Chapter 13 - Tessa's Name
Brandon fled before I could ask another question. The black sedan followed him through the next intersection.
Marisol called the building manager and saved the lobby video. Daniel told me to stay inside while he asked the investigator handling my report whether Patrick was already being watched.
Tessa agreed to speak through an attorney. Two days later, she gave a sworn statement describing a workplace so careless it had become easy to abuse. Shared computers, unlocked drawers, rushed approvals. She admitted leaving her account open when she'd taken her daughter to surgery. Patrick had access to the workstation and had entered approval codes under her name.
"I should've logged out," she said when Daniel read me her statement. "That's on me. The transfers aren't."
The firm's access records backed up part of her account. Her badge was recorded leaving the office long before the second payment. The workstation connection used her credentials afterward. Tessa's hospital records placed her elsewhere, but the investigators still needed to establish who had used the machine.
She had kept one crucial email: a warning to Patrick that the beneficiary consent looked altered. Patrick replied, I'll discuss it with the family. Leave the file open.
"Why didn't the trustee see this?" I asked Renee.
"Patrick didn't circulate it. Tessa was told he'd resolved the issue directly."
Later that evening, the police investigator asked to interview me again. She wanted the exact words Brandon had used at Marisol's building and whether he'd mentioned Patrick's full name.
"We've located a second copy of the forged authorization," she told me. "It wasn't in the trust files."
"Where was it?"
"In a package mailed to your husband's mother last month."
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Attached to the copy was a handwritten instruction in Gertrude's careful lettering.
Make sure Abby never sees the original.
