There was one account the Mrs. didn’t monitor. She didn’t monitor it because she understood that it was not to be touched. It was the trust fund Jack had set up for their son. Money was put into this account but was never taken out.
Jack started depositing money into his only son’s trust fund the day he was born. Now, after many movies and many years, it had grown to over $5 million. Jack and Kate went to extreme measures to keep this money safe. No couple plans to get divorced, but in the event they ever had to divide their estate, Jack and Kate wanted to make sure their son’s money could not be touched, even by the two of them. So they made me the trustee. I had total control over it until their son turned eighteen. I never imagined I would do anything but gift it to him.
But Jack told me I would no longer be giving this money to his son. Instead, I was to give it to Holly. Every last cent. I was to change the terms of the trust without telling anyone, including Kate.
“Sign here,” the gray-haired notary instructed without so much as looking at me. I was grateful for her indifference, and I complied in silence. There were so many ways this could end badly. It wouldn’t take much for our circle of trust to collapse, so I tried not to think about the obvious weak link, and how this financial juggling act might break our fragile pact wide open.
I rolled my thumb on the inkpad and stamped my fingerprint in her ledger.
This bribery plot suddenly—literally—had my fingerprints all over it.
If one person cracked, we were all going down.
CHAPTER 20
I woke up in a cold sweat.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had a nightmare about the accident, but this dream was particularly gruesome.
I was back at the scene of the crash, walking toward the wreckage, just as I had done in real life. As I peered down at Holly’s husband’s dead body, his mangled limbs suddenly came alive like Medusa’s head of snakes, snapping at me with foaming white fangs. The snakes’ eyes flashed with rage as they strained against their tether, desperate to bite me but unable to reach. The dead man’s bloody brain matter was oozing out of his skull like hamburger meat through a grinder. I tried to run, but as so often happens in dreams, I couldn’t move my legs. My feet were cemented to the pavement as Medusa’s snakes engulfed my feet, my legs, my torso. I cried out as I braced myself to drown in a rising sea of blood and guts.
It was a little after five a.m. when I gasped myself awake. I was too shaken to go back to sleep, so I got up, showered, and opened my laptop at my kitchen table. As the coffee brewed, I clicked on my email. I saw that Jack had found a script he liked and was considering making an offer on it. He had production legal handle those deals, so there was nothing for me to do, but he copied me so I would know what he was up to. I glanced at the subject line—“possible new business”—then archived it in the appropriate folder.
Holly’s credit card statement had also arrived. I had to keep track of what she was spending to make sure the $5 million we had allotted wasn’t in danger of running out. We’d paid cash for the house and the car, which meant she had a little under $3 million left to fund her new life. I had the money in index funds with projected annual interest of about 6 percent. If she didn’t spend more than $180,000 per year, that $3 million would last her forever. With no mortgage or car payment to make, I thought it more than enough.
I moved the credit card statement to the encrypted server where I kept all the documents related to the accident. Then I opened it. It was my job to know how she was spending my client’s money. And to be honest, I was curious.
We had given her two credit cards, one for her and one for Savannah, so I knew which one of them was buying what. I tried not to panic when I saw Savannah’s statement. She’d been to the Apple Store, Sephora, Victoria’s Secret, Lady Foot Locker, and Louis Vuitton, all in one billing cycle. It wasn’t a total surprise, I knew she would splurge. What I didn’t know was if her spending would slow down or accelerate. What if she was testing the arrangement? Setting the stage for more demands? Would I dare say no to her if she asked? That video evidence was damning, and she was too smart not to have made a copy. Which meant we had no choice but to keep paying. The situation was as stable as a grenade. And Savannah had her finger on the pin.
Holly, on the other hand, had barely bought anything. She spent a modest amount at a hair salon, $135 at Pottery Barn, a couple hundred bucks on gas. The rest of her charges were at the grocery store. She went almost every day. They were mostly small amounts—under twenty dollars. Except for one charge at a sushi place, all her meals were made in her kitchen with food she bought at Gelson’s.