Chapter 6 - The Paper TrailThe dining room had gone dead silent. You could hear the hum of the climate control system overhead.
“Alex thought he was clever,” I continued, walking slowly around the table, letting my fingers brush the edge of the mahogany wood. “He assumed that because I stayed at home to raise Sophie, I didn't know how to track financial flows. He assumed that when Margaret transferred four million dollars out of our joint holding account into an offshore Cayman shell corporation last November, I wouldn't notice the discrepancy in the quarterly tax filings.”
I stopped behind Thomas Vance’s chair and placed my hand on the back of his dossier.
“Page four of the packet in front of you, Thomas, contains the wire transfer receipts signed by Alex Harrington using forged power-of-attorney documents. Not mine. His.”
Vance’s eyes widened. He flipped the page, his glasses catching the amber light as he scanned the bank routing numbers and official signatures.
“That’s… that’s federal wire fraud,” Vance muttered under his breath, looking up at Alex with absolute disgust.
“It gets better,” I said, turning my gaze toward Dr. Paul Kesler. The therapist was trying very hard to make himself invisible, slowly sliding his silver briefcase off the floor and onto his lap.
“Dr. Kesler,” I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous, conversational register. “How many private consultations did Margaret pay for behind my back? Was it forty thousand dollars last year? Or fifty-five?”
Dr. Kesler swallowed hard, his throat bobbing visibly. “Client confidentiality—”
“Client confidentiality doesn't cover medical insurance fraud, Paul,” I interrupted smoothly. “Especially when you bill insurance companies for clinical psychiatric evaluations that never actually took place, writing up fictional diagnoses of ‘paranoid delusions’ while charging three hundred dollars an hour to pad the Harrington family's legal arsenal.”
I pulled a second document from my tote bag—a certified printout of bank deposits from a Harrington-controlled shell company directly into Dr. Kesler’s personal Swiss bank account.
“I mailed a complete forensic accounting report of these transactions to the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct at 4:00 PM this afternoon,” I added with a sweet smile. “Along with copies to the District Attorney’s white-collar crime division.”
Dr. Kesler turned the color of spoiled milk. He shoved his chair back, nearly tipping it over, and scrambled toward the private exit doors of the dining room.
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“Don't bother running, Paul,” I called out as he fumbled with the brass door handle. “The elevator is locked on this floor. I had building security program a security hold on the entire thirty-eighth floor fifteen minutes before we sat down for dinner.”
The heavy glass doors wouldn't budge. Dr. Kesler turned around, trembling, trapped like a rat in a glass cage.
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