Page 117 of The Bitterroot Inn (Jamison Valley 5)
He placed a gentle hand on my knee. “I told Nell I was coming to ask you, but really, I was coming to talk you out of it.”
“Oh.” I slumped against the door.
“After that, I told Nell to leave you alone and that I wouldn’t support her case if she tried to get custody of Coby. Miraculously, she dropped it for a while and moved to Grand Rapids to get out of Chicago. I finished up my residency and took an attending position at the hospital where Dad had worked. I thought that was the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t.”
He shook his head. “No. Nell decided to go after Coby again. I just happened to catch wind of it when I ran into one of her old friends at the hospital. I went to Grand Rapids to confront Nell that night.”
“And you convinced her to drop it. Otherwise I would have heard from her, right?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “She wasn’t going to drop it so I moved here the first time. I wanted to be close in case she came to Prescott. And it was my silent threat that if she pushed a custody fight, I’d expose her secret.”
More secrets? This was exhausting. Would we ever get through them all? “What secret?”
“That Nell had already blown through my dad’s insurance money and was living on Everett’s drug money.”
Shocked, I blinked a few times as I replayed his last statement. “She knew about Everett’s drug dealing?”
“No. Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“I’m confused. How was she living off his drug money if she didn’t know about it?”
“Everett only had one checking account when he died and the balance matched up to his hospital salary perfectly.”
That made sense. He wouldn’t have been able to hide his pill mill if he’d been keeping his money in plain sight. “So where was he putting his drug money?”
“In an account in Nell’s name.”
“So he’d hidden his money with his mom.”
Hunter nodded. “That’s right. Now, I’m not sure if Nell knew it was from drugs or if she just thought he was taking care of her since Dad was gone. Regardless, after he died, she would have been able to do the math and figure out where that money had come from.”
“How did you find out?” If I were Nell, I would have kept all that information to myself.
“By accident. You see, when Dad died, I got our house but I didn’t kick out Nell. I figured it had been her home too and Dad would have expected me to help take care of her. So she stayed in the house and I stayed in the pool house. I’d been living there during my residency because I hadn’t felt like buying my own place until I knew where my career was going to land me.”
“Okay.” I was still following, but just barely. “So you’re living next to Nell after your dad dies. Everett leaves for Montana, then he dies.”
“Right. And how does Nell deal with her grief? Two days after Everett’s funeral, she takes a three-month vacation to Mexico. She just up and leaves, leaving nothing but a note for me to find days later in the kitchen. Since I’m living there, I’m getting the mail. After a month, it was piled everywhere so I decided I’d better go through it all in case there’s something important. I find these bank statements and get curious. Then I find one last envelope of cash and get really curious since it has a Montana postmark.”
“Everett’s last donation to his mom’s secret account?”
“He must have mailed it the day he died. I started putting two and two together and realized where all that money had been coming from.”
I tipped my head back to the now-dark sky and studied the stars while I let everything sink in. “Why didn’t you turn in that money? Then Nell would have been broke.”
“Because of you.”
My head snapped straight. “Me?”
He nodded. “All I ever had to protect you and Coby was my knowledge about that money. You’re right, if I’d turned that money over to the authorities, they would have cleaned Nell out. But that money is the one thing she wants more than anything else. Without it as leverage, I had nothing to keep her from harassing you. I’d have played all my cards.”
“I guess they weren’t very good cards to begin with. She still came after Coby.”
“Yep,” Hunter muttered. “I thought she’d stay away with me living here again, but I guess not.”
“Why this time?”
