands out.”
Malcom gazed at the column she’d highlighted. It was the accounts receivable column, and the numbers were all increasing in order, by ten dollars each. It was kind of odd. “Maybe those are estimates?”
“I compared this column to the invoices on file, and they all match the invoice number.” Brandy clicked to another spreadsheet and highlighted one of the columns.
Malcom didn’t need to ask her to go back to the first spreadsheet to see that the numbers were an exact replica, although the listed items varied.
“What is this?” His stomach had tightened. “What am I looking at?”
“Duplicated numbers and duplicated invoices, except the item and the date has changed.” Brandy clicked on another spreadsheet. “Two years in a row might be a coincidence, but it’s a long shot. And a third year? Here’s last year’s accounts receivable report.”
The numbers in the column were duplicates again—or triplicates, he supposed. “Is this a mistake? Lazy accounting?”
“A mistake would be very generous. And lazy accounting might happen, but this feels deliberate. The accounts receivable are the same each year, yet the expenses keep increasing, which means that your company should be operating at a loss. At least that’s what’s being reported to the Internal Revenue Service.”
Malcom rubbed at his forehead. “So this creative accounting saves us on taxes?”
“Yep.” Brandy released a breath. “I mean, it might eventually be caught, and you’ll be fined and ordered to pay back taxes. But that’s not what I’m most worried about.”
He dropped his hand. “There’s more?”
Brandy clicked over to the next spreadsheet. “This is showing payroll by month.”
He nodded. The numbers all looked normal.
“Yet . . .” She scrolled to the far right on the spreadsheet, advancing through columns Malcom hadn’t noticed before. “This column shows transfers to another account. I don’t have access to any of these accounts, so I can’t verify them. But I’m thinking once you log into the payroll account, you’ll see extra transactions that aren’t going to payroll.”
Malcom frowned and pulled up the banking app on his phone. He opened the business account and scrolled through the recent withdrawals. There were a lot of them because of all the employees in the company. It would take him forever to compare the withdrawals to payroll.
“Let me log into the bank on the laptop,” he said.
Brandy scooted over, and he sat in front of the laptop and entered in his password information. As he scrolled through the dozens of transactions, she said, “Look for amounts that are outside of payday. See where all of these payments are coming out on the first and the fifteenth of the month? Look for anything on other days.”
Malcom paused on a payment that came out a few days ago on the twenty-sixth in the amount of $3,300. It looked pretty innocent since it wasn’t a huge amount and several people in the company made that amount twice a month. Just the date was suspicious. Then he looked at the twenty-fifth and saw another amount of $3,300. In fact, that same amount had been deducted multiple times a month outside of payroll dates.
“Where’s the money going?” he asked as he clicked on the transaction to find out more information. It only had another routing number attached, but no account number, of course.
“It’s going to another bank, but it’s not a direct deposit transaction,” Brandy said. “It’s a manual transfer. Open a couple of the others and see if they’re the same time of day.”
Malcom did so, but they were all different times of the day. He exhaled, his skin prickling. “Payroll is going out to someone in the company who I don’t know about.”
Brandy nodded. “There might be more. But after finding these two issues, I thought it would be a decent place to start.”
Malcom downloaded the most recent bank statement and saved the PDF to the hard drive. “What do you think I should do?”
“I think you have a few choices,” Brandy said. “I talked to Austin about this in very broad terms—I didn’t even mention your name. He once owned a successful company, something to do with data storage. But things with his business partner went south. He recommended hiring a lawyer.”
Malcom felt like he’d been slapped in the face. “That seems extreme. This is my brother and my in-laws.”
“I agree,” Brandy said. “Family’s important. There might be a good explanation, or like you said, lazy accounting. But if there’s fraud, or other things, then you’ll be liable as part-owner of the company.”
Malcom pushed to his feet and paced the small area. His head pounded, and his mouth tasted bitter. He’d been suspicious for a while, but this . . . this shone a spotlight on everything. Was it Bronson? Or was he in on it with his wife? Was it Penny? Was it all three of them?
No one else in the company had access to their accounts.
