Helen arranged a meeting with the former administrative assistant, whose name was Patricia Wells. She agreed to attend with me, provided Patricia's solicitor was present and the documents were handled through a proper chain of custody.
Patricia chose a conference room at her solicitor's office rather than meet at Northbridge. When I arrived, she was already seated at the table, holding a plain document envelope against her chest.
She looked older than I had expected, perhaps in her late fifties, with short brown hair and the tired expression of someone who had spent months debating whether to speak.
“I knew your father,” she said as we introduced ourselves. “Not well, but enough to understand why he was worried.”
“How did you know him?”
“He came to the office several times. He always asked for the underlying records, not just the summaries Richard prepared. He was polite, but he didn't accept vague answers.”
I thought of Dad sitting across from Richard, asking for invoices and account references while the project grew more complicated around him.
Patricia placed the envelope on the table.
“I kept this because I thought someone might eventually need to know what happened. I didn't know whether I would ever have the courage to hand it over.”
Helen asked her to explain how she had obtained the documents.
Patricia said that she had worked in Northbridge's administrative department and had occasionally prepared files for Richard's meetings. Several months before my father's death, Richard instructed her to separate a group of documents from the ordinary project archive.
“He said they were preliminary papers and should not be included in the accountant's review,” she explained. “I asked whether they should be retained separately, and he told me to keep them in a temporary file.”
“Did you know what they contained?” Helen asked.
“Not at first. Later, I noticed that some of the payment references matched entries in the project ledger. I also saw a draft agreement that appeared to give the company additional rights over the Mercer Street property.”
Helen asked whether Patricia had seen a signed version.
Patricia shook her head.
“I saw a draft. I never witnessed anyone signing it. But I remember Richard asking Daniel to bring him documents bearing Claire's signature.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did Daniel say?”
“I wasn't present for the entire conversation. I heard him say that he could obtain the necessary paperwork, and Richard told him to make sure the signatures matched the existing records.”
The room seemed to grow smaller.
Helen asked Patricia to distinguish what she had personally heard from what she had inferred. Patricia confirmed that she had heard those words but could not say precisely which documents they were discussing.
She then opened the envelope.
Inside were copies of emails, payment schedules, a draft agreement, and several pages from the project's internal ledger. Patricia's solicitor documented each item before allowing Helen to examine them.
The first documents concerned payments to Alder Consulting. Several entries matched the transactions Martin Shaw had identified. Others referred to transfers made through accounts whose ownership had not yet been established.
The draft agreement was more troubling.
It proposed that Northbridge could acquire additional rights over the Mercer Street property if the financing remained unresolved after a specified event, including the death of the original investor. The language was conditional and heavily qualified, but it resembled the arrangement Richard had described in his emails.
At the bottom of the draft was a section identifying the parties who would need to sign.
My father's name appeared first.
Mine appeared beneath it.
There was no signature in either space.
I stared at the blank lines.
“Was this the document Dad refused to sign?” I asked.
Patricia nodded.
“He told Richard that it was unacceptable. I remember because Richard was furious afterward.”
“Did Dad explain why?”
“He said the company was trying to turn a financing agreement into a way of taking control of property that had already been promised as security for a specific loan. He said he would not agree to anything that changed the original terms.”
Helen photographed the draft and asked Patricia whether she knew where the original had been stored.
Patricia said that Richard had ordered her to place the working file in a separate cabinet. Later, he instructed her to remove it and transfer the contents to a storage location used for old company records.
She had made copies before moving the file because she feared the documents might disappear.
“Why didn't you contact my father?” I asked.
“I tried,” she replied. “I called his office, but he was already ill. I left a message with his solicitor. I don't know whether he received it.”
I thought of Dad's final letter to the notary and his request that no document be witnessed without his presence. He had been taking precautions against a threat he could not fully explain, while Patricia had been quietly preserving evidence that might have helped him.
Helen moved to the ledger pages.
One entry showed a transfer from the project account to an intermediary company. A second entry recorded a payment from that company to an account associated with Daniel. A third entry showed money leaving that account shortly afterward.
The amounts were not identical, and the records did not establish the final destination of every dollar. But the sequence corresponded with the transfers Daniel had admitted receiving.
Helen placed the pages side by side.
“These entries appear to connect the project funds to the account described in Daniel's statement,” she said. “We will need the bank records to confirm the movement of the money and determine the purpose of each payment.”
