The road opened up once we cleared the bridge and headed north toward the peninsula.Mount Pleasant spread out around us, unhurried and sure of itself, old money with nothing to prove and no interest in proving it.
Winston Malone’s address took us off the main road and into a neighborhood of older clapboard homes set back from the street, where the trees had been growing long enough to arch over the road and meet in the middle.His house was pale yellow with white shutters and a crape myrtle out front that someone had never butchered into a ball, which I took as a good sign about the man’s character.
Dash pulled to the curb.We sat a moment.
“What do we know about him?”he asked.
“James said he was sharp.Numbers man.Called him gifted.”I thought about the appointment book, the Monday meeting Henry had never kept.“He had a meeting scheduled with Henry for the week after Henry died.”
We got out into the thick morning heat.
The man who answered the door was somewhere in his mid-seventies, trim and upright.He’d lost most of his hair and wore what was left combed carefully to one side, and his wire-rimmed glasses were the same style he’d probably worn for forty years.He had on pressed khakis and leather loafers, even on a Tuesday morning with nowhere to be, which told me something about who he was.
“Mrs.McCoy,” he said, and his gaze moved to Dash, assessing.“Sheriff Beckett.”
“Thank you for seeing us,” I said.“James Everett sends his regards.”
Something eased in his face at that.“Come in out of the heat.”
The inside of the house was tidy without being fussy.Bookshelves along one wall, a leather chair positioned for the best light, a small collection of framed photographs on the mantle.No clutter, but not empty either.
He directed us to the sitting room and excused himself to get the coffee he’d had brewing.The room was quiet enough that I could hear him moving around in the kitchen.Dash sat on the sofa and I took the chair beside him.
Winston came back with three mugs on a tray and set them on the low table between us without ceremony.He poured, pushed the cream and sugar forward, and sat in the leather chair across from us.
“You’re investigating Henry’s death,” he said.It wasn’t a question.
“We believe it was a homicide,” Dash said.
Winston wrapped both hands around his mug.“I’ve believed that since the morning they found him.I just didn’t have anyone to say it to.”
“Tell me about the foundation,” I said.“James gave us some of the history.How long had you been with them when Henry died?”
“Twelve years.”No hesitation.“I came on in 1987.They’d been running it on goodwill and a prayer up to that point.Henry and James were brilliant doctors, and Henry had this vision that could fill a room.But they needed someone who understood what it actually took to run an organization that size.So they brought me in.”
“You were their numbers man,” I said.
He almost smiled.“I was.The foundation was growing faster than they could manage.We were in eight countries by the time I arrived.By 1995 we were in twenty-two.”He lifted his mug.“The money moved the same way.Donors from all over.Private, corporate, a few government grants from partner countries.It required a very careful hand.”
“And you were that hand,” Dash said.
“I tried to be.”He set the mug down.“For a long time, I thought I was.”
I watched his face when he said it.Not guilt.Disappointment, maybe.
“When did you first notice something was wrong?”I asked.
“September of that year.Just weeks before he died.Supply orders that were slightly higher than they should have been for a given clinic.Shipping invoices that didn’t match what I had on file.It was designed to be hard to find.”
“How long had it been going on when you found it?”
“Hard to say.Could have been a year.Could have been longer.Whoever did it was patient about it.The amounts weren’t large individually.A few hundred dollars here, a few hundred there.Scattered across different operations in different countries.If you looked at any single piece of it, you could explain it away.A supply chain hiccup in Haiti.A currency conversion issue in Moldova.”He leaned forward slightly.“But I didn’t look at individual pieces.I looked at the whole, and the whole didn’t balance.We were moving around two hundred and fifty million dollars a year at that point.A million dollars missing across that kind of operation is easy to miss.Someone knew that.”
“Who had that kind of access?”Dash asked.
Winston set his mug down.“That’s what kept me up at night.It wasn’t a long list.Myself.Henry.James.We had a small executive staff—an operations director, a grants coordinator, and a logistics manager who oversaw the overseas supply chains.And the board.”He paused.“Twelve members.They didn’t have direct access to the accounts, but they had account numbers and quarterly reports.Anyone sharp enough could have found the seams if they knew what they were looking for.”
“So we’re talking six people at most who had real access,” I said.“You, Henry, James, and the three on your executive staff.And then the board, which would add ten more since Henry and James were also board members.”
