Chapter 9 - The Wrong Address
The new invoices listed our former Baltimore office.
We had moved eighteen months earlier.
Harbor Lantern supposedly performed on-site reviews every month.
At an office we no longer occupied.
“They could have used an old template,” Mara said.
“I know.”
She smiled faintly.
“You’re learning.”
I didn’t want another story built on certainty nobody had earned.
I wanted proof.
The court temporarily blocked action based on my disputed consent.
The financing stayed frozen.
Through the records process, Mara obtained the electronic files behind the new invoices.
An independent accountant named Jonah Reed examined the dates, payment history, and underlying documentation.
The invoices had all been created on the same night.
After the demand to preserve records.
“That alone doesn’t prove the services were fake,” he told us.
“What would?”
“Work product. Contracts. Correspondence. People who performed the work.”
There was none.
Instead, the bank records showed Harbor Lantern transferring money toward Rebecca’s mortgage on a vacation property and paying balances on two family credit cards.
My father’s explanation was simple.
“Management compensation.”
Mara’s answer was simpler.
“Then show us where it was approved and properly recorded.”
He couldn’t.
Thursday’s shareholder meeting took place in Mara’s conference room under an agreed procedure.
My father arrived with Dale and a new attorney.
He didn’t look at me.
Not until Mara placed my mother’s trust documents on the table.
“The voting rights belong to Claire,” she said.
His attorney shifted in his chair.
Charles looked older than he had at dinner.
Only for a second.
Then he turned toward me.
“Your mother wanted this company protected.”
“She wanted me protected, too.”
“She trusted me.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the part I keep coming back to.”
His lawyer requested a break.
As they stood, Dale dropped a folder.
Loose pages slid across the floor.
I bent automatically to help.
One page stopped beside my shoe.
A bank transfer request.
Four hundred eighty thousand dollars.
May you like
The reserve account.
And there, beneath the authorization line, was another copy of my signature.
