by J P Barnaby
“There’s a board for the bookstore?”
Steve chuckled. “There is. It’s made up of the officers of the corporation and the majority stockholders. That would be your dad, who was president and treasurer, your neighbor Mrs. Mackey, who was secretary, and you, vice president. The terms of the succession plan make you president and treasurer, and Mrs. Mackey becomes vice president and secretary. That’s based on a decision made at a board meeting from last December.”
“Board meeting? I don’t remember any board meeting…?”
“You talked to your dad about the store, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah. We always were doing that.”
“And you’ve signed papers he asked you to, haven’t you?” The lawyer was grinning like the whole thing amused him.
“I… remember signing… something?”
“Well, that’s how you became vice president. And all that’s required for a meeting is a quorum—in this case, two officers—and the filing of minutes by the secretary.”
“I don’t remember Mrs. Mackey being there or taking notes or anything.”
“She didn’t have to be. Your dad did. All she did was file them.” Steve shrugged. “Charlie’s idea of meetings was the Braves and beer.”
“Wait—Steve. You’re the guy Dad went to games with.”
“Yep.” This time the smile had a tinge of sadness. “Like I said, he was a great guy, even if he did hate old Smoltzie.”
“He sure was. Okay. So what do I need to know?”
IT TOOK over an hour, but by the time they were done, Noah knew more about inheritance laws than he ever wanted to know. As Steve had said, the plan kept the store going while the rest of it was in probate. The house wasn’t part of the corporation, but since his dad had no other heirs or potential heirs (Noah was relieved to find that his parents hadn’t been married long enough and had been divorced long enough that his mother had no legal rights to any part of the estate), Noah wouldn’t have any trouble living at the house. He just couldn’t sell it until it had gone through probate.
So much for selling the house to get funds to keep the store going.
While it turned out that Steve was also a CPA, he wasn’t the accountant who handled Charlie’s business—that was a firm in Macon that Steve recommended Noah call—so he didn’t have any information about the two loans Noah had found the paperwork for. He did say he’d look over it and see if there was anything Noah should know, so Noah gratefully handed the file to an assistant, who took it off for copying.
Other than Noah being an officer of a corporation he hadn’t known existed, nothing in the files was an absolute surprise. As his dad’s only living relative, he knew he would get everything Charlie had left, essentially. Steve read out a few minor bequests in the will, specific gifts to people like Miss Edna (a clock she’d particularly liked) and Fred the postman (a Zane Grey trilogy in hardcover), but other than that, everything came to Noah.
As they were wrapping up, Steve reminded Noah to call the accountant. “Though knowing Charlie, I doubt if he had them handle more than his taxes. He liked to keep his own books.” Steve snorted. “Literally.”
“Yeah, literally—he had them all in these big paper ledgers. It’s gonna take me forever to transfer the data to the computer.”
“I recommend doing a complete inventory before you talk to the accountants. It’ll give you a feel for what assets you have. Are you planning on following in Charlie’s footsteps?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do.”
Steve walked him out to the elevator lobby. “Well, when you know what your plans are, let me know. Maybe we can take in a Braves game in honor of your old man.”
“Thanks. I will.”
“Good. In the meantime, I’ll go over those loan documents. It might be a couple of weeks before I get back to you on them, so you’ll probably want to talk to the bank to get extensions on them for now, at least until we know what’s going to be tied up in probate.”
“I will.”
“Okay.” The elevator dinged and Steve shook his hand again. “Good luck, Noah. Call if you have any questions.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
Chapter Eight
NOAH DECIDED he might as well get the bank out of the way too while he was already looking like an adult. He needed to get the loan balances and see what kind of funds his father had for the business. If he were completely honest, he needed to see exactly how much trouble his father had been in. From Matt Handley’s little jabs, it seemed like the scales weren’t tipped in his favor. Deep in his heart he knew this was about more than just the state of the store, but it was about the state of his life. He’d need to know how far in the red his father was, to decide whether he’d stick it out and try to save the store or call James to cut and run.
Traffic from the station back to Aster slowed in the midafternoon exodus from the workday. He used the lack of movement to ask his phone when the bank closed. Six o’clock on Mondays. He’d have about half an hour—hopefully that was all he’d need. He hated Handley. The less they had to talk, the happier Noah would be. Plus, he wanted to get home to Jake, whose presence calmed him more than he could say.
As he navigated the rental down Aster’s main drag toward the bank, he glanced at the bookstore and noticed a familiar shock of red hair. Kyle stood in front of the door, peering in through the glass. Noah slowed and pulled a not-so-legal U-turn to sidle up to the curb. He fumbled for a second with the unfamiliar window controls, but finally the glass slid down.
“Hey, Kyle!”
Kyle turned, and Noah watched the clouds in his expression roll back to let the sun shine through. His face turned from troubled to happy in a heartbeat.
“Hi, Noah. I came by to see… well, how are things going?” Kyle stuttered.
“Things are okay,” Noah admitted. “I just came back from the lawyer.”
“You needed a lawyer? Are you in some kind of trouble?” The clouds threatened to return, and the concern touched Noah.
