Nora asked whether she had checked the new banking information.

Allison looked at the floor.

She said the account number was hidden behind a secure portal and she had been told it was a routine update.

Preston said the system did not permit her to see sensitive data anyway.

Nora replied that the audit trail suggested otherwise.

She slid a second page across the table.

It recorded a login to Allison’s account from an unfamiliar device at 2:14 in the morning.

Allison said she had been at a hotel with Preston that night.

Her face went pale as soon as the words left her mouth.

Rachel did not react.

She asked which hotel.

Allison answered.

Nora wrote the name in her notebook.

Preston said everyone was turning a bookkeeping dispute into a morality play.

I stared at the login record.

On the night the first payment was redirected, I had been sitting beside my father’s hospital bed.

Allison had told me she was attending a leadership seminar.

I remembered texting her a photograph of my father asleep beneath a thin blanket.

She had replied with a heart.

The same hour, someone had used her credentials to alter the route of money belonging to the people who trusted me.

Chapter 11: The Supplier on Broad Street

Our first concrete lead came from a supplier named Owen Hartley, whose office stood above a tire store on Broad Street.

Owen had spent twenty years supplying drywall and finishing materials to crews like mine.

He kept paper copies because he mistrusted software upgrades.

When I explained the missing transfer, he pulled out a binder and pointed to a confirmation that listed the correct amount but an unfamiliar routing suffix.

He said a Bellwether representative had called the previous week to ask whether he would sign a statement confirming receipt.

Owen refused because the money had never reached his account.

The caller said the discrepancy might jeopardize future work.

Owen wrote down the caller’s name and extension.

He had been frightened but also insulted.

He said nobody got to bully him into saying a check had cleared when it had not.

Daniel obtained his notes through the proper process.

The extension belonged to a support team that had been reorganized the month before.

That did not establish misconduct, but it offered a new path for the investigation.

I spent an hour with Owen after the paperwork was finished.

He told me about a worker who had skipped medical appointments because the delay left him without cash.