Every Heart Sings (Serenity Island Series) (23 page)

“When we like someone, we trust blindly. Only in business, you can’t go with your feelings or gut. You’ve got to always verify the numbers. Period.” Salty tapped his thumb on the steering wheel.

“Jordan said the same thing the other day. You’re both right. I didn’t verify.”

“Want a ride?” He jerked his head, indicating for Josh to get in.

“Absolutely.” Josh ran around the golf cart and slid into the opposite seat. “How good are you at playing lookout?”

Salty slapped Josh on the shoulder. “The best. And I run a mean interference.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen you in action.” Josh laughed. He had to figure this out. Make it right. For Tony, for Luke.
And for Jordan
, his heart whispered. She didn’t trust him. And the hurt cut deep, but he got it. She’d been hurt by so many people close to her and the proof of his signature looked irrefutable.

Only it wasn’t, because Josh knew he’d never signed a contract with Tony’s name on it, or anyone else’s for that matter. So once he found concrete evidence of Ben’s corruption, the contract he’d falsified would be the last thing his business manager ever did in the industry, because he’d fire him and then he’d ruin his name. And there would be police involvement. Ben would go to jail. Period. End of story.

They got to the campground a short time later. Josh jumped out a few campsites before Ben’s. “It shouldn’t take me long.”

“I’ll sit halfway between the entrance and here. I’ll knock on the door if someone comes.”

“Thanks, Salty. I appreciate your help.”

“Get the truth, dude. That will be thanks enough.”

Josh pulled his key ring from his pocket. He had a key to Ben’s office. He slid the key home and unlocked the door. Climbing up the stairs, he hit the soft lighting. Just in case Ben headed home early, he didn’t want to hit the full overhead lights. He walked to the back of the trailer to the spare bedroom Ben used as his office. The door was open. He fumbled around for the light on the desk. He found it and clicked it on.

He turned to pull open the file cabinet. The drawer didn’t budge when he tugged on it. Shit. It was locked.

He didn’t have a key for the file cabinet.

He sat down in Ben’s desk chair, thinking about hiding places and where his manager might keep a key. He opened the long slender drawer on the desk and poked around. Nothing. He closed it.

Josh scanned the desk. Photos of him and Ben at various venues. He picked up one framed picture of them and studied it. They’d been in Amsterdam. The concert had been sold out. This had been early in his career. They’d had a blast. Celebrated in style. Boozed it up. Girls galore. And weed. Man, the weed.

Good times.

He shook his head. No, if he were real with himself, they weren’t always all that good. He’d been in a haze for a couple of years after that.

Amsterdam had been the beginning of the downward spiral. He’d never experimented with drugs before then. Because it had been illegal. And if there was one thing that his grandfather had hammered into him, it was to keep it legal. So in Amsterdam, pot hadn’t been outlawed. He’d used it. And liked it. For years after that, Ben had supplied Josh’s fix. Until five years ago, Josh had pulled back. Ben had gone all sullen on him. As if suddenly, he couldn’t control him anymore. And it was true. After that, Josh began to get his act together. To make creative decisions that strayed a little from Ben’s wishes. He’d begun to break free then. And he hadn’t even known it.

Sadness squeezed Josh in a full-body hug, pressing in so hard that he couldn’t catch his breath. Everything he’d ever believed about Ben had just been thrown into question.

He’d always believed Ben was out for his good. Helping to push him in the direction he needed to go. Fostering his career. Doing what was best for him. Now he had to question if any of it was true. He had to find out. Know if Ben had embezzled money from Luke, if he truly had just snookered Tony into signing a bad deal. And if those two things were true, what had Ben done to him that he hadn’t ever seen? Could he have embezzled from him? Misrepresented his name to other artists? Gained from him in ways he couldn’t even begin to think about?

He placed the photo back on the desk. The corner of the frame caught the edge of an enamel-covered box Josh had picked up for Ben when they’d been on tour in Singapore. The box turned over, sending the contents spilling onto the desk. The box had been filled with the guitar picks that Ben collected from all over the world. And there, buried amongst the heap of hard plastic picks, was a file cabinet key.

