Chapter 9: What Patricia Found
Patricia's office at eight in the morning looked exactly the same as it had the afternoon before — same neat desk, same measured quiet — but she was already standing when her assistant showed me in, and she had a second folder open beside mine on the desk.
"Sit down," she said.
I sat.
"The message you received last night came from a woman named Grace Okafor.
She's a forensic accountant.
She works independently, mostly on financial disclosure cases in family law." Patricia turned the folder toward me.
"She reached out to me at eleven last night.
She's been building a file on your husband for the past four months."
I looked at the folder.
"Why?"
"Because she was hired to."
"By whom?"
"Daniel's business partner.
A man named Robert Fenn." Patricia sat down.
"Fenn believes Daniel has been siphoning money from their shared business account for approximately eighteen months.
Small amounts, moved carefully, routed through a subsidiary account that Fenn wasn't monitoring closely.
Grace has been documenting it."
I sat very still.
"How much?" I said.
"Approximately two hundred and forty thousand dollars."
The number sat in the room.
"Robert Fenn was planning to confront Daniel this week," Patricia continued.
"When Grace saw that a divorce filing had come through with Daniel's name on it, she reached out.
She thought I should know before Daniel's attorney had a chance to position the business assets in the divorce proceedings."
"He was stealing from his own business partner," I said.
"Allegedly.
But Grace's documentation is thorough." Patricia looked at me steadily.
"This changes the financial picture of your divorce significantly.
It also means Daniel is facing potential civil action from Fenn, possibly criminal exposure depending on how the DA's office views the evidence."
I thought about Daniel standing in the kitchen doorway the night before.
*I'm not going to make this easy.*
"He had no idea any of this was coming," I said.
"None," Patricia said.
"He walked into your divorce proceedings thinking his biggest problem was a folder of text messages.
He didn't know about Fenn.
He didn't know about Grace." She paused.
"And he definitely didn't know that his business partner had been quietly building a case against him for four months."
I looked at the second folder on the desk.
"What do we do with this?" I asked.
"We coordinate with Grace and with Fenn's attorney.
We make sure the financial disclosure in your divorce reflects the full picture — including the missing funds, which are marital assets that were removed without your knowledge or consent." Patricia folded her hands.
"And we let Daniel's attorney figure out how to defend a client who is now facing two separate legal actions simultaneously."
I thought about Warren Schell's smooth, practiced voice on the phone the night before.
*Cooperation works both ways.*
"When does Daniel find out?" I said.
"He finds out when we file the amended disclosure.
Probably Thursday." Patricia almost smiled.
"I'd like to be there when Schell explains it to him."
I picked up my bag.
At the door I stopped.
"Patricia.
The money he took — is there any chance I can get it back?"
"A very good chance," she said.
"That's actually the easy part."
I walked out into the morning.
Dana was waiting on the steps outside, coffee in hand, because I had called her at seven and she had driven forty minutes without being asked.
She handed me the second cup.
"Well?" she said.
"He was stealing from his business partner," I said.
"For eighteen months."
Dana stared at me.
"He came to that anniversary dinner," I said, "thinking he was the one with all the cards."
She shook her head slowly.
"He had no idea who he was sitting across from."
I took a sip of coffee.
The morning was cool and bright and ordinary in the way that mornings sometimes are when everything underneath them has already changed.
May you like
"No," I said.
"He really didn't."
