Chapter 4 - The Business AccountTwo days later, Patricia called me into her office again, and this time she wasn't alone. A younger associate, a forensic accountant named Julian Reyes, sat beside her with a laptop and a folder thick enough that I felt my stomach drop before either of them said a word.
"We found the invoices," Julian said. "Ansley Creative Consulting billed 'social media strategy services' to three different accounts over the past eight months. One was Marcus's marketing firm — which makes sense, since that's ostensibly why Brooke works with him at all. But two of the invoices," he turned his laptop toward me, "were billed directly to your father's estate account."
"For social media strategy," I repeated. "For a boat."
"For the Wanderlust's social media presence, specifically," Julian said, not quite masking the disbelief in his own voice. "There's an Instagram account. It's public. I'll warn you before I show it to you."
He turned the laptop fully toward me, and there it was — an account called WanderlustCharters, seven hundred followers, a bio that read Chesapeake Bay's premier private charter experience — inquire for bookings, and a grid of photographs, most of them featuring Brooke on my father's boat, in my father's captain's chair, beside my father's compass, laughing in sunglasses I didn't recognize.
They had been renting out my father's boat.
Not officially. Not legally. But there, in the account's highlighted stories, were screenshots of Venmo payments — small ones, three or four hundred dollars at a time — from what appeared to be Marcus's business contacts, colleagues, even one from a name I recognized as his college roommate, all labeled with variations of Wanderlust day trip and thanks for the ride.
"He's been running a charter business," I said slowly, "using my dead father's boat, funded partly by my dead father's estate account, marketed by his mistress, without my knowledge, for eight months."
"That appears to be the case," Patricia said gently. "And Diane — I want to be careful here, because I know this is a lot — but running an unlicensed charter operation on a private vessel is itself a legal violation, separate from anything involving you personally. If the Coast Guard or the state marine authority became aware of this, Marcus could be facing fines completely apart from any civil claim you might bring."
I sat back in the chair, and for the first time since I'd stood on that dock at 1:47 in the afternoon, I felt something other than grief or fury. I felt something colder, sharper, more useful.
"I want everything documented," I said. "Every payment. Every post. Every invoice. And I want to know exactly what my legal options are — not just for the money. For all of it."
Julian glanced at Patricia, then back at me. "There's something else," he said. "One of the invoices — the largest one, twelve thousand dollars, dated six weeks ago — wasn't paid from the estate account. It was paid from a home equity line of credit that was opened in your name."
The room went very quiet.
"I never opened a line of credit," I said.
"We know," Patricia said. "Which is why, Diane, I think it's time we stop treating this as strictly a marital and estate matter. I'd like to bring in a colleague of mine who specializes in financial fraud. This has moved beyond what a divorce attorney alone should be handling."
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I thought of Marcus's voice on the dock, low and urgent: Don't do this here. You're embarrassing yourself. I thought about how carefully he'd built an entire second structure of deception, brick by brick, invoice by invoice, while I sat at my father's kitchen table sorting through sympathy cards and casserole dishes, believing, with the exhausted trust of a grieving daughter, that my husband was simply trying to lighten my load.
"Bring in whoever you need to," I said. "I'm done being careful with his feelings."
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