Page 18 of Drowning in Lies
"Did you mention the discrepancies we found last night on the real estate bank account?" I asked him, as he was typing out his text to the detective.
He nodded and finished typing, then slid his phone in his back pocket. "I mentioned it but told him we could go over it in more detail when we meet."
I told them both about the bracelet that Vanessa had been wearing in the photo.
"Holy shit, are you kidding me?Are you sure it's the same one?" Sherry asked, horrified.
"No, but if it isn't the exact same bracelet, then he bought two identical ones to give to us," I said in disgust. "That probably makes gift giving easier, when you can buy your wife and your mistress the same damn thing, doesn't it?"
"Especially if you're using your wife's money to buy them," Sherry added with a roll of her eyes. "You drove yourself crazy looking for that thing, and he gave you such a guilt trip for losing it!"
"I know, and I thinkthatmay piss me off more than anything."
"Have you looked at all of your accounts yet?" Chris asked.
"Everything except the joint checking and savings accounts.I'm kind of afraid to, since he obviously had full access to both of those, but I guess I need to do that."I sighed, before getting up to walk into the dining room where I'd left my laptop the night before.Chris and Sherry followed me in there, and we all took our seats around the table. His phone buzzed as he sat down, and he pulled it out of his pocket.
"Horton wants us to meet him at your house at 10:00."
"That's fine.I'll check this quickly, then get ready." I tapped the screen to wake up my system, then typed in my password.
"Did David have your password?" Chris asked.
"Yeah, he did. We both used the desktop computer for our online bill paying and that sort of thing. I use the same password for my laptop and the desktop."
"Please tell me you don't use the same password for all of your banking and financial accounts," he said.
"No, they're all different for each account."
He nodded. "OK, I'm just trying to figure out how he accessed the real estate account. Do you have to log in with your password every time, or did you save it to your system?"
"I have to log in every time." I pulled up our bank's online banking portal and logged into the joint savings account first.It showed very few withdrawals, and nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at me. I did notice that I was the only one contributing to the account lately. Normally, we both put a percentage of our salaries directly into savings.
"On the desktop too?Do you ever open up the accounts from your phone, or ever use David's laptop for that?"
"I don't log in from my phone to anything except our joint checking account, and I never used David's laptop for anything since it was his work-issued one.But, I would need to double check the desktop system to make sure I'm not permanently logged in on it."
Chris shook his head. "No, we'll let Horton know and he can check it.You won't be able to touch anything that they may want to secure as evidence.You will be able to look, but not touch."
"You mentioned that they are getting a search warrant for his office at the firm.Randall didn't agree to let them search?" I asked, remembering his earlier comment.
"He may not have asked, if he's concerned that something hinky was going on there."
"Hinky? Is that a legal term, counselor?" Sherry asked with a grin.
Chris chuckled. "Yes, smartass, as a matter-of-fact 'hinky' is a universally accepted term in the legal community."
I smiled at their snarky banter as I switched over to the joint checking account. There was a lot of activity there, as expected, since it was used for our daily living expenses. It would take forever to go through each one, and I sighed. I decided to set a transaction search parameter of $2.000.00 minimum to see what popped up. There were a lot, going back over two years.
"I think I'm just going to meet with my accountant on this one.There's no way I will be able to verify all of these transactions.Who knows how long it's been going on?"
"Have you heard anything back from anyone regarding the audits?" Sherry asked.
"No, but I haven't checked my email since I first got up. I'd better do that, then get changed to meet Detective Horton." I pulled up my email account and saw an email from Melissa which had come in about ten minutes earlier.
"Lila,
I checked on all of the properties in the LLC portfolio, as well as the condo as we discussed. You didn't specify them but given your concerns, I took the liberty of also checking on your house here and the villa in Maui.