Josh picked up the key, squeezing it in the palm of his hand as he stared at the enamel box. The Chinese character on the top of the box said KINSHIP. When Josh had given Ben the box, he’d told him he’d been more of a father to him over the past few years than his own grandfather, who’d disowned him, had been. His heart pounded in his chest, the sound rushing in his ears.

He turned to the file cabinet behind the desk and inserted the key. It snicked open. He pulled open the drawer and fingered through the tabs. He found one for Luke Alexander. He pulled out the manila file folder. Then he saw one labeled “Saul Cohen.” What the hell? His grandfather had no business with Ben. He grabbed that folder, too. From the hanging folder simply labeled “Josh,” he pulled two folders—one marked “contracts” and one labeled “reported royalties.”

Curious what Ben had on his grandfather, he opened that file first. And what he found floored him. His grandfather had been right; he’d sent him a dozen letters or more over the years. They sat inside this manila file folder. Josh opened the envelope dated two weeks after the infamous letter that had ended it all between them. His grandfather apologized for that initial letter and asked him to contact him, but said he understood the Cohen alpha mindset, so he’d honor his grandson’s silence. Until Josh made the first contact.

And, apparently, that’s what Josh had done with his missed phone call and voicemail to his grandfather recently. Reached out. Finally. Understanding that a relationship with his grandfather was more important than an old argument that had driven a wedge between them for more years than he could count.

Josh massaged his forehead. Why would Ben keep this from him? He didn’t get it. But he sure as hell wanted to know because he couldn’t let this go.

Next, he opened Luke’s folder. The contract Ben signed with Luke looked exactly like Tony’s. Yes, the year was dated two-thousand-one. Josh had been working with Ben three years by then. While Ben hadn’t been brand new, he’d still been a young business manager. Josh had been one of his first clients. So he could almost buy the story Ben had fed him that he’d been new to the industry and naïve about the laws. Almost. But three years was a long time. And what he found in Luke’s folder didn’t add up. Sales for a concert Josh had done with Luke that year—a concert he remembered well because of record sales—weren’t reported the same in Luke’s file. He compared it to ticket sales and royalty statements from his own sales. Nope. Not the same. Luke’s numbers had been adjusted down.

Josh’s stomach churned. No. That couldn’t be right. He found evidence of five more instances between two-thousand-one and two-thousand-five, right before Luke died, where the numbers had been altered when he compared them to his own sales numbers. These were venues they’d performed together. Luke had headlined those concerts. He’d been the opening act for Nicodemus.

Shit. Salty was right.

And if that was the case, what about his own numbers?

Josh pulled out his phone and began to snap pictures. He needed evidence of what Ben had done. He also needed a copy of Ben’s reporting of his own sales since then. He’d check them out. Finally, something tickled the back of Josh’s brain.

If Ben had pulled this on Luke first, and again more recently on Tony. What were the chances he’d done the same to Josh’s later contracts? When Josh maybe wasn’t paying as much attention—when Ben had lulled him into a friendship that bordered on kinship? On family?

Josh pulled the final file toward him, the one containing all his signed contracts. He stared at the closed folder. Tension gripped his forehead, his muscles in his neck had gone tight, and he didn’t want to open the folder, for fear of what he’d find. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Opening them again, he flipped open the folder.

He turned the pages of the first contract. The in-perpetuity clause was missing. He breathed a sigh of relief. But he had given Ben the right in each of his contracts to collect and report sales. Which opened him up for the same kind of embezzlement Luke had experienced at his manager’s hands.

He flipped through later contracts. And in each one of them—each album and any single he’d contracted through Ben’s management, the in-perpetuity clause mocked him.

Josh took pictures of each of the documents as proof.

Ben’s career would be over once Josh reported this to the authorities. He wouldn’t air it in a big, public court battle. But he would press charges. And Ben would make this right. One way or another, he’d pay recompense.

Josh put all the folders back in place, but kept the letters from his grandfather. Those were his. Legally and rightfully. Ben had no right to them, whatsoever.

He locked the file cabinet and dropped the key back in the small enamel box, careful to scoop up the guitar picks that had scattered on the desk and dump them on top of the key. He replaced the lacquered lid, tracing the Chinese character.

So much for kinship. Sometimes those closest to you did hurt you, but that didn’t make it right, and it didn’t mean that Josh had to like it or take it lying down.

