Chapter 6: The List of Names
Ruth Calloway's office was on the fourth floor of a building twelve minutes from the diner.
No reception desk.
Just a short hallway, a waiting area with two chairs, and a door with her name on a small brass plate.
She was already standing when I came in.
Shorter than her voice had suggested.
Silver hair pulled back.
Reading glasses pushed up on her forehead.
"Sit down," she said.
Not unkindly.
"We have a lot to cover."
She had a file open on the desk.
Thick.
Tabbed with colored markers.
"Your grandfather began building this file two years ago," she said.
"He hired a private forensic accountant.
A woman named Carol Jennings.
Carol spent fourteen months going through Palmer Group Holdings' internal accounts." She turned the file so I could see the first page.
"What she found was systematic.
Not careless.
Your father knew exactly what he was doing."
The numbers were laid out in columns.
Dates.
Account codes.
Transfer amounts.
Each one initialed with the same two letters.
R.P.
Richard Palmer.
"He routed personal expenses through three shell vendor accounts," Ruth said.
"Home renovations.
A car lease — not the company car, a second one.
A vacation property in South Carolina that's registered to a numbered company he controls." She tapped the page.
"And payments to a personal account in Savannah's name."
I looked up.
"Savannah's name?"
"Starting three years ago.
Monthly transfers.
Described in the ledger as consulting fees." Ruth's expression didn't change.
"There is no consulting agreement on file.
No work product.
No invoices."
"She knew."
"She received the money.
Whether she understood its origin—" Ruth paused carefully.
"That's a question for her to answer."
I sat with that for a moment.
"What does Grandpa want me to do with this?"
Ruth opened to a tabbed section near the back of the file.
A handwritten note, one page, in the same loose script as the letter.
*Fiona.
I am not asking you to destroy your father.
I am asking you to stop him.
There is a difference.
The people on the list below have worked for that company for years.
Some of them for decades.
They stayed when things were hard.
They deserve to know the company is in honest hands.*
*What you do with the evidence is your choice.
I trust your judgment more than my own at this point.*
*But do not let him talk you out of it with sentiment.
He is very good at that.*
Below the note, the list.
Fourteen names.
Employees.
Long-tenured ones, from the looks of the titles beside each name.
"He wanted me to protect them first," I said.
"Yes."
"Before I do anything about my father."
"That was his priority." Ruth leaned back.
"The board meets in three weeks for the quarterly review.
If you walk in as the controlling shareholder before your father has time to prepare a legal challenge, you can stabilize the company's leadership before any of this becomes public."
"And if he files an injunction before then?"
"I file a response the same day.
The documentation is airtight, Fiona.
Walter spent two years making sure of it." She looked at me steadily.
"Your grandfather was a quiet man.
But he was not a passive one."
My phone buzzed on the desk between us.
Savannah.
I declined the call.
"She's going to come to me eventually," I said.
"She will." Ruth folded her hands.
"What will you say to her?"
I thought about the monthly transfers.
Her name on the ledger.
The champagne glass she'd lifted that morning.
*Don't come begging us to take you back.*
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
Ruth nodded.
She didn't push.
"There's one more thing." She reached into the file and produced a single sheet.
"Your grandfather made one additional request.
He asked that before you take any formal action — before the board meeting, before any legal filing — you give your father one private opportunity to come clean on his own."
I stared at her.
"He wanted to give him a chance?"
"He said—" Ruth found the line and read it aloud.
"'Richard is not a bad man.
He is a weak one.
Weak men sometimes surprise you when the door is already open and the only thing left to do is walk through it.'" She set the page down.
"He wanted you to offer the conversation.
Not the outcome.
The conversation."
"And if Dad doesn't take it?"
Ruth looked at me over her reading glasses.
"Then you walk through the door yourself."
My phone buzzed again.
This time the screen read: MOM.
May you like
I looked at it for a long moment.
Then I picked it up.
