Chapter 5 - The Numbers Were Higher After They Left My Desk
I still had old spreadsheets.
My originals.
Vendor totals.
Staffing estimates.
Rental costs.
Transportation.
Catering.
Flowers.
Security.
Everything I used to build event budgets.
Julian’s accounting team provided copies of final invoices Bennett Events had submitted to the Sterling Foundation.
The numbers did not match.
Not by a little.
A lighting package I recorded at $18,600 became $26,900.
Temporary staffing went from $14,200 to $21,400.
Flowers increased nearly forty percent.
Small differences appeared everywhere.
Individually plausible.
Together significant.
Over five years, the Sterling Foundation had paid Bennett Events approximately $640,000 more than the underlying cost schedules I had prepared appeared to support.
That did not automatically mean theft.
Companies mark up services.
Administrative fees exist.
Margins exist.
But those charges should be defined.
These weren’t.
Worse, several vendor companies receiving payments did not appear in my records at all.
Orchid Consulting.
Hale Event Logistics.
Eleanor Services.
I stared at the names.
Orchid.
Hale.
Eleanor.
Names connected to my grandmother and Julian’s wife.
Not coincidence.
Someone was making a joke.
Or leaving a message.
I showed Julian.
His face changed.
“Who created these vendor accounts?”
“Vanessa handles billing.”
“Who approves them?”
“Richard signs some. Olivia signs some.”
I looked through more invoices.
Payments to those three vendors totaled nearly $380,000.
I had never hired them.
Never spoken to them.
Never seen actual services attached to them.
Then I remembered Vanessa recording the cake incident.
Her phone.
Always in her hand.
Always connected to company systems.
I called her.
“Who is Orchid Consulting?”
Silence.
“Vanessa?”
“You need to stay out of this.”
The same kind of warning my family had been giving women for decades.
I almost smiled.
“You recorded your brother shoving my face into a birthday cake.”
“So?”
“So you’re probably the last person who should be lecturing me about staying out of anything.”
She hung up.
Thirty minutes later, my access to Bennett Events’ cloud files was disabled.
That was not proof.
May you like
But it was panic.
And panic usually has a direction.
