Chapter 18: The Board

Two men in black blazers started toward the dais, and Silvan didn't look at them.

He walked to the front table, where the board chair sat in dark green with her reading glasses on a chain.

He set the canvas bag in front of her.

"Open it," he said.

"Mr. Tregellis, this is highly irregular."

"So was the slideshow."

A man at her elbow, silver-haired and furious, said, "Security," and nobody moved.

The board chair opened the bag.

She took out a shoebox, lifted the lid, and picked up the top bundle of check stubs.

"What am I looking at?"

"Sixteen checks, a quarter apiece," Silvan said. "Twenty-five hundred dollars, every three months, for four years. Signed by Adelaide Sanborn."

"For what?"

"For consulting. From the Lila Sanborn Foundation to a retired nurse at the clinic that handled Lila's donor eggs."

The ballroom had gone silent enough that I could hear the candles.

"Keep the file closed," Silvan said. "That's what the consulting was."

"A nurse who knew Rochelle's name was paid not to say it. Nobody was ever to call her."

"That is a lie," Adelaide said from the dais.

Her voice carried, but it had lost some of its polish.

"She'll say it herself," Silvan said.

At the back of the room, a small woman in a cardigan rose from a chair by the door.

Her hip made her stand carefully, and she did not use the wall.

"I took your money for four years, Mrs. Sanborn," the nurse said.

She had a carrying voice after all.

"Sixteen checks. The stubs are in that box. A lawyer in a good coat told me the foundation was grateful for my discretion."

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