Chapter 4 - Evelyn Torres came back
Clara called Evelyn at 8:03 the next morning.
The new number rang twice.
“Clara?”
The familiar voice nearly made her cry.
“Mrs. Evelyn.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Is Lily okay?”
That question alone broke something loose.
Nobody in Clara's family had asked.
Evelyn listened as Clara explained the wrong number, Ethan, Harmon and the fake Harbor Grace entity.
Then Evelyn became silent.
“Mrs. Evelyn?”
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Don't leave.”
Ethan watched Clara.
“What happened?”
Evelyn answered through speaker.
“I’m coming.”
She arrived forty minutes later carrying her own groceries and the kind of furious expression only kind people achieve when somebody abuses what they love.
Sixty-seven.
Silver hair.
Worn wool coat.
She hugged Clara.
Then Lily.
Only afterward did she look at Ethan Mercer.
“I know who you are.”
Ethan nodded.
“I imagine most people do.”
“No.”
Something in her voice changed.
“I knew your mother.”
Ethan stopped moving.
“What?”
“Margaret.”
The name sounded different coming from someone else.
Evelyn had volunteered at St. Anne's food pantry in Queens thirty years earlier.
Margaret Mercer occasionally came with Ethan.
Thin boy.
Big eyes.
Always pretending not to be hungry.
Ethan sat down.
“You remember me?”
“You used to steal sugar packets.”
Clara saw the billionaire disappear for a second.
There was only a boy.
“My mother never told me.”
“She was proud.”
Evelyn smiled sadly.
“That was sometimes her problem.”
Then she turned to Clara.
“Harmon has been using our shelter's identity for at least two years.”
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
Fake donor acknowledgment letters had appeared.
Grant applications Harbor Grace never submitted.
Evelyn complained to Harmon after recognizing its name on one transaction notice.
A vice president visited her personally.
Grant Vale.
Harmon's chief financial officer.
“He offered the shelter $250,000 if I signed an agreement saying the duplicate entity was an administrative mistake.”
“Did you?”
Evelyn looked offended.
“No.”
Three weeks later, someone broke into Harbor Grace's office.
Nothing valuable was stolen.
Only old accounting files.
Then anonymous calls started.
Evelyn changed her number after one caller described the route she took home.
Clara stared at her.
“That’s why my text went to Ethan.”
“Yes.”
A coincidence.
But one created by fear.
Evelyn reached into her bag.
“I kept one thing outside the office.”
A paper ledger.
She placed it on Clara's table.
Grant numbers.
Dates.
Amounts.
One entry made Ethan's entire face change.
$1,800,000.
Authorized through Mercer Capital Community Investments.
Approving executive:
Conrad Hale.
Ethan whispered:
“No.”
Clara looked at him.
“Who is Conrad?”
Ethan didn't answer immediately.
Then:
“My chief financial officer.”
May you like
His closest business partner for nineteen years.
And the godfather named in Ethan's will.
