“Like that coconut water crap?” Jake asked as he peered down the boardwalk to make sure Mason didn’t get too far away on his bike. His nephew pedaled past a sandwich shop. “I mean, Mother Nature’s sports drink,” he said in mock seriousness. “What’s next? Chocolate water that makes you healthier?”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Don’t even get me started. I tried that coconut water diet and it did nothing for me. Hoping it would have taken ten pounds off the old flat tire here, but no such luck.” He patted his stomach, then pointed to Jake. “But you, I’m sure you don’t have to worry about that.”
Jake simply shrugged. No flat tires allowed here, but this meeting wasn’t about diet crazes or the best way to stay in shape. It was about whether Jake could help Andrew and his screwed-over business partner.
He hung his shades on the neck of his T-shirt. “So you’re saying Eli Thompson, who started the Eli Fund twenty years ago, with money his then-wife gave him from sales of her craft fair coral necklace jewelry, so he could launch a hedge fund for ‘Bob in Middle America,’” Jake said, stopping to sketch air quotes as he used the term Eli himself bandied about in the marketing of his investment firm, “has been skimming pennies off the top for years?”
“Yup. And you know what happens to lots of pennies over time?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here. Do they turn into dollars? And then do those dollars become Benjamins and so on?” He made a rolling gesture with his hand.
Andrew tapped his nose. “Bingo.”
Jake peered down the boardwalk. “Mason!” he shouted to his sister’s kid, who was speeding off in the distance. “Don’t go past the ice-cream shop. That’s too far.”
“Ten bucks says that’s probably where he’s headed,” Andrew said with a smile.
“Double or nothing says you’re right,” Jake said, then started walking in Mason’s direction. His nephew had just learned to ride a bike after a few solid months of practice. The kid was a natural now, but he was embracing his freedom a little too quickly for his uncle’s taste. With flip-flops slapping on the sidewalk, Jake quickened his pace. “Be right back,” he said to his potential client. Seconds later, Mason turned around and grinned wildly.
“Did you see how far I rode?” Mason shouted from many feet away.
“I did. And it was so far you started to turn into a speck. And a speck of Mason is too small, so stay closer,” Jake said, drawing a circle with his index finger as Mason rode to him. “If you do, we’ll get the chocolate peanut-butter-cup scoop, ’K?”
“My favorite!”
“Mine, too, buddy. Mine, too,” he said, and Jake was already looking forward to an ice-cream cone. That’d be his reward for a potential new business deal. Ice cream—now that’d be an investment worth making. Ice cream never went out of style. Come to think of it, Jake might invest in some Ben & Jerry’s. Or Talenti. That was some seriously good stuff. Ice cream was his guilty pleasure, and since working out was his best friend, he never truly felt guilty.
“I’ll stay closer,” Mason said, the smile never leaving his face as he pedaled in the other direction.
Jake walked back to Andrew, returning his focus to the conversation as they leaned against the boardwalk fence. “How much money are we talking?”
“About ten million.” Andrew shook his head in disgust.
He whistled. “Damn. Skimming is a hot business these days. I made the wrong career choice for getting rich,” he joked.
“You and me both.”
Jake raised his chin, returning to his serious mode. “I need to ask—how did you have no idea this was happening? You and your brother, Aaron, are Eli’s right-hand men in the fund, you said. Was this all under your nose?” He aimed to be direct with clients. Going into work armed with facts was the only way to operate.
“Unfortunately, yes. But we all have different areas of expertise.” Andrew tapped his chest. “That’s how we split up the work, so we could make bets in different areas. Lots of those bets don’t pay off—that’s the nature of a hedge fund. But when the cocoa bean farm went belly-up at the same time Eli retired to the Caymans sooner than we expected him to, that’s when we started thinking there might be a pattern,” he offered, then heaved a deep sigh, flubbing his lips. “Wish I’d caught on to this sooner. Makes me feel stupid not to have checked before.”
“Hey now,” Jake said, trying to reassure the guy. “Don’t beat yourself up. Just give me the details.”
Mason wheeled to a stop by Jake’s side, the brakes braying loudly. “See! I’m going to be a cycling pro like my dad,” he said, then started up again, and Jake fixed on a smile for Mason, not wanting to breathe a negative word about the kid’s deadbeat dad, who was hardly a cycling pro. More like a bum—a cycling groupie who followed the pros around as they raced in Europe, spending more time with them than his own kid who he hadn’t seen in a year.
Mason took off in the other direction, and Jake locked eyes with Andrew once more. “My sister’s at a parent-teacher conference,” he said, explaining.
“Hey, no worries. I’ve got three of my own,” Andrew said.
“Anyway, so what did you find out? I want to understand as much as I can if I’m going to take this on.”
Andrew took a deep breath, then explained how Eli funneled a bit of dough each year into odd investments that didn’t pan out, pocketing the money, bit by bit so the other partners wouldn’t notice. “The most recent one was the cocoa bean farm. Once that went bust, he retired to the Caymans and opened a nightclub. Ergo . . .” Andrew let his voice trail off with the obvious.