Chapter Five
Max and Heloise might have been more upset if one of their children had been hurt, but I had the feeling I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
Peppermint had taken several long cuts to his shoulder and maybe had dislocated the leg.
He’d been hit hard, but bassets are sturdy little things—and the sludge-possessed lion had merely been swatting him out of the way.
“I’ll pay for the vet,” Tripp said as they were bundling the dog up to go get medical attention. “Sheesh. The dog came right in to help. I mean, he’s kind of a hero.”
The cuts on my chest burned, a distant and vague sensation behind the Winter Mantle that linked me to Mab and the Winter Court, and Tripp had taken no note of them. But he had empathized with the dog. It was a start.
“Dresden,” Max said worriedly. “How much of this threatens my household directly?”
“I don’t think any of it,” I said. “It was there for Tripp. Peppermint just got in the way.”
Max grimaced. He went to a small chest on a filing cabinet, opened it up, and withdrew a talisman on a silver chain.
It was a potent protective charm; I could sense it from all the way across the room.
He solemnly hung it around Peppermint’s neck.
The basset wagged his tail and whuffled, sniffling at Max’s hands as he put the charm on the dog.
“Nonetheless,” he said grimly, “someone has offered harm to my family.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry about that. We’ll clear off.”
“You misunderstand me, sir,” Max said, his voice hard. “Someone has offered harm to my family. That is something I cannot tolerate.”
I lifted my eyebrows.
“Assuming that you are not responsible for what has happened, Mr. Tripp,” Max said, “you and I now share an enemy.” He packed up Peppermint in a carrying crate and hefted it with more strength than I would have thought a man his age could manage.
“I’m going to see to my dog. And then we’ll talk about who hurt him. ”
“Max!” Heloise called from outside. “The engine’s running!”
“Coming!” Max called. “We’ll be back when we’re done, Dresden. I’m not sure what Animal Control is going to say about that thing in front of the house.”
“Not much,” I said. “It’s decomposing faster than it should. I don’t think it will be there in a few hours.”
Max shook his head grimly and said, “Heloise already has your papers. We’ll look at them while we wait at the vet and get to the root of this when I get back. Meanwhile, both of you should consider yourselves my guests. There’s a first aid kit in the hall bathroom.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Max nodded firmly and departed, carrying the wounded dog in his crate. Outside, a car door opened and closed, and then an engine rumbled as Max and Heloise pulled out.
“Who did you piss off, Tripp?” I asked wearily.
“Nobody!” Tripp said. “I mean, I don’t think anybody.”
“Assassin-beasts like that aren’t exactly dime-a-dozen stuff,” I said. “Someone with some supernatural juice wants you dead.”
He swallowed. “This stuff. This weird stuff. It’s real.”
“Monsters?” I said. “Magic? Yeah, obviously.”
“But the TV said it was all that HBGB stuff from the terrorists.”
“Could be the television doesn’t always tell the truth.” I sighed. “You ever heard of some kind of drug that makes you hallucinate for months and years after you take it?”
“Maybe not,” he admitted. He narrowed his eyes at me. “So … this wizard stuff. It’s like for real?”
“Just let me know when you get caught up, okay?” I said. “I don’t have time to babysit you, man. You’re into something that could have gotten me killed. Could have gotten other people killed.”
“Oh,” he said. “Damn. You’re bleeding, man.” He frowned down at himself. “And I think there’s chicken shit on my suit.”
I felt my hands start to lift to give the man a good shaking. But I flexed my fingers and relaxed them again. All in all, he wasn’t doing as bad as some people I’d seen at assimilating the reality of the supernatural world.
“You risked your neck for me,” Tripp said quietly. “Again.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I know.”
“Why?” he asked. He sounded genuinely confused about it. “I been a pain in the ass to you. You owe Marcone that much?”
I snorted. “I helped you because you needed help. You’re in over your head and there’s no one else who’s going to stick his neck out for you. It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Principle?” Tripp said. “What’s that?”
“I did it because it’s what I do,” I said.
“Okay,” Tripp said, uncertainly. “But what do you get out of it?”
“I get to be me,” I said. “I get to be the guy who helps people who need it.”
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Not yet.” I sat down on one of Max’s chairs and felt tired. The pain would have been considerable if I had been a vanilla mortal. “Do me a favor. Get the first aid kit from the hall bathroom. I should clean these cuts before they get infected. So should you.”
“Oh. Yeah, right,” Tripp said, raising a hand in an abortive gesture toward his jawline. And he went to find the first aid kit.
And I sat there, bleeding and getting to be me.
“Well,” Max said, later in the afternoon. “We’ve worked out a solid outline of your problems, Mr. Gregory.”
“But I ain’t got problems,” Tripp insisted. “Except this IRS thing. And the court thing.”
“Yes,” Max said drily. “Only those.” He cleared his throat. “According to your own records, you received your initial investment from an Adeline Hathaway, now deceased.”
“Sure,” Tripp said. “Nice old rich broad. She was giving her dough away on account of she wasn’t gonna need it where she was going. Talked her into funding Kid Power.”
“From which you immediately began paying yourself a salary,” Max noted.
“Guy’s gotta eat,” Tripp said.
“And you began expensing much of the rest of it out for rather luxurious gatherings,” Max said.
“Jesus, Tripp.” I sighed.