“I need to talk to my brother,” Malcom said, stopping to face Brandy. “I don’t know if he’ll tell me the truth, but I need to at least have the conversation before I can decide what to do next.”
As soon as Brandy left, he called Bronson. The call went to voicemail, so Malcom left a message, then texted his brother that they needed to meet right away.
Then, because he felt like he might literally go crazy, and he needed to talk this through with someone, he called Lori. The minute she answered, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. It was the middle of the workday for her, and she was probably busy.
“Hey, it’s Malcom.”
“Yeah, I know,” she teased, her voice light. “Don’t tell me you’re bailing on tonight.”
“What? No.” Malcom tried to focus on what she was saying. “I do need to talk to you though. Brandy was just here.”
“Brandy?” she echoed. “Oh, you mean about the financial statements you had her look at?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
“Sounds like the news isn’t good,” Lori said in a softer tone. “What’s going on?”
“Uh . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Are you swamped? I wondered if we could talk in person. I’m waiting for Bronson to call me back. I might have to track him down if he doesn’t respond soon.”
“Sure, are you at your trailer?” Lori asked. “I can come over there and have Marci watch the place. We aren’t busy anyway on account of the rain.”
Malcom hadn’t even noticed it had started to rain. He moved to the window, where raindrops pattered against the pane. “That would be great. Thanks, Lori.”
He hung up and literally watched through the window for her. Moments later, she came out of the shop and opened an umbrella. She crossed the street after checking for traffic, then hurried across the parking lot.
He opened the trailer door as she neared. She was wearing a flowy black dress with black boots that hit just below her knees. Her earrings of choice were white ghosts. Any other day, he might have teased her about them. Not today.
“Thanks for this,” he said, and motioned for her to come inside. After she set the umbrella aside, he offered her a chair.
It took him seconds to pull up the spreadsheets again on the laptop. He walked her through what Brandy had disclosed.
“Wow, I don’t even know what to say,” Lori said in a subdued tone. “This is really rotten of your brother, or whoever is responsible. I mean . . . there’s been a lot of money hidden. I wonder how far back it goes?”
Malcom’s shoulders sagged. “At least three years—which is what I gave to Brandy. We’ve only been in business for six, and despite this terrible news, I’d hate to think it’s been going on the whole time.”
“What are you going to do?” Lori asked. “I mean, what are you going to tell your brother?”
“I don’t know.” Malcom rubbed a hand down his face. “I hope he’ll confess if it was him. I hope it’s not him, of course. But I hope more lies don’t happen.” He folded his arms and focused on Lori. “I’ve been wanting to get out on my own anyway, like I told you, but I feel like I need to do it now.”
Her brows lifted. “Like today?”
“This week at least.”
She nodded. “You could set up an LLC online. Put in your resignation to your brother. Then get your name taken off of everything with him.”
“Yeah.” He googled small-business licenses and had just pulled up the online application when his phone rang. He froze when he saw it was Bronson.
“I can give you some privacy,” Lori said, standing to leave.
“You can stay,” Malcom said, picking up his phone. “Hey, Bronson, where are you? We need to meet.”
Bronson’s voice came through tinny. “No can do. I’m at the golf tournament, remember?”
Malcom remembered now. It was a two-day charity golf tournament that Bronson and Penny played in every year. It was usually toward the end of October, but this was the first year the second day would be on Halloween itself. It also meant that Bronson wouldn’t be back in town until tomorrow night. He didn’t want to bring up the financial stuff when Bronson was with Penny. They might team up and put together more lies.
“All right,” Malcom said. “When do you get back home? We need to meet sooner than later.”
“I’ll be back around six o’clock tomorrow,” Bronson said. “What’s going on, man? What’s the rush?”
“It can keep until tomorrow,” Malcom said, trying to keep his voice nonchalant. “Have a good tournament.” Then he hung up and looked over at Lori. He told her about the golf.
She nodded. “Kari doesn’t play?”
He paused at this. “She does, but she doesn’t like to compete.”
Lori rubbed her hands over her knees. “Hey, if you need to cancel tonight, I'll understand.”
The fact that she offered was sweet, but he didn’t want to be alone with his circling thoughts tonight. “I think the distraction will be good for me.”