Chapter 7 - The Dates Tanya Was Paid More
The trust accounting took time.
Meanwhile, Margaret asked the household payroll administrator for Tanya’s full employment records.
Tanya’s regular salary remained unchanged.
Adrian’s private payments were separate.
Margaret placed the dates beside Eli’s school calendar.
A pattern appeared.
The first $600 payment came after Eli asked his school counselor whether children could choose to live with grandparents.
The $750 payment came after he searched online for “what is a trustee.”
The next followed an email Eli sent Margaret from his school account asking if Rebecca had ever talked about “money Dad was holding.”
Margaret never saw the email.
It had been caught by the family spam filter.
The $1,000 payment came after Eli told Tanya he wanted to bring the blue folder to Margaret’s foundation office.
The final $1,500 transfer came four days before the bathroom incident.
What happened four days earlier?
Margaret asked Eli.
He did not answer immediately.
Then he went upstairs.
He returned carrying his tablet.
There was a photograph.
Blurry.
Taken through a partially open study door.
Adrian stood beside a man Margaret recognized from First Prairie Bank.
On the desk were property schedules from Rebecca’s trust.
Eli had photographed them during a supervised weekend at his father’s house.
“What were they doing?” Margaret asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why did you take this?”
“Mom used to say if Dad told me not to worry about something, I should ask what it costs.”
Margaret almost smiled.
That sounded exactly like Rebecca.
Then Eli said, “Tanya saw it.”
Margaret looked at him.
“When?”
“Tuesday.”
Four days before the bathroom.
The final payment to Tanya arrived Wednesday morning.
The implication was obvious.
Still not proof of exactly what Adrian instructed her to do.
But the pattern was becoming difficult to explain as ordinary childcare compensation.
Margaret’s attorney obtained formal trust records.
A series of distributions had been made for Eli’s “education, health and welfare.”
Those categories were permitted.
The expenses beneath them were not what Margaret expected.
Consulting fees.
Property-management charges.
Legal expenses associated with entities Adrian controlled.
And a $210,000 loan from the trust to Mercer Development Partners.
The loan documents existed.
The interest rate was below market.
Adrian had signed on behalf of both borrower and trustee.
That conflict of interest was serious.
Margaret read the page twice.
The trust had not simply lost money.
Adrian had used Eli’s assets to finance his own company.
He apparently intended repayment after refinancing.
Exactly as Rebecca had feared.
Then the bank produced one more document.
A proposed amendment to the lending arrangement.
It would extend repayment by three years.
The bank had requested consent from the successor trustee because of the conflict.
Margaret.
She had never received the request.
Adrian had been trying to keep Eli quiet at the exact moment the financial arrangement required Margaret’s attention.
The bathroom cruelty was not random.
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It was pressure.
And the boy had finally spoken just before Adrian needed silence most.
