Chapter 67
Caine: "How do I find myself in the light?"
Po: "By taking the path that leads to the truth."
Following Bae's Prius from the diner, Gold drives Kamen to Emma and Bae's to pick up a half-dozen banker's boxes, their work for the day. Bae will spend the day in an imposed vacation; with Treadle in stasis, he has no job to go to. The men sit on the porch for a while, nursing beers, and while Bae and Kamen talk about this morning's support rally, Gold tries to call Belle. He's sent directly to voice mail. He hates how bossy he sounds as he demands she call and explain herself, but he's scared. They don't keep secrets from each other, so why the hell did she take off like that? He gives her thirty minutes, then calls again with the same result.
"We ought to get to work on that evidence," Kamen advises.
"Yeah, whatever," Gold leaves his unfinished beer on the porch rail. But halfway down the steps he swings back. "Did she say anything to you or Emma?"
Bae squirms. "Pop, you're going to have to talk to her."
"This is wrong." Gold looks up from the stack of photocopies spread out across his dining table.
Across from him, Kamen is setting up his Surface and sipping coffee. The note of alarm in Gold's voice draws his attention away from the computer. "What is?"
"This 990." Gold stabs a finger at a tax return. He rifles through the other documents. "And this one, this one, this–my gods, these are all wrong. All lies." He leaps to his feet, landing hard on his bad ankle and has to limp into his office. In a minute he's back, cursing and empty-handed. "They took my records! Damn it, how do I–"
"Take it easy, Rumple," Kamen says calmly, lifting a banker's box from the floor to the dining table. "Here are photocopies of the records they took from your study–the ones that you had in your file cabinet. The ones on the table here are copies of documents they claim they found hidden in a false bottom in your desk. Documents that, I take it, are falsified."
"Damn right they are." Gold pounces on the banker's box. In a few minutes he's lined up Treadle's 2011 990 side by side with a document purporting to be the one that was submitted to the IRS. "This," he stabs a finger at one of the documents, "is correct. The other is a fake."
"The one that was sent to the IRS," Kamen says. "That's a fake. Who had access to these forms before you mailed them to the IRS?"
"Belle, of course, for our personal income; Bae and the board for Treadle; and Josiah for the shop; they reviewed the forms and signed them."
"Of course. Who else?"
"The vice-president of my bank, Wilford Scrooge. He checks my math, then when he's verified each form, he makes a copy to send back to me for my files–"
"And sends the original to the IRS," Kamen finishes.
Glumly, Gold adds, "I first hired him to assist me in 2012, when I was on honeymoon; I continued to use his services in 2013 and 2014. With two partnerships and a nonprofit, the taxes became more complicated; it helped to have a more knowledgeable. . . ." He sighs, giving up.
Kamen smirks. "And there's our inside man. Now, let's start cataloging the damage he did." He slides a pack of Post-its across the table. "Here, start going through the tax returns. On the stickies, make note of everything in the fakes that doesn't match up with the real returns. While you do that, I'm going to call a colleague of mine, a regional president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners."
"I like that name," Gold remarks.
"We'll photocopy these documents and have them overnighted to her. Her services are expensive, Mr. Gold, but when she's consulted on a case for me, I've had an eighty-seven percent win rate."
"Make the call, Mr. Kamen." Gold slaps a yellow sticker onto a stapled set of pages, then fumbles in his pocket. As Kamen steps out onto the porch for better reception, Gold returns to his office for a pen. One of the drawers, he notices, has been taken, probably as evidence: the one that presumably has a false bottom. He's certain now that Spencer, either in the flesh or in representation by a stealthy minion, at some point entered this room and planted "evidence." It makes him queasy; he wonders if he and Belle were at home at the time of the break-in. . . asleep upstairs. . . perhaps nude and draped around each other, as they often fell asleep. His hand clenches. He imagines transporting himself with a puff of magic into Spencer's bedroom in the middle of some night when the damn DA has a lady friend staying over, and greeting them into wakefulness with floodlights and a bullhorn, or better yet, TV cameras, yes, cameras and a laugh track and a live studio audience. Don't use magic in anger, he'd promised Archie, but a mage could still daydream.
He yanks open every remaining drawer in his desk in hopes of finding his lucky pen, but has to settle for a handful of Bics.
