Chapter 18

The band was excited when they heard about the interview. Marco made a comment that they should have been included, but Lyla pointed out it had been set up by the record label, and they already knew what the deal was with that.

Internally, I winced as soon as Marco started complaining. Not because he was complaining specifically, because that I had gotten used to; but because I realized that except for the last little bit of the interview, I’d mostly only talked about myself. I hadn’t purposefully tried to snub the rest of the band, but I knew Marco wouldn’t take it well if he thought I was trying to take all of the credit. For now, I decided not to mention it. The gig had gone well enough that Marco, in spite of his complaint, was in a good mood, and I didn’t want to ruin it until I saw what was actually in the article.

With that last show, we were officially done with our tour. There was still a week until the first day of school, so I was taking the time off to get my life back to normal. Or at least as normal as I could.

We set up a few practices for the middle of the week, which would have to stop when the school year started, at least until the rest of the guys moved up from Ashville. We were also playing on Friday and Saturday at the Blue Ridge. I hadn’t been sure if Chef or Willie would want us back, since they’d had to work out a new schedule over the summer, but when I went back on Monday to start training, Chef made it clear he wanted us to come back and play.

Just like that, we were back to normal. I still tried to get out of the house as much as possible, since Dad was there all the time. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t even started thinking about getting an actual job, let alone gone out and applied for any. He’d made some noise about calling old friends and seeing if there was any work for a gig musician, but as far as I could tell, no one was calling him back.

Besides just getting into the groove of things, I also had some busy work from Hanna, who emailed me mid-week to give me some assignments. We’d had a really good sale through of our merch at the last show, to the point where we could pay off all of our investors and use what was left to buy more. As one of our investors, Chef had already asked if he could set some of our merch up for sale at the Blue Ridge. He already had our album cover, which Kent had sent over right before our Ashville gig, blown up and put on the wall next to the stage hanging beside album art with a very young-looking Willie on it.

He’d actually asked when we’d first gotten the merch, but Hanna had argued that this tour might be our one shot before the label decided to exercise their rights to produce and control our merch, so she wanted to make sure she had as much to sell through as possible while we had the chance. Chef had agreed, but now that the tour was over, he started asking again. Some of the better shirts had all but sold out in the more popular sizes, so Hanna needed to cut a check to the printer we used for the shirts to get more.

First, however, she wanted to pay off the investors before we started paying for another round of merch, which is where I came in. Hanna had accidentally taken the checkbook for the account with her, since she’d been handling that stuff while we were on the road. Theoretically, she could have written the checks and mailed them, but she didn’t want to wait on the mail system and then wait on the investor to cash the check. Her solution was to send me to the bank to get cashier’s checks, and personally hand them to each of our investors.

Since this was one of the slowest weeks I’d had in almost a year, what with no school and minimal practices with the band and Chef, I had some extra time to deal with it, so I didn’t mind. I also appreciated the dramatics of walking up and handing an investor a check.

I was less enthused once I got to the bank. Getting a bunch of high dollar, at least for me, cashier’s checks from the bank took forever. Normally, my trips to the bank were just going to deposit my paycheck from Chef or my cut from the shows I’d played and took all of five minutes. Because we had a bunch of checks to cut, however, it seemed to take forever and involved the teller having to go get someone else to check something. Finally, she came out with a bunch of checks and my receipt.

I was so excited to get to Chef’s and give him his check, that I only half glanced at the receipt showing how much each check was for and the remaining balance in the account, and it took me until I was almost out the door before I noticed the balance wasn’t what I expected.

I didn’t keep a specific eye on the bank account we’d set up for the band which was used to pay each of us out of, but Hanna did since she was the one dealing with payments and whatnot. Mom hadn’t been thrilled with this arrangement, seeing Hanna as a kid, but I’d been insistent that if she was going to be my manager, at least temporarily, she should be allowed to manage everything. Besides, I trusted her, which was the litmus test for me, and the same reason I had Mom on the account.

When we’d been discussing the checks, Hanna had mentioned how much was in the account and how much should be left for producing new merch once we paid off the investors, which is why the number, when I saw it, caught my attention.

It was lower than it should have been to the tune of two-thousand dollars. Hanna had been sure about the numbers, and everything else she’d said when it came to money so far had been dead on. Still, she was my first call. Unfortunately, she didn’t answer.

Kat was at her doctor’s visit and it was the middle of the lunch rush, which meant Chef was busy, so instead of going there, I headed back home, intending to hunker down in my room and maybe noodle on some songs while I waited for Hanna to call me back or until my training time with Chef started.

I didn’t have to wait long. Just as I was going up the steps into the trailer, she called back.

“Problems with the checks?” she asked when I answered.

“No, I got them, but the total left in the account is different than you said it should be, by a couple of thousand dollars. I wanted to double-check and make sure I didn’t do something wrong.”

“Let me check,” she said.

There was some rustling in the background, followed by typing.

“Let’s see. I see the checks they did there, and ... you’re right. This is lower than it should be.”

“Did money get withdrawn?”

“Uhh ... yes. Two thousand dollars was pulled out last week. What’s the last four on your card for the account?”

I pulled out the card that I’d gotten when we signed up for the account and read off the digits.

“It has to be your mom. I could look into the records and see, but that isn’t my card or yours, and she’s the only other one with a card for that account. Could you ask her if she took out the money? If not, I’ll call the bank and see about identifying it as fraud. I’m not sure if that will cause some kind of hold on the account, so I want to make sure it wasn’t one of us first.”