Chapter 9 - THE DEAD WOMAN THEY TRIED TO BLAME
Troy arrived at Anna’s office with his attorney and a binder of copied accounting records.
He looked thinner than he had in the mountains. His green jacket hung loose at the shoulders, but he still carried himself like the person with the missing piece.
The ledger pages showed transfers between company accounts. Claire’s initials appeared beside seven entries totaling more than six hundred thousand dollars.
“She developed the system,” Troy said. “Move units temporarily, close the reporting gap, replace the money after the next contract payment.”
Claire had worked as the company’s controller before her diagnosis. She was exacting and cautious. She also loved my parents and had spent years trying to keep peace between Richard and me.
It was possible she had protected them.
That possibility hurt more than Troy’s accusation.
“Why didn’t you produce this during the first review?” Anna asked.
“We didn’t think Daniel would try to destroy his own family.”
Priya examined the pages without touching them.
“These are exports, not originals.”
“The originals are on the server.”
“The server image will tell us when the entries were created.”
Troy’s attorney interrupted. “This is a settlement discussion, not an interrogation.”
Priya closed the binder.
“Then the settlement depends on fabricated evidence.”
Troy’s expression shifted.
Only slightly.
I noticed because I had spent nine days watching every small change in Noah’s face for signs that he was getting weaker.
Priya turned the laptop toward us. The accounting-system logs showed that five of the seven entries bearing Claire’s initials had been created six months after her death.
The remaining two had been edited later.
Troy leaned toward his lawyer.
Richard had often told me grief made people imagine betrayal where none existed. Now I understood why my family had repeated that idea so aggressively. If I questioned the books, they could call it mourning. If I remembered Claire’s warnings, they could call it obsession.
Troy stood.
“This meeting is over.”
“Did my father know you were using Claire’s initials?” I asked.
He did not answer.
His attorney guided him toward the door.
Before leaving, Troy looked back at me.
“You weren’t the only one trying to keep her alive.”
It was the closest he came to sounding human.
Later, Priya recovered a series of draft reports from the server archive. Claire had flagged duplicate serial numbers and unrecorded loans eight weeks before her final hospitalization.
Richard had marked the review postponed.
The next version of the report removed Claire’s concerns entirely.
May you like
My father had not simply covered for Troy after Claire died.
He had been suppressing her questions while she was still alive.
