Chương 6
“And a signature sheet.”
Arthur looked up.
“What signature sheet?”
Priya opened the box.
He stopped her with one hand.
“Don’t.”
She froze.
“If there is potential evidence in that box, I want you to tell me how you obtained it before we disturb anything.”
“I copied the documents from the conference room.”
“Did Mark know?”
“No.”
“Did you remove originals?”
“No.”
“Did you access anything outside your normal job permissions?”
Priya hesitated.
“That depends what you mean by normal.”
Arthur’s face hardened slightly.
“Then let’s be very precise.”
“I’m operations director.”
“You have access to financial administration?”
“Yes.”
“Accounting system?”
“Yes.”
“Personnel files?”
“Some.”
“Mark’s personal email?”
“No.”
“Did you enter his personal email?”
“No.”
“Did you bypass any password?”
“No.”
“Did you take anything from a locked drawer?”
“No.”
Arthur nodded once.
“That helps.”
Priya let go of the box.
“Are you going to turn me in?”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then don’t invent consequences before we understand the facts.”
Her shoulders dropped a fraction.
Arthur looked at me.
“Do you want the girls hearing this?”
I turned.
Emma stood in the kitchen doorway.
Of course she had been listening.
“Emma.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“You’re standing five feet away.”
“I was getting water.”
She held up an empty glass.
“Without water?”
She looked at the glass, annoyed by the evidence against her.
“I forgot.”
For a moment nobody said anything.
Then I walked her back into the kitchen.
“Can you take Lily upstairs and help her find something to watch?”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
The question caught me.
“I don’t know.”
Emma studied my face with the unsettling patience children develop when adults lie badly.
“Is Dad?”
“I don’t know that either.”
She lowered her voice.
“Do you still love him?”
Behind us, Arthur shifted papers.
Priya coughed.
I wished the townhouse had thicker walls.
“Yes,” I said.
Emma frowned.
“Why?”
I almost smiled.
“I’m working on that part.”
She considered this, then nodded as if it made more sense than a cleaner answer.
“Okay.”
She went upstairs.
I stayed in the kitchen long enough to rinse her unused glass.
My hands needed something ordinary to do.
When I returned, Arthur had placed the cardboard box inside a clean plastic storage bin he found in the hall closet.
Priya sat at the edge of an armchair.
“What’s the signature sheet?”
I asked.
She rubbed her hands together.
“Mark gave it to me last spring.”
“To do what?”
“He said he needed samples for electronic authorization forms.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed.
“Whose signatures?”
“Staff.”
“Anyone else?”
Priya looked directly at me.
“Yours.”
I felt nothing for perhaps two seconds.
Then heat climbed my neck.
“How did you have my signature?”
“I didn’t collect it.”
“Who did?”
“Mark.”
Arthur leaned forward.
“What did the sheet contain?”
“Scanned signatures, names, job titles, a few corporate seals.”
“Was Clara’s trust role listed?”
“No.”
“Was her signature labeled?”
“Yes.”
“As what?”
Priya looked miserable.
“Authorized principal.”
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“I’m not an authorized principal of anything.”
“I know.”
“Did you know then?”
“No.”
Arthur’s pen moved again.
“What did Mark tell you?”
“That you had approval authority over family investment entities backing some of the firm’s projects.”
“And you accepted that?”
“I had seen Clara sign documents before.”
“What documents?”
“Office leases, insurance renewals, a line-of-credit extension once.”
I turned toward Arthur.
“You told me that line of credit was routine.”
“It may have been.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“No.”
Priya continued.
“Mark made it sound like you were more involved behind the scenes than people knew.”
“That was deliberate,” I said.
She looked at me.
“I think so.”
A car door slammed outside.
All three of us went still.
Arthur crossed to the window without touching the blinds.
A delivery van rolled away from the curb.
Priya laughed nervously.
“Great.”
“What?”
“I’ve become the kind of person who jumps at FedEx.”
Arthur sat again.
“When did Mark fire you?”
“He didn’t exactly.”
“What happened?”
“He found me in the copy room.”
My stomach dropped.
“Did he see the documents?”
“Some of them.”
“What did he say?”
Priya rubbed her thumb against a chipped nail.
“He asked what the hell I was doing.”
“And you said?”
“That I was trying to organize the Harbor Point file.”
Arthur’s eyebrows lifted.
“He believed that?”
“No.”
A humorless smile passed over her face.
“He’s many things, but he isn’t stupid.”
“What happened next?”
“He asked for my key card.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“He told me to go home and not contact anyone from the office.”
“That’s suspension, perhaps.”
“He also said, ‘You’re finished here.’”
Arthur wrote that down.
“Did he threaten you?”
“No.”
“Did he ask whether you had copied anything?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
Priya’s face tightened.
“So I lied.”
“You were frightened.”
“That doesn’t make it true.”
I watched her for a moment.
“Why come here?”
She looked toward the stairs.
Then back at me.
“Because I watched him last night.”
“At the party?”
“Yes.”
“I saw what Diane did.”
Her voice thinned.
“I saw Emma look at him.”
The room became very quiet.
Priya continued.
“I’ve worked for Mark eight years.”
I folded my arms.
“That’s a long time.”
“He gave me my first management job.”
There was no defense in her voice, only fact.
“My father had just died.”
She stared at the carpet.
“I was missing work constantly because my mother couldn’t handle anything by herself, and my previous employer basically told me to choose.”
“Mark hired you anyway?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds like him.”
Priya looked surprised.
I understood why.
She expected me to need him transformed into a monster.
But Mark had never been one thing.
He could be generous.
He could be funny.
He once drove ninety minutes in freezing rain because Emma forgot her stuffed rabbit at a hotel.
May you like
He remembered the birthdays of junior staff and forgot our anniversary twice.
He paid for Priya’s mother’s home-care aide for a month without telling anyone.
