Chapter 7 Lara #2
“I can fly a drone out there, but even in this smaller pocket between the national park and the reservation, we’re still looking at tens of thousands of acres.”
“No, that’ll take too long.” Calder massaged the hard edge of his jaw with his hand. “This is the only property owned by the corporation?” He didn’t wait for confirmation before tacking on, “What about Maxwell? Does she have property in her name?”
“Well, that’s where things get interesting.
For Wilderness Within, everything from their legal status to tax filings, even down to the reviews left online, is legitimate.
But I had the same thought as you, so I looked into Maxwell and found this.
” Callum clicked, and documents appeared next to the doctor’s image on the monitor: Schedule C forms filed with the IRS for the last three years.
“According to their website, Wilderness Within runs two retreat cycles: one at the beginning of summer and one at the end. Based on what she filed with the IRS, Maxwell is bringing in roughly ninety thousand a year after expenses from Wilderness Within, but when I looked into her personal assets, I found a mortgage for a $3 million home just outside of Jackson, a lease for a brand-new Porsche that she’s upgraded every year for the last three years, and a $1 million condo in West Palm Beach that I can find no record of on any third-party-rental listing website, so she’s not renting it out. ”
“Does she have a private practice? Would that account for the spending?”
“No,” I scoffed and bit into my cheek when Calder glared at me. There was no way a psychologist could afford all that, even in private practice, without some external source of funds.
“No, she doesn’t. She had a practice in California, but she closed it when she moved to Wyoming.”
“Family money? Investments?”
“Not that I’ve found.”
“So she’s getting money from somewhere to afford her lifestyle, but somewhere that she’s not reporting it.”
“Maybe she asks for gifts or donations from participants at the retreat and then doesn’t report them,” I suggested.
“That would be a lot of gifts.”
“I might’ve found something else on Maxwell.” Callum leaned forward. “I thought it was odd that she closed up shop and moved to Wyoming. She has no family or any other ties to this area. I looked into her practice thinking the reason was financial, but I didn’t find any hardship there.”
“Something with her license?”
“Still valid.” Callum clicked and opened a clipped image. “When I was looking for information on her office, I found this review cached on one of those provider-aggregate websites.”
You did this to Hannah. She’s gone because of you. You’re a monster.
“What does that mean? Who’s Hannah?”
“Great question,” Callum drawled, his sarcasm barely contained. “Except for a great-great-aunt who is deceased, I couldn’t find anyone named Hannah associated with Julia Maxwell. The only, most likely option is that Hannah was—”
“A patient.”
“Right.” Less sarcasm this time. “I did a search crawl for any article or blog from around the time of this post that mentioned Hannah, Maxwell, tragedy, psychologist . . . anything along those lines, and this is what showed up.”
An article from a university newspaper appeared.
Sophomore Suicide Shakes Campus
“‘Sophomore Hannah L., found dead in her dorm Wednesday morning from apparent suicide,’” Calder read aloud. “How does this have anything to do with Maxwell?”
Callum clicked, enlarging a section of the article.
Family of the deceased claim she was seeking psychological treatment regularly before her passing.
“You think Maxwell was treating her, and the person who left that review blamed her for Hannah’s death,” Calder inferred.
Just like someone blamed me for Ian’s. Instantly, my throat clogged and my vision blurred. Ian’s face—his eyes bright and wild in front of mine. My heart slugged against my chest, seeing the way he looked at me—
“Lara.” Calder’s hand touched the back of my arm, and I flinched, snapping out of the memory.
“Doctors get blamed for many things that aren’t their fault,” I murmured, a telltale catch in my voice.
“True, but do they all pack up their successful practice in the city and move states away to run a wilderness retreat?”
No. I swallowed but didn’t say anything. It did seem off—but then again, I’d up and left for Wyoming after Ian, even though Rachel was my reason.
“I have a call out to the student who wrote the article for the paper to see if I can get more information. He’s still at the school getting his master’s, so I should hear in the next day or two.”
“All right. In the meantime, keep following the money—”
“It has to be coming from somewhere, I know,” Callum finished, not bothering to hide the drip of bitterness in his voice. “I know how to do my job, Calder. You don’t always have to be the director.”
Calder winced. “You’re right.”
“I know,” he said, and then one of his computers on the other end of the desk started beeping, and it must have been something important, because Callum spun his chair around and almost ran over my foot to check the alert.
He squinted, zoomed in on one of the weather models, and then whistled. “Gotta go. Come on, Twister.”
The dog bounded over, waiting for the door to the back side of the porch to open.
Callum grabbed a baseball cap off the nearby coatrack, several of them adorning the rungs.
At the very top, and well beyond what he could reach from his chair, was a cowboy hat.
The cowboy hat he’d been pictured wearing in the news.
I had a feeling it was out of reach for a reason.
“Looks like we’re going to the retreat,” I murmured.
Calder’s expression remained almost unreadable as he looked me over. Almost. Ever since that moment back at the diner, the glint in his hazel eyes had burned like embers he couldn’t put out.
His jaw flexed. “Then I guess we better learn a little bit about each other so our”—his jaw flexed—“incompatibility isn’t mistaken for ignorance.”
Following him back outside, I pretended like I hadn’t heard how his voice hit a speed bump over the word incompatibility.