“We’ll be back,” I told him. “And you can come see our home in Santa Barbara any time you want. Like Nick said, the door’s always open.”
He nodded. “He did say that.”
“You’ll like it. It’s got a big yard too.”
He turned and looked at me.
“Not as big as your yard,” I teased him. “But not tiny, either.”
His smile was warm. “You’re a good boy.”
“Sir, I am older than your son.”
“But not older than me,” he said with a grin, setting me straight. “Bring ’em on in, but sit ’em in the living room. I don’t want them at any of my tables, not the one in the kitchen and not the dining room, either.”
“Yessir,” I said, and after he gave me a pat, I went to the door and invited them in.
There were a lot of disdainful looks cast around, and when they sat, the two women on the love seat, the man in the recliner, not one of them looked comfortable.
“Something to drink?” I asked them.
“Just water, if it’s bottled and not from the tap.” Danielle spoke for all three of them.
I left and came back with cold bottles for the group.
“Thank you,” the man said kindly as I turned back to Danielle and Beth.
“He played until midnight last night,” I apprised them. “So since it’s what, six now, you all might be here for a bit.”
Beth huffed out a breath. “I told you we should have called.”
“What is it you’re needing?” I asked them.
“What exactly do you do for Nick?” Beth asked me.
“I’m his advisor,” I answered, and I wasn’t lying. Technically, I did advise him.
“I thought Sawyer whatever his name is was his business manager, and my understanding was that he was in Los Angeles,” she replied tersely.
“I work with him,” I lied, because it didn’t matter who they thought I was, I just needed to get to the bottom of what they wanted.
Danielle sat up straight. “I don’t know how much you know about our father’s current legal situation, but we’re here to ask Nick to contribute to our father’s defense.”
“In what way?”
“Well, we have retained counsel, of course, but our lawyer has informed us that the sale of the horses will not be enough to clear the debt that’s owed. The land, as well as all our father’s personal assets, and anyone he was in business with––”
“Meaning you all,” I chimed in.
“Yes,” Beth told me. “But only that which was attached to the horse farm. My business as well as my sister’s, our husbands’…they’re not included.”
“Lucky,” I offered.
“The thing is,” Danielle explained, shooting her sister a pointed look, “if Nick would be able to cover the rest of what’s owed after the sale of the horses, then the farm and the personal assets could be left intact.”
“But isn’t your father still going to jail?”
“Yes,” she muttered, “but only for eighteen months or so, and this way––”
“Are you sure? Only eighteen months for child endangerment?” I knew better, because clearly, I was more up to date on what Sterling Madison was being charged with than his daughters were. Because yes, while the statute of limitations had, in fact, run out on child endangerment—which I found obscene to begin with—that wasn’t what the county prosecutor was charging Sterling Madison with. She was hitting the patriarch of the Madison clan with a hate crime, and that would, in fact, put him in jail for far longer than Nick’s sisters understood.
“The whole thing is sordid and regrettable,” Danielle assured me. “But our father is not being charged with any crime relating to Nick, only with fraud and animal cruelty.”
Someone had definitely missed a memo. “Are you sure?” I asked, trying not to sound snide, because her not caring about Nick was twisting my stomach into knots.
“Yes, of course,” she snapped at me.
Oh man, she was in for the shock of her life.
“But we’re not here to talk about that; we need to speak to Nick about the farm and––”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“I mean, if your father can’t own horses when he eventually gets out, what’s the point of owning a horse farm? That seems odd to me.”
Beth gestured at the man. “My husband, Alan, he’s going to run the horse farm, and my father will be a silent partner.”
There was a knock at the front door that kept me from replying to that, and moments later, another man appeared under the archway between the kitchen and living room.
“This is my husband, Gene,” Danielle told me as the man crossed the floor, and I stood up as he offered me his hand.
“Eugene Bechtel,” he told me. “And you are?”
“Locryn Barnes,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Pleasure,” he said before taking a seat in the club chair next to the recliner where Alan was sitting.
“You were saying about Alan?” I asked Danielle.