Holly Banks Full of Angst (Village of Primm, #1)(82)

“What is it?”

“If you lose your job, do we have to sell this house?”

“Most likely.”

“So we might have to leave the Village of Primm?”

“That’s two questions.”

She couldn’t get a read on him. The poor guy had dark circles under his eyes. “Are you sure you can’t tell me what happened?”

Jack walked Holly to the living room couch, which was positioned beneath the bedsheet Holly had hung in the window for privacy and wanted so desperately to take down and replace with actual curtains. Fluffy white clouds on pale-blue flannel? Holly was pretty sure clouds had never been used as an element of design in curtain decor.

“Sit down,” Jack said.

They sat, the couch beige and old and—Holly hoped—not hiding Charlotte beneath it. Jack didn’t know Greta was in town; nor did he know she’d brought a pregnant cat from the Vegas Strip.

“The man I’m investigating will most likely be brought up on insurance fraud.”

“Michael St. James,” Holly confirmed. “Whose wife made a costume for our daughter.”

“Yes.” He fell silent. Picked at something beneath his thumbnail.

“She calls him ‘My Love.’”

“I know.”

Holly reached over to hold his hand.

He looked off awhile, toward a mirror leaning against the wall. Then he began.

“I really wish I wasn’t part of this because apparently, My Love’s a super nice guy. He’s a music collector. Albums, clippings, books, authentic posters. That sort of thing. Seems harmless. A family man. But whenever something big comes up at a music auction, it whets his appetite.”

Holly heard Greta getting something for Ella in the kitchen. Holly had left them in the family room with a big piece of poster board. Ella’s thesaurus assignment was due Friday, so they were cutting yellow circles out of construction paper to draw smiley faces on them. The plan was to glue them around the edges of the poster board and then fill the inside space with words they found in the thesaurus. It occurred to Holly her mom might come barging into the living room before Holly had the chance to tell Jack she was there.

“An auction house in Stockholm announced a large block of rare ABBA memorabilia up for auction at the end of the month,” Jack said. “We can confirm at least three instances where Michael St. James has committed insurance fraud and then laundered the money through the offshore shell company, probably to fund his addiction to music and album collecting. We think he’s in the process of doing it again. Right now. In the Village of Primm.”

“But how? With what?”

Jack exhaled. Heavily. Again. “Okay, so first, we incorporated the offshore companies for them. Mostly in the British Virgin Islands. A place called Devil’s Bay.”

“Devil’s Bay?” Holly remembered that name—from the postage stamps on the envelope the G-Class visitor delivered to the house. “Who was that guy? The man who delivered the envelope. Why’d he deliver the envelope here and not the office?”

“Holly, please.”

“Is he with the vineyard?”

“Yes,” said Jack. “And he’s highly agitated about the bug infestation. They can’t risk an infestation. It would kill the vines and lower the appraised value of the vineyard.”

Holly remembered seeing him through the glass wall of the boardroom at the Topiary Park. The way he chased that poor horticulturist, he did seem pretty angry. “So is that guy under investigation?”

“No.” Jack rubbed his temples. “He’s just a pain in the butt because he wants something in the Village of Primm he can’t have.”

The G-Class visitor had unnerved Penelope, that day on Holly’s porch. Why? Was any of this connected? “What was in the envelope?”

“Nothing. That’s not connected to any of this. An offshore investor from the group that bought the vineyard wants to buy the Stone House next to it. That’s what was in the envelope. An offer to buy the Stone House using the vineyard as collateral for the purchase. But if the vines die, the vineyard won’t be worth as much, so the purchase of the Stone House won’t go through. But more than that, right now, the offer isn’t even on the table because a prominent family owns the Stone House and doesn’t want to unearth—in their words—an ‘unspeakable thing’ that happened on the property. They’d rather let it fall into disrepair.”

“Unspeakable thing?”

“Before you get excited, there’s nothing left to tell about the Stone House and its history. It only matters to the family wanting it forgotten. All of that, the envelope, the offer to purchase the Stone House, all of that is totally unrelated to what’s causing all the trouble at work right now.” Jack rubbed his eyes. Cleared his throat.

“Keep going,” said Holly. “Go back to what you were saying about My Love wanting to buy ABBA memorabilia at auction to add to his music collection.”

“Right. Okay,” said Jack, reaching to take three coffee coasters from a stack on the table. He lined them up side by side, three in a row. “Here it is in a nutshell. Three separate issues, but they’re all connected. Step one.” He touched the first coffee coaster with his finger. “Set up an offshore shell company. Step two.” He touched the second coffee coaster. “Break the law. Step three.” He touched the third coffee coaster. “Get caught. You following me?”