Chapter Twenty-One
“Obviously, I told Jessica,” Sebastian continued, anger seeping into his voice. “There was no way I was letting that jerk threaten me.”
“What did Jessica say?”
“That she’d handle it. I asked her what was she going to handle? What was going on? She said she didn’t know, but she was going to figure it out.”
“Do you know if she did?”
Sebastian shook his head, sending a wisp of pale brown hair sliding across his forehead. “I don’t know. She went quiet for a little while and when I saw her next, she said everything was fine. I asked if she was sure, and she said she was.”
“Did you believe her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. No, no, I don’t think I did. I didn’t want to press too heavily because I didn’t want her to start avoiding me. I wanted her to open up when she was ready.” He sighed, and slumped a little in his seat. “She’d just started opening up when…” He waved his hand.
“Did you see her often?” I asked.
Sebastian nodded. “At least once a week. Sometimes we’d go to lunch. Sometimes we’d just hang out.”
“At the farm?”
“We used to, but I haven’t been there in a long time.
I like horses but I’m hardly a rider like Jessica.
Like she was. Plus, I got the feeling I was persona non grata when Joel was around.
Jessica said I should just ignore him and it was her farm, but I wasn’t comfortable with that when we could just meet elsewhere. ”
“When did you first meet?”
“School. My family moved to the area my freshman year and Jessica came over and started talking to me on my first day at school and we’ve been friends ever since. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think the move would have been so easy. She eased the transition for me.”
“So it was never anything more?” I pressed gently.
“More?” Sebastian frowned, then huffed a laugh. “No, no, it wasn’t. We really were just friends for many years but I wish it had been more. I wanted it to be, but Jessica wanted to get out of her marriage first.”
“She said that to you?”
He nodded. “Only a couple of weeks ago. That’s when she told me about Joel and Yvette’s affair. I told her I’d always be there for her, no matter what.”
“She must have really appreciated that,” said Lily.
Sebastian glanced at her, nodding. “I’d like to think so. She really was the light of my life, you know. I was married once, years ago, but it didn’t work out, and Jessica helped me through that too. She knew I knew how it felt.”
“Your wife cheated too?” I guessed.
“Yeah, with some guy she met in a bar. It wasn’t even love, just lust for a guy she thought was fun.
I was upset at the time, then after the divorce, I got over it so easily, I wasn’t sure I’d ever been madly in love with her.
Not like I felt about Jessica. Jessica… Jessica I was madly in love with.
I was happy to wait for her. Well, not happy, but I would have.
” He toyed with the glass in his hand but didn’t take a sip.
I wasn’t sure he’d realized he hadn’t poured any lemonade in it.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I should have made my move years ago. I should never have waited. If I had, she’d never have married that jerk, and he could never have cheated on her.
She would have been happy. She would have been alive.
” He brushed a hand over his forehead, rubbing it, his eyes closed a moment as silence hung between us.
He breathed deeply, steadying himself as he looked directly at me, his eyes tormented.
“She gave me something before she died. I think you should see it,” he said.
“Is it the farm’s books?” I asked.
He nodded. “It took me a while to look through it. I haven’t quite finished because… well, you know what happened, but I discovered something before then. I should show you.” He got to his feet, indicating we should follow him up the stairs to the mezzanine.
An office had been set up there with a broad desk and an expensive, padded leather desk chair, set up to take advantage of the expansive view. A sofa and a nice collection of guitars made up the rest of the accoutrements.
Sebastian slid into the chair and tapped the keyboard, the monitor coming to life. He scooted forwards to slot his knees under the table and we crowded either side of him as he called up a spreadsheet.
“This is what Jessica gave me,” he said, pointing to the screen.
“It’s the farm’s accounts for the past five years.
It lists all their income sources and all the expenditures.
All the expenses you can imagine for a farm.
There’re a lot of animal products from purchasing the horses right down to their feed, then employee expenses, farm maintenance, and so on. ”
“That all seems normal,” I said, as line after line zipped past.
“Right? On first glance, it does. As an accountant, I’m happy to see everything accounted for so I wasn’t sure what Jessica was concerned about.”
“She didn’t say?”
“No, not exactly. She’d told me a long time ago that Joel had a gambling problem but he’d sworn he’d stopped and there was nothing to suggest otherwise.
She just asked me to look at the accounts and tell her if anything was off.
I asked if she was worried about anything specifically and she said she wasn’t sure and that Joel took care of all the accounts so she could concentrate on other aspects of the business. ”
“That doesn’t seem unusual to me.”
“Nor me. One person can’t do everything in a business, so it makes sense to split tasks according to your abilities.”
“You said ‘on first glance’,” I reminded him.
“Yeah. So, I was looking through and I’m an accountant, remember, not a farm manager, but I noticed more and more money was going out on things like feed.
There were several feed companies and I searched them online, of course, and found two of them.
I couldn’t find the other three, but money was still being paid out to them.
I asked Jessica how many horses they had four years ago and she told me, and I asked how many more had they purchased since then and she said they’d sold six and bought eight.
The feed sums didn’t add up for two additional horses. ”
“Could Jessica have gotten the numbers wrong?”
“She said no, plus, the figures weren’t a little bit out, they were way out.
Anyway, I tried finding the other feed companies and they didn’t exist so I went back to the spreadsheet.
