The Accountant Put A Red Dot Beside The Missing Company

Yvette's office sat above a print shop on South Grand. I reached it with my metal box under one arm and a damp paper cup under the other.

Rain had followed me from the parking meter.

“Keep the coffee,” she said. “Give me the box.”

Yvette Marchand was forty-six, a Black American woman with close-cut gray curls and yellow glasses. She worked as a forensic accountant. Her smile was warm enough that I nearly apologized for bringing her trouble.

Then she read the agreement.

She read every page, including the ones Nolan called boilerplate.

“Did you sign any change to this?”

“No.”

“Any release? Any new split?”

“No.”

“Good. Those are answers. We'll collect the proof around them.”

I showed her the receipt photograph and the four royalty statements Nolan had given me. Together, the statements listed $12,000 in sales and $4,800 paid to me.

“He said the shows barely sold,” I told her.

“One school paid most of his reported total.”

“Maybe it was a good sale.”

“Maybe,” she said cheerfully. “That's why we ask for all of them.”

She entered North Meridian's name in a public business search. The company had been formed eighteen months earlier. Its manager was Nolan Shaw.

Its mailing address was a rented mailbox in Clayton.

I stared at his name.

“He said it was a distributor.”

“It is,” Yvette said. “He left out who was standing inside it.”

She printed the record. On her copy, I put a red dot beside the company name.

“Habit from the dome,” I said. “Marks a place that needs checking.”

“A useful habit. Just don't turn a dot into a verdict.”

Her first bill would be $1,500. I had $1,864 in my personal checking account, mostly money from extra weekend shifts.

I asked if she could start with a smaller review.

“This is the smaller review,” she said gently. “We can stop at that amount until you approve more.”

I wrote the check.

It frightened me more than the receipt had. A photograph could be a misunderstanding. A check was a choice.

Yvette helped me make a list of records covered by my audit clause: customer agreements, invoices, bank deposits, transfers, and the books of any company Nolan controlled.

Then she suggested an attorney named Beth Rusk.

“For the contract?” I asked.

“For the contract, and for anything the contract turns up.”

Beth met me the next afternoon. She wore a plain navy suit and let me finish sentences, even the messy ones.

Her office window looked across a narrow alley. A delivery driver below spent several minutes fitting one cart through a doorway. I watched him turn it, back up, and try again while Beth made copies. I wished I had understood sooner that taking my time was allowed.

“You don't have to decide about your marriage today,” she said. “But you should stop signing papers you haven't read.”

I thought about three tax returns. Nolan had handed me signature pages while dinner cooled.

Beth wrote that down without making a face.

“We'll get copies,” she said.

She sent a formal audit demand by the methods in our agreement: certified mail and email. It named the shows, quoted my inspection rights, and requested electronic records within ten business days.

She also told Nolan to preserve the files behind the payments.

That night he stood in the bedroom doorway holding his phone.

“You hired somebody?”

“I asked for the books.”

“Same thing when you do it like this.”

He set the phone on my dresser, screen up. The email filled it.

“Do you know what an audit does to a small business?”

“It checks the numbers.”

“It costs money we don't have.”

“Then send the records.”

He breathed through his nose. Behind him, our hall bulb buzzed.

“North Meridian has costs. Travel. Promotion. Housing on tour. You can't just take forty percent of a deposit.”

“We signed that I could.”

“Six years ago. Before we were a family.”

I had believed family meant the promise mattered more. He made it sound like marriage had erased the ink.

“Send the records, Nolan.”

The next morning, he offered me $8,000.

He called it a peace payment. The paper beside his coffee called it a full release of all claims, known and unknown. There was no list of sales attached and no space left for questions.

“Sign before noon,” he said. “I have to move money around.”

I took the paper to Beth instead.

She read the release, then placed it in a folder.

“An offer isn't a balance sheet,” she said.

On the tenth business day, Yvette received a spreadsheet listing $21,400 in sales. No bank records came with it.

Three rows had no customer names.

One listed a payment of $1,800 to a woman named Tessa Vale, with a note that read: Touring Apartment, Month Six.