Chapter 13 #2
Bugatti winced. “All I can tell you is that my father was asked to handle the estate. Ricky’s parents were busy, always traveling, doing all kinds of things, and they didn’t have time for a child who had … special needs.”
She closed her eyes at that because obviously the needs that he had were rather special, but it still stung like hell when put in that unflattering context.
Trent grabbed her hand and suggested, “Let’s get all the information first.”
She nodded. “So, do we have any answers as to how or why?”
“No, not yet,” Bugatti said, clearly not happy to relay any of this news. “I’ve handed over as much information as I could to somebody named Tesla. She was pretty … persuasive, I have to admit, but now I’m a little concerned over the legalities of it.”
“Oh, I don’t think the legalities are a problem,” Oakley stated, his tone hard.
Trent added, “Speaking from experience, if you hadn’t turned it over to Tesla, she would have made your life pretty difficult.”
“So, she was the right person to turn it over to?” Bugatti asked.
“Definitely,” Trent declared, followed by a smirk.
“Well, thank God for that. She was pretty insistent, and we went into a lot of the information about the parents, but honestly, every time you contacted me, I just … wanted it all to go away because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. If the parents got back in touch with me, it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but they never did. ”
“How do you know they’re alive then?” she asked the lawyer.
“I don’t,” he replied. “I have no idea if they are alive or dead, but it takes seven years to declare them dead if they don’t show up in response to my queries. For seven years, I need to keep everything kosher and aboveboard so that Ricky is looked after through his developmental phases.”
Tears filled her eyes as she thought about what this would do to him.
Trent spoke when he saw how upset Naomi appeared.
“He’s a strong boy, and he’s exceptionally smart, so in his heart he probably already knows that this would be an easier answer than some of the alternatives,” Trent shared.
“If they’re dead and gone, it would be rough.
However, maybe that’s easier than thinking they just didn’t want anything to do with him. ”
Naomi took several deep breaths and added, “I hear you. I just think the whole thing is ugly.”
“It is ugly,” Trent acknowledged, “but maybe they were doing the right thing after all. I don’t know what to say because we don’t have any facts.” He turned to Bugatti and asked, “You don’t have any other information?”
“No, I gave it all to Tesla, in terms of everything I do know. Basically, just that they had some sort of shipping industry and that there’s a lot of money and responsibilities that come with handling the estate.”
“How much money are we talking about?” Trent asked.
Bugatti shook his head and squirmed. “I can’t name a specific figure because it’s tied up in all kinds of businesses. A lot of money is tied up in physical assets that make up the estate, while still more is invested. If I had to guess? Likely close to fifty million, give or take.”
“And what happens to it if they are gone?” Trent asked Bugatti.
“It all goes to Ricky,” the lawyer replied. “As far as I am aware, he is the only living heir to the whole empire.”
“Good God,” she muttered. “Of course it should go to him. It’s his family, or whatever is left of it, but the fact that you’re even thinking that he may not even have any family left alive is horrific.”
“I don’t know what to think,” the lawyer admitted, “and, no, I wasn’t being very forthcoming because I wasn’t sure. Then I got word about what happened to you two, and it made me realize that something incredibly illegal could be going on.”
She stared at him and snorted. “So, of course, even now you’re just trying to save your own butt, right?”
He flushed, then glared at her, and snapped, “What am I supposed to do? I’ve been in the same boat as you, in that we’re both employees of the same mess. It might make you feel better to sit there and judge me for it, but I’m really just doing my job.”
She frowned as she looked over at Trent, who nodded.
“We’ve got enough problems right now,” Trent intervened, “so let’s just park this one and see if we can come up with answers.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, as she sat back, staring at Bugatti. Then she asked Trent, “What do we do from here?”
*
Trent was still hyper this evening. Naomi and Ricky had both gone to bed.
Trent didn’t see how they could sleep as there had been way-too-much excitement, particularly with this latest information.
