AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Because if she had one, I’m pretty sure she’d have usedthatrather thanthis”—she held up Madison’s phone with a triumphant gleam in her eye—“when calling her secret night job at the strip club.”
CHAPTERNINETEEN
Naomie sat at the white laminate desk in her solarium, furiously jotting notes and searching through her contacts. Generally the white-and-navy decor soothed her, made her feel like she was out sailing on her father’s boat, but today she jumped like a bundle of raw nerves when the phone rang. Fully expecting it to be one of the vendors she’d contacted about Madison’s celebration of life or Rhea Blondell, her co-founder at Triple-B, she hit the connect button without registering the caller’s name.
“Naomie?” her administrative assistant Sandra’s voice came over the line, hesitant and shaky.
Naomie’s stomach tightened. “Sandra—are you okay?”
“I’m so sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but I just got your email about Madison.”
“Oh, right.” Naomie’s eyes squeezed shut. Before she jumped into organizing the memorial, she’d sent an email to the staff of Triple-B letting them know that Madison had passed, but she hadn’t expected anyone to get the message until they arrived at work Monday.
“What happened?” Sandra asked.
“The police aren’t sure yet.” She explained what little she knew, carefully holding back her tears.
“Oh.” Sandra’s pause was uncomfortable. “It’s just that…well… I don’t want to make a fuss and I know you said you were going to talk to Madison about it and I’m sure you already did but at the same time I can’t help but wonder—”
Naomie held in an impatient sigh. Sandra was an organizational whiz with the mind of a computer, but the people skills of a rabid raccoon. Naomie cut Sandra off in her most reassuring voice. “Whatever’s on your mind, you can tell me.”
“It’s—it’s that grant issue I told you about. I hate to bring it up again because I know you said you’d look into it—”
The grant issue. Naomie’s eyes flicked to the stack of papers she’d set aside once she’d received the call about Madison. It included an anomaly Sandra brought to her attention late the previous week regarding a thousand-dollar grant for Madison, a disbursement from a fund that helped mothers buy necessary supplies for their coming babies or newborns. Each grantee was only entitled to one endowment per calendar year, but somehow Madison had received a second pay out.
“I emailed Madison, but we didn’t have a chance to talk about it. And, now, well…now it doesn’t matter. I’m sure it must have been some sort of clerical error. We’ll write up the discrepancy and report it to the board, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. In our five years, this is our first issue.” Naomie’s gaze dropped to the list of potential caterers in front of her.
“But the thing is… I don’t want to seem like I’m… But I just think it’s strange. All those CSI-type shows say there’s no such thing as a coincidence. It’s strange that right after this discrepancy crops up Madison turns up dead.”
“That’s TV.” Naomie struggled to keep her attention away from the memorial plans. “In the real-world coincidences happen every day.” She pulled over the relevant forms. “The most likely explanation is Janelle misfiled the application, didn’t realize it had been paid, and paid it again. It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re new.”
“I asked Janelle about that, and she was adamant there’s no way. She always prints out the approval and staples it to the application form.”
“Everybody makes mistakes, Sandra.” Naomie paged through the file. “And if this was really a second application, where’s the first? There’s no other application in here, no printout of the approval, nothing.”
“But that’s just it,” Sandra said. “Janelle’s predecessor taught her to make photocopies of the applications in case something gets lost or there’s a problem with the review. And she pulled the backup and showed me the first application.”
Naomie’s full attention turned to Sandra now. “There are two different applications?”
“Yes. With two different dates, although the rest of the application is the same.”
“The handwriting’s the same?”
“Well, no. Madison filled the first one out by hand, but the second one was filled out online and then printed. Everything’s typed except her signature.”
“Do the signatures match?”
“Yes. And the log signature at time of receipt matched, too. So I pulled the checks. The first was deposited to Madison’s bank account, but the second was signed over and cashed at a different bank, not deposited.”
“Do those signatures also match?”
“They do.”
“That suggests Madison cashed it.” But her brain balked at the thought that Madison would have done that, to Triple-B, or to her. “Can you make me a copy of that original application? I’d like to take a look at it.”
“I took pictures of it because Janelle didn’t want to let it out of her office. I can email them to you as soon as we hang up.”
“Have you told Rhea about this?” Rhea Blondell was the woman who’d co-founded Triple-B with her; she handled the administration, while Rhea functioned primarily as the financial officer.