“Hey, you gotta spend money to raise money,” Tripp said. “The rich set likes their champagne and fancy dinners.”
Max held up a hand to me. “Actually, there’s a certain amount of truth to that, and the law recognizes as much,” he said.
“There’s been an accurate accounting of it, and as long as potential donors can access the organization’s records transparently, much of that kind of spending is entirely within the law.
” He held up another letter. “However, this letter from the courts says that Mrs. Hathaway’s heir, one Norman Hathaway, has asked for a temporary restraining order freezing Kid Power’s funds.
He intends to seek restitution of the originally donated amount as the executor of her estate, and to press charges for financial exploitation of the elderly. ”
Tripp waved a confident hand. “Lady wasn’t daffy. She was old and she was on the way out, but she still had all her marbles.”
“If it goes that far, that would be for the court process to decide,” Max said. “If Hathaway’s petition for a restraining order is successful, the courts will freeze your assets in the amount of the original donation.”
Tripp snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Max sighed. “Indeed. Based upon these records, you withdrew approximately ninety-five percent of the original amount and awarded it to yourself as an executive bonus in the amount of two million dollars.”
“Tripp!” I said.
“It ain’t like that!” Tripp protested. “Look, I been holding fundraisers, and between the money I spent and the money I raised, the kids weren’t getting much. So, I took that money out and put it on a fight.”
Max’s eyebrows attempted to rise up off the skin of his forehead. “You did what?”
“I put it on a fight at five to one,” Tripp said defensively.
“You can’t just take charity money and do that,” I protested.
“Indeed, you cannot,” Max said. “No wonder Ms. Abernathy has set her sights upon you, throwing away donated funds like that.”
“I didn’t throw them away!” Tripp said, clearly offended. “The underdog took the fight that night! I won!”
The room fell a little quiet after that. The only sound was a medicated Peppermint, curled up in his box and snoring loudly.
“You won,” Max said quietly, “ten … million … dollars.”
“Help a lot of kids with that,” Tripp said proudly.
“Tripp,” I said quietly. “Tell me it was a legal bet.”
He frowned. “Yeah, well. I mean, there’s bets and there’s bets. You know?”
“Oh, dear,” Max said.
“Where’s the money?” I asked him.
“That’s another problem,” Tripp admitted. “I won the bet, I got the paper on it—but they ain’t paying off.”
“Legal or not, the fact that you took donated funds and gambled with them is … problematic.”
“What problem?” Tripp said. “I won! The kids get the payoff!”
“There are laws that regulate what you can and can’t do with charitable funds, Mr. Gregory,” Max said wearily. “Entirely aside from facing charges for financial exploitation of Mrs. Hathaway, you could wind up going to prison for this kind of embezzlement.”
“Christ!” Tripp said, throwing up his hands. “Here I am, trying to do the right thing, help out a bunch of kids that got dumb cause the schools were down, and I’m the bad guy again?!”
“Tripp,” I said. “Right now, all the law is going to see is that you talked a nice old lady on her deathbed into giving you a lot of money, took most of it for yourself, and now it’s gone. Even if you had good intentions, where’s the money? Who’d you put the bet with?”
“Yeah, well. Mr. Marcone didn’t want me working inside the organization for that,” Tripp hedged. “So, I kinda had to go outside. Guy in from Vegas named Estevez.”
“I assume this was a cash transaction,” Max asked tiredly.
Tripp’s expression made it clear he thought it was a foolish question. “Yeah, of course. Took a lot of arranging, that much.”
I blew out a breath and eyed Max. “How bad is it?”
“It’s awful,” Max replied. “If he had recouped his wager and donated the money to the charity, there would still be a great deal of taxable income on the winnings. As it is, with the money gone, we have only Mr. Gregory’s word that he took it out with good intentions, and given his record, that is unlikely to carry weight should this come before any judge.
In fact, I would advise very strongly against any course of action that would bring this into an actual court of law. ”
“We need to make a deal with Abernathy,” I said.
“In my experience, ten million dollars can arrange for serious mediations,” Max confirmed.
“It’s about ten million reasons to put out a hit on somebody too,” I said. “What about asking the heir for some more time?”
“It’s worth a try,” Max said. “But if I were in his shoes, I’m not sure I’d be compassionate. I’d want the money back.”
“But I don’t got the winnings,” Tripp said. “And I can’t exactly take Estevez to court to get them.”
“Making this something less than my area of expertise, I’m afraid,” Max said. “I believe this falls closer to your side of the street, Dresden.”
“I’ve only lifted money like that out of the literal underworld, not the criminal kind.” I sighed. “But maybe I can figure something out. What kind of time do I have to work with?”
Max consulted the letters. “You have one week before the hearing for the temporary restraining order with Mr. Hathaway.”
“A week?” I complained. “I thought the mills of justice ground slow.”
“Yeah, about that,” Tripp said. “I mean, I might not have taken this Hathaway guy serious at first. I was busy trying to help the kids. He sent letters and I just threw them out.”
I rubbed a hand over my face.
“It’s not much time,” Max noted. “Fortunately, there is still time. Should the judge grant the restraining order, I suspect Ms. Abernathy will be ready to pounce on the case, provide evidence to the State’s Attorney office, and said justice will indeed begin to grind.”
A week. During which, Tripp would almost certainly be attacked again. I’d have to keep the jerk close.
“One whole week.” I sighed. “Sure. What could go wrong?”