When he emerges, Kamen has returned. "She'll take us on." He sits back down at the table and grabs a tax form and a pen. "This is going to take a while, so we may as well get comfortable." He slides his jacket off and loosens his tie. Gold merely unbuttons his jacket. Kamen snorts. "That's your version of comfortable?"
Gold blinks. "Yeah."
"Okay," Kamen shrugs. He kicks off his shoes, leans back in his chair, clicks a pen and starts to scan the first page of the 2011 Form 1065 for Gold & Dove Antiques. They work in silence for a few minutes, filling stickie after stickie with notes, until Gold's temper cools down enough that he remembers his manners. "Would you care for something to drink, Mr. Kamen? Coffee, iced tea, mineral water?"
"Tea would be nice," Kamen decides. "And Mr. Gold? We're going to be spending a lot of time over the next couple of days working together. How about if you call me Kevin and I'll call you–if you don't mind a nosy question, how did you get such an unusual first name?"
Raising to his feet, Gold smiles with a feigned fondness. "My father never did tell me and I never asked. But he was quite the joker, so I assumed he meant it as some sort of prank, the meaning of which is forever lost in time."
Kamen chews thoughtfully on the cap of his pen. "'Rumple' wouldn't be short for something, would it?"
"It was, at one time, but as I told the judge, 'Rumple Gold' is my full legal name now. Do you take sugar or lemon in your tea, Kevin?"
"Not going to tell me, are you?" Kamen smirks. "Lemon, no sugar."
On top of things. Gold feels at last on top of things, now that he and Kamen have a detailed list of every discrepancy between the fraudulent tax returns and the true documents. They know the "who" and the "what" now, Kamen surmises; they need only discover the "how." And that, both men admit, will be tough, because, at least to their untrained eyes, the fakes are damn good, the handwriting almost a close enough match to fool Gold himself.
All right, the handwriting is a close enough match to fool Gold himself. It's perfect, down to the wide swooping head of the "r" ("a showman's 'r,'" Belle has called it) and the tight formation of the letters of the last name (an indication, Gold thinks, that he's never been comfortable with his curse name).
Spencer is no practiced forger; in fact, there is none in Storybrooke. Gold's certain of that; as a pawnbroker, he knew every criminal in town. So Spencer must have brought in an outsider, possibly snuck in as one of the few tourists the Storybrooke Chamber of Commerce managed to lure. A smart move: Spencer would have known that the boundary spell Gold and Blue erected would have wiped away any outsider's true memory of his visit, leaving him with only vague images of a pleasant but dull village. Hell, not only would the forger leave with no memory of the crime; Spencer wouldn't have had to even pay him.
It's dark when they finish their catalog of lies. The least he can do for his lawyer, after all that work, is to feed him, Gold decides, so as Kamen types up the notes, Gold ambles into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator. He's shocked to find it nearly empty. He scrounges up a can of mushroom soup and another of tuna; that, along with crackers for a crust, gives him a casserole. Belle must have been too distraught this past week to go shopping. He will take care of that task tomorrow while she's at the library, and tonight he will take her out to eat. His poor sweetheart needs some nurturing.
As he serves up the casserole, Gold speculates on Scrooge's reasons for cheating him. He comes up as empty as his cupboards. As the bank's largest depositor, Gold was the golden goose for its employees. None of the bank's staff had supported CUSS, nor had Scrooge or his relatives owed Gold money, and Scrooge had had no previous association to Spencer–at least, not in Storybrooke. As for any connection they may have had elsewhere. . .Gold doesn't raise that possibility with Kamen.
"Well, let's catch our man first, then we'll ask him what he has against you," Kamen says cheerfully. He forks up a big bite of casserole with as much enthusiasm as if it were one of Fran's steaks.
Gold, too, finds his appetite returning.
After Gold has driven Kamen back to Emma and Bae's for the night, he pulls into the mini-mart to fill up the gas tank. After paying, he counts the bills remaining in his wallet: there's not enough to take Belle out, so he runs his debit card through the ATM. He orders the maximum withdrawal, $400, so he can buy groceries tomorrow and have a nice cushion of cash: a stuffed wallet always cheers him up.
The ATM spits his card out as if it were a slice of spoiled pork. "Insufficient funds!" the machine accuses him. He kicks it, then backs away before the clerk catches him.
