No Fault of Mine

Chapter Twenty-Four

After Melanie's call, I sat listlessly in my dead husband's office, my mind wandering to better days. I swept the flat of my hand across his desk, remembering the day we bought it at a box store in Spokane. We could have ordered it, but Martin wanted to make a day of it, throwing in an anniversary celebration a week away.

He was like that: spontaneous, fun-loving—and affectionate, at least at the beginning.

I took a deep breath and tried to refocus on the work at hand. I took the black box and threw it back in the filing cabinet. I was being silly, chasing nightmares and fairies, tilting at windmills, standing on the deck of the Titanic...waiting for a lifeboat. Wishing my husband was the man I married. Wishing Stan had been the real deal. And running... I do that well, running.

You have a company to run, Mia. Get with it!

I marched out of Martin's office, grabbed the file containing the statements, and rushed out of the building. Fifteen minutes later, I drove into Betty's driveway. She lived with her husband in a modest home in a gentrified neighborhood. She opened her door as I was walking up the sidewalk.

"I'm glad you brought the statements today," Betty said. "My husband has a family reunion in Pocatello. If we leave today, we can visit one of our children in Boise."

She invited me in, and I followed her down the hallway to her office.

"I put the invalid statements in this folder. Their copies, actually." She pointed to a folder on her desk. "You'll find thirty-two statements over eighteen months."

I picked up the folder. My curiosity nearly got the best of me, but I wanted to project a more relaxed version of myself. I handed the current statement folder to her.

"Betty, when did you first notice the invalid statements," I asked.

"After Martin's death," she said. She turned to face me. "I told Thad the next day."

"Do you remember the date?" I asked.

"Let's see, Martin died on the twenty-eighth, right? It must have been either the first or the second. I don't remember exactly, but I do remember it was on a Monday," she said.

"That would have been almost a month ago," I mused. "I wonder why Thad didn't tell me until Thursday last week?"

"I don't know," she said. "The police interviewed my on Friday."

"Betty, you've been our accountant for a long time," I said. "What do you think is going on? Frankly, I'm puzzled."

"I'm as puzzled as you are. The statements were mixed in with the rest, and I didn't think of checking them. They were validated by either you or Martin. I sent the checks to the same address I used for the valid ones."

I opened the file of invalid statements and examined the initials.

"They sure look authentic," I said. "They would've fooled me." I looked from the document to Betty and smiled.

"They fooled me," she said. "But in all my years as an accountant, I never ran across this issue. Drawing money and failing to submit receipts? Yes, all the time."

"If I remember correctly, my brother faced the music a few times before he took it seriously."

"I remember that," Betty said. "I don't like to say no to the owners of the company. This certainly is not the best month of my life."