She Trusted a Fake Lie Detector, So I Left Her the Truth novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Paid in Full
The boardroom of VanHorne Freight was on the thirty-first floor, and I had never been invited into it.
A long glass table ran down the middle, with twelve chairs and a screen at the end.
Ten directors sat in ten of the chairs, in dark suits, and none of them looked at me.
Rhoda sat at the head of the table, because she always had.
Joanna stood beside the screen in the black dress from the gala.
She had a folder in her hand, and she did not sit down.
"Thank you for coming on short notice," she said. "I'll be brief."
"Joanna, this is theatrical," Rhoda said. "Your brother is in jail, and the company is under investigation. Sit down and let the lawyers speak."
"The lawyers work for you."
"They work for this family."
"Then it's the right room for it."
Joanna set a yellow folder on the glass and slid it to the director on her left.
"That's a report on a man named Flynn Sewall, dated nine years ago," she said. "It's marked client R. VanHorne."
The director opened it and turned a page.
He turned another.
"Pass it down," Joanna said.
It went around the table with a soft sound of paper.
Rhoda didn't reach for it.
"I had my daughter's fiancé checked," she said. "Every mother in this room would have done the same."
"Four years of weekly reports on my husband, mother. After the wedding. After the baby."
"Dane's idea."
"Paid from the company's security line, nine thousand four hundred a month, on invoices my brother put in front of me, and I signed them without reading."
"A family matter."
"The auditor will call it theft," Joanna said.
A director near the end put his pen down.
"Mrs. VanHorne," he said quietly. "Is it true you paid for the first investigation out of company funds?"
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