Chương 5
“It wasn’t edited.”
“I know. They don’t.”
“I can send the original.”
“You already did. Preserve the phone.”
“What about the card?”
“Security logged it. According to Perez, Eleanor tried to take it to her office. Nathan stopped her.”
Livia looked toward the counter where the engagement ring remained.
“Did the police arrest anyone?”
“No. They took an initial report about missing records and potential evidence tampering. Nobody knows yet whether records are actually missing.”
“They are.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Nathan told Adrian.”
Silence held for a moment.
“When?”
“Two nights ago. Adrian came home after one. He thought I was asleep. I heard him take the call in the bathroom.”
“What exactly did you hear?”
“Nathan said the original vendor ledger was gone from the finance office. Adrian told him to stop looking for it.”
“Did Adrian know you heard?”
“No.”
Mara exhaled slowly. “We need to discuss everything you have not told me.”
Livia closed her eyes.
There were several things.
The first irregularity had appeared six weeks earlier as a mistake too dull to be threatening. A fourteen-year-old violinist named Iris Mendoza had called Livia because the housing deposit for a summer program had not arrived. Livia served as artistic ambassador for the Rowan Arts Trust, which meant she performed at benefits, recruited faculty, mentored students, and appeared in photographs with donors. She had no formal authority over payments. Still, the students called her when something went wrong because she answered.
Livia contacted the program director, who blamed an administrative delay.
Two days later, a pianist from Baltimore received the same explanation.
Then three travel stipends were postponed.
Livia asked Adrian whether the trust had a cash-flow problem. He told her large foundations sometimes delayed disbursements while accounts were rebalanced. His answer sounded plausible and carried just enough mild irritation to discourage another question.
The following week, Livia rehearsed at Rowan House after a board luncheon. Her access card still opened the fourth-floor practice rooms, though Adrian had told her the cards were being updated. She entered the staff kitchen looking for tea and found Nathan sitting alone at the table with his jacket off and his head in his hands.
He had looked up too quickly.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“People only say that when something happened.”
He gave her a tired smile. “Is that a musician’s rule?”
“It’s a human rule.”
Nathan closed the laptop in front of him. A spreadsheet disappeared from the screen, but not before Livia saw two names she recognized: the florist and the company supplying Camille’s custom dance floor.
He followed her gaze.
“You didn’t see that.”
“I saw enough.”
“No, you didn’t.”
She waited.
Nathan rubbed both hands over his face. “My mother moved money between accounts. It’s temporary.”
“Scholarship accounts?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He stood and put on his jacket. Before leaving, he said, “Talk to Adrian.”
She did.
Adrian listened in their kitchen while tightening a loose handle on the drawer beneath the sink. He had been promising to fix it for months. When she described the spreadsheet, the screwdriver stopped turning.
“Nathan is overwhelmed,” he said.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“The wedding costs are being advanced through Rowan House operations and reimbursed privately.”
“Then why did I see wedding vendors beside trust accounts?”
“You saw a screen for two seconds.”
“Are the scholarships delayed because money was moved?”
He set the screwdriver down.
That was the first answer.
The second was his request that she wait until after the wedding. He said a financing agreement would close Monday. Funds would be restored. Students would lose nothing but a few days. Public allegations could destroy donor confidence, forcing the trust to suspend the entire program.
Livia wanted to believe him because the alternative damaged too many things at once.
She waited.
Then Iris Mendoza’s mother called crying from a bus terminal. The summer program had given Iris’s room to someone else because the deposit missed the final deadline.
When Livia confronted Adrian again, he admitted the financing had been delayed. He promised the Rowans would cover Iris’s placement personally. He asked Livia not to involve the board. He said Eleanor would consider it a betrayal.
“Would you?” Livia asked.
He took too long.
After Livia told Mara the full sequence, the attorney remained quiet.
“You protected him,” Mara said.
“I protected the students.”
“You believed protecting him protected the students.”
“Yes.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
“I know that now.”
Naomi placed toast in front of Livia and left the room, giving them privacy without pretending not to hear.
Mara continued. “The recording helps, but it also gives the trust an argument. Eleanor threatened to frame you after you refused to sign a statement. They will say you had already taken documents and recorded the meeting as leverage.”
“I didn’t take anything.”
“Then we prove that. We also prove the transfers.”
“How?”
“Not through a viral video.”
At ten, the Rowan Arts Trust issued a statement.
It acknowledged an “unfortunate private dispute” at the wedding reception and announced an internal review of “unauthorized access to confidential records.” The statement praised Eleanor Rowan’s four decades of philanthropy and described Livia as a “former artistic consultant whose contract recently concluded.”
Livia’s contract had three months remaining.
The chamber orchestra called eleven minutes later.
The executive director, Paul Lerner, sounded as though he had been chewing ice. The Rowan trust funded nearly a quarter of the orchestra’s education program. Eleanor sat on its advisory council.
“We support you personally,” he said.
“That usually means something bad professionally.”
“We need to postpone Saturday’s performance.”
“Because I’m pregnant?”
“Livia.”
“Because I recorded a threat?”
“Because the lobby will be full of cameras and the board is concerned about disruption.”
“So I disappear until they decide whether I was worth framing.”
“That is not what I said.”
May you like
“It is what you are doing.”
Paul sighed. “We have eighty-three musicians and forty-one staff members. I have payroll next week.”
