Chapter 3 - The Missing Forty-Seven Thousand
Colleen slept for less than three hours.
At six the next morning, she called her primary-care office, photographed the bruising beginning along her cheek, and wrote down everything she remembered while the order of events was still clear.
She had spent thirty-five years running the front office of a dental practice.
Documentation was a habit she trusted more than memory.
At nine, Brett knocked.
He carried coffee and a paper bag from a bakery Colleen liked.
She let him in but didn’t touch either.
“Tell me everything.”
Brett sat in the desk chair.
Dana had started ClearSpace Home Studio four years earlier, designing high-end closets, pantries, and home-organization systems for wealthy clients in Chicago’s western suburbs.
The first two years had gone well.
Then construction costs rose, two large clients canceled, and Dana signed leases on equipment she no longer needed.
Instead of closing the company, she borrowed against the house.
Brett knew about the first $80,000.
He had agreed to it.
He had not agreed to the rest.
“So somebody forged your signature?”
“No. The line was already open. She could draw against it.”
Colleen’s stomach tightened.
“How much is left?”
“About twenty-three thousand.”
“That means more than one hundred fifty thousand is gone.”
“I know.”
“What was it spent on?”
Brett looked toward the hotel window.
“That’s the problem.”
He showed her spreadsheets from their joint accounts.
Payments had gone to business vendors, credit cards, leasing companies.
Most made sense.
One group did not.
Over eleven months, forty-seven thousand dollars had moved through transfers labeled “materials reserve.”
The destination account belonged to Dana’s company.
But ClearSpace’s bookkeeper had told Brett the previous week that those deposits never appeared in the operating ledger.
Colleen remembered Dana snatching the yellow envelope from her hand.
“You confronted her?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I wanted proof first.”
Colleen stood.
Her knee hurt, but anger steadied her.
“So you knew money was missing. You knew she was hiding things. And you left town.”
Brett flinched.
“That’s not fair.”
“No?”
He had no answer.
Colleen picked up her purse.
She planned to spend several days with an old friend in Downers Grove.
Before leaving, she made one decision.
She called the investigating officer and told him she wanted her statement formally added to the report.
Brett watched her from the doorway.
“Mom, please don’t turn this into something bigger before we understand it.”
Colleen stopped.
Dana had dragged her by the hair and chained her to a staircase.
May you like
Yet Brett was still worried about things becoming bigger.
That was the first moment Colleen understood there was another problem in her son’s marriage he had not told her about.