“No, no, nothing like that. I met with the lawyer that handled my dad’s business. But I guess I may be in trouble, I don’t know. I haven’t been to the bank yet.”
“Why would you be in trouble with the bank?” Kyle asked, learning forward. Noah got the impression he wanted to say more but held back.
“My dad borrowed money from them, and I don’t think he could pay it back,” Noah admitted.
“So they would take the bookstore away from you, even though it’s yours now?”
He wondered how Kyle knew so little of the world and how it worked.
“Yes.”
“That’s terrible. Can I help?”
Noah didn’t see how he could, but his tone was so earnest. “I don’t know. Me and—” He stopped short before saying “Henry” aloud. Noah didn’t know why, but it felt like a secret. People would think he was nuts anyway if he started talking about his new ghost friend. “Me and you could take a look and see if there’s anything worth selling in the basement.”
Kyle didn’t answer. He was looking behind the car. Noah glanced up and his mirrors were full of truck. Someone got out of it with the boom of a big door, and he heard his dad’s name being called out. Noah climbed out of the car, leaving it parked on the curb.
“Hey, I’m Noah Hitchens. Charlie was my dad,” he called to the ether, since he couldn’t see the person yelling. Noah walked the length of the huge delivery truck and followed the words JAMESON SUPPLIES along the side.
“Was?” the voice asked Noah as he rounded the back. Two guys began hauling boxes from the trailer, making a stack taller than he was on the sidewalk. The blond looked too thin to heft those huge boxes, but the other guy was burly. He straightened a Braves hat over razed black hair.
The boxes couldn’t be books; they were too big. What the hell?
“Well, we can’t take returns. You’ll have to call the sales office,” Braves Hat said and tipped the
boxes to slide a hand truck beneath them. “Where do you want ’em? We got more stops.”
“Oh, sorry.” Noah stopped examining the labels to grab his I Heart New York keychain from his jeans pocket and open the front door. They had to pull the top box off the stack to get it to fit, but the blond was apparently stronger than he looked. Noah directed them to an open area off the main room that his father had cleared of books and shelves. They dropped the boxes in the space and were back out the door before Noah could say boo.
“Hey, I’ve got to help Miss Sarah with the leaves, but I’ll help you unpack those as soon as I have time. You have to set them up right or you’ll break them,” Kyle said, making Noah jump. He hadn’t realized Kyle had followed him in.
“Wait, what?”
“Those machines, they’re tricky.”
“Machines?”
“Yeah, the coffee machines? I’ve got to go, Miss Sarah is waiting,” Kyle said over his shoulder, and then he was gone. Noah stood alone amid mountains of boxes.
“What the hell just happened?” Noah wondered aloud.
“That language,” Henry admonished, coming through the wall to his left. Noah staggered back and slammed his knee into the corner of a box. Okay, maybe not exactly alone.
“Damn it, don’t do that!”
Henry chuckled. “How did it go with the lawyer?”
“Fine.” Noah grabbed the phone out of his pocket. “Twenty to six. I can still make it.”
“Make it where?” Henry called as Noah sprinted for the door.
“The bank!”
He climbed back into the rental as Aster’s only squad car rolled up behind him.
“Sir!” a voice bellowed toward him, and Noah sighed. He leaned over to grab his registration before he remembered it was a rental. Crap. Now what did he do? He tilted to the side and pulled out his wallet as the cop reached his window, still down from his talk with Kyle.
“I’m sorry, Officer. We got a delivery and I didn’t have time to move the car,” Noah offered.
“A delivery? At the bookstore?” He leaned down and peered into the car. “Hey, Noah. I was sorry as hell to hear about your dad, son.”
“Sir, can I get out?” Noah asked. In New York that could get you in a lot of trouble. The sun was setting behind the guy and he didn’t want it in his eyes as he looked up.
“Yeah, come on out.”
Noah got out of the car, acutely aware that he would no longer make it to the bank. When he glanced up at the guy, he was surprised to see a familiar face. It was older and the hair far more gray than brown, but the eyes were still the same.
“Hi, Officer Thompson,” Noah said, almost in that singsong voice they’d used when he was Officer Friendly at school. He seemed to be in charge now, judging by the bars on his uniform.
“Son, you can call me Cooper. Everybody does. Well, unless you plan on gettin’ in some trouble,” Cooper said with a smile. The man had seemed like a grizzly when Noah sat in front of him as a freshman, face averted, and told him about the shit Handley and his friends had done. It seemed almost ironic that Handley held the key to his future now.
“Thanks, Cooper, and I’m sorry about the car. I was moving it when you came up.” Noah leaned against the door.
“Don’t worry about it. Just wanted to make sure everything was all right.” Cooper wiped sweat off his brow in the early fall heat. “Not like folks round here give me a lotta trouble.”
“Everything is fine, I guess. Except I missed getting to the bank.”
“Sorry I slowed you down.”
“Nah, I don’t think I really wanted to go there tonight anyway.” Noah shrugged and glanced down the block to the bank’s sign, mostly hidden by foliage.
“Not in a hurry to see Handley again?” Cooper surmised, but Noah didn’t see any hint of a smirk. In fact, the man’s expression had softened.