The same fake companies were being paid for two years, then all of a sudden, there was a canceled check showing up in the figures from six weeks ago. ”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Doesn’t that just mean Joel wrote a check and canceled it before it was paid out?”
“Sometimes, yes, but I checked again and there was a total of four of these checks over a short period of time and the total amounts came to exactly the same as all the fake payouts.” Sebastian scrolled through to the most recent spreadsheet and pointed to a cell.
Lily and I leaned in and exchanged glances over his head.
“So the money disappears consistently for two years and then, a few weeks ago, it’s all paid back?”
Sebastian nodded. “Yes.”
“Is that a bad thing really?”
“It’s totally a bad thing,” said Lily. “He was stealing from the farm, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. It was subtle and it built up to a significant sum.”
“But where did the money go?”
“My guess is into a bank account that ultimately Joel operates.”
“It couldn’t be anyone else?”
“I don’t see how. Jessica said Joel managed the accounts.
He’d run through everything with her when it came to filing their taxes, but otherwise, she was hands off.
She was perfectly capable of running the business, of course, but she wanted to be with the horses and Joel needed to feel like he was the boss of something. ”
“What if he were funneling it to someone else?” I wondered.
Sebastian shrugged. “It’s possible. I don’t have the banking details but it’ll show up in the farm’s bank accounts. I was going to recommend to Jessica that she get a forensic accountant to do a deep dive.”
“If he were stealing, why put the money back?” I asked.
“If Jessica was asking questions, he might have thought it was in his best interests to return it.”
“Or if he thought she was going to divorce him and their finances would be scrutinized?” I asked.
“Or if he was going to divorce her and wanted to get as much money out of her as he could,” said Lily, “but then I don’t see why he’d give it all back.”
“The pre-nup might have ensured he got more through stealing than waiting for the outcome of that.” An alarm bell sounded in my mind. “Do we really think he stole the money and sat on it all this time?”
“He had expensive tastes,” said Sebastian, “and I know he’s gambled in the past. I think it’s more likely he got a cash injection somewhere and plugged the gap with it.”
“Who would give him such a large amount of money? That’s not chump change,” said Lily.
“A loan shark,” I said, thinking about what Sebastian had witnessed.
“The first check was canceled around the time when he threatened me,” said Sebastian.
“It still doesn’t make sense,” I decided. “Why borrow from a loan shark to pay back money you’ve stolen that no one has noticed is missing?”
“He might have been desperate.”
“So how was he going to pay the loan shark?” I said, puzzling it through. “Sebastian, you recognized this guy. Would you recognize him again?”
“I can do better than that. His name is Jerry Fitch,” he said, “and he operates out of a bar called The Broken Tap, off the highway to Fort Charles.”
“Guess where we’re going next,” I said to Lily.
“No need to guess. I’ve got your back.”
“It’s not the type of place for ladies,” warned Sebastian.
“We’ve been to worse places,” I said.
“This is the worst. Even I wouldn’t go in and I’m a man. If I describe Fitch, you can wait outside and look out for him but even then, you should probably take someone with you.”
I pointed at Lily. “I’m taking her.”
“Are you armed?” he asked.
“I’ve got two arms,” said Lily and wiggled her shoulders.
Sebastian turned in his chair to fix her with a serious, unamused look. “I meant a gun. Even if you had a gun, they’d probably just use it on you. I’m serious, don’t go, there has to be another way.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, knowing that I would for a whole two seconds before I ignored his warning. “Can you send me a copy of this spreadsheet?”
“I’ll do it now.”
By the time we left, after warning me again that the dive bar was not the place for ladies or nice folk of any description, Sebastian seemed to have lost some of his gloom. I knew he’d probably crash again once the high of helping Jessica had worn off, but that was inevitable.
He’d given us valuable intel and another piece of the puzzle.
“Joel is a cheat and a swindler,” said Lily as we buckled up. “Poor Jessica!”
“It sounds like she was putting all the pieces together before she died. I still don’t know if this means Jessica was murdered or if she suffered an unfortunate accident, but I do believe she wasn’t going to let Joel get away with it.”
“Do you think he knows about the will yet?”
“Since he didn’t realize she was onto him, it probably hasn’t occurred to him to check. As far as we know, he never knew she went to visit a lawyer so it’s going to be a horrible surprise for him.”
“Poor Jessica,” said Lily again. “Her last few weeks must have been unbearable.”
“All we can do is help her now,” I said.
Fort Charles was in the opposite direction of the farm, and the highway leading there only a few miles from Sebastian’s home. Lily switched on the radio, running through the frequencies until she found a station playing pop classics.
“Can you call Solomon for me?” I asked, reconsidering Sebastian’s words.
“Sure.” Lily dialed and pressed “speakerphone,” holding the phone up so we could both speak and listen.
“Sweetheart,” said Solomon, the warmth in his voice wrapping me up like a hug.
“Honey,” said Lily.
“Where is my wife?” Solomon’s voice turned businesslike.
“She’s driving. I’m facilitating this call.”
“We might need help,” I said.
“What kind of help?”
“Muscle.”
“Do I want to know why?”
“We’re going to The Broken Tap off the highway to Fort Charles.”
“Delgado and I are on our way. Wait outside,” said Solomon promptly. “We’ll be armed.” He disconnected.
I glanced at Lily. “How bad a bar is this?” I asked, dread looming within me.