(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon(75)

He chuckles. “Okay, so we have five bank accounts, all of which are bloated with cash. Three rental houses in Seattle alone.”

“Get the locals to run well-being checks on those houses. They could be brothels in disguise.”

“Oh God.”

I massage my temples and close my eyes as we take off. “Right.”

“There are two houses in Canada; coincidentally enough, one is on the East Coast. It doesn’t look so hot either—a bad neighborhood in Halifax. And even worse, it’s near the police department downtown. So if it is a brothel you know somebody’s on the take, because there has been suspicious behavior there, like inquiries about prostitution. But it doesn’t look like they have gone anywhere with it.”

“Could be where the girls are coming from to supply the hookers-in-the-hills program.”

“Sounds like an outreach program.” He makes a fake coughing sound. “I found something else. In the will it states that the oceanfront house has been deeded to the children upon their mother’s death, but the cabin in the woods is to be given to the Backcountry Brothers Society.”

“Wow, they made a society?”

“Yeah. The Backcountry Brothers Society is a not-for-profit society that owns that entire mountain where the lodge and the slave cabin are. The property is eleven thousand acres and completely pie-shaped. It’s narrow at the cabin and wide at the lodge. It’s a property that’s been attached to the cabin in the woods for fifty years—sold off and made to look like the man was setting up a private park. Signature is none other than the president of the United States in 1963. We won’t mention names, because you should know that.”

“Why the hell would the government sell him that land in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s hard to set up parks. They have to be approved, and inquiries have to be made. Then they have to be checked on. It leaves a paper trail.”

I pause. “So sell the land and it’s a private park?”

“Yeah, but the trick is to find a house to sell the land to, so that there is already a structure and you aren’t getting approval for building permits and making more of a paper trail. So at the time, the only private residence up there belonged to one Mr. Francis Richard Russell. It was a shit shack back then.”

“Oh my God. Attaching the land to the cabin totally makes sense. It was the closest structure up there, and the old man was clearly for sale, in his soul. It was an easy way to ensure the land was privatized, and no one had to know about it. The government wasn’t giving it away—they sold it. No one is the wiser.”

He coughs. “Yeah, and they sold an even eleven thousand acres for eleven thousand dollars. Old man Russell paid a dollar an acre, which even at that time was insane for land with no access. But if they were making a park with it no one would have batted an eyelid at this, unless they wanted to chuckle about the moron who bought land he couldn’t even use.”

My mind is blown. “So Old Dick’s dad owned the cabin in the woods, which at the time was a shack, and the president and his cronies, who probably wanted to open a legal form of brothel slash resort, decided using the old man as a patsy was a good idea?”

“Yeah. But the old man wasn’t a patsy. That explains where the money came from. That friggin’ dry cleaners went from just making it to banking, fast. And get this—the fucking kids, the dirty, fat sex addicts, were the first ones to contest the will because of the nasty cabin in the woods. They contested because the land never went to them. It’s worth a ton to the forestry companies, which is who it looks like the kids want to sell to. They even have a contract drawn up. It’s dated two weeks after Daddy Dearest died. But then the will stated that the Backcountry men—or Backdoor, as we so fondly know them—got the cabin and the land.”

“Holy shit. So then Rory comes along and wants the land to stay in the pervert’s hands. He pretends to be a lawyer and an executor and gets the whole will tied up even more?”

Antoine sighs. “Even my brain is hurting from all this.”

I scowl. “Why does Rory need to be the lawyer and the executor?”

“I bet he was pretending to be a lawyer to convince the adopted kid, Amanda, to sign the papers, and if she didn’t then he would kill her or something nefarious. But if she does sign, Rory sweet-talks Amanda into going for the money and then earns her trust, which we all know he’s good at. He then convinces her to go with the lawyer chosen by the horde of evil men. Rory probably told her he was the executor and was looking out for her best interests.” Antoine gasps again. “Executors are the only people allowed on the property when buildings and plots of land are being contested. I always knew Rory was smart, but dude!”