The Second Sister

“Good!” Hayley said. “That should make her happy.”

“I gather that won’t be a problem, then?” Gavin asked.

“Not with us,” Hayley assured him, looking to Leigh for confirmation.

She nodded at both of them.

“Then we can dispense with that part of this meeting. If you have any questions after you’ve looked over his will, feel free to call me. Ira wanted to meet with you on another issue completely.”

Gavin’s expression turned grave. He laid his palms flat on the desk and made eye contact with them.

“You know that Marcus was in charge of caring for Heartskeep under Ira’s supervision. What you may not know is that Ira was confined to a wheelchair for the past two and a half years. He didn’t get around much before that, either.”

“I know,” Hayley told him. “And Marcus never bothered to take care of the grounds or the buildings.”

“No,” Gavin agreed, “He didn’t. But he did bill the estate for hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs that were never made.”

“What?” Hayley demanded.

“Copies of the receipts are in your packets. Eden’s doesn’t contain this information. I was going to ask her to stay while I told you about this privately, first, but…” He shrugged.

“Marcus bilked the estate?” Hayley asked.

“Ira transferred several hundred thousand dollars into an account managed by Marcus shortly after your mother disappeared. He signed off on all the bills presented to him without sending anyone out to make sure the work was actually done. It wasn’t until I happened to drive past the entrance to the estate one day that I realized something was wrong. We had just paid Marcus a fortune for a completely new driveway that had never been installed.”

“You can say that again,” Hayley told him with asperity.

He held up a sheaf of papers. “I suspect all of these bills are phony. Some of these companies don’t exist except on paper.”

Leigh looked at the photocopy in her folder and nodded. “Computer generated?”

“That’s my guess. As near as I can tell without an audit, your estate has been defrauded of over six hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

Hayley gaped at him. Bram, sitting silently beside her, covered her hand.

Gavin’s eyes, which always seemed to see so much more than they should, pinned Leigh where she sat.

“You and I will need to work closely together. Will you be all right with that?”

Her heartbeat gave a little stutter. She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “Of course. Will you?”

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