Chapter 10 - The Price of a Convenient Villain
“Vanessa,” I repeated.
Marcus glanced at Rebecca, then back at me.
“She entered the expenses. She had access to the records. Let her answer for what she did, and I can get some money back to the company.”
“How much?”
“That depends on how this is handled.”
He wanted my agreement before he named a number. More than that, he wanted me to give the board an answer it could use before anyone had finished asking questions.
“Vanessa should answer for her own entries,” I said. “That doesn’t explain why your companies sent the invoices.”
Marcus’s expression hardened.
“You think an investigation gets you every dollar back? Even if you win, you’ll spend years chasing it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’m not trading an honest account for a faster one.”
He looked at Rebecca.
“Does she understand what I’m offering?”
“She does,” Rebecca said. “If you have a repayment proposal, send it through counsel. If you have records, give them to the independent reviewers.”
Marcus shook his head and walked toward the elevators. He never told us how much he would return.
In Rebecca’s car, before either of us started the engine, I wrote down his words and the time. Rebecca made her own note. We sent both to Helena, with one sentence stating that we had accepted no terms.
For a moment I held my phone in my lap. I wanted to call Vanessa and ask how much she knew. Then I remembered why I had agreed not to direct the inquiry. A fair investigation could not mean independence only when I liked where it was going.
The next morning, Rebecca called from her office.
“Vanessa has contacted the review team,” she said. “She has an attorney. She asked whether you could be present when she gives her account.”
“Why?”
“She said she wants you to hear the part she got wrong.”
I looked at the silver watch on the hotel dresser. I had taken it out of my handbag the night before, intending to put it away, and left it there instead. *Forever, my love.* The engraving caught the light whenever I crossed the room.
“Is Helena comfortable with me being there?”
“She approved it on conditions. Their attorney will lead. You won’t question Vanessa or receive anything outside the review team’s process.”
“I can do that.”
At the office, Vanessa sat across from the review team’s attorney with her own lawyer beside her. She wore a plain sweater and no necklace. When I entered, she looked at me briefly, then down at her hands.
The attorney explained that notes would be made and that Vanessa should distinguish what she knew firsthand from what Daniel had told her.
Vanessa nodded.
“I entered the party charges,” she said. “Staffing, equipment rental, and video. Daniel told me to use the business-development code.”
“Did you believe the party was a client engagement?” the attorney asked.
“No.”
Vanessa’s lawyer shifted in his chair but did not interrupt.
“I knew it was his birthday party,” she continued. “I saw the invitation list. There were a few people he’d done business with, but that wasn’t why they were there.”
“Did you approve payment?”
“Not for those charges. I entered them for processing. I didn’t release the payments.”
The attorney asked her to identify the entries she remembered and whether she had changed any descriptions herself. Vanessa named the staffing entry and said she had typed “client engagement reception” after Daniel told her to make the request consistent with the business-development code.
“I could have refused,” she said.
No one rushed to spare her that admission.
“What happened when you questioned the code?” the attorney asked.
“He said it was his event and his decision. He told me I wasn’t being asked to make a legal judgment. Just to do my job.”
Vanessa rubbed her thumb against the edge of her sleeve.
“I wanted to keep my job. And I liked being the person he trusted. Both are true.”
She looked at me then.
“I also let him put me in your chair. I wore the necklace. You saw all of that.”
“Yes,” I said.
She seemed to expect more. I had more to say, but none of it belonged in a room where people were trying to establish a record.
The attorney asked about messages. Vanessa said some instructions had come by company email and others by text. She had saved her phone, had not deleted the conversations, and would provide copies through her attorney.
“Copies are a start,” the attorney said. “We’ll need to arrange preservation and examine the originals and their context. Your cooperation matters, but it doesn’t make the descriptions you entered accurate.”
“I know.”
Rebecca, seated beside me, wrote something on her pad. I kept my hands still.
Before we left, Vanessa asked to speak. The attorney said she could, but the conversation would remain part of the interview.
“I thought if Daniel chose me, that meant I mattered more than the people he pushed aside,” Vanessa said. “I was wrong. I’m not saying that so you’ll forgive me.”
“I’m glad you’re telling the truth,” I said. “I need you to keep doing it.”
In the hall, Rebecca waited until the door closed behind us.
“You didn’t promise her anything.”
“I couldn’t.”
“That may be the kindest thing you could have done.”
I wasn’t sure kindness was the word. Vanessa had made choices. So had Daniel. I did not want the difference between them erased simply because Marcus had offered us someone easier to blame.
Late that morning, the review team requested records from the jeweler whose name appeared on a company card charge Leah had flagged. The charge had settled. That mattered: unlike the party-staff payment request, it was money that had actually left a company account.
The description on the card statement was too general to identify the purchase. By early afternoon, the jeweler had provided the sales record to the investigators. It showed a diamond necklace, purchased shortly before the party, with its item and clasp identification numbers.
Vanessa, through her lawyer, agreed to let the jeweler inspect the necklace Daniel had given her. The identification matched the sales record. Owen’s original footage showed her wearing it at the party, seated beside Daniel in my chair.
Rebecca told me only after the review team had documented the comparison.
“So we know the company paid for it,” I said.
“Yes. We know the charge settled, and the purchased necklace is the one Vanessa wore. The reviewers still need to establish who authorized that spending and whether anyone repaid the company.”
I remembered Daniel showing me a picture of the necklace and saying it was for my birthday. I had believed him. Now the same purchase connected a company payment to the woman beside him at his party.
I wanted to tell everyone who had laughed in that room. Instead, I asked Rebecca whether the investigators had the footage in its original form.
“They do.”
Leah sent an update just before two. Her deputy had checked the wage totals; she was still giving the tax figures their final pass before submitting the payroll file that afternoon. The bank had not reported a blanket hold on ordinary payments, but the file was not yet submitted, and Friday’s deposits were not a promise either of us could make.
I thanked her and put my phone away.
Rebecca’s office called again as I reached the hotel.
“Marcus has sent material through his attorney,” she said. “The board’s counsel has it. They want to show you one document because you signed it.”
“The memo?”
“Yes.”
I went straight over.
Helena joined by video. The review team’s attorney sat at the conference table with Rebecca and a folder of documents. Marcus’s attorney had sent a written position: Daniel had authority over vendor renewals and related implementation spending, Marcus’s companies had invoiced for work within that authority, and any dispute was about bookkeeping or oversight rather than unauthorized payments.
No deliverables had accompanied the invoices. No one in the room said the memo proved services had been performed.
The attorney slid a single page toward me.
I recognized the memo before I saw my name. I had signed it when the company was growing fast and Daniel complained that waiting for routine approvals held up projects. It gave him authority within approved budgets, subject to the usual controls. I had read those words then. I wished I had asked more questions about how people would apply them when I wasn’t looking.
“Is this your signature?” the attorney asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you sign a different version?”
“Not that I recall. This looks like the one I signed.”
Helena’s face remained steady on the screen.
“Your signature isn’t the end of the inquiry, Claire,” she said. “We still have to examine the budgets, the controls, and what those vendors actually supplied.”
I nodded. The memo was genuine. So was the fact that I had trusted Daniel with room to spend. I could not make either fact disappear because he might have used that room for something else.
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The attorney turned to the documents Marcus’s lawyer had attached. They were invoices from the companies linked to him, with broad descriptions of advisory and implementation work. Together with the other questioned posted payments, they formed part of the roughly $2.4 million the reviewers were testing—not a final loss figure.
Then he laid my real signature beside the invoices for work no one had yet been able to find.
