Chapter 18
Early Friday afternoon, I walked from my office to the basement of the building, my steps quick and purposeful. I glanced at the catalog envelope clutched in my hand, and a wave of unease washed over me.
When I pulled open the door to our file room, Gabe was already waiting inside. We’d been putting off cleaning out old files for a while now, and coincidentally enough, we decided to do it today.
Gabe smiled. “Hey.”
I nodded in greeting. “How was the conference?” He’d been in Columbia the last two days.
“It was like any other conference,” he said with a chuckle. He glanced around the file room. It was dusty as fuck because we never came down here. “That’s a lot of damn boxes.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling that unease hit me again. “Listen, I need to talk to you about something.”
Gabe looked back at me, his brow creasing slightly at what I assumed was the serious tone I took. “What’s up?”
I blew out a breath. “You know I’m doing Callie’s probate…” He nodded. “And I offered to help her with her mom’s final tax return, just to make sure she had all the documents and stuff she would need.”
“Okay…”
“The bank called and left me a message on Monday and said they had everything I asked for, but they found this trust when they pulled up her mom’s social.
Callie did mention a trust to me before, one that was set up from a life insurance policy after her dad died when she was a kid, but she said there was nothing left in it.
I assumed it was just the financial records for that, so I called the bank back Tuesday and told them to send me everything they had. ”
Gabe nodded again. “Alright…”
“I finally got around to looking at all of the documents late yesterday afternoon. I got through what Callie would need to file her mom’s return and then started looking at the trust documents.”
I handed Gabe the catalog envelope I was holding.
His brow furrowed curiously as he opened it and pulled out the papers from inside.
I watched as he sifted through the pages, reading over the legal jargon of the trust listed in Lori Bennett’s name, but when he got to the financial records portion, his eyes widened, then snapped to me.
“Nearly ten million dollars is sitting in this trust.”
“Yeah,” I breathed.
“What did her parents do that they—”
“Her mom was a school teacher,” I cut him off. “Her dad was a mechanic.”
More confusion filled Gabe’s expression as he flipped through more pages. “There is no way a teacher and a mechanic would have qualified for this amount of coverage for life insurance.”
“Yeah, I know. When I saw that amount, red flags immediately rose. I know you and I haven’t known Callie that long, but I’m pretty certain she would have mentioned that amount of fucking money.”
“You don’t think she knows?” he asked.
“I’m gonna assume she has no idea. And if I’m right, once she’s made aware of it, she’s probably going to be wondering the same damn thing I did when I saw it: where the hell did it come from?
But I didn’t want to go to her with this with no answers or, at the least, without being able to say I looked into it.
I knew there had to have been a lawyer who helped her mom set everything up, and if I could find them or the firm, I could reach out to start asking some questions… ”
“That’s a good plan. Were you able to find anything?”
I stared at Gabe, staying silent for a heartbeat. “Let’s just say we picked a good day to go through old office files…” His brow knitted deeper at my response. “The lawyer who helped Lori Bennett set up that trust…it was my dad.”
He stared at me for a moment before looking down at the papers and thumbing through them until he landed on the page where Robert Callahan’s name was listed.
He remained silent, and I could practically see the wheels churning in his head before he finally looked at me and spoke again.
“Okay, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. ”
“I know we were supposed to be cleaning this place out today, but—”
“You want to look for anything pertaining to Lori Bennett and this trust,” he finished for me.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He nodded without hesitation. “We got a lot of boxes to go through, so let’s get looking.”
We spent the next couple of hours sifting through box after box of files, starting from the bottom shelves and working our way up.
If I learned anything, it was that whoever the hell our dads had in charge of filing back in the day was absolute shit at their job, and when we actually did clean this place out, it was going to take days to go through the mess they created and left behind.
There were mixed records and boxes that didn’t even contain any matters but old office bills and receipts that had no business being there.
Poor Gabe looked like he might implode—he was extremely organized and tidy, and I was sure this place had become his new kryptonite.
I tossed another useless box to the side after going through it and turned, stepping onto the stepladder and pulling another from the third shelf.
After another hour, I was more than frustrated. I’d just tossed another useless box and was on the stepladder reaching for one on the top shelf when Gabe’s voice cut through the air. “Wes…”
I turned. “You find something?” I hopped off the stepladder and walked over to where he was standing in front of a box on the table, a manila envelope in one hand and a paper in the other.
“Look at this…”
I took the paper and read it over. It was an accident report from a fatal MVA, which wasn’t unusual for them to keep on record if there was a client they were representing for that purpose. What I found unusual was the victim of that MVA.
Matthew Bennett.
Callie’s dad.
I looked over the report, reading the details of the accident that claimed her dad’s life eighteen years ago—he’d been driving with Callie’s mom in the passenger seat, hydroplaned and lost control on a rain-soaked road, and hit a tree, taking all of the impact on his side.
“You found that in there?” I gestured to the manila envelope.
Gabe nodded. “Yeah, it was buried under all of this useless shit,” he said, lifting a stack of papers.
I grabbed the envelope and pulled out the rest of the contents from inside; I took the first paper, dropping the others onto the table as I looked it over, and my brow furrowed. “What the fuck…?”
“What?” Gabe questioned.
“It’s another accident report from that same night.” It was another report with the same date listed at the top, the same victim, the same passenger, but none of the other details were the same. And when I got to the details of the accident, I swore my heart stopped. “Holy shit,” I whispered.
Gabe leaned over to read, and a few moments later, I heard him gasp as he ripped the paper from my hand. “No fucking way…”
While he skimmed it again, I tried wrapping my head around what I’d just read.
I was trying to decipher why the hell there were two conflicting reports from the same accident, but more than that…
why the second one had Lucas’s mom listed as the driver of a second vehicle involved in the accident that killed Callie’s dad.
Not just the driver…but the one at fault.
Still trying to make sense of it, I looked at the last two documents I pulled from that envelope, reaching down and shifting the top paper to see the second. My eyes widened when I registered the titles of each written in bold black letters across the tops of the pages. “No…”
Gabe looked at me. “What?”
Something in my gut told me I knew exactly what I would find if I read those documents in their entirety, so instead of picking them up, I stared at them. A part of me didn’t want to know. And for the first time in my life, I sure as hell didn’t want to be right.
One document was a non-disclosure agreement. The other, a settlement agreement.
Gabe, sensing my hesitation, lifted the documents and looked at them. I continued staring at the spot on the table where they had been moments ago, my body tense. The silence as he read them was deafening.
“Lucas’s mom and dad signed both of these, along with Callie’s mom,” Gabe said, his voice quiet.
I closed my eyes. We didn’t have to look any further to know where the money in that trust came from.
A ragged breath escaped me, not wanting to ask my next question, but I did it anyway. “Who drew up the contracts?” I heard the rustle of papers beside me before it went silent again. I tensed my jaw. “Who?”
“Your dad…”
Fuck.