Chapter 4 - The Paper Trail
"He’s going to make bail by five o'clock," Evelyn said, leaning across her massive mahogany desk and sliding a cup of black coffee toward me. "His firm will put up the bond just to avoid a public relations disaster. But that’s fine. The arrest was just the curtain-raiser."
I sat in Evelyn’s high-rise office overlooking the Chicago River, sipping the hot, bitter coffee. My laptop was open between us, its screen displaying three years of cross-referenced bank statements I had pulled from our cloud archives using recovery keys Derek didn't know I possessed.
"Look at this," I said, tapping the trackpad.
Evelyn leaned in, her sharp eyes scanning the lines of numbers.
Sixteen months ago, a series of small, recurring monthly transfers had begun leaving our joint money-market account. Amounts ranging from $2,400 to $4,800, routed to a shell LLC registered in Delaware under the name Silver Birch Consulting.
"Who owns Silver Birch?" Evelyn asked.
"I ran the registration file through an corporate intelligence service this morning," I replied, sliding a printed document across the desk. "The managing agent is listed as an offshore firm in Nassau, but the ultimate beneficial owner... is Christine Hale."
Evelyn raised an eyebrow, a cold, appreciative smile spreading across her lips. "Your best friend was on your husband's payroll?"
"Not just his payroll," I said quietly. "Look at the dates. Every single transfer corresponds directly to the dates Derek claimed he was taking client trips to Denver and Atlanta. And look at the source account for those funds."
Evelyn zoomed in on the document. Her smile disappeared, replaced by a sharp, professional intensity.
"That’s not his money," she said softly.
"No," I agreed. "That’s money drawn directly from the escrow accounts of the Harbor Pointe Development Project—a sixty-million-dollar municipal waterfront construction project Derek’s firm was managing for the City of Evanston."
Derek hadn't just been cheating on me. He had been embezzling client funds from his own firm to fund a secret second life with Christine—buying her a condo in Lincoln Park, paying off her credit card debts, funding luxury weekend getaways to Cabo and Miami while I was home editing manuscripts and worrying about our mortgage interest rates.
He had used his firm’s internal project software to mask the missing funds as "preliminary engineering consultancy fees" paid to Silver Birch. And because he was the lead project director on Harbor Pointe, no one had audited his secondary authorizations.
Until now.
"Laura," Evelyn said, leaning back in her chair and folding her hands. "If we turn this over to the Cook County State's Attorney, Derek goes to federal prison for grand larceny and fraud. But if we do that right now, his firm goes into receivership, his assets get frozen by the government, and you’ll be fighting federal liquidators for ten years just to get your inheritance back."
"I don't want him in prison yet," I said. My voice was calm, almost conversational. "Prison gives him a floor and a ceiling. It gives him a routine. It gives him an excuse to be a victim."
"What do you want?"
"I want him to try to cover it up," I said. "I want him to dig the hole deeper. I want him to go to Christine and ask her for the money back."
Evelyn looked at me for three long seconds. Then she let out a short, quiet laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across pavement.
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"God save any man who crosses an editor with a grudge," she murmured. "What's the next move?"
"Call Marcus Vance," I said, pulling out my phone. "Derek’s real estate attorney. Tell him we’re willing to settle the house dispute quietly—if Derek agrees to meet me alone at the Forest Avenue house tomorrow morning to 'sign the separation agreement.'"
