Northbridge finally produced a more complete extract from its finance system at the beginning of the following week. The files included the payment task, several audit entries, and a message reference that had not appeared in the earlier summaries. Helen forwarded the production to Martin and asked him to review it before they responded.
Martin began with the task history. The entry had been created by Elaine Foster, a finance administrator, and referred to an urgent Mercer Street closeout adjustment. A note stated that the supporting schedule would follow. The record also identified the project request as originating with Richard Cole.
Claire stared at the screen. “So Richard requested it?”
“The system identifies his project request as the immediate source of the task,” Martin said. “That is now documented. But we still need to know what authority he had to make that request and whether someone else approved the payment.”
The distinction was important. Richard’s name had appeared throughout the project records, and several witnesses recalled his involvement in the closeout. But the new task history established something more specific: his request was the immediate source from which the finance task had been created.
Martin compared the task timestamp with the bank transfer. Richard’s request had been entered shortly before the payment was processed. The supporting schedule remained incomplete, and the manual instruction bearing Andrew Mercer’s name was created later.
The system history also showed that the task’s description had been amended during the accounting process. The original reference concerned an urgent closeout adjustment, while a later entry used wording associated with project reconciliation. The audit trail did not identify a final supporting schedule attached to the task.
“Who changed the description?” Claire asked.
“The extract shows that a change occurred, but the production is incomplete,” Martin replied. “We need the full audit log to identify the user account and determine whether the change altered the accounting treatment or simply clarified the wording.”
Helen drafted a supplemental request asking Northbridge to produce the complete audit trail and identify the person who amended the description. She also requested the original message from Richard that prompted the task, the full email thread, and any record showing who authorized Elaine to enter the payment.
The request asked Northbridge to explain whether Richard had authority to initiate a payment of this size and whether he could direct finance to proceed before a supporting schedule was complete. It also asked whether the payment required separate approval under the company’s policy or the financing agreement governing Mercer Street.
Northbridge’s solicitor responded that Richard had been acting in his project management role. The company did not provide a document establishing that he had authority to approve this particular payment, but it argued that project managers routinely requested adjustments as part of closeout procedures.
Helen replied that the estate was not disputing Richard’s general role. It was asking whether his role included authority to initiate the specific transaction under the conditions that existed at the time. The distinction between requesting a payment and approving its release remained central.
Martin prepared a note explaining the evidentiary position. Richard’s request was documented as the immediate source of the payment task. Elaine’s role was administrative, and Andrew’s later instruction did not establish a confirmed prior approval. The supporting schedule was incomplete, and the payment had been processed before the later instruction was created.
The note did not conclude that Richard had acted without authority. It stated that Northbridge had not yet produced evidence establishing the scope of his authority or identifying a separate approval for the transaction.
Claire asked whether the task history changed the investigation substantially.
“It narrows the question,” Martin said. “Previously, we knew the payment occurred and that the supporting records were incomplete. Now we know that Richard’s project request directly preceded the task. The next question is whether he was entitled to request the payment under those circumstances, and who decided it could proceed.”
Helen asked Northbridge for the project authority matrix in force at the time, including the approval limits for project managers and finance officers. She also requested any policy allowing urgent payments to be processed before supporting schedules were complete. If Northbridge relied on an exception, it needed to identify the exception and show who approved its use.
While the company reviewed the request, Daniel sent Helen a longer statement about his dealings with Richard. He acknowledged that Richard had asked him to provide copies of documents bearing Claire’s signature and that he had complied without telling Claire. He also admitted that he had hidden information about the project because he feared the consequences for his own debts.
Daniel did not claim that Richard had explicitly ordered him to forge a signature for the supplementary agreement. He said he had forged Claire’s signature on other financial documents and had provided copies to Richard, believing Richard could use them to help resolve the project’s problems. He could not establish how the copies were later used.
