Acts of Desperation (20 page)

I stood inside Jax’s home office and stared at boxes and boxes of material stacked almost to the ceiling.

“Wow,” I said, looking at the tallest stack.

“Well, that’s the one I’ve already been through. I think his goal was to bury us in paperwork—not really anything new to this profession—but he’s taken it to a new level. I have to give him credit at least. Anders had to know Sarah would never have the money to pay a lawyer to go through all this. That’s probably why he was so pissed when she switched attorneys to someone at our firm. He had to assume I was doing this pro bono, but he couldn’t be sure if I’d take the time to go through all of this. I bet he got nervous,” he said.

“That makes sense. He was constantly putting pressure on her to call off the divorce. He cornered her every opportunity he could get and it did get a little worse after you took over.”

“I bet.”

“How did you even know where to start?” I asked. “This looks overwhelming.” I turned to him and then leaned against his desk.

“Well, you remember how I said he had me draw up the papers but the wording was suspicious?”

“Yes.”

“It was the wording for a trust he was establishing for the boys.” He motioned to two overstuffed blue chairs across from his desk. “Come here and sit down next to me. There’s a lot to explain.” I walked over and we both sat. I turned my body so our knees touched.

“Ok,”
I said. “I remember you mentioning that, but what was weird about it?”

“Anders admitted to having a living trust
.”

“A living trust?” I scowled.

“Yes, and it contained sixty thousand dollars. He requested, and Sarah agreed to, a funeral costing no more than twenty thousand dollars to be paid from said trust. He wants a grand display with horse drawn carriages, bag pipes, and a twenty-one gun salute so that everyone can celebrate his life.”

“Geez, that’s not narcissistic at all,” I said with a chuckle.

Jax laughed. “I know, but Sarah agreed and I was through arguing. But here is the red flag. He asked that it state—in these specific words—that the remainder of his
estate
, not his trust, but
estate
be divided up evenly between the two boys. Sarah thinks the remainder of the trust will be twenty thousand each, available when they turn eighteen so they have a small college fund. Anders knows the children and their security is a major weak spot for Sarah so he used that against her. And, I chose not to poke the sleeping dragon on his choice of terminology. He assumes everyone around him is dumb and he’s far superior so I let him think that, playing into his personality disorder. Again, in the meantime, Sarah raises the children and struggles, for years possibly, but when the money is found, it’s his one last ‘got ya’ from the grave.”

“What a complete shit.”

“He truly is.”

“I can’t believe
he has a living trust. What a total slime ball.”

“I couldn’t agree more, but it was just another desperate measure to avert a financial mishap and to protect himself. So he had me write in that the amount left in his estate
would go to the children. But of course, if Anders and Sarah weren’t divorced, the money obviously would have gone to Sarah.”

“God,” I said, shaking my head, and then slumped back in the chair. I knew Anders was conniving, but
hearing and realizing all that he did was still shocking. He’d started protecting himself years before Sarah even suspected anything. He established his business so that it was worth nothing without him. He creatively cut his income and blamed it on Sarah so her support was cut in half. And now hearing that he’d established a living trust made me furious. But, I knew there was more and I craved the details. “So, what’s left in your discovery?”

“The big chunk of missing money I found. It’s the most devious thing he’s done yet.”

“I can’t wait to hear.”

“
So right after he collapsed in our office that day, I started looking at his travel history. Sarah said he was always gone so it seemed the most logical place. I eliminated quite a few locations as nothing out of the ordinary when I found clients in each of those states. But what struck me most were his repeated trips to New York.”

“Yeah, Sarah said he went there a lot,” I said.

“But what I found most curious was he doesn’t have any clients there,” he added.

“Really,” I said. “That is interesting.”

“Even more so was while he was in New York, there’s no information on where he stayed—no hotel records, and Sarah said he’d be gone for a week at a time. I highly doubt he was sleeping in a car.”

“He could have had a girlfriend in the area. I hear he had plenty,” I said.

“It was a possibility. He started traveling there as soon as he started his business. But I noticed the trips to New York spiked shortly after Sarah filed for divorce. So I looked at his phone records. Surely if he had a girl in the area he would have been calling whoever she was a lot, right?”

“Right.” I nodded.

“But there weren’t any of those either.”

“O-k.”

“So then why was he going there so often? He didn’t appear to be staying anywhere, there were no phone calls to anyone in the area, and no clients to justify the trips—he was essentially off the grid for a week at a time.”

“Couldn’t he have used cash for the hotels? Cash doesn’t leave a trail.”

“Yes, but hotels still require a credit card to hold a reservation and human beings are creatures of habit. He used his credit card for everything, but it still wouldn’t explain the absence of phone records.” I sat, perplexed. “So I wondered, what does New York have that other cities don’t?”

“What?” I asked.

“Airports. New York is a huge travelling hub and you can go anywhere in the world from there.”

“Very true.” I agreed. “But so is Cincinnati.”

He chuckled. “Not as big as New York. And obviously he wanted it to look like he had business there. And side note, I’m not ruling this out as a possible location of a large real estate purchase that we don’t know about yet.”

“Oh my gosh! I’m such an idiot. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re an honest person. Honest people don’t do these things.”

“True,” I said, shaking my head while silently beating myself up for having been so obtuse.

“So then, I went through all of his credit card receipts—there has to be over a thousand in here. He deducted travel expenses from his taxes so he was meticulous with keeping track of those. Then I discovered a receipt buried deep within the rest whose number didn’t match any of the others. But what was most interesting was…it was in French.”

