Chapter 6 - THE MAN WHO KEPT COPIES
Frank chose a diner near the old train station.
Charles brought Elaine anyway.
After eighteen years of trusting the wrong person, he had lost interest in following mysterious instructions.
Frank sat in the last booth with a canvas bag at his feet.
He looked older than seventy-two.
“I said alone.”
“You’re getting me and my lawyer.”
Frank rubbed his hands together.
“Fair enough.”
He placed a stack of bank statements on the table.
Charles recognized the scholarship fund’s old logo.
“Vivian asked me to establish a temporary operating account,” Frank said. “She said you had approved it.”
“I hadn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“Did you know it then?”
Frank looked down.
“I should have checked.”
Elaine moved the papers into a clear sleeve.
“Keep going.”
“The sixty thousand went through that account before it landed with a company called Northstar Events.”
“Anna’s company?”
“No. Anna never owned a company.”
Charles remembered Vivian telling him otherwise.
Remembered how believable she had sounded.
“Who owned it?”
“Vivian.”
A waitress approached. Nobody ordered.
Frank waited until she left.
“When Anna noticed the missing money, she came to me. She was helping review scholarship applications that summer. She saw the numbers didn’t match.”
“And you let me accuse her?”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Losing my job. Being blamed. Vivian said my signatures were on the setup documents.”
Charles leaned across the table.
“So you let a twenty-three-year-old woman take the blame.”
Frank’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
There was no excuse in the word.
That almost made it worse.
Elaine asked why he had kept the records.
“Because throwing them away felt like doing it again.”
He opened the canvas bag.
Inside were statements, invoices, and an old backup drive.
“One more thing,” he said.
Charles braced himself.
“It didn’t stop with the sixty thousand.”
Elaine’s pen paused.
“How long?”
Frank pushed over a recent invoice.
“I still consult for one of the scholarship vendors. I saw this last month. Different business name. Same mailing address.”
Grant’s signature appeared at the bottom.
Charles stared at his grandson’s name.
“How much?”
“I don’t have the whole picture.”
“Give me the part you have.”
Frank swallowed.
“Enough that they may need Anna’s old file to keep you from looking at the new ones.”
Charles’s phone lit up.
Mrs. Ellis.
He answered immediately.
“Sir,” she said, her voice tight, “Mr. Grant is here.”
“Tell him to wait.”
“He isn’t waiting.”
May you like
Behind her, Lucy was crying.
And Grant was saying, “Her grandfather said it was fine.”
