Chapter 5: What Patricia Found in the Third Column
Patricia worked for two hours without stopping.
She had her reading glasses pushed up into her hair for the first forty minutes, then down on her nose for the rest.
She made notes in her small, precise handwriting, filled four pages, started a fifth, and said almost nothing except to ask me twice to confirm dates — once for the February document Michael had sent, and once for the date Thomas had passed.
I answered both times and let her work.
At half past eight she set her pen down and looked at me across the desk.
"Eleanor, when did Michael become a secondary signatory on the operating account?"
"He didn't.
Thomas and I discussed it when we set up the office.
We decided the operating account would stay under my sole authority until a formal succession plan was agreed and documented."
"That's what the founding documents say." Patricia turned her notepad toward me.
"But the account records show a secondary signatory was added fourteen months ago.
The authorization form carries your signature."
I looked at the page.
My name.
My signature — or something very close to it.
"I didn't sign that."
Patricia nodded slowly.
"I didn't think so."
She turned to her laptop and pulled up a second window.
"There's more.
In the last fourteen months, eleven transfers have been made from the Harrison Family Office operating account to a holding company called Collier Advisory Group."
The name landed before I could stop it.
"Collier," I said.
"Yes." Patricia watched my face.
"You recognize it?"
"Diane Collier.
She was on the Nassau flight with Michael."
Patricia wrote the name down.
"The transfers total just under four hundred thousand dollars.
Each one is below the threshold that would trigger an automatic review notification to the account holder." She paused.
"They were sized that way deliberately."
The room was very quiet.
"He structured them to stay under the limit," I said.
"Yes."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The garden was dark.
The outdoor light Thomas had installed the summer before he got sick was still on, the way it always was at this hour.
"Patricia, is there any legitimate business reason the Harrison Family Office would have a relationship with a company called Collier Advisory Group?"
"None that I can find.
There's no contract on file, no service agreement, no board resolution approving the relationship.
The transfers appear in the records but there is no corresponding documentation explaining what they were for."
I turned around.
"What does that mean legally?"
"It means Gerald needs to see this tonight."
I called Gerald at eight forty-three.
He answered on the second ring.
"I'm sending you photographs of Patricia's notes right now," I said.
"Fourteen months.
Eleven transfers.
A secondary signatory authorization I never signed.
A company called Collier Advisory Group."
A silence on Gerald's end that was different from his usual pauses.
"Eleanor, I need you to secure the original founding documents and the account records tonight.
Physical copies.
Lock them somewhere Michael does not have access to."
"Already in hand."
"I'm going to contact the Family Office administrators first thing tomorrow and place a temporary hold on all outgoing transfers pending a full audit review.
I have the authority to do that under the original trust structure."
"Do it."
"I also need to tell you something I learned this afternoon when I pulled the aviation records." Gerald's voice was careful.
"The Nassau flight was not the only unauthorized booking.
There were three others.
Two to Miami, one to Charleston.
All within the last fourteen months.
All with a second passenger.
All under Michael's credentials."
Four trips.
Fourteen months.
Four hundred thousand dollars.
"He's been doing this since shortly after Thomas died," I said.
"It appears so."
I sat back down at the desk.
Patricia was watching me with her hands folded on the notepad.
"Gerald," I said, "at what point does this become something more than a breach of the program agreement?"
"When the signature on that secondary authorization is confirmed as a forgery," he said, "it becomes something the police will want to know about."
I looked at Thomas's handwriting on the cover of the founding documents folder.
*Harrison Family Office.
Est.
2001.*
"Then let's confirm it," I said.
After I ended the call, Patricia poured two cups of tea from the pot she had made earlier and set one in front of me without asking.
"What do you need from me?" she said.
"I need you to document everything you found tonight in a formal report.
Dates, amounts, account numbers, the works."
"I'll have it to you by tomorrow noon."
I wrapped both hands around the cup.
"He invited me on that trip," I said.
It wasn't a question.
It wasn't even really directed at Patricia.
It was the thing I kept returning to, the detail that didn't fit the rest of the picture.
Patricia looked at me steadily.
"Maybe he genuinely wanted you there and Lauren overruled him."
"Or maybe," I said, "he invited me because he thought I would never look too closely at an account I trusted him with.
And Lauren realized this morning that having me on that plane was a risk."
Patricia said nothing.
She didn't need to.
My phone lit up on the desk.
Michael again.
Not a text this time.
A call.
I watched it ring.
It rang seven times before it stopped.
May you like
Then a voicemail notification appeared.
I did not listen to it that night.
