Betrayal by Danielle Steel Page A

if it’s just shampoo,” and Brigitte usually bought that for her too. She bought all of Tallie’s personal supplies for her. There was very little that Tallie had to do herself. Brigitte took wonderful care of all her needs, and often thought of them before Tallie did herself. “Victor, that’s crazy. You must be looking at the wrong amount or the wrong column or something. There’s no way I’m spending twenty-five thousand a month in cash.”
    “That’s what I show. There are checks made out to cash, and they’re being cashed at the bank. Do you leave the cash lying around the house?”
    “Of course not. Half the time I have to borrow money for coffee, especially when Max is here. She helps herself in my bag, but not to twenty-five thousand dollars. That has to be a mistake.” She was certain of it.
    “No, it’s not,” he insisted. “That’s why I wanted to have this conversation with you. I’m concerned about the lost deductions, and even more so if you don’t know what you’re spending it on, or don’t know what you spent.” He made it sound as though she were irresponsible and careless and couldn’t keep track of her own money.
    “Look at my credit card statements. For anything over five or ten dollars, I use my card.”
    “Then how would you explain a twenty-five-thousand-dollar cash expenditure every month? Is Brigitte using that much cash for you?”
    “No, Brigitte uses a credit card too. We have a joint card for anything she buys for me.” He knew that, he saw it in her accounts. “I don’t think she uses much cash either.”
    “Well, somebody is spending it. You need to find out who, if you’re not.” He was visibly worried about it on her behalf, and Tallie was concerned too. To Victor, it was a black hole in her accounts. “If you round that up, annually, over the last three years, it comes to close to a million dollars. You can’t just lose track of that kind of money.”
    “Obviously,” she said, mystified. “I’ll talk to Brigitte. Maybe she’s paying for something in cash that I don’t know about. Since she pays the bills, I don’t know what she’s using the credit card for, or checks, or maybe cash. I’ll ask her,” Tallie said, although she looked less concerned than Victor. She was certain that there was a reasonable explanation for it. And Brigitte kept a very careful record of her accounts. Victor had always been satisfied before. But the recent audit had allowed him to do some fine-tuning, and look at the overall picture more carefully, and he never liked to press his clients about what they were spending unless they were in financial trouble, which Tallie certainly wasn’t, but he didn’t want her to lose track of that much money either. It was a very large amount. He didn’t like his clients using cash for just that reason—no one could ever remember what they spent it on, and Tallie was no different. Victor was sure the money had been spent legitimately, but he wanted to know for what, and by whom. Tallie promised to find out. She knew without a doubt that Brigitte would have the answer to his question.
    After that, he ran down a list of bills that he wanted to verify with her, to double-check that they sounded accurate. Clothing for Max, some artwork Tallie had bought in New York, and several gifts for Hunt, among them a gold watch. He was always very generous with her too. And at the end of the list, several travel expenses, airfare, and the local hotels that he had also questioned Hunt about.
    “Hunt explained to me the other day about the local hotels.” He was no longer concerned about that, but he had wanted to be sure. Victor could see from her accounts that they frequently stayed at several local hotels, although they had stopped showing up on her credit card statements for the past year. They had been on her credit card bills for about three years before that, and now they were only on Hunt’s. Apparently Hunt was paying for the hotels now