Chương 13
“Right.”
Another message arrived from Harrison.
Charles had requested an attorney and was no longer answering questions.
Courtney had voluntarily gone to the sheriff’s office to give a statement.
The second phone was being preserved pending appropriate legal process.
“He lawyered up.”
“That is not evidence of guilt.”
“Do lawyers get a handbook where every suspicious thing has a boring interpretation?”
“Yes.”
“Is it leather-bound?”
“Three volumes.”
The nurse brought my daughter back.
I took her carefully.
Her entire body fit along my forearm.
“She’s five pounds, eleven ounces,” the nurse said.
“Is that okay?”
“For thirty-six weeks, absolutely.”
I touched one impossibly small fingernail.
Lucas should have seen this.
For the first time since his funeral, I did not merely miss him.
I resented him for being gone.
It was unfair and useless and completely real.
“You idiot,” I whispered.
Samantha glanced over.
“Me?”
“Lucas.”
“Reasonable.”
My daughter opened one dark eye.
“Your father was an idiot.”
Samantha cleared her throat.
“Should we perhaps wait until day two before parental alienation?”
“She deserves accurate family history.”
The baby yawned.
It was so enormous for such a small face that I almost laughed.
Then she settled against me.
For several minutes, I did not ask about money.
Samantha did not volunteer anything.
A cart rattled past in the hallway.
Someone down the corridor argued with a vending machine.
The rain finally reached the window in fine diagonal lines.
Ordinary noises returned one at a time.
Then Samantha’s phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
“Daniel.”
“Answer.”
She put him on speaker.
Daniel sounded exhausted.
“I found the token registration audit.”
“You already found the approval,” I said.
“I found the creation details.”
Samantha straightened.
“What do they show?”
“The duplicate token was registered from Charles’s administrator account, but not from his workstation.”
“Where?”
“Remote session.”
“From what device?”
“That’s the problem.”
Of course it was.
Daniel continued.
“The connection originated through our corporate VPN, so the external address was masked in the historical log.”
“Can you identify the device fingerprint?”
“Partially.”
“And?”
“It matches an executive laptop retired eight months ago.”
“Whose?”
“Marlene Shaw’s.”
I blinked.
“My father’s assistant?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean she registered it?”
“No.”
“Does anything mean anything today?”
Daniel almost laughed.
“The laptop was assigned to her, but it stayed in a shared executive office during the period in question.”
“Who could use it?”
“Charles, Marlene, Lucas sometimes, IT staff.”
“Courtney?”
“She wasn’t employed by the company.”
“That didn’t stop her from asking for personnel files this morning.”
“No.”
Samantha asked, “Where is Marlene now?”
“At work.”
“Has anyone spoken to her?”
“I haven’t.”
“Don’t.”
Daniel went quiet.
“Why?”
“Because if she is involved, warning her is a mistake.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“Then there is no reason to drag her into this before we understand what we’re looking at.”
I shifted my daughter higher against my chest.
“Daniel, did Lucas suspect Marlene?”
“I don’t know.”
“You worked with him every day.”
“He stopped telling me things toward the end.”
There was resentment underneath the sentence.
Small, but unmistakable.
“Why?”
“I thought he didn’t trust me.”
“Did he have a reason not to?”
Samantha looked sharply at me.
Daniel did not answer immediately.
That pause made me regret the question.
Then he said, “Maybe.”
My grip on the phone tightened.
“What happened?”
“I made a mistake with the Rochester acquisition.”
“What kind?”
“I sent an early financial model to Charles before Lucas approved the distribution list.”
“You leaked it?”
“No.”
“You just said—”
“I sent it internally.”
“To Dad.”
“Yes.”
“Was that prohibited?”
“Not formally.”
“Then why does it matter?”
“Because the leaked projections included figures from that model.”
Samantha leaned forward.
“Who knew you had sent it to Charles?”
“Lucas.”
“When did you tell him?”
“After the seller raised the price.”
“So Lucas suspected you too.”
“Yes.”
There was no defensiveness in Daniel’s voice now.
That somehow made the admission harder to dismiss.
“Did you leak it?”
“No.”
“Did you give anyone your credentials?”
“No.”
“Did you have access to Lucas’s token?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Not that you recall?”
“I’m not going to say something impossible when we shared offices, conference rooms, travel bags, chargers, all of it.”
Samantha nodded once, approving the caution.
I hated that I was beginning to recognize lawyer-approved answers.
Daniel continued.
“There’s something else in the audit.”
I closed my eyes.
“Please surprise me someday by saying there isn’t.”
“The duplicate token wasn’t used only for Rochester.”
My daughter shifted against me.
“What else?”
“North Harbor approvals.”
“How many?”
“Seventeen.”
My stomach tightened.
“So whoever cloned Lucas’s token could use Dad’s account.”
“Yes.”
“That person could make it look like Charles was authorizing payments.”
“Yes.”
“Could they make it look like Lucas was involved?”
“Potentially.”
The structure of the fraud was becoming visible, and somehow that made it less clear.
Everyone had evidence pointing toward everyone else.
My father’s account.
Lucas’s token.
Marlene’s laptop.
Daniel’s financial model.
Courtney’s company waiting to receive four point eight million dollars.
It was almost elegant.
Too elegant.
“What if that was the point?” I said.
Samantha looked at me.
“What?”
“What if somebody built this so no single person could prove anything without implicating themselves?”
Daniel stopped typing.
I continued.
“Dad couldn’t expose the fake invoices without admitting he created them in the first place.”
Samantha’s eyes narrowed.
“Lucas couldn’t accuse him cleanly because his own security token appears in the logs.”
“And Daniel looks responsible for Rochester because his model leaked.”
Daniel said quietly, “Yes.”
“Courtney gets used as the owner of the holding company.”
“Used?” Samantha asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Good.”
I ignored the correction.
“Everybody has enough dirt on them to stay quiet.”
Daniel said, “That would require someone who knew the entire system.”
“Who does?”
Silence.
Then he said, “Marlene.”
The name sat there.
May you like
I pictured her at my mother’s funeral, handing Charles a handkerchief before he asked for one.
Marlene had managed his calendar, travel, passwords, expense reports, and temper for more than a decade.
