Chapter 15 - The Harbor Discrepancy
|
My breathing slowed to a dead stop.
Martin Shaw—the retired lawyer who had spent the last two days portraying himself as Thomas Mercer’s noble defender—was listed as a founding board member of the very charity receiving tens of thousands of dollars from Adrian’s fraudulent shell company.
The entire landscape shifted in an instant.
I stared at the screen, my mind racing through the mathematical probabilities.
Why would Vivian Mercer—a woman famously obsessed with every penny of her stolen wealth—allow $42,000 to be wired every three months to a non-profit controlled by her late husband’s personal attorney?
Unless it wasn't a charitable donation at all.
Unless it was blackmail. Or a hush-money payoff.
At seven o'clock the next morning, when Detective Lena Morris walked into my room carrying her morning coffee, I didn't say good morning.
I simply rotated my laptop screen toward her. “Look at line 402.”
Lena set her coffee cup down and put on her reading glasses. She scanned the spreadsheet for two minutes, her expression hardening with every passing second.
“The Harbor Foundation?” Lena read aloud. “Quarterly transfers of forty-two thousand dollars?”
“Totaling over half a million dollars over the last four years,” I pointed out. “And look at the board of directors listed on page three of the tax filing.”
Lena’s eyes widened as she reached Martin Shaw’s name. “Jesus Christ.”
“Martin Shaw didn't contact you two days ago out of a sense of moral justice because he saw news of my accident,” I said coldly. “He contacted you because he knew that once Adrian was arrested, police auditors would eventually discover Northstar and trace those wire transfers directly to his foundation.”
“He was trying to control the narrative before we found the money,” Lena realized, anger flashing in her eyes.
May you like
“He played the role of the sympathetic old lawyer coming forward to help the poor victim,” I said. “He handed us Thomas’s old letters to make himself look completely innocent while throwing Vivian and Adrian under the bus.”
Lena pulled out her phone. “I’m calling the chief. We need a search warrant for Martin Shaw’s home and bank records immediately.”
