Chương 8
Daniel approached alone. Marisol waited near the elevator.
Luis rolled down the window two inches.
“I’m not talking without a lawyer,” he said.
“That’s reasonable.”
Luis looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not supposed to say that.”
“I’m not the police.”
“You’re worse for my job.”
“Vivienne has been suspended from foundation operations.”
“She’ll come back.”
“Maybe.”
The answer made Luis glance at him.
Daniel rested one hand on the roof of the car. “Did you alter the Lark and Stem invoice?”
“I downloaded it.”
“Why?”
“She told me there was an accounting problem. She stood behind me while I logged in.”
“Did you change it?”
“No.”
“Did you upload the revised version?”
Luis rubbed both hands over his face. “She sent it to me and said accounting had corrected the classifications. I uploaded it.”
“Did you know the amount had changed?”
“Not then.”
“When did you know?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Nora said something to her near the flowers. I heard part of it.”
“Why did you ask Nora about the invoice?”
Luis looked through the windshield.
Daniel waited.
Finally Luis said, “Because Ms. Hale told me if anyone asked, I was supposed to say the florist requested the changes.”
The garage ventilation system hummed above them.
“Did she say why?”
“She said vendors moved costs around all the time and Nora was trying to create a problem because she wanted attention.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I believed she signed my performance reviews.”
Daniel looked toward the concrete wall.
Luis continued, “My contract ends next month. I applied for a permanent role. She said she could approve it.”
“And last night?”
“She told me not to talk.”
“The gesture.”
“Yes.”
“Did you access Lark and Stem’s email?”
Luis’s head came up. “No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
Daniel believed him, which was not evidence of anything.
Luis lowered the window another inch. “Are you ending my contract?”
“I don’t know.”
“That means yes.”
“It means the review has to determine what happened.”
“I just told you.”
“You also uploaded a false invoice.”
“Because the vice chair told me accounting corrected it.”
“You had access to the original.”
“I had forty-two vendor files and three days of sleep across a week. I didn’t compare every number.”
Daniel almost said that he should have.
The words reached his mouth and stopped there.
Daniel had signed the quarterly oversight statement without reading the supporting vendor report. He had allowed Vivienne to manage operations because she was better at donor relationships and because conflict with her exhausted him. He had accepted explanations that sounded organized. He had confused delegation with innocence.
“You should get a lawyer,” he said.
Luis laughed without humor. “With what money?”
Daniel took a card from his wallet, then paused.
Offering to pay for counsel would compromise the review. He put the card away.
“Marisol can give you the contact for a nonprofit employment clinic,” he said. “No promises about representation.”
Luis looked at him for a long moment. “That’s less useful than money.”
“Yes.”
“But probably less dangerous.”
“Yes.”
Luis rolled the window down fully. “I have messages.”
Daniel stayed still.
“From her,” Luis said. “Not about changing the amount. About uploading the revised file and telling people it came from the florist. She used Signal for some of it, but I took screenshots because she deletes messages.”
“Why?”
“Because I have poor instincts.”
For the first time all day, Daniel almost smiled.
Luis did not.
“I took them because I knew she’d blame me,” he said.
Daniel nodded. “Give them to your lawyer. Not to me.”
“You don’t want them?”
“I want them handled in a way she can’t claim I pressured you.”
Luis studied him. “You’ve done this before?”
“No.”
“That shows.”
Daniel left the garage with the uncomfortable sense that it was the first honest assessment anyone had offered him in years.
That evening, he returned to the villa.
The entrance hall had been cleaned. No stain remained on the ivory stone, though a faint sweetness lingered where the wine had spread. The three intact glasses had been removed. The overturned one sat inside a clear evidence bag on the library desk because Priya Shah, the independent attorney Daniel retained, had asked staff to preserve anything connected to the incident.
Daniel thought the request excessive until she explained that the glass might hold fingerprints or show whether it had been on the tray.
“It shows wine spilled,” he said.
“It may also show who handled it.”
“We have video.”
“Video is not truth. It is one angle of an event.”
He thought of Nora saying he had sent her image to strangers.
Priya was in her late forties, with cropped gray hair and a blunt way of speaking that made even simple questions feel billable. She had represented Daniel’s company in an internal procurement investigation six years earlier. He trusted her because she had once told him his preferred solution was legally defensible and morally weak.
She set a folder on the library table.
“We have at least seven revised vendor invoices over the past fourteen months,” she said.
Daniel sat opposite her.
“How much?”
“Approximately one hundred eighty-six thousand dollars in added charges.”
“To whom?”
“Four event vendors, two consultants, and a production company.”
“Did they receive the money?”
“Some did.”
“And then?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Daniel looked through the open doors toward the dark sea.
Priya continued, “Three vendors refunded portions to an entity called Hale Strategic Outreach.”
He turned back. “Vivienne’s company?”
“An LLC registered by her brother’s former business manager. The listed address is a mailbox.”
“How did no one see this?”
“Someone probably did.”
The answer landed with the weight of accusation.
Daniel picked up one invoice. The foundation’s logo appeared at the top. Beneath it, a production company had billed forty-eight thousand dollars for “community media integration.”
“What does that mean?”
“It may mean something. That is the problem with vague services.”
May you like
“My signature is on the quarterly report.”
“Yes.”
