Chương 4
“I have not been watching him.”
“How long?”
Richard exhaled.
“Since February.”
It was April.
Evelyn looked back out the window.
“What did you find?”
“We can discuss that tomorrow.”
“No.”
“You have had a traumatic night.”
“So you decide when I get information now?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It is exactly what you said, just with nicer tailoring.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then it disappeared.
“I found financial inconsistencies connected to Daniel’s consulting company.”
Evelyn’s mouth went dry.
“How much?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You know enough to have a number.”
Richard drove another half block.
“Potentially more than a million.”
She looked at him.
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I tried.”
“No, you told me Daniel was reckless. You told me I was letting him have too much influence. You told me I was sentimental.”
“You were.”
“Was I sentimental about a million dollars?”
“I did not have proof.”
“But you had enough proof to inspect my locks.”
Richard said nothing.
Mara lived in a narrow brick townhouse on a street where every third car seemed to belong to someone who had given up trying to parallel park correctly.
She opened the door wearing gray sweatpants and an old university T-shirt.
She looked at Evelyn’s wrist.
Then at Richard.
“Good evening, Richard.”
“Mara.”
“Still terrifying?”
“So I’m told.”
“Come in, Evelyn.”
Richard reached for Evelyn’s arm.
He stopped before touching her.
“Call me in the morning.”
“I will.”
He looked as if he wanted to say more.
For once, he did not.
Mara closed the door after him.
Then she turned, took one look at Evelyn’s face, and said, “Tea or whiskey?”
“Toast.”
Mara blinked.
“Toast?”
“I haven’t eaten since lunch.”
“Okay. Toast.”
The kitchen smelled faintly of garlic and dish soap.
A stack of mail leaned against a fruit bowl containing two bananas that had gone brown at the stems. Evelyn stood there staring at them while Mara put bread in the toaster.
“You can sit,” Mara said.
“I know.”
“Just checking.”
Evelyn sat.
Mara did not ask what had happened until the toast appeared.
She buttered it unevenly and put the plate down.
Evelyn ate half a slice before speaking.
“Daniel is sleeping with Vanessa.”
Mara nodded slowly.
“All right.”
“He locked me in the safe room.”
Mara stopped moving.
“With a key.”
“Evelyn.”
“My father was already in the house.”
“Your father was what?”
“And apparently he’s been investigating Daniel since February.”
Mara pulled out the chair opposite her.
“Start over.”
Evelyn did.
She started with the email she had found eleven days earlier because starting with the vase would have been easier, and she was suddenly tired of telling easier versions.
The email had not been romantic.
That would have simplified things.
It was an ordinary message from Vanessa to Daniel with a spreadsheet attached.
Need your approval on revised vendor allocations before E signs.
Evelyn had seen it on Daniel’s laptop while looking for their accountant’s contact information.
She had almost closed the screen.
Then she saw a company name she did not recognize.
North Lake Strategic.
She chaired the Carter Community Foundation, which her mother had created fifteen years earlier. Daniel’s advisory firm handled some administrative work for the foundation, though Evelyn had gradually reduced that relationship as the organization grew.
North Lake Strategic had received six payments in nine months.
Evelyn did not remember approving any of them.
She asked Daniel at dinner.
He barely looked up from his plate.
“Research contractor.”
“For what?”
“Workforce modeling.”
“Why don’t I remember them?”
“Because you hired me to make sure you don’t have to remember every contractor.”
She had laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because she was embarrassed.
The next morning she searched her own email.
There were approval messages.
Her name was at the bottom.
She remembered none of them.
At first she assumed she had forgotten.
That frightened her more than fraud.
Her mother had developed early cognitive problems in the final two years of her illness, and Evelyn had carried a private terror ever since that one day her own memory would begin dropping pieces of her life.
She spent three hours searching calendars.
On two dates when she supposedly approved invoices, she had been traveling.
On another, she had been in a dental surgery with her phone off.
When she confronted Daniel again, he said an assistant might have routed the approval through a delegated account.
Then he kissed her forehead and told her she looked exhausted.
That night, Evelyn lay awake beside him until three.
The next day she called a lawyer.
Two days later she called a forensic accountant.
She did not call Richard.
“That part matters,” Evelyn told Mara.
Mara had not touched her own tea.
“Why?”
“Because he thinks I called him first.”
“Did you tell him you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Evelyn rubbed her thumb along the cracked edge of her phone.
“I don’t know.”
Mara gave her a look.
“Okay. I know. I didn’t want him to enjoy being right.”
“That sounds more like you.”
“It’s childish.”
“It’s also very believable.”
Evelyn finished the second piece of toast.
The night before the vase, the accountant had sent preliminary findings.
North Lake Strategic shared a mailing address with a property company Daniel had invested in three years earlier.
The signatures on several internal forms appeared to have been copied from legitimate documents.
One transfer had been approved from an internet address used by Daniel’s office while Evelyn was attending a conference in another state.
She confronted him at seven that evening.
Daniel denied forging anything.
Then he became offended that she had hired an accountant without telling him.
Then he accused Richard of engineering the investigation.
Then, after two hours of argument, he admitted there had been “temporary cash movement” to protect a project from default.
Temporary.
Cash movement.
Project.
The money had become vocabulary.
May you like
Vanessa arrived a little after ten.
Daniel told Evelyn she was there because they needed to correct the documents before Monday.
