Chapter 15 #2
“Why would they suspect you if it was her username and password?” Seven asked, indignation creeping into his voice.
Neith shrugged. “Because the laptop was mine. Nobody has access to it but me. Brioni would have had to have known my credentials to access my laptop, and if she did, why would she have used her own credentials to make those bogus transactions? She’s a smart girl, but if she was trying to frame me, why would she have used her own information for the most damning part? ”
“To make it look like a cover-up?” Francesca suggested. “Maybe she was trying to muddy the waters?”
Neith frowned. “Possibly. She was supposed to be the one promoted. She was—is—the assistant finance director. She works directly underneath me. When Damian left, she was supposed to replace him, but they promoted me instead. They said it was a reward for all my hard work over the last twenty plus years.”
“A reward?” Enzo prompted.
Neith nodded. “I told them I wasn’t sure I was qualified for the position.
I was great at getting donors to open their checkbooks, but I didn’t know anything about accounting.
Grant insisted that I could learn on the job, that it was new software and they were all learning it with me.
Called my promotion a seniority thing and said Brioni would be there to help me.
It was too much of a raise to pass up.” There was a bitterness to her words.
“Maybe that should have been my first clue that this was all a set-up.”
“You couldn’t have known that they were trying to frame you for embezzlement, Mama,” Seven said softly.
She didn’t answer, just picked at the flaky top of her pastry with one perfectly manicured nail.
“So, this Brioni had to have been pretty upset that she got passed over for the promotion, no?” Enzo asked.
Neith shook her head. “She didn’t seem upset.
She said it was kind of a relief not to have the added responsibility.
If anything, she was overly helpful, constantly hovering.
She did everything she could to make the transition easier for me.
” As his mother spoke, Seven could see the realization dawning behind her eyes.
“I guess that would have been the perfect way to cover her tracks.”
“We’ll look into Brioni, but is there anyone else you can think of?” Enzo asked. “Anyone at all?”
Seven shifted in his seat. “What about that guy you had to fire? Could he be behind this?”
Her brow furrowed, a look of confusion crossing her face. “Who? Marcus? I suppose anything is possible, but he was just a loud mouth with connections. I’m not sure he’s capable—mentally—of pulling off this level of deception. Besides, Grant said he had already moved on to a ‘much better’ job.”
Disappointment settled in Seven’s chest. Of course, someone like that would land on their feet. But Brioni was still a viable suspect. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“Did you notice anything off about the accounting? Transactions you didn’t authorize? Vendors you didn’t recognize?” Enzo continued. “Did anything ring any alarm bells for you?”
Neith opened her mouth like she was about to say no, but then she hesitated.
“Did you think of something?” Enzo prodded.
“Yes?” she said, tone unsure. “But it was before my promotion. And it didn’t have anything to do with accounting.”
“Tell us anyway,” Francesca said gently. “You never know what might be important later.”
Neith gave a jerky nod, her forehead creasing, making her look her age.
“Every year, we have a gala—that’s how I met your mother, actually.
” Neith smiled at Francesca, who smiled back, patting her hand.
“Planning the gala has been my job for the last decade. Every year, I have to fight for something other than that same rubber chicken fundraiser that everyone dreads.”
“But something was different this year?” Enzo pressed.
“We started planning around eight months ago,” she said.
“Our budget was lower than usual, so I had an idea to help bring in more funds. I decided to invite not only the donors, but some of our success stories. The women we helped. I wanted to show the donors how their funds truly helped real people.”
Seven frowned. “And someone didn’t like that?”
Neith paled. “No. I couldn’t find them.”
“Find who?” Enzo asked, brow furrowed.
“The women. We have a handful of our success stories on the wall in the lobby. The photos we use in our marketing materials to show proof of concept. There are dozens of these success stories in our files. Hundreds even, maybe. Women I personally helped find placement with job services and housing opportunities. But when I went looking for them…I couldn’t find them. ”
“Any of them?” Francesca asked.
Neith shrugged. “A few were easy to track down. They were locals. They seemed happy to help. But the more women I tried to contact, the more bizarre it became that I couldn’t,” Neith said, shaking her head, like she was remembering her own puzzlement.
