Chapter 6: Douglas Parrish
He was already seated when I arrived — a corner table, back to the wall, coffee untouched in front of him.
A man in his early sixties with careful eyes and the posture of someone who had spent over a year expecting to be watched.
I sat across from him.
"Mr.
Parrish."
"Mrs.
Blackwood." He said it like he wasn't sure which version of me he was meeting.
"Just use my name," I said.
"It's Olivia."
He nodded.
His hands moved to the folder on the table but didn't open it yet.
"I want to say something first," he said.
"Before we get into any of it." He looked at me directly.
"Your father was a good man.
He was fair to everyone who worked for him.
When I found the first transfer and brought it to the board, I thought — I genuinely believed — that someone would act on it.
That it would be investigated and stopped." He paused.
"I was wrong about who was already involved."
"How many board members knew?"
"Two, I believe.
Possibly three.
I can only prove two." He opened the folder.
"These are the transfer records I kept.
Originals and copies.
The dates, the amounts, the receiving account numbers." He slid the first page toward me.
"The first transfer was for four hundred thousand dollars.
Routed through a subsidiary in Delaware, then to a holding company in the Cayman Islands.
Small enough to miss if you weren't looking.
Large enough to matter if you were."
I looked at the page.
The date at the top was four years and three months ago.
"This was before my father's diagnosis," I said.
"Yes."
"How did Grant know my father was going to be ill?"
Douglas Parrish was quiet for a moment.
He picked up his coffee, then set it back down without drinking.
"I don't have documentation on that," he said.
"What I have is a name.
A physician who consulted on several Blackwood family health matters over the years.
A man named Reeves.
Dr.
Carter Reeves." He met my eyes.
"Your father saw Dr.
Reeves twice, about five months before the official diagnosis.
Referral visits.
Your father's primary care physician sent him for a second opinion."
"And Dr.
Reeves had a relationship with the Blackwood family."
"He sat on the board of a Blackwood-affiliated medical foundation.
He and Eleanor Blackwood had known each other for over twenty years."
I looked at the transfer date again.
Four months after those consultations.
"They knew," I said.
Not a question.
"I believe so."
I sat back.
The coffee shop around us was quiet — midmorning, mostly empty.
A woman near the window was reading.
A man at the counter was talking to the barista about something ordinary.
The world outside this table was going about its morning as if nothing had shifted.
"Mr.
Parrish," I said.
"Are you willing to give a formal statement?
To the SEC, and potentially to law enforcement?"
"Yes." He said it without hesitation.
"That's why I kept the copies.
That's why I've been waiting." He closed the folder and pushed it across the table to me.
"I want it on record.
What they did to your father.
What they did to you.
I want it on record before I'm too old to say it clearly."
I put my hand on the folder.
"One more question," I said.
"The threatening message I received last night.
Someone warned me to walk away." I watched his face.
"Do you know who sent it?"
He didn't look surprised.
"Grant has someone he uses.
A man who handles things he doesn't want connected to his name.
I don't have a name for him.
But I know he exists because he came to see me, fourteen months ago, the week after I was pushed out." He looked at his hands.
"He was very polite about it.
That made it worse."
"What did he say?"
"He said that people who hold onto things they shouldn't have tend to find their lives becoming very complicated." Douglas Parrish looked up at me.
"I told him I was a sixty-one-year-old accountant with a bad knee and nothing left to lose.
He left.
I don't think he expected that answer."
I almost smiled.
"Neither did Grant," I said.
"When he finds out what you've kept."
May you like
Douglas Parrish finally picked up his coffee and drank.
"Good," he said.
