The Foundation's Missing Funds
Chapter 06 - The Foundation's Missing Funds
Corinne Ashby's investigation into the foundation's finances, conducted alongside an independent forensic accountant named Priya Anand, confirmed within a week exactly the discrepancy Eleanor had originally identified, and considerably more besides.
"The consulting contract itself appears to be entirely fabricated," Priya told Julian and Eleanor, presenting her preliminary findings. "There's no record of any actual strategic services rendered. The payments were structured to look like legitimate quarterly consulting fees, but I can't find a single deliverable, report, or work product connected to any of them."
"So she simply invented a reason to bill us," Julian said, jaw tight.
"That's my assessment," Priya said. "And I want to flag something else concerning. The board resolution that originally approved this consulting arrangement appears to have been passed during a meeting where attendance records show considerably fewer board members present than the minutes suggest actually voted."
Eleanor's expression darkened. "She forged attendance records to make an unauthorized arrangement look properly approved."
"That's a serious allegation," Corinne said carefully, "though the documentation certainly raises that possibility. I'd want considerably more forensic review before stating it definitively."
Julian sat with the growing weight of what his own foundation's finances had apparently been quietly bleeding for months, possibly longer, under a board member he'd personally recruited two years earlier based on her considerable reputation in real estate development circles.
He kept returning, uninvited, to the specific memory of introducing Vanessa at last year's gala, praising her generosity to the entire room, genuinely proud to have her associated with his family's name. The memory now sat sour in his stomach, a private humiliation layered underneath the growing public one, the particular shame of having vouched so completely for someone capable of exactly this.
"I want her removed from the board immediately," he said. "Pending the full investigation's conclusion."
"That's within your authority as foundation chair," Corinne confirmed. "I'd recommend documenting the removal carefully, given how aggressively she's likely to contest it once she understands the full scope of what we're uncovering."
Eleanor reached for her son's hand, something steady and proud in her expression despite the exhaustion still visible from the preceding week's ordeal.
"I'm proud of you," she said. "For taking this seriously the moment it came to light, instead of trying to quietly manage it away to avoid embarrassment."
"I learned that from you," Julian said. "Thirty-one years building this foundation on integrity. I wasn't about to let one board member's greed unravel that, regardless of how uncomfortable the public scrutiny might become."
Maya, informed of the investigation's progress through Julian's regular updates, found herself increasingly drawn into the foundation's orbit, offering her own account formally to Priya's investigation, providing documentation from her father's old business records that helped establish the broader pattern of Vanessa's predatory practices.
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"I never thought I'd actually see something like this happen," Maya told Julian, during one of their now-regular conversations. "People like Vanessa usually just keep building bigger empires, untouched by whatever they left behind."
"Not this time," Julian said. "I intend to make sure of that."
