Chapter 8: What Grace Found
Grace called at twelve forty-seven.
I was in the airport executive lounge, at a corner table, working through the audit files I had brought in the briefcase.
I answered on the first ring.
"Talk to me," I said.
"Sykes gave us everything," Grace said.
"Full written account, signed.
He also gave us the contact information for the person who brokered the introduction between him and Elaine.
That person has already been called and is, shall we say, cooperating enthusiastically."
"What did Elaine tell him the job was?"
"Exactly what he told you on the plane.
Observe and report.
Specifically, she wanted to know whether you referenced Crestline in any conversation, any call, any document you handled in flight.
She was trying to determine whether the internal audit you initiated had reached that file yet."
"It hadn't," I said.
"At least, not the part she's worried about."
A pause.
"There's more."
"Tell me."
"The Crestline acquisition you shelved eleven months ago — Elaine didn't let it go when you did.
She took the irregularities you found in the asset valuation and used them."
I went very still.
"Used them how?"
"She approached Crestline's secondary investors privately.
The ones who stood to lose the most if the valuation was disclosed publicly.
She offered to suppress your findings in exchange for a position — silent, undisclosed — in the restructured entity they were building to replace the original company."
The lounge was quiet around me.
Someone three tables away was laughing at something on their phone.
"She was on my board," I said, "when she did this."
"She was.
Which means she had a fiduciary duty to you and to this company that she was actively violating while she sat in your meetings and drank your champagne." Grace's voice was measured, but only just.
"The secondary investors paid her in two tranches.
The first while she was still on the board.
The second after she resigned."
"How much?"
Grace told me.
I set down the pen I had been holding.
"That's why she resigned," I said.
"She had already been paid.
There was no reason to stay."
"That's our read as well." A pause.
"The audit trail is clean on our end.
Your forensic team pulled the scheduling system access from her secondary code — it's timestamped, it's attributed, and it is unambiguous.
Combined with Sykes's account, Dawes's written statement, the false compliance number seeded into crew communications, and the Crestline briefing document — we have enough."
"Enough for what, exactly?"
"Breach of fiduciary duty.
Misuse of retained authorization.
Conspiracy to obtain financial advantage through suppression of material information." Grace paused.
"And depending on how the Crestline investors respond to a formal inquiry — securities fraud."
I looked at the audit files spread across the table.
"I want to speak to her first," I said.
Silence on the line.
"Grace."
"I heard you."
"Before any formal action.
Before attorneys, before filings, before the board is called.
I want to sit across from Elaine Marsh and hear what she says when she understands that I know."
"That is not the legally advisable course."
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
Another pause.
"I can give you until end of business today," Grace said.
"After that, I'm filing the preliminary notice regardless."
"That's enough time."
"She won't admit to anything."
"She doesn't need to," I said.
"I just need to see her face."
I ended the call and looked out the lounge window at the grey tarmac, the lines of aircraft, the ground crew moving in their bright vests between the machines.
Eleven years ago I had bought the first plane in this fleet from a man who told me a woman my age had no business owning aircraft.
I had smiled at him pleasantly, signed the papers, and flown home in the left seat.
I thought about that now.
I dialed Elaine's number from memory.
She answered on the fourth ring.
Her voice was warm and slightly surprised and entirely practiced.
"Elaine," I said.
"I'm in the city.
I'd like to meet.
This afternoon if you're free."
A pause so small that someone who didn't know her would have missed it.
"Of course," she said.
"Two o'clock?"
"Two o'clock," I said.
"Your office."
I hung up.
She knew.
Or she suspected.
The warmth in her voice had been precisely one degree too warm — calibrated, not felt.
Elaine had always been good at that calibration.
It was one of the things I had admired about her, once.
Richard appeared at my table with two coffees and the expression of a man who had not yet been told what was happening but had correctly identified the shape of it.
"Cancel everything this afternoon," I said.
"And drive me to Elaine Marsh's office at a quarter to two."
He set one of the coffees in front of me.
"Should I come in with you?"
"No," I said.
May you like
"Wait in the car."
He nodded and sat down across from me, and we worked through the rest of the audit files in silence, and the morning moved quietly toward two o'clock.