He was thinking about everything said and what they hadn’t said because Naomi had a really good point.
Where did they go from here?
What was her responsibility in all this?
And how could anybody leave Ricky to suffer like this?
Maybe his parents didn’t want to leave Ricky, and that would make a huge difference to Ricky, but the rest of them still needed the legalities to be sorted out if the parents were, indeed, dead.
The lawyer was also concerned, especially now that he hadn’t heard from anybody in almost two years with the exception of a couple short phone calls.
He had looked in his files and then realized just how long it had been.
He now wondered what his role in all of this would end up looking like.
Trent still felt something was off about Bugatti, but then Trent felt that way about most lawyers.
As far as he was concerned, attorneys were after a lot of things, but rarely the same things their clients needed, what served their clients’ best interests.
Surely looking after a little boy and making sure the family was there and was doing what they needed to do was more important than Bugatti’s own bank account, but apparently not—at least not according to everything Trent had seen so far. And that was, of course, the challenge.
Unable to sit still, he got up and grabbed a cup of tea from Naomi’s stash, which was quite a selection.
He went through it looking for something that might help him chill out a little bit, as his mind still raced.
He had just so many options, so many things to consider, that he was struggling with planning what to do next.
When Mason sent him a text, asking if he was available for a phone call, Trent immediately responded with a yes. When he sat back down to talk to him, Mason’s call came through.
“There have been no transactions under their Social Security numbers nor in their US bank accounts,” he began, his tone grim.
“We’re searching for anything else in other countries, but that could be under false names or fake companies and things like that.
The information from the lawyer has been processed and, so far, to the best of our knowledge, Ricky’s parents have just disappeared. ”
Trent swore at that because, if Tesla didn’t find anything, it meant a whole lot of things.
“And considering the message that was sent regarding the sailing trip …” Mason began and left it at that.
“Yeah, that’s kind of what we’re hanging on to. One option is that it might have been in some ways either a call for help or—”
“A mistake,” Mason interrupted, his tone bitter, “because they were still using those numbers. The potentially bigger problem is that they may have been part of the drug running.” Mason continued.
“Nobody has been able to get photos, and even the ones that you sent via the police sketch aren’t triggering anything anywhere.
The lawyer also couldn’t confirm that was even them because he’d never met them in person.
So, we have that dubious acknowledgment as well.
And Bugatti’s father, while there but not quite there? … You know what I mean.”
“I do know what you mean.”
Mason added, “Unfortunately that’s not a big help either.”
“No, it sure isn’t,” Trent agreed.
“How’s Ricky doing?”
“He’s okay. I don’t know that he’s processing any of this that easily, any more than Naomi is.”
“Of course not,” Mason said. “When you think about it, they’ve been expecting the family to be there, … just on the surface, just out in the shadows somewhere, doing their own thing, only to pop in one time and not the next.”
“For all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing,” Trent acknowledged, his tone smooth.
“So, it’s not any more valuable to know that they’re not there.
And it doesn’t add any clarity. It just adds more confusion and questions.
They have been gone for a long time, two years according to Bugatti, or did something happen recently?
Were they expecting to come back and just couldn’t? ”
“Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it?” Mason noted. “If they expected to come back and couldn’t for some reason, we could be potentially looking at their being dead.”
“And, if that’s the case, and we can’t find any proof, it’ll be seven years before they can be declared dead, or so I’ve been told by the family’s lawyer,” he shared. “That means uncertainty for everyone for a very long time.”
“Agreed,” Mason replied. “Yet Ricky is only six, … going on seven soon. In a way, it won’t impact him that badly as long as nothing changes—if Naomi is willing to stay and look after him, though I guess that would be up to the lawyer.”
“It would be on the lawyer to a certain extent, but it also would depend on whether there is any documentation giving further instructions. Not that everybody ever sets up things like that,” Trent pointed out.
“The lawyer says there is a lot of money, and he just manages the payouts up to a certain amount. He does the taxes and all that. Should there be anything else?”