Chapter 15 - The Woman Behind the Glass|
Victoria Ashford had spent her entire adult life cultivating the impression that she was untouchable.
She attended charity boards, sat beside politicians at fundraising dinners, and appeared in glossy magazines discussing women's leadership. Her office displayed photographs of her shaking hands with famous people. Her social media accounts featured carefully staged donations and smiling children.
Clara had once admired her.
Now she saw the machinery behind the image.
Helen arranged for an independent investigator to interview Victoria about the foundation's records. Victoria declined to attend voluntarily, but her attorney agreed to a formal meeting after receiving the document identifying her as a witness to the transfer.
Clara did not attend. She wanted no part in turning the investigation into a personal confrontation.
Instead, she spent the morning at a small café with her notebook open, listing every task Victoria had assigned her during the previous year.
There were the donor spreadsheets. The envelopes delivered to the accounting office. The replacement pages. The late-night requests to print documents after the office had closed.
Some tasks had seemed harmless at the time.
Others now made her uneasy.
At noon, Victoria called.
Clara considered ignoring the call, but Helen had advised her to preserve any communication. She answered with the recording function enabled under her attorney's guidance.
“You've gone too far,” Victoria said without greeting.
“Please send any legal questions to Helen Park.”
“You think this is about a scholarship? You have no idea what you're doing.”
“Then explain it.”
A sharp breath came through the phone.
“You were hired to assist me. You were never supposed to examine financial records.”
“I didn't know they were financial records.”
“Exactly. You were a clerk. You handled paperwork. You didn't understand the bigger picture.”
Clara's stomach tightened.
“Are you saying you knew what the documents contained?”
“I'm saying that people like you can be manipulated by people who know how business works.”
“Did you know my name was being used on a scholarship application?”
Silence.
“Victoria?”
“You should be grateful I gave you a chance.”
“That's not an answer.”
“You think Dante Moretti is going to save you? He'll protect himself first. He always does.”
Clara said nothing.
Victoria's voice sharpened.
“You have no money, no influence, and no idea how quickly people can decide you're a liability. I can make the story about you. I can tell everyone you copied confidential records and tried to blackmail the foundation.”
“Then provide your evidence to my attorney.”
“You ungrateful little—”
The call ended abruptly.
Clara saved the recording and sent it to Helen.
An hour later, Helen called back.
“Victoria's attorney has confirmed that she attended a meeting where the scholarship transfer was discussed. Her position is that she witnessed the transaction as part of her administrative duties and had no authority over the funds.”
“Do we believe her?”
“We don't have to decide that yet. We need to determine what she knew, what she signed, and whether the records support her explanation.”
“What happens if she says I forged the documents?”
“Then the evidence will be examined. Your signature on the scholarship form is already disputed, and the date is inconsistent with the foundation's own record. That matters.”
Clara looked at her notebook.
“What if I did unknowingly help them?”
“Then you explain exactly what you did and didn't know. Don't protect yourself by guessing, and don't accuse yourself of things you didn't do.”
That evening, an email arrived from Victoria's attorney. Attached was a scanned memorandum from the foundation's finance department.
The memorandum stated that Clara had personally delivered a sealed envelope containing scholarship documentation to the accounting office.
It was dated seven months earlier.
Clara remembered the day.
Victoria had handed her a white envelope and told her to deliver it to a receptionist. Clara had never opened it. She had signed a delivery log at the desk and left.
The memorandum claimed that the envelope contained a request to transfer scholarship funds.
Clara felt sick.
If the document was genuine, she had carried the envelope.
But she had never known what was inside.
Helen reassured her that delivering a sealed envelope under ordinary workplace instructions did not establish knowledge of its contents. The delivery log might even help show that Clara had not accessed the documents herself.
Still, the thought haunted her.
The next morning, the independent investigator discovered that the envelope's tracking number matched a package sent from Victoria's office to Richard Vale's firm.
The package had been received by a person who no longer worked there.
That person had left the firm two weeks after the transfer.
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His name was Anthony Graves.
And when investigators contacted him, he claimed he had never received the envelope at all.
