Take Me Home for Christmas

He seemed to make an effort to keep his voice down. “I guess...I guess he’s the target of a probe. They plan to bring him up on criminal charges.”

Sophia was so stunned she couldn’t speak.

“Mrs. DeBussi?”

After clearing her throat, she managed to find her voice. “I’m here. What—what kind of criminal charges?”

“There’s a whole list. Just a sec, they gave me something—” She heard a flustered sigh, then sheets of paper rattling in the background before he came back on the line. “Here it is. He’s looking at several counts of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, securities fraud and engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.”

After such a windy day, the night was, by contrast, calm. But Sophia hardly felt calm inside. Conspiracy. Fraud. Unlawful...whatever that was. Those charges sounded like a jumble of very bad words. “And that adds up to...”

“From what I understand, he could go to prison for the rest of his life.”

Knees weak, Sophia felt behind her for a chair and sank into it. “It can’t be as bad as that.”

“They claim to have proof,” he said, “and they think they’re going to uncover more in their search.”

“They claim?” she echoed. “Is it true? Could it be true? Wouldn’t you know if he was doing something that...terrible?”

“How would I? He only tells me what he wants me to hear, and he’s never said anything about fraud. But—” he lowered his voice “—he has been acting strange lately.”

Somehow she’d missed every sign of that. But she’d been in rehab for a month, during which he could’ve done almost anything. During the first two weeks, she wasn’t even allowed to talk to him. And she’d been absolutely focused on maintaining her sobriety ever since. “In what way?”

“Distracted. Worried.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” she asked, appalled. “When we called, you claimed everything was fine.” Kelly hadn’t seemed concerned in the least. He’d said that maybe Skip had arranged for a boat to pick him up and take him to Rio or somewhere else in Brazil.

“I was trying to keep the business running here and I wanted to handle the call the way he’d expect me to. What if I’d gotten everyone worked up and then he returned by nightfall? I never thought...I mean, I guessed a particular deal might not be going well, but there are always ups and downs when you’re managing investments. I had no idea his problems were this serious.”

Kelly had referred to prison. In a town the size of Whiskey Creek, the humiliation of criminal prosecution would be devastating—not just for her and Skip and his parents, who were so proud of him, but for Alexa, who’d had everything money could buy and was used to feeling important and admired.

“Those charges you mentioned—mail fraud and...and securities fraud. They’re not murder. They’re not anything...violent. If he gets a good attorney, he’ll be able to stay out of prison, won’t he?”

“It’s white-collar crime, but those are serious charges.”

She rubbed her temples. She had such a headache. She needed a drink but refused to succumb to the pressure. How could she handle all this if she was drunk? Lexi needs me.

“They’re not coming after you, too....”

“They haven’t said, but I can’t imagine they are. All they have to do is follow the money to know I haven’t been involved.” But his job was in jeopardy. That couldn’t be easy to hear, especially out of the blue.

“I’m still not clear on what he’s done,” she said. “Or what they say he’s done.”

“He’s stolen money, Mrs. DeBussi.”

But he always had so much. Why would he need to steal? “From who?”

“From his investors.”

Oh, God... “Then what’s the mail fraud?”

“I can’t say how that figures in, exactly. It’s one of the charges. According to a special agent by the name of Freeman, your husband’s been taking investors’ funds and funneling them into private accounts and privately held companies instead of putting them into the SLD Growth Fund. Maybe they mailed him the payments. The FBI is asking a lot of questions but they’re not giving a lot of answers.”

Funneling money into personal accounts? Why would Skip be so dishonest? “He wouldn’t cheat anyone. He must’ve been borrowing the money. He’ll pay it back.”

“Impossible.”

“Excuse me?”

Kelly’s whisper grew louder. “Do you have any idea how much we’re talking about?”

Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She wanted to be home where she could find solace in the familiar. “No. How much?”

“Sixty million dollars.”

Sophia felt faint. “That’s a huge amount of money.” Even to her, and she was used to hearing Skip talk in big figures.

“More than he’ll ever be able to come up with.”

“So...who’s been hurt? Which investors?”

“Anyone who gave him money for the SLD Fund.”

“And the SLD Fund is...”

“The money that was supposed to be invested in a diverse array of assets and publicly traded equities.”

Wait. The “publicly traded equities” reference jogged her memory. She’d heard Skip talking about the SLD Fund with various people around town. That was the big moneymaking opportunity he’d been pushing for the past year. “You’re saying these investors have lost their money? There’s no way to get it back?”

“Now you’re catching on,” Kelly retorted. “I’m guessing he wouldn’t have taken it if he didn’t need it, but that doesn’t make this right. He’s been struggling to cover our overhead here for months. I thought he’d get the finances straightened out when he closed the next deal. That’s what he told me. He said he had a big one coming down the pike. But now...I’m wondering if he’s been saying that just to buy time, so I’d stick around until the end and help him keep up appearances.”

“You’re making it sound like...like DeBussi Investments is defunct. Broke!”

“It should sound that way. Because unless he’s sitting on a secret stash somewhere, it’s true.”

“That can’t be possible.” Skip always had money. Although he’d entered the business world right out of high school and hadn’t attended a day of college, he’d been independently wealthy by the time she married him, when they were twenty-two. And he’d grown richer as the years passed. Not long ago, California Business, a respected magazine, had touted him the best investment consultant in the state.

“But if there’s no money in DeBussi Investments, what about our personal finances?” she asked. “Maybe I can pay some of it back.” At least to the people she knew.

“I have no idea how things stand on the personal side,” Kelly said.

That gave Sophia some hope, but she found out soon enough that she wouldn’t be able to right Skip’s wrongs. When she tried to buy fuel for the Legacy the next morning, she learned that the FBI had frozen all of their bank and credit accounts.

3

Sophia squinted against the bright afternoon sun. She’d never been fond of her in-laws, especially Skip’s mother. Generally, they treated her with a sort of mild neglect, and she pretended not to notice, but occasionally she detected real disdain. She could only assume that her husband had complained about her to them the way he did to Lexi. She’d never said or done anything that should put her out of favor—but there was her drinking problem. Their disapproval and their coolness toward her made it difficult to turn to them, even in her hour of need. She’d called them today because they deserved to know that their son was missing. He was fairly close to them, as close as he was to anybody, and she needed money to fly Alexa and her home. It wasn’t as if she could go to her parents for help. It’d been twelve years since her father had died of prostate cancer, fourteen since her mother had been hospitalized for good.

“What are you talking about?” Sharon snapped. “This can’t be true.”