Helen emphasized that Daniel’s statement needed to distinguish his own conduct from anything he merely suspected about Richard. Daniel agreed. He added that he had never witnessed Thomas signing the supplementary agreement and had never seen a completed original bearing the required signatures.
Claire read the statement in silence. Daniel had finally acknowledged the extent of his deception, but she could not forget that his decisions had exposed her to financial and legal risk. His cooperation was useful, yet it did not entitle him to decide what she should accept or how quickly she should move on.
Later that day, Helen spoke with Patricia Wells about the new task history. Patricia said she remembered Richard emphasizing that the closeout needed to be completed before the estate began requesting detailed accounts. She had preserved the internal message because she was concerned that the project file was being handled differently from ordinary records.
Patricia did not claim to know whether Richard had acted outside his authority. She had not approved payments and had not seen the bank instructions. Her evidence was limited to the documents she preserved and the conversations she remembered.
Helen recorded those limits in the statement. She wanted Patricia’s evidence to remain credible and useful, rather than allowing it to become a sweeping accusation based on inference. The task history and Patricia’s message could be compared, but neither alone established Richard’s motive.
The next morning, Northbridge provided a partial authority matrix. It showed that project managers could request certain adjustments, while payments above specified thresholds required finance approval. The extract did not include the full policy or identify the threshold applicable to the disputed transfer.
Martin reviewed the document and said that the missing pages mattered. Without the complete policy and the relevant amount limits, he could not determine whether Richard’s request fell within his authority or required additional approval. He asked Northbridge to provide the full matrix and the records showing which approval route had been applied to the transaction.
Helen also asked for any exception approval authorizing payment before the supporting schedule was complete. If the company had relied on an urgent closeout procedure, the estate needed the actual record rather than a general statement that such procedures existed.
Northbridge’s solicitor replied that the finance team was still reviewing the archived records. The company repeated that Richard had acted in his project role and that the payment was treated as a project adjustment. It did not provide the missing policy pages or a record of the approval required for this specific transaction.
Claire found the response unsatisfactory, but Helen told her that it was useful to have the company’s position in writing. Northbridge had acknowledged Richard’s role in the request while failing to identify the separate authority that allowed the money to be released. That gap could be raised in the next formal stage of the dispute.
Martin then returned to the destination of the payment. The new task history helped establish how the transfer began, but it did not identify the ultimate beneficiary. The bank trail still showed movement through Alder Consulting and another intermediary before a substantial portion reached Westmere Advisory Services.
The company’s initial accounting summary had not named Westmere. The supporting schedule remained incomplete, and the records did not establish whether the payment was for advisory services, a reconciliation obligation, or another liability. Martin therefore recommended that the estate continue seeking Westmere’s underlying records independently of Northbridge’s explanation.
Helen agreed. She sent a request asking Northbridge to authorize direct contact with Westmere or, alternatively, to provide the engagement documents and accounting records itself. The request included the dates and transaction references so that the recipient could identify the relevant entry without relying on Northbridge’s later summary.
That evening, Claire sat with the task history open on her laptop. Richard’s name appeared beside the request that had started the process. It was the clearest connection yet between him and the disputed payment, but it was not a final answer.
She wrote three questions in her notebook: What authority did Richard have? Who approved the payment’s release? Where did the money ultimately go?
Under those questions, she copied the date on which the payment had been processed and the date of the later manual instruction. She wanted the sequence preserved exactly as the records showed it, without an interpretation added too soon.
For months, Northbridge had presented the transaction as an ordinary adjustment. The new task history revealed that the process began with Richard’s urgent request, continued while the supporting schedule was incomplete, and was later documented through an unsigned instruction that Andrew could not confirm approving.
Claire knew that the evidence did not yet prove Richard had acted improperly. But it had made the next question unavoidable: if he had initiated the payment, who had decided that the company could proceed without the records Thomas had demanded?
Click here to continue reading: PART 32: The Condition Claire Would Not Abandon
Three Days After the Funeral, My Husband Quit His Job and Made a Decision That Changed Everything
Part 31 of 35
