Page 29 of Brenna, Brat

“Brenna, if I’m actually calling you, it’s something important and you should pick up immediately,” Sophie told me.

“The last time you called, it was because you wanted me to check my text messages. You had sent a video of Esme walking and I was the only one who hadn’t responded to it.”

“Exactly,” she answered. “Your niece walking for the first time is extremely important. She was wearing the outfit you made for her, too, and she could be a baby model.”

“Sophie…”

“This is not about Esme,” she informed me, and then asked a question about someone totally different. “How close are you and Campbell Bates?”

“What?” Of all the things I might have expected to come out of her mouth, that wasn’t one of them. And as a matter of fact, we weren’t close. I hadn’t actually seen Campbell since I’d been at his house for the dinner we’d cooked. I’d consulted Addie about what to do next and she said I needed to text and tell him thanks and something funny, like a little joke. So I had written, “Thanks for dinner, and it doesn’t look like I have food poisoning.” I’d thought it was amusing, since I didn’t have any type of stomach ailment at all—but Addie, when she’d read it afterwards, hadn’t really laughed.

Campbell had answered that he was glad to hear that I was well and that we’d have to cook again, but there was nothing about when that would happen. I also hadn’t been able to picture him smiling as he’d typed it. Since then, he’d said hello a few times but nothing more, and I wasn’t going to debase myself with more plotting and/or begging. I wasn’t made that way.

Sophie’s news didn’t relate to any of that. “The Ghregg Bates Financial Group is in trouble,” she stated.

“What?”

She huffed impatiently. “Carrington’s company, the one her father runs, is in deep you-know-what.”

And Campbell worked there too, of course. “What?” I asked again, and she told me. The offices had been raided the day before and Ghregg “Extra H, Double G” Bates was under federal indictment.

“Holy…” I drove for a block, stunned, before I pulled over. I was too unfocused to prevent myself from being a danger to others. “Why was he indicted? What did he do?”

“First of all, he was a slum lord. I’ve known that forever,” she answered, and started to crow over how she’d been right about the business. She had dug into it when Carrington had been dating Sophie’s now-husband, Danny. At the time, my sister had been telling all of us that no, she wasn’t interested in Danny at all; meanwhile, she’d been gathering intel on her rival and preparing secret reports about the woman’s life. Those reports had included information on Carrington’s job at Ghregg Bates Financial, so Sophie really might have known things.

“Lots of people are bad landlords,” I pointed out, “but they don’t get arrested!”

“Ghregg Bates didn’t get arrested. He’s under indictment,” she condescended to explain. “It means he’ll get arraigned but they’ll probably let him stay out of jail. When I say that he’s a slumlord, it isn’t only stuff like, ‘Oh, he didn’t fix the handrail when I put in a work order.’ It’s years of abuse of tenants and years of—”

“What else?” I interrupted her, and she explained the gist of the charges. I tried my hardest to understand, but unlike Sophie, I didn’t have a background in accounting, and as she went on, my eyes started to glaze in confusion. “Give me the ten-second summary,” I finally interrupted again.

“Bates has been lying since the beginning. For more than thirty years, he’s been running a con about what he’s doing at his company and he colluded with others to cook the books so that it all looked legal,” she stated. “He’s a cheat. A scam artist, a criminal.”

“Who are the ‘others’ that he was working with?” I asked.

Well, that was what the authorities were working to figure out, and she said that she wouldn’t be surprised if there were more indictments coming down the pike. “I would think that all the corporate officers are feeling their collars tighten,” she said smugly, and I wanted to reach through the phone and smack her.

“If people are really doing illegal things, then yes, they should be punished,” I said. “But just because you’re jealous of Carrington—”

“I am not!”

“You’re mad that she was with your husband, even though you two weren’t dating at the time, even though you weren’t even aware that Danny was back in Detroit when they got together,” I said.

She was silent, a first for Sophie.

“And now you’re gleeful that this company is in trouble, and it’s not a good look,” I told her. “If Guh-hu-reg-guh Bates is a criminal, then he should go to jail and pay back whoever he hurt. But how many other people work there? They’ll all lose their jobs, won’t they? And why are you so sure that Carrington was involved? Maybe she wasn’t, and she’s an innocent victim in this, too.” I didn’t care about her at all—but why paint everyone at the Ghregg Bates Financial Group with the same criminal brush? There were people at the company who were very nice and decent and probably had no idea what their father was up to.

My sister stayed quiet for another moment. “I see your point,” she said finally, “but I’m not actually gleeful.”

She totally was. “Bull,” I told her.

“I didn’t like that Carrington was with Danny because I was jealous, even if I didn’t want to admit it back then. I still don’t like that because I love him so much. I’m sorry for all the time that we weren’t together, and I feel guilty about that, too. We were apart because I pushed him out of my life and then I was miserable without him.”

“What? Are you admitting that you made a mistake? Can you say it again so I can record it?”

“Brenna, you’re such a brat!” Sophie hung up before I could tell her that I didn’t want to hear that word out of her mouth again.

I read through all the news I could find about the collapse of the company—and yes, it appeared that Sophie had been correct. It was in shambles and its basic premise, that Ghregg Bates had been able to work real estate magic, was a fallacy. Somehow,through sophisticated chicanery and personal charm, he’d been able to hide it all this time and make money hand over fist…how was that possible?

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