From the mini-mart, he should turn east to get back home, but he turns south instead, telling himself it's a warm night and he's been cooped up for four days and Belle's not going to be home for another hour anyway. He cruises up and down the streets, crisscrossing the town, enjoying his freedom–except he's not. A tight band of tension is squeezing his chest and it's not the stars he's watching; it's the cars he's passing. Cars just sitting placidly in driveways, their owners tucked inside houses or apartments for the night, enjoying dinner and the company of spouses, as he should be, would be if Belle were not keeping a secret. He keeps rolling up and down those streets until he admits to himself he's looking for a Honda Fit, license plate "Readmore."
He finds it.
Parked in front of Room 101 at the Sleepybye Motel.
She's better off, he tells himself after he's shattered his cane against the streetlight. He stands there in the flood of his headlights, leaning on the hood of his car because he needs the support, and he pants, partly from exhaustion, partly from anxiety. She's better off. Her new man is no doubt kinder, younger, and hasn't been in jail three times. Someone she can live a quiet, respectable life with. Have kids with.
He waits an hour but she doesn't come out. Then the sobs come and there's no way in hell he'll allow the new man to see him like this, so he drives home, and he supposes he should find another place to sleep tonight, let her have the house, but Kamen is at Bae's and Josiah is her ex and he can't exactly go to the one motel in town, now can he? He can't even go to Storybrooke because he's not allowed to leave the county.
He decides to decide later. In the meantime, he'll kill a couple of hours in the bar. Except he doesn't have any money, so he goes home (is it still home?) and he raids the cookie jar, where, each night, they unload the loose change from their pockets before they go upstairs to bed: he finds less than two dollars there.
With his fingers still scrabbling for coins in the jar, he gets a grip on himself. True Love, stupid, he tells himself; her kiss broke his curse. Magic doesn't lie. The kiss proved she was destined for him. Belle doesn't lie: she vowed forever; her ring is the proof.
He's calling himself thirty-one varieties of jackass when a small, dismayed "oh" startles him and Belle's caught him with his hand literally in the cookie jar.
As he withdraws his hand, the rosy-cheeked ceramic Santa–a Christmas gift from Henry last year (Gold can still hear Belle laughing, "Henry, is this your subtle suggestion that I bake more cookies?")–crashes to the floor and shatters.
The first thing Gold notices is that Belle's hair is a damp mess and her hands are reddened. The second thing Gold notices is that she won't look him in the eye; she just stares at the fragments of Santa.
"What's going on, Belle?" His voice, hard, brooks no denial.
"I was hoping you wouldn't find out for another day or two, until I get paid." He can barely hear her.
He speaks louder. "What's going on, Belle?"
She turns and walks up the stairs. There's a moment of panic as he wonders if she's walking out on him, if she's going upstairs to pack. He follows, unsure what to do, how to stop her. If she's lost faith in him, surely he can win her back when he proves his innocence. All he has to do is to show her the forgeries; then she'll believe in him again.
His heart sinking, he follows her to their bedroom. Not again. He won't lose her again. She promised forever and he'll remind her they have a deal–
She's opening her dresser drawer. The top one, the underwear drawer. He gulps, "Belle, no."
Her shoulders are shaking with silent tears as she fishes some papers from the drawer. She comes toward him; he steps back. He won't accept them. If he doesn't sign them, he can prevent the divorce.
"These came the day you went to jail." Her voice is still weak. She holds the papers out and now he can see in bold letters the title "Notice of Levy." He doesn't know what that is, but it's not "Petition for Divorce" so he doesn't care.
Except Belle does, enough that she's crying openly now. "Rumple, it's all gone. We can't pay the mortgage, the phones, the lights. The check I wrote to Archie bounced. I had to borrow the money for Mr. Kamen's retainer from my father. I can't even pay Henry for mowing the lawn."
A/N. Hats off to Deweymay and Twyla for correct guesses! And for those who wondered about the lawyers' names: Joseph Keaton is just a little homage to my favorite comic actor, but if Google Translator is right, "Saeva" means "savage" and "Anguem" means "snake." In Croatian, "Kamen" means "rock," so he might be someone Gold can depend upon; but according to another source I found, it means "masked" in Japanese, so maybe Kevin isn't what he appears to be.