Chapter 6: What the Books Were Hiding
Gerald's office smelled the same as it always had — old paper and coffee and something faintly like cedar.
He had been in the same building on Broad Street for thirty years.
The framed photo of my father on his credenza was from a fishing trip they had taken in 1998.
I sat across from him and the accountant he had brought in, a woman named Carla Simms who had spent twenty years doing forensic work for the state attorney's office before going private.
She had a yellow legal pad covered in numbers and a laptop open beside it.
"Show me," I said.
Carla turned the laptop toward me.
"Starting twenty-six months ago, money began moving through a subsidiary account attached to the parent company.
Small amounts at first — forty, sixty thousand.
Then larger.
The pattern is consistent with what we call layering."
"Someone was cleaning money through the company."
"That's what the pattern suggests, yes." She tapped the screen.
"The deposits came in tagged as consulting fees and licensing revenue.
But there are no corresponding contracts.
No deliverables.
No counter-party documentation of any kind."
"Who authorized the accounts?"
"Marcus Reeves is the signatory on all of them." She paused.
"But the accounts were opened eight months before your father's death.
When your father was still technically the controlling officer."
Gerald leaned forward.
"Which means either your father authorized them—"
"Or someone used his authority without his knowledge," I said.
"Yes."
I thought about my father in his last year.
The visits I had made, the phone calls, the way he had still been sharp about the things that mattered to him — his family, his history, his principles.
He had not been a man who would have allowed his company to be used this way.
Not knowingly.
"The amendment to the trust," I said.
"It was filed eight months before he died."
"Yes," Gerald said.
"Same window as the accounts being opened."
"Yes."
I sat back.
Marcus had moved fast after securing control of the trust amendment.
He had opened the accounts, started the money flow, and then waited for my father to die so the controlling interest would transfer cleanly.
The forgery hadn't just been about the inheritance.
It had been about making sure no one could challenge the financial activity once it started.
"Who is the money coming from?" I asked Carla.
"We're still tracing it.
But two of the inbound transfers originate from shell companies registered in Delaware." She turned a page on the legal pad.
"One of those shells has a registered agent we've seen before in other cases.
It's connected to a man named Terrence Obi."
The name meant nothing to me.
Gerald's expression said it meant something to him.
"Gerald."
He folded his hands on the desk.
"Terrence Obi is a name that has appeared in two federal investigations in the past four years.
Neither resulted in charges.
He is very careful.
He uses intermediaries."
"And one of his intermediaries was my brother."
"That appears to be the case."
I stood up and walked to the window.
Broad Street below was quiet in the mid-morning.
A woman walked a dog past the iron fence of St.
Michael's churchyard.
A delivery truck idled at the corner.
My father had built something honest.
He had spent forty years building something that bore his name and reflected his character.
And Marcus had turned it into a laundry.
"Does Marcus know you've pulled the books?" I asked.
"Not yet," Gerald said.
"But he will know soon.
He still has access to the company's administrative systems.
When Carla's team requested the records this morning, a notification would have been generated."
I turned around.
"How long before he realizes what we found?"
Carla checked her watch.
"If he's monitoring his alerts?
He may already know."
My phone buzzed.
Marcus.
I let it ring.
It rang again immediately after.
Then a text: *Naomi.
Call me.
Now.
This is not what you think.*
I showed Gerald the screen.
He read it.
"He knows."
"Yes." I put the phone face-down on the desk.
"What do we need before we go to the authorities?"
"We have enough to open an investigation today," Carla said.
"The forensic comparison on the signature, Raymond Hale's statement and recordings, your mother's statement, and the financial records together constitute a strong predicate." She paused.
"But if you want a clean case — one that doesn't give Marcus room to argue he was acting under your father's instruction — we need one more thing."
"What?"
"Your father's medical records from the last eighteen months of his life." She met my eyes.
"Marcus has already suggested your father was not competent.
If that argument gains any traction, it muddies the forgery charge.
We need documentation that establishes your father's mental clarity during the period the amendment was filed."
I thought of his doctor.
A quiet man named Ellison who had treated my father for fifteen years.
"I can get those," I said.
"Today?"
"I'll try."
Gerald walked me to the door.
In the hallway, out of Carla's hearing, he put a hand briefly on my arm.
"Naomi.
Marcus called me this morning.
Before you arrived."
I stopped.
"What did he say?"
"He said you were acting out of grief.
That you had always resented him for being closer to your father.
That the forensic report was something you had manufactured." Gerald's voice was steady.
"He asked me to delay any action until he could bring in his own attorney and his own expert."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him I had been your father's attorney for twenty-two years," Gerald said.
"And that I knew his signature better than anyone alive." He paused.
"And then I told him I had already made copies of everything and sent them to a secure location."
I looked at him.
"He didn't take that well," Gerald said simply.
I almost smiled.
"No.
I don't imagine he did."
I took the elevator down to the lobby and pushed through the front door into the warm Charleston air.
My phone buzzed again.
Not Marcus this time.
A number I didn't recognize.
Different from Raymond's.
I answered.
"Ms.
Reeves." A man's voice.
Smooth.
Unhurried.
"My name is Terrence Obi.
I think we should speak before this goes any further.
I can be very reasonable.
And I think you'll find that your brother's situation is considerably more complicated than you currently understand."
May you like
The street noise around me seemed to drop away.
"I'm listening," I said.
