Chapter 12 - Money with Someone Else's Name
Celia traced Northbridge through public filings. Its owner was a holding company that shared a business address with Owen Pike's security contractor. No money had ever gone to me. The relocation fee had bought his services.
"An approval stamp is not a signature," Celia reminded me. "We need records showing who actually authorized the expense."
The next morning Dr. Bell came to the office with a copy of a campus incident report she'd filed four years earlier. Someone had left a photograph of her son's school beside a note warning her to stop discussing my sample results. She had reported it, then withdrawn her complaint when the threats continued.
"I signed a statement saying your laboratory work was inconclusive," she told me. "It wasn't. I was afraid they'd hurt my child."
"Your statement made it easier for them to call me unstable," I said.
"I know. I am ashamed of that."
"Then tell the investigators everything."
She agreed, without asking for forgiveness. That was more than I'd received from most people who had hurt me.
Ethan sent Celia an independent audit of the voucher. His corporate account had approved it, but the approval came from a delegated login used by his former executive assistant, Miles Trent. The system had recorded an office computer in a room Ethan hadn't entered that night.
We brought the information to Kim. "Trent is alive," she said. "And we have a way to contact him. Please let us do that."
I went home and made spaghetti for Lily. She carefully separated each piece of broccoli as if she were conducting an experiment. I let her. After dinner we sang an absurd song about a dancing fork.
For twenty minutes we were only a mother and daughter.
May you like
Then Detective Kim called.
Miles Trent had agreed to speak, but he demanded protection before he would explain whose order he followed.
