Chapter 10 - My Name Again
This time the signature was real.
That was worse.
Two years earlier, David handed me a tablet at a board retreat.
“Sign the vendor continuity package.”
I signed six items.
Maybe seven.
I did not read every page.
The audit trail later showed the document was altered after signature capture.
Sophisticated.
Too sophisticated for David’s usual shortcuts.
Our CFO, Charles Wynn, had the access.
Charles disappeared.
Agents found him drunk in a cabin near Traverse City.
His first request was immunity.
He admitted helping David move money.
Then admitted the Cayman reserve was his own side theft.
Two men stealing from the same company while hiding theft from each other.
Messy enough to be true.
Charles also gave prosecutors a recording.
David’s voice.
“I need Maya out before the audit.”
Charles asked, “Divorce?”
“Whatever works.”
A pause.
“If she melts down publicly, even better.”
Then Charles described a plan for Lily’s school fundraiser.
David intended to plant my own prescription anxiety pills in my bag beside a flask.
Create a public scene.
Make me look intoxicated and unstable.
The consultant refused because David did not pay enough.
Lily got sick before the fundraiser.
The plan never happened.
Charles said David did not know about his private Cayman skim.
David's lawyers seized on that immediately.
One thief pointing at another did not make either innocent.
Still, it mattered which dollar belonged to which lie.
Agent Ruiz kept saying, 'Separate the conduct.'
I started using the phrase in my own head.
Separate David the father from David the defendant.
Separate Lily from the case.
Separate anger from proof.
Some days I managed it.
That realization made me sit on the floor of Naomi’s office.
If Lily had lived, another trap had already been waiting for us.
Naomi sat down too.
May you like
Neither of us tried to make that thought useful.
