They Called Me a Fraud I’ll Prove It Was a Crime novel · Chapter 1 of 3
Chapter 1: The Board Table
State Street, boardroom, October. Owen presents the risk finding: the $60 million pledge is backdated and Sadie's signature is on it. Spencer sits in as Hale Ridge's claimant. Sadie says the page was signed at the license table. Owen calls her a fraud in front of the whole table.
The pledge hit the table at 9:14 on a Tuesday morning.
I know the time because the clock over the boardroom door is the only thing on that wall I can still stand to look at.
Eleven people sat around it.
I was one of them.
"Ms. Lowell."
Owen Flaherty sat at the far end with a folder open in front of him.
He didn't look up when he said my name.
"You're the signatory on the Lowell Family Trust pledge to Corwin Group."
"I'm one of them."
"You're the only one who signed."
He turned a page.
"The pledge is sixty million dollars against the Ocean Avenue tower. It's dated September second of this year."
"That's right."
"Your signature is on it."
"Yes."
"Did you read it before you signed?"
The room went quiet in the way a room does when everyone already knows the answer.
I looked down the table.
Nine men and two women, most of them old enough to be my father, all of them watching me the way you watch a car slide on ice.
Spencer Hale sat at the claimant's end.
Navy suit, dark hair silvering at the temples, hands folded on a leather portfolio.
He didn't look at me.
He looked at the middle of the table, patient, like a man waiting for a train he already knew the schedule of.
"I read it."
"All four pages."
"I read the pages I was given."
Owen finally looked up.
He has a crooked nose from hockey and reading glasses he keeps losing, and he was wearing neither of those things that morning.
He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and he looked at me like I was a stranger.
"Four pages," he said. "The pledge is page three."
"Then I read page three."
"On September second."
I didn't answer.
I should have answered.
"Ms. Lowell."
"I was in Santa Monica on September second."
"That's not the question."
Across from me a board member I'd known since I was nine cleared his throat and looked at his coffee.
"You signed a pledge of sixty million dollars," Owen said. "The trust has three hundred and forty beneficiaries. Retired teachers. Their checks come out of that trust."
"I know who they are."
"Do you know what happens if the pledge is called?"
The man with the coffee answered for me.
"The guarantees get withdrawn. The trust covers the shortfall. The teachers stop getting paid."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Then Spencer spoke, and his voice was exactly as soft as it had always been.
"Lowell Capital isn't here to answer for the trust's paperwork. Hale Ridge is the injured party. We filed the claim on the pledge and we'd like the board to hear it."
Owen didn't look at him.
"The board will hear it," he said. "After I finish with Ms. Lowell."
"I'm not sure there's much left to finish."
"There's one thing."
Owen reached into the folder and slid a single page out of the sleeve.
It was the pledge.
I knew it before he turned it around. I knew the pale blue line where the date was written in the box, and I knew the shape of my own name at the bottom.
"This page is dated September second," Owen said. "Two days before the trust's quarterly meeting. Four days before the tower's financing closed."
"I don't know anything about the financing."
"You signed it."
"I signed it at a license table."
The room shifted.
Someone down the table set a cup down too hard.
Owen didn't move.
"A license table," he said.
"In Santa Monica. October seventeenth."
He turned the page over and set it down flat.
"October seventeenth," he said, like he was reading it off a wall. "The pledge is dated September second."
"I know what it says."
"So you're telling this board that you signed a document dated September second in October."
"I'm telling you what happened."
Owen sat back.
He took his glasses out of his shirt pocket, looked at them, and put them on the table without putting them on.
"Ms. Lowell," he said. "Where did you sign it?"
"At the county clerk's office. There was a table by the window."
"Why were you at a county clerk's office?"
I looked at Spencer.
Spencer looked at his portfolio.
"For a wedding," I said.
"Whose?"
"Mine."
Somebody laughed. Just one short breath of it, from the far end, and then nothing.
Owen didn't laugh.
"Your wedding," he said.
"It wasn't one."
"Either it was or it wasn't."
"There were two brides. Two grooms. It was a party they put together for a camera crew."
"And you signed a trust pledge at it."
"I signed four pages on a clipboard."
"Who handed you the clipboard."
"Kelsey."
"Kelsey Vance."
"Kelsey."
"She works for Corwin Group."
"I'm aware."
Owen picked up his pen and tapped it twice on the folder.
"Ms. Vance works for Corwin Group," he said. "Mr. Hale filed the claim. Mr. Corwin is the developer. You signed a sixty million dollar pledge at a party thrown by all three of them and you didn't read it."
"I read it."
"You just told this board you signed it at a license table in October."
"I did."
"Then the date on this page is wrong."
"Yes."
"And the pledge is invalid."
"Yes."
Owen looked at me for a long moment.
Then he put the pen down and slid the pledge across the table.
It stopped an inch from my hand.
"Ms. Lowell," he said. "I've worked at this firm eleven years. I've sat on this side of the table for six of them. I've watched people lie to this board about a rounding error and lose their seat over it."
"I'm not lying."
"I hope not."
He took his glasses off the table and put them back in his pocket.
"Because here's what I see. I see a pledge dated September second. I see your signature. I see the trust's money already moved in January, before any of this. And I see the only person in this room who benefits from this page being backdated is you."
"That's not true."
"Then explain the September date."
The clock over the door ticked.
Eleven faces, one claimant, one page.
I put my hand flat on the table beside it and didn't touch it.
"I can't," I said. "Not yet."
Owen picked the pledge back up and slid it into the sleeve.
"Then I'll tell the board what I think," he said.
He looked down the table at eleven people who had known me since I was a child.
"I think Sadie Lowell is a fraud."
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