Chapter 3 - A Signature After I Left
The purchase authorization haunted me all the next day, not because the initials were convincing but because I knew the system. I'd created half of Bellwether's internal controls and taught the accounting staff never to share passwords. Then I'd trusted Gio when he said an outside consultant could manage our transition to new software.
At breakfast, I called our bank's commercial fraud team and Margaret. Neither could promise the payment would be reversed. Both asked the question that made me sick: had I ever authorized anyone to use my credentials?
“No,” I said. Then I remembered sitting beside Gio on a flight home from Houston, exhausted after Evelyn's funeral, while he asked me for a temporary code so he could approve payroll. I had read him the six digits before the plane landed. One code, years ago. The new authorization couldn't have been completed using that expired code, but I had taught him I would surrender a control when he sounded distressed.
Margaret urged me to write a precise statement instead of guessing. “A bad memory can become an allegation if you let someone pressure you into filling gaps.”
That afternoon I walked through Bellwether's original restaurant, a narrow brick building Evelyn had kept even after the company bought hotels in three Texas cities. The lunch crowd was thin. On the wall hung a photograph of Evelyn in an apron beside the first employees. My face was barely visible at the edge, twenty-five and grinning, holding an adding machine. Gio wasn't in that picture. He hadn't joined the business full time until the following year.
Nora came out of the kitchen carrying a ledger envelope. “I didn't take any confidential files,” she said immediately. “These are my own pay stubs and statements. Some of the staff asked me to hold them when their savings deductions stopped matching the portal.”
I opened the envelope at an empty table. Over six months, the employee relief fund had withheld small amounts from checks as employees requested. The deposits made to the segregated fund account, however, stopped three pay periods before the deductions stopped. It wasn't yet proof of embezzlement; an accounting misclassification could leave the bank and payroll records out of sync. But dozens of people had been denied emergency grants for medical bills, rent, and family funerals.
A server named Luz approached us. She had been with Evelyn since high school and now had a son with asthma. “I don't need a miracle, Claire. I need the six hundred dollars I put aside when my son's prescription went up.”
“I won't promise money I can't release today.” I held her gaze. “But I'll get an independent accountant to trace it, and I'll tell you what we find.”
Before leaving, I noticed Tessa standing by the front window. In daylight she looked younger than twenty-eight, her red gala dress replaced by jeans and a white blouse. She hadn't come to apologize. She held a folder against her ribs like a shield.
“Gio says you think I stole company money,” she began.
“Did you?”
“No. But he billed Bellwether for 'client development' through a company with my name on it.” Her voice shook. “I signed a contract to handle event publicity. I received thirty-two thousand dollars. The ledger they sent my accountant says three hundred and eighteen.”
“Crosswind Events?”
She nodded.
“Can I see your contract and invoices?”
“If Gio finds out I met you, he'll say I made this up.”
“If you're telling the truth, those records matter. You can speak to Margaret directly, with your own lawyer present.”
“He told me you abandoned the business after Evelyn died,” Tessa said.
I almost laughed at the size of the lie. “And did you believe him?”
“For a while.” She looked down. “Long enough.”
Tessa left me photocopies. At the door she turned back. “There's one more thing. I was in Gio's office when his consultant asked whether to keep paying the relief fund. Gio told him to move the money until the hotel acquisition closed.”
“What acquisition?”
May you like
Tessa went very still. “You don't know about the hotel in Oklahoma?”
Bellwether had no approved Oklahoma acquisition. Someone was spending money on a deal the directors had never seen.
