The Staffing Bills Put Empty Shifts On Our Calendar

I took Nolan's offer to an attorney named Leah Sato.

Her office had a worn chair and a window facing a parking lot. I liked it at once. Nothing there looked designed to impress a buyer.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"My work paid for. My share counted. My name off whatever else he signed."

"Do you want to stay married?"

I looked at the $12,000 offer on her desk.

"No."

She let that answer sit without trying to make it larger.

I paid a $3,500 retainer from the savings Nolan had said I should use for a new car.

Leah copied the fabrication agreement, Mina's loan papers, and our company records. Our operating agreement gave each of us half ownership. It also gave both members access to the books.

"Managing the front desk didn't make him the only owner," she said.

She sent a formal records request and a demand that nothing be moved, deleted, or sold. She filed my divorce case and asked the court to preserve the business assets while the claims were sorted out.

There would be no final ruling that week. There could be a short hearing about keeping things in place.

That was enough for me to start.

I kept thinking about the staffing bill.

"Can we find out who owns Cedar Shift?"

Leah asked her assistant to pull the state business filing. Nolan was its only listed manager. He had formed it fourteen months earlier.

Its mailing address was a rented box in Ogden.

"He said it was a vendor," I said.

"It may have been his vendor," Leah said. "We need the money records."

Two days later, Nolan's lawyer sent a folder of company exports. It held payroll totals, monthly sales sheets, and Cedar Shift invoices.

It did not hold bank statements.

Leah sent the missing-record list straight back.

With her help, I hired an accountant named Peter Dunn. He charged $175 an hour and asked dull questions that gave me hope.

"Who approved vendor bills?"

"Nolan."

"Who could change the monthly reports?"

"Nolan."

"Who closed out ticket payments?"

"Nolan."

Peter turned the monitor toward me.

"Then these aren't three separate checks. They're one person."

The Cedar invoices listed staffing blocks for private groups. I compared them with the room calendar and maintenance log I had saved on my own phone.

On March 12, the mine room had been shut for a broken return spring. I had photographed the repair beside that day's newspaper for the insurance file.

Cedar billed six workers for that room that afternoon.

On July 9, it billed a night crew. Our alarm log showed the building had been armed at 6:04 p.m.

Peter marked both dates for follow-up. He did not call them proof of theft.

"A bad invoice tells me where to look," he said. "It doesn't tell me where the money ended up."

Abby agreed to speak with him after Leah explained she could decline. She brought her pay stubs and a notebook of shifts.

"Nolan said the extra crew came after we left," she told him. "I thought they cleaned."

Thuy supplied her own bills. She had repaired and cleaned the sets during the same months. Some of her work dates overlapped the supposed Cedar crews.

"Don't make me the whole case," she told me over dinner.

"I won't."

"Good. I'm very convincing, but I still need receipts."

For the first time that week, I laughed.

Nolan called while I washed our bowls.

"You hired an accountant?"

"Yes."

"That comes out of your money."

"The books affect both of us."

"You're letting strangers destroy our marriage."

I dried my hands before I answered.

"I saw your signature on a claim that you owned my equipment. That wasn't a stranger."

He breathed hard into the phone.

"You were happy when I paid the bills."

"I thought tickets paid the bills."

He ended the call.

The next morning, Leah forwarded his response to our court request. Nolan denied that I had any right to block the sale. He said I had signed the fabrication agreement only to track hobby expenses.

He asked the judge to let him complete the transaction and place my disputed payment claim aside.

Attached was a sworn financial statement. It listed Cedar Shift's bank balance as $2,100.

Peter called it a number to verify.

I called it a number that had arrived without a bank statement.

Leah's assistant brought in the hearing notice while we were still talking.

Monday morning. A courtroom in Ogden. Both of us were required to appear.