Chapter 8 - What I Had SaidI listened to the complete meeting recording in Leah’s office.
Daniel had brought bank records and asked for an immediate outside audit. Celeste had argued that the transfers were ordinary renovation expenses. Elliot said he could explain them if given a week.
Then I heard myself say, “Take care of Daniel before he takes those papers outside this room.”
A few seconds later, I continued:
“Give him the records he’s asked for. I want the three of you to sit down with the auditors tomorrow.”
The auditors had never been called.
Daniel had come to me again two days later. I told him Celeste and Elliot were preparing an answer. He died before I heard it.
The full recording cleared me of the accusation Celeste had released. It did nothing to make me proud of my part in that meeting.
“I should have called the auditors myself,” I told Claire.
“Yes,” she said.
I appreciated that she did not hurry to forgive me.
Outside Leah’s office, reporters waited by the curb. I had spent my working life building a reputation for knowing every detail of a project. In my own foundation, I had signed payments without understanding them and dismissed the two people who tried to warn me.
Leah helped me make a statement. I said the edited clip omitted my instruction to provide records to an audit. I also said I had failed to follow through and would cooperate with the investigation of every payment made under my name.
The statement did not stop the calls. It did allow the board to see the complete recording before Celeste could ask them to act on her version.
Torres and her team continued searching.
The foundation’s fleet server contained a dispatch entry assigning silver sedan 42 to Daniel. Someone had deleted it two days after he died. The server’s backup still held the original entry and the user account that had erased it: Gideon’s.
A second backup held location records from the sedan. It traveled from the garage to Unit 17, then north toward the road where Daniel’s SUV was later found. Another foundation vehicle followed it for much of the route.
Gideon’s lawyer said the records showed only that staff had been trying to locate Daniel.
Torres needed to know what happened on the road.
Ben’s old camera backup helped with one part. It showed Daniel’s SUV at his garage long after the reported crash. The real crash photographs, now reexamined, showed damage that was hard to reconcile with the original account. The SUV had been left in the ravine after Daniel died elsewhere.
While investigators compared vehicle records, Claire and I went with Leah to Harbor House. The board had voted to close the building to foundation staff and let an independent team count every room and every file.
Ava met us at the door.
She wanted to help the auditors speak to families who had applied for beds. Claire had already asked whether she would be willing. This time Ava looked me in the eye.
“Will you listen when they tell you what happened?”
“Yes,” I said.
Inside, empty mattresses were stacked in a ground-floor room. There were fewer than the number claimed on a single invoice.
Claire and Ava began making a list of families to contact. I carried files when asked and stayed out of the way when I wasn’t needed.
That afternoon, Elliot came to Leah’s office under police escort to identify the records he had taken from Unit 17. His lawyer sat beside him.
“The case had all the originals,” Elliot said. “Celeste kept them after I brought it to her.”
“Why give Jonathan the copy?” Leah asked.
“Because Daniel was right.” He stared down at his bandaged wrist. “I knew about the false payments. I knew Claire didn’t make them. After Daniel died, I signed whatever Celeste put in front of me.”
He told Torres that Celeste had called him from the road on the night Daniel died. She sounded frightened and said Gideon was bringing a car back to the motor pool. She ordered Elliot to keep the dispatch book out of sight.
“She said Daniel had an accident,” Elliot said. “I asked where he was. She told me not to ask again.”
“Where did she call from?” Torres asked.
Elliot named a waterfront warehouse the foundation had leased through one of its vendors. Celeste had used it to store old furniture and records. He believed she had taken the metal case there.
Police obtained a warrant. By the time they arrived, the warehouse office had been emptied. A security camera showed Celeste leaving that morning with two suitcases.
She was still in the city.
Torres found something else at the warehouse: a damaged memory card beneath a desk. It was marked with the number 42.
An examiner warned us it might hold nothing. It might contain footage from the silver sedan. Either way, recovery would take time.
That evening, Claire tucked Emma into bed at the hotel. Emma asked whether the police had found Celeste.
“Not yet,” Claire said.
Emma pulled her fox close. “Will she come back?”
“The police know what happened at the school,” Claire said. “You’re staying with me, and the people here know who can pick you up.”
Emma nodded, but she did not sleep until Claire sat beside her.
I waited in the hall. When Claire came out, she looked exhausted.
“I thought if I got Daniel’s letter to you, everything would change,” she said. “It did. I just didn’t know how much Emma would have to go through first.”
“She should never have had to carry it.”
Claire looked at me. “You can help her by being her grandfather. She’s had enough people asking her to do grown-up things.”
May you like
I went in and sat quietly by the bed.
Emma reached one hand out from under the blanket. I held it until she fell asleep.