“Did you bring this to anyone’s attention?” Seven asked.
Neith nodded. “Our director, Grant. He laughed me off. He reminded me that we deal with a largely transient population, and that while we had many success stories, we could only track people for so long before they moved away or lost contact with us. He said that we were tied to some of the worst times in these women’s lives and it wasn’t weird that some of them wanted to leave the past in the past.”
That sounded shady to Seven, but maybe he was just a natural skeptic.
“What happened after that?” Enzo asked. “Did you look into it further?”
“I was going to. But before I could, Brioni came to me and said she could get into a lot of trouble for telling me this, but that Grant fudged some of our success stories and that the reason I couldn’t track some of these women down was because they never existed in the first place.
But that didn’t track. I knew some of these women.
I personally helped them. They definitely existed. ”
“Did you tell her that?” Seven prompted.
She shook her head. “I didn’t want to get into an argument.
I thought maybe I was just being paranoid.
Two weeks later, I was promoted and Brioni wasn’t.
I thought maybe Grant had found out about her gossiping,” Neith said, shaking her head like the pieces were falling into place. “I’m such an idiot.”
“No, you’re not,” Seven said. “These people set you up.”
Francesca patted her hand. “Seven’s right.”
“The gala planning was left to Brioni after that, which wasn’t her job.
It had never been her job. I was going to continue helping with it, but then the DOJ audit was triggered, and after that, I was slammed, trying to make sure we had all our financial ducks in a row.
Which wasn’t easy because I wasn’t familiar with the job. Brioni was always having to help me.”
“How soon after your promotion was the DOJ audit?” Enzo asked.
“Six weeks,” Neith answered, once more paying too much attention to the pastry on her plate.
“Can you think of anything else that might be helpful?” Enzo asked. “Anything at all?”
She started to shake her head, then stopped. “My predecessor, Damian…he died in a car accident three months ago. A DUI. Wrapped his car around a light pole at four in the morning.”
“You think it wasn’t an accident?” Enzo asked, tilting his head in a way Seven found hotter than he should.
“At the time, I chalked it up to poor judgment, but then I remembered something. At a fundraiser four years ago, I offered him champagne and he said he never touched the stuff. I must have looked confused because he laughed and said he wasn’t in recovery or anything, he was allergic.
Something called an AL something deficiency. ”
“Was it a fatal allergy? Would it have killed him to drink alcohol?” Francesca asked, leaning into his mother’s space, expression tense.
Neith shook her head. “He made it sound more like it was just very unpleasant. He said he would get flushed and sweaty and probably throw up all over our party guests and ‘kill the vibe.’”
“What did Brioni say when you mentioned it?” Seven asked.
“She said he was a recovering alcoholic with a good story. That he was likely just hiding it because he was embarrassed. I didn’t really question it because Brioni had worked closely with him for years. Why would she lie?”
“I want to make sure I have the timeline correct,” Enzo said.
“Eight months ago, you noticed that women from the program appear to have disappeared. Two weeks later, Brioni is passed over for a promotion, but doesn’t seem at all upset about this.
Six weeks after that, the DOJ sends word there’s going to be an audit.
A few weeks after that, the man who used to have your job dies under mysterious circumstances. Does that sound about right?”
Neith nodded. “God, when you put it like that, it sounds so obvious that I stumbled onto something they didn’t want getting out and they set me up to take the fall. What do we do now?”
Enzo looked almost relieved, like it would be an easy fix.
“Well, first, we let the twins do what they do with the thumb drive. Whoever set you up couldn’t have gotten much of a head’s up that the police were on their way to arrest you, which means the decision to toss that thumb drive into your purse was probably done in haste. ”
“What if it was in my purse for weeks?” Neith asked.
“Doubtful. They would have been concerned about you finding it, and if it was in there for weeks, then whatever incriminating evidence they put on there would likely abruptly stop after a certain point.”
Seven hoped he was right.
“There’s a good chance they weren’t as thorough as they think,” Enzo continued. “While the twins do that, Seven and I are gonna start running down previous clients helped by WERC to see just how many of them are truly missing and if there were any common denominators.”