I looked at Patricia.
“Did you ever hear Richard explain why Daniel's account was used?”
Patricia shook her head.
“He said Daniel was helping him manage the financing. I thought it was unusual because Daniel wasn't a Northbridge employee.”
“Did you see my signature on any document?”
“Only on copies of earlier paperwork. I never saw you sign anything.”
Helen asked Patricia to preserve the remaining records and agreed that her solicitor would coordinate their formal disclosure. She also requested a statement describing when Patricia had created the copies, where she had stored them, and how she had kept them secure.
Before the meeting ended, Patricia reached into her bag and removed a small folded sheet of paper.
“There is one more thing,” she said.
The paper contained a handwritten note dated three days after my father's funeral. It appeared to be an internal instruction from Richard to someone in the finance department.
The note referred to the large transfer we had been investigating and stated that the payment should be completed before the new beneficiary requested a full accounting.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
The timing was exact.
Richard had instructed the transfer after my father's death, before I had even met with Helen, and the note suggested that he anticipated my inheritance would give me the right to examine the records.
Helen read the page carefully.
“This is important,” she said. “But we need to authenticate it and establish who wrote it.”
Patricia confirmed that she had seen Richard write similar notes and that the handwriting appeared consistent with his. She did not claim to be a handwriting expert, and Helen made clear that further verification would be necessary.
I asked whether the note proved the transfer had been made to conceal the missing money.
“No,” Helen replied. “It proves that someone recorded an instruction with that stated purpose. We still need to identify the recipient, trace the funds, and establish the full context.”
I understood the caution, but I could not ignore the implication.
The payment had not been an ordinary transaction forgotten in a complicated ledger. Someone had wanted it completed before I began asking questions.
On the drive home, I thought about the different people who had played a part in the story: my father, who tried to protect the property; Daniel, who used my name and concealed his debts; Richard, who directed payments through accounts that were difficult to trace; and Patricia, who had quietly preserved documents when she suspected the official records might not tell the whole story.
The evidence was finally beginning to form a coherent pattern, but it also made the consequences more serious. If the records established that Daniel knowingly participated in the transfers, he could face claims far beyond the debt notice that had first frightened me.
That evening, Daniel asked whether I had met Patricia.
I stopped in the doorway.
“How do you know her name?”
He looked startled.
“I heard it from my lawyer. He said someone from Northbridge had provided records.”
I watched him carefully.
“Did you know she had a file?”
“No.”
“Did Richard ever tell you to bring him documents bearing my signature?”
Daniel's face changed.
He sat down slowly.
“Yes.”
I felt my hands begin to tremble.
“What documents?”
“He said the company needed updated guarantees. I told him I couldn't keep producing signatures without your permission.”
“Did you tell him that before or after you forged them?”
Daniel covered his face.
“After.”
I waited.
He lowered his hands and looked at me with an expression of complete exhaustion.
“Richard told me that if I refused, he would report the earlier transactions and say I had acted alone. He said the company had enough evidence to make me responsible for everything.”
“And you believed him?”
“I was afraid he could do it.”
“So you continued cooperating because you thought he would protect you.”
Daniel nodded.
I looked at him and realized that he had spent years making decisions out of fear, but each decision had required him to betray someone else. He had betrayed my father to protect himself, then betrayed me to protect his relationship with Richard, and finally concealed the truth because he feared the consequences of his own actions.
His fear might explain his choices.
It did not excuse them.
I called Helen and told her about Daniel's admission. She asked whether he would provide the information formally through his solicitor, and I said I believed he would.
She reminded me not to treat his latest statement as established fact until it had been recorded and corroborated.
When I ended the call, Daniel was still sitting at the table.
“I don't expect you to forgive me,” he said.
I looked at him for a long time.
“Then stop asking me to understand you and help establish what happened.”
He nodded.
For the first time, I believed he might actually cooperate.
But when I went upstairs, I found a new message from an unknown number on my phone.
The message contained no greeting, no explanation, and no name.
It read:
The file you found is only a copy. Ask Richard what happened to the original.
Click here to continue reading: PART 17: The Anonymous Message Pointed Toward a Missing Original, and Richard Cole Suddenly Had More to Fear Than a Financial Investigation
Three Days After the Funeral, My Husband Quit His Job and Made a Decision That Changed Everything
Part 16 of 35
