Chapter Twenty-Eight
Colt
“Hey, Colt.”
“Mike! What’s up?”
“Could we speak privately in your office?” he asked.
“Everything alright?”
“Just got some information you might enjoy,” he said.
“Alright. Let me finish wiping down this bar for today, and then I’ll meet ya in the office.”
I was worried when Michael came in and asked to talk in my office. Mike was the kind of guy that always just hopped up to the bar and said whatever he needed to say, then kept his nose out of shit when he needed to back off. It was what I liked about him.
So when he asked to talk, and privately to boot, I knew he meant business.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I shut the door behind me and walked over to my desk, and when I sat down, I saw something morph in his face. He went from the laid-back farmer I knew him to be to the ice-cold lawyer I’d always assumed he was. I knew he had a background before he moved here and had dropped everything to become a farmer in a peaceful town, but since things had kicked up, I figured he’d probably done some work.
But the information he had for me was beyond anything I ever would have been able to find out on my own.
“I used a few of my old legal contacts to check into Bill,” he said.
“And?”
“He’s in an incredible amount of debt. Or, at least he was. Recently, he came into a great deal of cash.”
“Like a one-time transaction?” I asked.
“More like repetitive dumps. Enough to pull him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and single-handedly fuel the buildup of his farm,” he said.
“Holy shit. Where the hell’s it coming from?”
“Well, my contacts can only go so far since they aren’t the authorities or anything, but Bill had a great deal of debt regarding his farm. Banks were turning him down for loans, and his credit cards were through the roof. At one point in time, he’d taken out and maxed out twelve different card accounts for his ranch alone.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“As a heart attack,” he said.
I leaned back into my chair and tried to process all of that. I wasn’t an idiot, but that entire scenario reeked of something illegal. You don’t climb out of that type of debt in a short period of time, and it had to have been quick payoffs in order for Mike to come to me with it.
“How long did it take to—”
“He had the debt for four years, then paid it all off within seven months,” he said. “The entire thing smells of money laundering.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“If he’s been doing it for this long, paying off this kind of debt, and not raising any flags, then the money is coming from somewhere that looks legitimate. All that stuff is watched by the government, especially the large transactions he is making on a regular basis. For him to not have already been flagged and had an audit, it would have to have come from a legal source and all with a decent explanation that didn’t raise any flags.”
“Like funneling money from a charity into a personal account,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Does Bill happen to own any charities?” I said with a smirk.
“Like I said, my contacts can only dig so far before they start breaching boundaries of legality, but it’s some pretty serious cash.”
“I mean, that’s all well and good, but what would money laundering have to do with burning a barn down?” I asked.
“Still convinced it was him that torched your girlfriend’s barn?”
“Cheyenne’s not my girlfriend, and yes, it’s the only plausible explanation,” I said.
“Well, I’m honestly not sure. I’m good at digging for information and piecing together facts I can find. Those are the facts, and that’s what it smells like to me. It might not be the motive for burning down a barn, but it sure as hell explains his outbursts over suddenly being in the public eye because of what PETA posted online. It went viral.”
“And it would raise a flag. Do you think all these people that back him around here are being paid off somehow?” I asked.
“Like I said, I deal in facts. This is all speculation, but again, it’s plausible,” he said.
“Well, the security company is coming by tonight to install the cameras, so hopefully something will actually happen so I can catch this asshole on camera,” I said.
“Have you talked to Cheyenne?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. I went over there last night to talk with her, and everything’s alright.”
“Uh huh,” he said with a grin. “Just how alright?”
“I went over there to check on her and the barn, and I think I convinced her to hold off on the hasty rehoming of her horses,” I said.
“Wow. That’s progress. Good job, Colt,” he said with a teasing tone. “You think she’ll stay?”
“I think I convinced her to at least stay through the fundraiser. I told her I wanted to prove to her how much emotional and financial support this community had for her. She’s seen the terrible side of it, and she’s scared, but I convinced her to hang in there a bit longer.”
“How’d you do that?” he asked.
“Not the way you think,” I said.
“You know I was a lawyer, right?”
“Yep.”
“So I can tell when you’re lying, right?” he asked.
“Shut the hell up, Mike,” I said.
“Anyway, what convinced her?” he asked again.
“I told her I’d drive by in the evenings and at least check to make sure nothing was going on with her barn. I’m also taking one of my shotguns over just in case.”
“That’s actually not a bad plan. She know how to shoot?”
“I taught her a bit,” I said.
“A single woman like her in the position she’s in needs to know how. Good on ya.”
“She contact you about the horse at all?” I asked.
“I told her I’d give her a call. I decided to build a different stall set up for him, and it should be ready in a day or so.”
“Good, good. She’s really excited to give that horse to someone it’s comfortable with. From what she’s told me, that horse was bad off, and he seemed to be comfortable with you.”
“He’s a beautiful horse. He’ll be well taken care of. I actually have a nephew that comes down to the ranch quite a bit. He has special needs, and I was planning on making it his horse; that’s why I’m setting up a special stall,” he said.
“You should tell her that. She’d love that story,” I said.
“Anyway, let me know how the installation of the cameras goes.”
“You’ll know when I call you up to tell you he’s being strung up in my tree by his underwear, like a human piñata, and I might be in need a lawyer,” I said.
Michael got up to leave, but a thought crossed my mind. If his legal contacts came across that information without breaking any laws, it might be enough information about Bill Coates to get the sheriff off his lazy ass and motivate him to actually investigate.
“Hey, Mike?”
“Yep?”
“Did your contacts get all that shit on Coates legally?” I asked.
“Uh huh. Why?”
“If you passed it on to the sheriff, it might be enough to light a fire under his ass. You know, inspire him to do some decent investigating,” I said.
“I like the way you think, Smith. Talk to you later.”
I knew I needed to go help the kitchen prep for lunch and dinner tonight, but my head was reeling. I wanted to be there when the company installed the cameras, but I was technically supposed to be behind the bar tonight. Tiffany was slowly getting better, but I still had to really rely on Rick to get a lot of things done around the ranch, and I knew it could really use my touch until Tif got herself out of the cast.
So, I took my contact book of employees and started calling to see if anyone could come in and work this evening. If I had the shifts covered and my chef could keep an eye on things, I could go help Rick before I went to see Cheyenne.
And then I could use these damn cameras to catch the son of a bitch who I knew was still lurking around my place. There were times I came back from work and just knew I was being watched, but now I was going to be the one doing the watching.
I just hoped they stuck to my ranch instead of migrating back over to Cheyenne’s.
It was going to be no help to us if they weren’t doing anything under the watchful eye of my cameras.