Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“I hate airing my dirty laundry to you. And it’s not even that I barely know you. It’s that I don’t want this to be how I know you.”
It’s an honest answer. I hear it in the rasp of her voice. I see it in the torment in her eyes. And every honest answer she gives me makes me trust her more. “We all have our dirty laundry, Faith. I told you my father fucked all of my many nannies. I don’t talk about my father. Or the many nannies.”
“You don’t?”
“No, Faith, I don’t.”
“You thought I needed to hear that,” she says, but it’s not a question, and she reaches for the cup again, withdrawing.
“Why did you just try to shut down on me?” I ask.
She sets the cup down, a few beats passing before her eyes lift and meet mine. “I appreciate that you shared that with me.”
“But you withdrew.”
“No. I just… I was taking in the impact of your statement. Taking stock of myself, too, and my reaction to…you, Nick. And I don’t mean to seem unappreciative of your offer to help. I’m sorry. I am embarrassed about this. And you are very unexpected.”
“I met you while those two assholes were trying to collect from you at the winery. I knew what you were going through when I pursued you.”
“You knew you wanted to get me naked,” she says, giving a humorless laugh. “There’s a difference.”
“I repeat. I’m here. I’m not leaving. I’m helping you. If that makes me a bull, let’s fight about it and get past it.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, too.”
It’s not hard to surmise the “too” means the collectors, but my gut says it’s more; avoiding an emotional trigger right now, I focus us on business. “If you don’t want to replace Frank, I’ll manage Frank. But I need details from you first.”
“Details,” she repeats.
“Yes. Details. If it’s easier, I can tell you what I learned when I was researching you.”
“Please don’t. I’d rather not know. Bottom line, without the family drama. My father left the winery to my mother on the condition I inherit on her death. She had no will, and she was apparently six months behind on a note my father took from the bank five years ago. Actually, she was behind on most things. Taxes, vendors, the bank.”
“Has the winery been losing money?”
“No. That’s just it. She didn’t run it. I did. All of it for most of the two years since my father died, and I had a tight rein on our profit and loss. We were—are—making a net of forty grand a month before her income.”
“But she wasn’t paying the bank note and obviously select vendors.”
“Several months before she died, I started getting collection calls. I confronted her, and she said she had it handled.”
“Define handled.”
“That’s exactly what I said, but she shut me out.”
“And you have no idea where the money is?”
“I’m locked out of her accounts because the bank keeps rejecting every executor we try to name with a conflict-of-interest claim.”
I tap the table, my mind working. If her mother needed money, blackmailing my father makes sense. But she clearly didn’t use it to pay the bills. Was Faith’s mother being blackmailed along with my father? Was her mother planning to leave the winery behind and run off with someone?
“It’s bad, right?” Faith asks when I don’t immediately respond.
“We’ll back the bank off,” I say. “And we’ll get you your executor and buy you some time. I can’t promise how long, but some time. Have you paid the taxes?”
“Yes. I used what I had left of my inheritance from my father. And I’m paying the vendors for current services and then some, which worked for some. Not all. I would have taken a loan on this house, but the note is too small, and I can’t sell it with a profit.”
“How much are you behind with the bank?”
“Sixty thousand dollars, and there’s another hundred thousand owed to vendors.”
And yet, my father wrote her mother a million dollars in checks. It just doesn’t add up. I glance at the loan papers she’s given me. “This note isn’t even close to what your property would be worth. Have you had the winery valued? Once I clear this probate issue, have you considered—”
“No,” she says, reading my mind. “I can’t sell it. I promised my father it would stay in the family, and I’d never sell it before the bank foreclosed anyway.”
“So your mother knew that if you didn’t take care of the place, you’d inherit a disaster.”
“Yes. She knew. But it wasn’t about the inheritance to me. This was never my life or my dream, but she knew that my father’s wishes were—and are—sacred to me.”
And so Faith gave up her art and her life—which to some would be a motive to kill her mother—grabbed the reins, and tried to end the hellish cycle of the past two years, but that just doesn’t ring true to me. The ways I could fit my father into the equation are many. However, that he found out about the murder doesn’t support a reason for the checks he wrote to her mother.