Chapter 4 - The Signature That Looked Like Hers
Valerie knew her own signature.
The slanted V.
The long tail beneath the M.
The tiny break in the final r when she wrote quickly.
The signature on the transfer authorization looked perfect.
Too perfect.
Detective Ortiz enlarged the image.
“Did you sign this?”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
Valerie looked at Thomas.
Then back at the screen.
“Yes.”
She wanted the answer to be clean.
It was not.
Because the form beneath the signature looked familiar.
Not the transfer amount.
Not the destination account.
The footer.
The legal language.
A document from a refinancing packet Daniel gave her in March.
Valerie remembered signing seventeen pages during a catering tasting.
She had read the summary.
She had not read every attachment.
“Wait.”
Her mouth went dry.
“I signed something that looked like this.”
Detective Ortiz did not react.
“What was it?”
“A bank authorization for emergency vendor payments.”
“Did it include blank transfer fields?”
“I don’t know.”
That admission burned.
Valerie had spent her career insisting managers count cash twice, reconcile tips nightly, and never sign a receiving sheet they had not reviewed.
At home, she had trusted Daniel enough to ignore her own rules.
The detective nodded slowly.
“Then we treat it as potentially altered rather than simply forged.”
Valerie looked at the amount again.
Two point four million dollars.
Enough to erase the cash reserve that protected six restaurants and nearly two hundred employees.
“Can the bank stop it?”
“They already have.”
Valerie looked up.
“How?”
Ortiz nodded toward the hallway.
“Your controller called them after the police contacted her.”
Valerie thought of Marisol Vega, who had worked beside her for eleven years.
Marisol was the person Daniel called too cautious whenever she questioned a transfer.
Valerie had told her more than once, “Daniel has it handled.”
Shame moved through her.
Not because Daniel deceived her.
Because people had tried to slow him down, and Valerie had interpreted their caution as inconvenience.
Her phone buzzed.
Marisol.
Valerie answered.
“Tell me.”
Marisol’s voice shook.
“We froze everything we could.”
“Everything?”
“Operating reserves, payroll release, credit lines.”
“What did you find?”
Silence.
“Marisol.”
“There are seventeen transfers I don’t recognize.”
Valerie stood.
“How much?”
“Over fourteen months? Just under nine hundred thousand.”
The room tilted.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
The words were gentle.
That made them worse.
“Last summer. Then again in December. Daniel said they were acquisition deposits.”
“I remember.”
“You told me he had board approval.”
Valerie sat back down.
She had.
She remembered defending Daniel with the exact confidence he later used against Thomas.
“He showed me minutes.”
“I know.”
“Were they fake?”
“We’re checking.”
Nick had been silent through the call.
Now he spoke.
“There was a blue folder.”
Valerie turned.
“What?”
“Last night. In his car.”
Nick rubbed his thumb over a crack in the table varnish.
“When he ran after the guard came, he dropped it.”
“Where is it?”
“I hid it.”
Detective Ortiz leaned forward.
“Nick, where?”
He looked at her.
“Somewhere adults don’t go unless they need something from us.”
No one in the room knew what that meant.
Nick stood.
“I can show you.”
Valerie immediately said, “I’m coming.”
Ortiz shook her head.
“You and Thomas need to go somewhere safe.”
“Daniel is in custody.”
“For now.”
Valerie understood the warning.
Money crimes were complicated.
Assault allegations involving a child were serious, but lawyers could move quickly.
Nothing was settled.
Thomas reached for Nick’s sleeve.
“Don’t go alone.”
Nick gave him a tired half-smile.
“I never do if I can help it.”
Before leaving with the detective, Nick turned to Valerie.
“There’s something else in the folder.”
“What?”
“A picture of you.”
Valerie frowned.
“What kind of picture?”
Nick’s face went pale.
“You’re asleep in your office.”
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