Chapter 3 - The Hidden Ledger
By Friday, the household was walking on eggshells. Blythe had returned late Thursday night, refusing to speak to Dad, locking herself and the twins in the nursery. She had left a trail of sticky notes around the kitchen demanding groceries, cleaning supplies, and gasoline money—as if nothing had happened.
Dad was drowning in guilt. He spent his evenings on the phone with bank fraud investigators and family law attorneys, discovering with every conversation that untangling joint bank accounts was a bureaucratic nightmare. Because Blythe was legally married to him and had access rights, proving the transfers were fraudulent without her cooperation was going to take months.
Months I didn't have.
"Look at this," Reid whispered, sliding a printed document across my bedroom floor on Saturday morning.
I looked down. It was a local property listing for a high-end commercial retail space in downtown Des Moines. The listing price for a six-month lease was exactly fifty-eight thousand dollars.
"Where did you get this?" I asked, looking up at my brother.
"Blythe left her tablet open on the kitchen counter yesterday when she went out to 'run errands,'" Reid said, a grim satisfaction in his voice. "I didn't just find the listing. I found her email correspondence with a real estate agent named Marcus Vance."
I scrambled to my feet, grabbing the paper. "Does she have a showroom?"
"No," Reid said, tapping the paper. "She *lost* the deposit. She tried to lease a boutique space for an interior design firm she registered under a fake LLC last August—using Dad's social security number without his knowledge. When the landlord demanded proof of ongoing liquidity, she wired another chunk of change. The lease fell through two weeks ago because she defaulted on the contract."
My stomach churned. She hadn't just drained our college fund for a legitimate business; she had gambled it on a vanity project that had already collapsed, and she was trying to hide the wreckage.
"We need to show this to Dad right now," I said, reaching for my phone.
"Wait," Reid stopped me, his hand resting on my wrist. "Look at the bottom of the second page. There's a bank routing number for a separate account. Not the joint account. A personal holding account in *her* maiden name."
I squinted at the small print. A string of numbers matched a local credit union just three blocks from our neighborhood.
"What are you thinking?" I asked.
"I'm thinking that if Dad confronts her with just the bank statements, she'll lie her way out of it. She'll claim it was a bad investment and cry victim," Reid said, his eyes hard and determined. "But if we have proof that she's hiding assets in an offshore-style separate domestic account under her maiden name... that's fraud, Laurel. That's criminal."
For the next two hours, Reid and I formulated a plan. It wasn't sophisticated, and it carried enormous risks. Blythe was scheduled to attend a "consultation" with a new client downtown at two o'clock. She would be gone for at least three hours. The twins would be asleep for their afternoon naps.
When two o'clock arrived, Blythe swept out of the house in a cream designer dress, reminding us to keep the twins quiet and threatening severe consequences if dinner wasn't on the table by six.
As soon as her SUV backed out of the driveway, Reid and I looked at each other.
"Let's go," I said.
We secured the twins safely in their cribs, checked all the baby monitors, and hurried out to my old sedan. We drove straight to the downtown credit union where Blythe’s secondary account was registered.
Getting information without being account holders seemed impossible at first. But Reid, possessing a terrifying amount of persuasive charm and carrying a folder marked *Mercer Family Legal Proceedings*, managed to catch the attention of a young teller who happened to be a former classmate of his from high school. When Reid explained that his family was undergoing an emergency asset audit due to fraudulent wire transfers, the teller—looking nervously around the lobby—pulled up a summary ledger of the holding account.
My breath caught in my throat as I read the screen over the counter.
There, sitting quietly in a private savings account under the name *Blythe Mercer-Hayes*, was a balance of $38,400.
She hadn't spent all the money on inventory. She was hoarding it for an exit strategy, preparing to dump Dad the moment the college fund ran dry and her fake business venture cratered.
"Can you print that summary for us?" I asked, my voice shaking.
The teller swallowed hard. "I shouldn't... if my manager sees this—"
"Please," Reid begged, sliding his student ID across the counter. "Our entire lives are riding on this. Our education, our family. If you don't help us, she's going to destroy us."
The teller hesitated for three agonizing seconds. Then, the printer beside her desk hummed to life.
May you like
She handed us three folded sheets of paper. Within five minutes, Reid and I were back in the car, clutching the evidence that would blow Blythe's entire deception wide open.
***
