At the door he said, “My mother says you’re trying to ruin us.”

“I don’t want to ruin anybody,” I replied.

“I want you to stop making our daughter responsible for saving your company.”

When he left, the bouquet remained on the table.

I put it in water because the flowers had done nothing wrong.

PART 10

The first person who called me about the company’s finances wasn’t a banker or an investigator.

It was a woman named Teresa Wu, who had managed vendor payments for Caldwell Meridian for nine years.