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“As far as I could tell, with the evidence to hand, no-one was. There were a few accounting anomalies, but Ken had answers for all of those, and there was certainly nothing concrete against anyone, so at the end of my time there, I wrote up my notes, filed my report and went back to my office.”
“Did you carry on seeing him… socially?”
“Yes. Not as often as I had done, but we met up quite frequently… until I discovered I was pregnant.”
She lowers her gaze, staring at the space between us. “With me?”
“Yes.” She looks up again. “I called Ken and said I needed to see him, and when I told him I was expecting his child, he just stared at me, like he couldn’t quite believe it.”
“He thought you were lying?”
“No, it wasn’t anything like that. It was as though he couldn’t understand. He proposed, though, and we were married just a few weeks later.” She shakes her head slowly from side to side. “That’s when I saw him for the cruel man he really was.”
“He hit you?” I sit forward.
“No. He was never violent. But he was mean, vindictive. His words…” She falls silent and Dad reaches over. She takes his hand and looks up at him.
“It’s okay,” he says.
“Is it?” She blinks and swallows hard, looking back at me again.
“Did you leave him?” I ask, still trying to make sense of everything.
She shakes her head. “I wanted to. Especially after you were born. That was when I discovered he was having an affair with someone at the office. It had been going on for some time, evidently… maybe even before we were married. I never got to the bottom of it all, and I never found out who she was, although by then, I didn’t really care. I thought about leaving several times, but I had nowhere to go… and then, one morning, while we were having breakfast, the cops came.”
“The cops?” This is getting more and more bizarre by the minute.
“Yes. They arrested him… for fraud.”
“Fraud?”
“The same fraud I’d been hired to investigate.”
“But you said there wasn’t any.”
She nods her head. “I know… because Ken had directed my inquiries to suit his own ends. That was part of his scheme… and one of the reasons he’d looked so shocked when I told him I was pregnant. He hadn’t banked on that. His plans had been meticulous. He’d worked everything out, hiding his fraud and bringing me in to investigate, knowing how inexperienced I was, and that he’d be able to influence the report I created. He did a good job, too… so good that after Ken’s arrest, Theodore Bennett wanted me charged as an accessory.”
I clamp my hand over my mouth. What’s she saying?
“What happened?”
“Fortunately, I’d kept my notes. I was able to show what Ken had done… how he’d manipulated me. The police exonerated me, and I helped them with their investigations.”
“Which showed what?”
She takes a deep breath. “That Ken had been embezzling money from TBA for years. He’d defrauded them of millions of dollars, almost wiping out the company.”
“So he was charged?”
“Yes. And once he saw the evidence against him, he confessed. There was no point in trying to deny it.”
“You mean my natural father went to prison?”
“He was sentenced to fifteen years,” she says, shaking her head. “That was the maximum allowed at the time. He’d admitted the crime, though. He’d pleaded guilty and paid back most of the money, so he should have been given a reduced sentence. I’m not trying to defend him, or what he did, but Theodore Bennett had friends in high places, and he wanted his pound of flesh.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that Theodore Bennett used his influence to ensure Ken paid the maximum price, and because he didn’t get back every cent that had been taken from him, he insisted Ken’s possessions were seized, including the house we were living in.”