He climbed out of the Winnebago, locked the door behind him, then found Salty sitting in his golf cart.

“Can I get Caitlin’s number from you?”

Salty pulled his cell from his pocket, tapped the screen, and handed it to Josh.

Josh dialed her number, knowing it was late—after eleven o’clock—on a Saturday night. Lawyers worked long hours, right? Especially those in the entertainment business, because their clients were crazier than most.

“Hi, Caitlin. This is Josh Nicodemus. Yeah, Salty gave me your number. I’ve got a problem. I need you to check ticket sales for all my concerts as well as record sales against the numbers my manager reported. Yeah. I think he did the same thing to me he did to Luke. But, I don’t really care about me so much as I care about getting Tony out of a predicament and recovering the money Ben stole from the Alexanders. I just need a little leverage.”

Salty drove out of the campground and back toward The Down Dog Café and the place Josh had begun to call home. Jordan had been right. Ben hadn’t been trustworthy, but Josh had been complicit in Ben’s crimes, because he’d never checked. Never verified anything his manager had told him. What kind of businessman did that make him? A pretty crappy one, that’s for sure.

He listened to Caitlin explain what she needed. “Yeah, I’ll send you copies of the sales he reported, but they should be in public record, too.”

Josh could feel Salty’s penetrating gaze on him.

“No. How soon can you get me this information? I need it tomorrow if at all possible. Don’t bother verifying every concert. Look at the latest ones—maybe for the past two years. I just need enough information to bury Ben Johnson.”

Josh paused again, listening to the lawyer.

“Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll wait for your call.” He turned to Salty. “Now, we wait.”

Salty nodded. “You’re doing the right thing.”

Josh shook his head, disgusted. “Then why does it feel so damned wrong?”

Josh didn’t have long to wait. Caitlin called him back within three hours and he had his answers. Ben had also bilked him out of ticket and record sales—to the sum of five million dollars over the past two years alone.

Ben had some answering to do. The money was a huge deal, maybe not so much to him because he already had way more than he could ever spend, no, it was a trust issue. But it mattered. Tony and Grace didn’t have much. They needed that money—their money—and Josh was going to make sure they got it.

However, the bigger issue for Josh was the letters Ben had kept away from him from his grandfather. He wanted answers. No, he really needed answers from his soon-to-be former manager. Because to him, there was no explanation for the meanness of withholding the letters.

So at three o’clock in the morning, Josh found the café’s golf cart keys and headed back to the campground.

All the lights in the Winnebago were out, except one tiny light in the kitchenette. Ben’s shoes sat on a mat outside the camper. He was home. The manager was notorious for practicing the Asian custom of removing his shoes before he entered his living space. Too bad other Asian customs, like do no harm, weren’t as high on his list.

Josh pounded on the camper door.

A few minutes later, Ben opened the door. His long hair hung in his face, his mustache looked bushy and poked out at odd angles.

“Josh? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

“We need to talk.” Josh shoved his hands in his pockets to keep himself from grabbing the other man around the neck and strangling him before he got his answers.

“Sure. Come in.” Ben stepped back, letting Josh push through the door into the kitchen. “Have a seat. What’s up? Having problems with the album?”

“No. I’ve got a good handle on the music and lyrics for ‘Bridges.’” Josh sat at the banquette in the little kitchen.

“That’s what you’re calling the album? ‘Bridges’?”

“Yes, I think it’s the right choice.”

Ben pursed his mouth, the corners turning down and nodded. “It’s as good as any, I guess. Your performance tonight was great. And with that kid . . . man.” Ben whistled. “You both were hot. I think a kid like that could give you an edge with the teenybopper crowd. He’s a looker. The girls loved him. Draw a whole new demographic.”

“You might be right.” Josh drummed his fingers on the tabletop and waited, not knowing how to start the conversation that meant so much to both their futures. Finally, he took a deep breath and just plunged in. “You told me a few days ago that Luke Alexander’s contract was a fluke.”

Ben stilled, looked at his hands palm down on the tabletop. “Yeah, I was a newbie manager. Green. Didn’t know what I was doing.”

Josh sat back, stretched his legs out in front of him, and crossed his arms over his chest, eyeing the manager the whole time. “Then, maybe you can explain to me how Tony signed a contract tonight with the exact same clauses?”