Chương 7
“What do you mean?”
“I thought I would feel something.”
Nathan sat beside her.
“You do.”
She shook her head.
“No. I mean something useful.”
Neither spoke for a while.
On television, a couple argued about whether to remove a wall.
Eventually Sophie muted it.
“Do you know what I keep thinking?”
“What?”
“If I hadn’t noticed the invoices, would she still be my friend?”
Nathan frowned.
“She would still be pretending to be your friend.”
“That’s not the question.”
He let the sentence sit.
Sophie pulled her knees up under the blanket.
“If I never found anything, she would come to dinner. She’d text me on my birthday. She’d complain about men. We’d go to that stupid spa she loves. I would think my life was one thing.”
Nathan looked toward the dark television screen.
“And it would be another.”
“Yes.”
She turned to him.
“How many things are like that?”
He almost said none.
Instead he said, “Probably more than we’d like.”
The forensic review of the foundation began the following Monday.
Sophie insisted on attending the first meeting by video.
Nathan stayed out of frame.
The outside accountant, a compact man named Elliot Barnes, explained that the questionable payments were spread across multiple vendors and did not immediately look fraudulent. That was part of why they had not been flagged.
Each individual invoice described plausible work.
Community outreach consulting.
Translation services.
Regional program support.
Event logistics.
The amounts were large enough to matter but small enough to blend into a foundation with several million dollars in annual grants and operating expenses.
“What do the vendors actually do?” Sophie asked.
“We’re verifying.”
“Who owns them?”
“We’re verifying.”
“How many were approved by Vanessa?”
“We’re verifying.”
Sophie closed her eyes.
Elliot paused.
“I know that phrase is frustrating.”
“It’s becoming my least favorite phrase.”
“I can replace it with ‘I don’t know yet.’”
“That’s worse.”
Maya, joining from the foundation office, gave a nervous half-laugh.
No one else did.
Sophie rubbed her forehead.
“Sorry.”
Elliot said, “You don’t have to apologize.”
“I do when I’m unpleasant.”
Nathan glanced at her from across the suite.
That was one of the things he loved about her.
Not that she apologized.
That she usually knew when she should.
The audit found the first solid connection forty-eight hours later.
One of the consulting firms had been formed by a man named Marcus Reed.
Vanessa’s younger brother.
Nathan stared at the report.
He had met Marcus twice.
Once at Vanessa’s thirty-first birthday dinner, where Marcus had arrived forty minutes late and spent most of the night talking about a real-estate project in Arizona.
Once at a Christmas party, where he had asked Nathan for advice about raising money.
Nathan had given him none.
Sophie sat across from him at the hotel table.
“She never told me.”
“Would the board have approved a related-party vendor?”
“Maybe, if disclosed.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“How much went to Marcus?”
“Two hundred eighty-six thousand through that entity.”
Nathan read further.
“What about the others?”
“Unknown.”
Sophie looked sick.
“Not drugged sick,” she added when she saw his face.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You have a face.”
“So do you.”
“Mine is better.”
He let that pass.
Detective Morales called that afternoon.
Police had obtained a warrant for Vanessa’s phone.
Vanessa had turned it over through her attorney.
The device had been recently reset.
Nathan stood in the hotel bedroom, looking down at the city.
“When?”
“The morning after Sophie was hospitalized.”
“She wiped it.”
“She reset it.”
“Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Using the least incriminating word available.”
“Because words have to survive contact with evidence.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
Morales continued.
“Some cloud records may still be recoverable. We’re working on it.”
“Did she explain?”
“Her attorney says she was concerned about private client information.”
“She doesn’t have clients.”
“She has consulting work.”
“She reset her phone the morning after a security recording caught her talking about doubling Sophie’s dose.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s still not enough?”
“It’s enough for me to keep working.”
Nathan heard the warning in her voice.
He thanked her and hung up.
When he returned to the living room, Sophie was staring at a message on her phone.
“What?”
She handed it to him.
It was from Marcus Reed.
I know you probably hate us. Vanessa didn’t tell me what she was going to do. I swear to God.
Nathan read it twice.
Sophie said, “Call Morales?”
“Yes.”
Marcus sent another message before they could.
I can prove what the money was for.
Then a third.
Please don’t send cops to my apartment. My daughter is here.
Nathan stared at the screen.
“Do you know he has a daughter?”
“No.”
“I didn’t.”
Sophie took the phone back.
“I hate that that matters.”
“It should matter.”
“I know.”
She did not respond.
Morales did.
Within an hour Marcus had agreed, through an attorney, to meet investigators.
The interview did not produce a confession about Sophie’s medication.
It produced something messier.
Marcus admitted that the consulting company had performed almost no legitimate work for the foundation. Vanessa had arranged the invoices. Money flowed through Marcus’s company, then partly into accounts used to pay expenses associated with their father’s long-term care and partly toward debts Marcus had accumulated after a failed business.
Marcus claimed he had believed Vanessa would replace the money.
At first.
Then the amounts grew.
He stopped asking questions because questions would have required him to stop accepting transfers.
He denied knowing anything about Sophie’s medication until after the hospital.
But he admitted Vanessa had called him from the penthouse that afternoon.
The security system’s recovered audio was part of that call.
According to Marcus, Vanessa had said Sophie was asking about the invoices.
Then she said the sentence Nathan had heard.
Double the dose. He’ll think she did it herself.
Marcus claimed he had responded, “What the hell are you talking about?”
May you like
The recording had cut before his answer.
He claimed he believed Vanessa was speaking metaphorically.