“You remember that, huh?” Noah sighed.
“I remember everything,” he mused, rolling back on the heels of his cheap shoes. “Most people grow up as they get older. Mature—”
“Stop being dicks?” Noah offered.
“Handley never left high school. His mama died when he was real young, and Daddy never made him grow up. He’s kind of a bastard, the old man.”
“I never knew that, but yeah—it’s like being back in high school.”
“Just watch out for that one, Noah. There’s something off about him, and it’s only gotten worse these last few years.” The comment didn’t seem offhand, but a genuine warning.
“I’ll do that.”
“Have a good night now.” Cooper turned and headed back toward the cruiser.
“You too.”
Chapter Nine
MATT HANDLEY was Aster’s only loan officer, and Noah had half expected the guy to leave him sitting in the waiting area for an hour or so, just to show Noah who had the power. But on a slow Tuesday morning, he couldn’t really manage it, and the office door opened almost immediately. That was not a good sign, nor was the smug smile that flickered on the banker’s lips. “Noah! Glad you could make it. Come on in.”
He gestured to a chair and settled himself behind the desk, pulling out a file folder and setting it on the surface. “Everything’s online now, of course, but I printed out the documents we’ll need to go over. As I mentioned, Charlie’s finances were kind of in a mess. No surprise—I’m just amazed that he managed to keep that place going in these times. Amazon, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
The smug smile grew. “Oh, I imagine he had a little sideline in antiques—everyone down in that part of town is either an antiques dealer or a gallery owner. Barely making ends meet, all of them. So.”
He flipped open the folder. “Charlie had two major loans out with this bank—a forty-two-thousand-dollar loan with the store as collateral, and an existing mortgage on the house on Oak Street. The original mortgage had been paid off, but about twenty years ago he refinanced it. The balance on the mortgage is a little over ten thousand. He’s been keeping up with the interest payments, but there hasn’t been any payment against the principal for a long time. The store loan is more recent, and he had been paying the set amount fairly regularly, but about three months before he died, he missed the payments. So the loan has gone into arrears, which makes it due now.”
“Forty thousand dollars?” Noah felt a little sick.
The smile broadened. “Fifty-three thousand, eight hundred sixty-four dollars and eleven cents. Since he hasn’t been paying on the principal for the mortgage, with his death, that loan has also gone into arrears.”
“I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Well, no surprise. What about his life insurance? Investments?”
“If he had investments, wouldn’t he have paid his loans off? I can’t even sell the house until it goes through probate.”
“That’s true.”
“His lawyer said something about the store being incorporated—does that have any bearing on the loan there?”
Matt shook his head. “The loan was a personal loan against the store building, which was Charlie’s personal property. The business itself was incorporated, which lets you go on running the store, but the physical property was owned by Charlie.”
“I get it.” The nausea had slid all the way into numbness. “What are my options?”
“You could always apply for a replacement loan to cover the existing ones. Do you have a current assessment on the value of the house?”
“I… I don’t know. Maybe?”
Matt snorted. “I doubt it. The loan was taken out twenty years ago. Unless he’s filed a tax appeal recently, there wouldn’t have been any reason to get it appraised. What’s your FICO score?”
“My what?”
“Your credit rating. Do you have outstanding loans, that sort of thing?”
“Student loans, yeah.”
Again, the faux-sympathetic shake of the head. “Student loans suck. The rules around them a
re vicious, and you can’t even include them in bankruptcy. 401(k)?”
“Yeah, but I’ve only been at the company a few years, so I’m not even fully vested yet.”
“So much for that. Look, I can do a review of your credit to see if you’re even eligible for a covering loan. If not….” He shrugged. “The loans come due the first of December. I can maybe get Dad to stretch it out through the holidays, with the final due date the first of the year. But I’ll definitely run some numbers and get back to you tomorrow. Look at it this way—in the grand scheme of things, fifty grand isn’t that much money. The house and store are worth more than that. If we can get you covered in the meantime, once the estate’s out of probate, you can sell both of them and recoup not only the loan, but probably your student loans as well, and go back to New York.” He put a piece of paper in front of Noah. “This is authorization to run your credit and do an analysis of the collateral. I’ll crunch the numbers and call you tomorrow.”
Noah read over the form and signed it at the bottom. He didn’t have much choice; no other bank would touch him with his credit and the loans already in default. “Thanks,” he said.
Matt nodded. “Anything for an old school buddy.”
“Really?” Noah couldn’t help the sardonic tone.
Matt laughed. “Hey, it was all in fun. Just goofing around. Boys will be boys, right?”
“You know there’s a whole lot of people who consider it assault.”
“PC.” Matt waved a hand dismissively. “Losers with no sense of humor and stuck-up dykes who couldn’t get laid if they paid for it. Don’t know what this world is coming to.”
“Right.” Now was not the time to get involved with an argument over politics. Noah needed Matt sympathetic—if he was at all and not jerking Noah’s chain. Still, he couldn’t take the risk. “Anyway, thanks for the help. That’s my cell number, so you should be able to get ahold of me any time tomorrow.”
“What did we do before them, huh?” Matt stood and shook Noah’s hand. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