“French?” I said, confused.

“He messed up.” He grinned. “It was his only mistake. So I thought if there are no banks housing large sums of money for him in the states, and Sarah said huge chunks of money went missing after she filed for divorce then the only thing that could make sense was an off-shore account.”

“Holy shi—” I covered my mouth.

He smiled and raised his brows. “The two most well-known places are the Caymans—which would make no sense since he was flying to New York—and Switzerland. And what languages do they speak in Switzerland.”

I paused for a beat. “French I assume?”

“Well French and German mostly,” he said.

“Oh my gosh, Anders’s mom was Dutch so he knew some Danish and German—enough to get by I imagine—and Sarah mentioned a long time ago that he was learning to speak French because of one of his new clients,” I said, taking a moment to digest it all. “So what did you do? Start calling every hotel and bank in Switzerland? The Swiss are known for their secrecy. There’s no way they would just give information out about their patrons travel over the phone.”

“I have a few tricks up my sleeve...and a couple of friends in convenient places. I worked closely with a couple of my buddies, actually the same ones I met up with at the bar the first night I saw you. They are my go-to computer geniuses. I mentioned this situation to them and
the off-shore account I was trying to find. They said the simplest way to find it was to hack in to Anders’s email. And, sadly, that was a lot easier than it sounds.”

“Well aren’t you kind of amazing.”

“They don’t call me the best for nothing baby.” He laughed, and yes, I rolled my eyes. “We found the bank and the first account after only about a day. And voila, the first chunk.”

I laughed and nodded as he went through the rest of his discovery. Anders had woven an intricate web of lies, and Jax had figured it out. We continued to work closely together over the next few days and were able to find another account with more hidden money without much effort. When all was said and done, we located over a million dollars, and there was the possibility of more still lurking in the shadows. It was more money than Sarah would have ever imagined—it was more than
I could have ever imagined. All of it proved how deceitful Anders really was. I pictured him laughing on the inside believing he’d fooled Sarah—again—but now the joke was on him.

****

When I got the call from Sarah that Anders’s body was failing, I dropped what I was doing to be with her. I arrived just as the kids were leaving the Hospice facility with my parents. I watched from my car as my parents loaded two very upset little boys into the back seat of their white Toyota Camry. My dad got behind the wheel, and they drove away.

I walked through the glass doors and down the hall to Anders’s room. A nurse was pushing a dose of something into Anders’s I.V., and Sarah was seated at his side holding his hand.

“How’s he doing?” I said, pulling my chair up next to hers.

“He’s in a lot of pain. He can hardly speak anymore. She just gave him some more pain medicine to make him more comfortable,” she said, looking at me for a split second then right back to him.

I watched as he drew in shallow breaths, and although I felt awful for Sarah, I felt no sympathy for him—I couldn’t. I wondered if this was God’s way of making him suffer for his sins. The way he’d manipulated my sister’s mind and took advantage of her innocence was reprehensible. He deserved every bit of the agony he appeared to be in.

The nurse leaned down and spoke softly to Sarah. Sarah nodded her head as the nurse patted her shoulder then she left us. After the door shut, I looked down at his frail, yellowed hand under my sister’s healthy pink skin, then up to his closed eyes. My pulse began to race as I debated with myself. Could I let him die thinking he pulled it off? I came to my decision within seconds. I couldn’t. I couldn’t remain silent and watch my sister suffer senselessly.

“I need to tell you something, Sarah.” She looked up at me curiously. “I can’t just sit here and watch cancer eat away at this shell of a human being and his decaying soul—”

“Sember!” Sarah said.

“Please, hear me out.” Sarah grimaced, but I continued. “He lied to you Sarah. Jax and I found what he’s been hiding.”

“What?” she said with a sigh. “You have
to let it go and now isn’t the time to do this.”

“He’s not broke and the divorce was a scheme to leave you with nothing.”

Anders’s heavy lids blinked open, and he opened his mouth to speak, but only a weak groan escaped. “Shh…,” I said, holding my finger up to my lips. “It’s my turn to talk now. I think you’ve said enough, don’t you?” I looked at Sarah. “Jax thought something was off weeks ago, and he went digging through all of his files. We found it.”

“What are you talking about?” Sarah asked then she looked at Anders. “What is she talking about?” But Anders only closed his eyes and turned his head away.

“It’s pointless. He’s incapable of telling the truth. We found his money—just over a million so far, but there could be more.”

Sarah took her hand off his as if his poisoned flesh suddenly burned her skin. She slumped back in her seat and let the information slowly sink in. “But…why would you do this to me? Are you really
that
evil?” she asked, staring at Anders. “Look at me!” But he remained motionless and silent. “LOOK AT ME!” Her skin flushed with rage.

The door to the room cracked open, and the nurse peaked her head in. “Is everything ok in here?”

I looked over and responded, “We’re fine. Just working through some emotions.”

The nurse nodded her head and gave what I imagined was her go-to sympathetic expression of saddened understanding. 

“It’s all yours, Sarah,” I said, as soon as the door clicked shut.

She looked at me, confused. “No.” She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “It can’t be.”

“It is.” I nodded.

“I signed those stupid papers, Sember—those stupid freaking papers!” She put her hands up to her face and covered her eyes. “Jax tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen to him. I can’t believe I—”

“The papers you signed don’t exist. And the hearing that took place in this room never happened. Do you understand?”

“No,” she said, confused.