Chapter 5 - MY AUNT STARTED SOMETHING SHE NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT
Maya did not believe Margaret stole from anyone.
“I represented her for sixteen years.”
“You represented her trust and estate work.”
“I also knew her.”
“So did I.”
“That’s my point.”
I pushed the Lakepoint authorization across the table.
“Then explain the signature.”
Maya studied it again.
“It’s hers.”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t mean Lakepoint was fraudulent when she approved it.”
“Six hundred thousand dollars went there.”
“Over three years.”
“To a company using a dissolved tax ID.”
“Now. We don’t know its status in 2011.”
That was fair.
I hated fair.
The forensic team obtained old vendor records by evening.
Lakepoint had originally been a legitimate pension-administration consultant.
It helped Blackwood Manufacturing locate former employees whose addresses were outdated, verify beneficiaries, and correct retirement records after the company changed plan administrators.
Margaret had approved the engagement.
The original contract had a fixed price.
$96,000 over eighteen months.
“What happened after that?” I asked Helen.
“Someone kept paying invoices.”
“For how long?”
“Until 2014.”
“How much beyond the contract?”
“Approximately five hundred and twenty thousand.”
“Margaret knew?”
“We don’t know.”
The invoices changed after the first year.
The letterhead looked slightly different.
A bank routing number changed.
Descriptions became vaguer.
Some were approved by Robert.
Some had no visible approval.
One carried Margaret’s copied signature.
The fraud had not begun with Daniel.
It had grown out of a legitimate vendor relationship my aunt created.
That was the first major shift.
Someone had taken a real process, a real contract, and a real signature and turned them into camouflage.
Exactly the kind of fraud that survives because the first page is true.
At six, Maya received a call from Margaret’s former executive assistant, Lorraine Pike.
Lorraine had retired to Traverse City.
She remembered Lakepoint immediately.
“Margaret hated them by the end,” Lorraine said over speakerphone.
“Why?” I asked.
“They billed Blackwood twice for one mailing project.”
“Did Margaret confront Robert?”
“Oh, yes.”
“When?”
“Summer of 2012.”
My skin prickled.
“What happened?”
“I wasn’t in the meeting.”
“But?”
“Margaret came out furious.”
“Did she terminate Lakepoint?”
“I thought she did.”
“Payments continued two more years.”
Lorraine was silent.
Then she said, “That doesn’t surprise me as much as it should.”
“Why?”
“Because Robert kept Margaret out of operations whenever he could.”
“She controlled the vote.”
“Control on paper and control in a building full of people loyal to Robert were two different things.”
I understood that more than I wanted to.
Lorraine continued.
“Margaret started keeping separate files after that.”
“Where?”
“She called them the blue books.”
Maya looked at me.
I had never heard of them.
“What were they?”
“Private ledgers. Notes. Copies of things she didn’t trust Blackwood to preserve.”
“Where are they now?”
“I assumed Evelyn inherited them.”
I hadn’t.
We checked Margaret’s estate inventory.
No blue books.
Maya searched her closed-file index.
Nothing.
Then Lorraine said, “Ask Robert.”
“Why would Robert have them?”
“Because he tried to buy them from her.”
My mouth went dry.
“When?”
“A few months before she died.”
“What did she say?”
Lorraine gave a tired laugh.
“She told him if he wanted her records, he could explain to Evelyn why they mattered.”
A silence followed.
I looked at Maya.
Margaret had intended me to know.
Somehow, I never did.
“Lorraine,” I said, “did Robert know Margaret was leaving me the Blackwood shares?”
“Of course.”
“How early?”
“Years.”
That contradicted everything Daniel’s family had ever implied.
Patricia claimed the inheritance had shocked them.
Robert said Margaret made “an emotional last-minute decision.”
Daniel told me he learned about my control only after probate.
Lorraine continued.
“Robert was obsessed with what would happen after Margaret died.”
“Why?”
“He said he could negotiate with Margaret.”
“And me?”
Lorraine hesitated.
“He didn’t think he could.”
Before I could ask what that meant, Maya’s phone rang.
The special committee’s investigator.
He had received bank identity documents for Northpoint.
We put him on speaker.
“The Northpoint account was opened using Patricia Elaine Mercer’s name,” he said.
“So it is her.”
“Yes.”
“Who signed as authorized manager?”
A pause.
“Evelyn Hayes Blackwood.”
I felt my pulse in my bruised shoulder.
“That’s forged.”
“We believe so.”
“What identification did they use?”
“Copy of your Michigan driver’s license. Copy of your CPA credential. Utility statement from your home address.”
Everything missing from my cabinet.
“But Northpoint was opened fourteen months ago,” I said. “My cabinet was broken into this week.”
The investigator answered quietly.
“The documents weren’t taken this week.”
“What?”
“The driver’s-license copy used to open the account expired last year.”
I went still.
Someone had copied my private documents long before dinner.
Long before I set the bait.
May you like
Long before I found the pension transfers.
And whoever did it had been preparing to use my identity for at least fourteen months.
