Page 23 of The Meeting
After arriving home, he threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt before organizing all the documents on his kitchen table. He had just finished when she knocked on the door.
Here goes nothing.
A smile lit her face as soon as he pulled open the door. She was beautiful—dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a purple blouse, a color that she seemed to enjoy wearing. Her auburn hair was accented perfectly against the blouse.
“Hey,” he said, not finding the words to muster a better sentence. He was about to ruin her night.
“Hi.” She gave him a quizzical look, which told him he wasn’t hiding his concern very well.
“Come in.”
She walked in and over to the table. “Is this all the paperwork on the expenses you were asking me about?”
“The important stuff, yes. I have an interesting find to show you.”
She sat down and looked back at him, waiting.
He sat down in the chair closest to her so he could show her the papers, with both of them being able to read them. “I’ve been looking over the financial statements. There was something bugging me, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, so I looked a little further.”
“And that’s when you asked me for the extra documents.”
“Right. So I called Drew’s lawyer, and she sent this. Well, sent these among several other documents, which I honestly believe she was filtering in to hide these.”
Kailynn’s eyebrow raised. “Hide what exactly?”
He pointed at the financial statement at the utilities expense. “Do you see the expenses right here?”
“Yes. Those are the utility bills.”
“Right. They should only be utility bills.”
“Did he mis-post some stuff?”
“This shows the amount for the various utilities—water, garbage, electric.” He slid a spreadsheet over to her he had made of the different utilities added up. “Now this shows everything that was posted in the account along with the documentation.” He pointed at another column of miscellaneous bills that were posted, along with the stack of papers he had printed.
He waited as she flipped through everything.
A few minutes passed before she whispered, “I don’t understand. Who’s Sheila Cale?”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.” He pulled another stack off the table and handed it to her. “These are your overhead costs.” Again, he showed her a spreadsheet of the proper expenses included in overhead, and then showed her additional expenses paid, along with the corroborating stack.
Kailynn shook her head. “No, this is Jessica, my friend. She does marketing for us, but she’s an employee.”
Chase looked at the documents, and then slid them back to her. “These aren’t payroll checks.”
“I’m confused. Why wouldn’t he run all of her checks through payroll?”
“Because they aren’t payroll. I’m guessing he didn’t want to pay the payroll taxes on it.”
Several minutes passed as she reviewed the documents before she spoke. “What else?”
He showed her two additional stacks, including the rent expense account. Slowly, her shoulders sagged more and more until he had shown her everything. She dropped her head in her hands and scrubbed at her face.
“So he has been writing this Sheila person and Jessica, who is supposedly one of my close friends, checks out of our business account for God knows what and has been hiding it in the expenses since he knew I wouldn’t look at them?”
“It appears so.”
Her shoulders began to shake. He scooted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her just as a sob escaped.
