Chapter 2 - THE PAPER TRAIL OF TREASON
The diner kitchen went dead quiet except for the rhythmic, dull buzz of the walk-in refrigerator compressor. My heart was hammering inside my ribs like a trapped bird. I took three quick, unsteady steps toward her, stepping right through the puddle of dirty mop water on the linoleum. I grabbed her trembling arms, careful not to squeeze the delicate, paper-thin skin covering her frail bones.
"Mom, what is this?" My voice sounded foreign to my own ears—high, tight, and bordering on hyperventilation. "Why are you here? Why are you working in a dish pit at nine o'clock at night? Where is the money?"
Mattie flinched, looking frantically toward the back kitchen doors as if she expected a supervisor to step out and reprimand her for speaking to a guest. "Susanna, please... don't make a scene. I have twenty minutes left on my shift. The manager, Mr. Henderson, he doesn't like it when we take personal calls on the floor."
"To hell with Mr. Henderson!" I shouted, causing the old man at the counter to freeze his sugar spoon in mid-air. "You are seventy-eight years old! You have severe arthritis! I wire fifteen thousand dollars into your First National Bank account on the fifth of every single month! You should be living in a gated community! You should have a full-time housekeeper!"
Mattie shrank back slightly, her pale eyes glossing over with a mixture of confusion and profound, crushing sadness. "Account? Susanna... what account?"
A cold, sickening drop fell straight through my stomach, freezing my blood instantly. "The account in your name. The automated wire transfers from Cardinal Health Systems. I’ve sent it every month since I sold my first healthcare logistics patent seven years ago. Over one point two million dollars!"
Mattie slowly shook her head, a soft, bitter smile touching her cracked lips. "Honey... I haven't had a bank account since your father passed away six years ago. The bank took the house on Oak Street. I live in a converted porch room behind your brother’s body shop. I work thirty hours a week here so I can pay Wayne three hundred dollars a month for rent and groceries."
Wayne. My younger brother.
The world seemed to spin out of alignment. My knees felt weak, and I had to grab the edge of a nearby booth table to keep my balance. Wayne had been my sole point of contact in Little Rock for nearly a decade. When I made my fortune in Boston and Seattle, I was too buried in my corporate ascension to fly back home. I felt guilty for abandoning them, so I used money as a substitute for presence. Wayne had offered to set up our mother’s managed trust fund. He told me he was handling her private care, paying her medical bills, and overseeing the maintenance on a luxury cottage in the hills. He sent me monthly email summaries, complete with fake receipts, bogus medical reports, and brief, reassuring notes saying, "Mom is doing great, she loves the garden you're paying for, but she still prefers quiet days without phone calls."
He had lied to me for eighty-four consecutive months. He had taken my money, stripped my mother of her home, and dumped her in a slum room while forcing her to wash dishes to pay him rent.
"Where is Wayne right now?" I asked, my voice dropping from panicked shock into a terrifying, icy register that my executive board members knew all too well. It was the tone I used right before I terminated a corrupt contractor or liquidated an underperforming division.
Mattie pulled her hands tighter behind her back, her eyes darting away nervously. "Susanna, leave it alone. Wayne is going through a hard time. His shop hasn't been doing well, and he has... expenses. He takes care of me the best he can."
"He is stealing from you, Mom!" I yelled, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes, cutting clean tracks through the makeup on my face. "He is taking my money and letting you rot!"
Before Mattie could answer, the rear double doors swung open hard. A large, thick-necked man in a grease-stained polo shirt stepped out, holding a clipboard.
"Mattie!" the man barked, not even looking at me. "Who said you could stop mopping? We close in ten minutes, and the grease trap in the back fry bay hasn't been scraped! Move it!"
I turned around slowly, drawing myself up to my full five-foot-eight frame, letting the full weight of my presence fill the dingy diner. I walked directly up to the manager, pulling a sleek black leather wallet from my designer handbag. I pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills without counting them and slammed them onto his clipboard.
"She quits," I said, my voice echoing like a crack of thunder off the metal walls. "If you ever speak to her like that again, I will buy this building by midnight, tear it down to the foundation, and turn it into a parking lot. Do you understand me?"
The manager’s mouth snapped shut. He looked at the stack of cash—at least two thousand dollars—and then at my custom Italian wool blazer. He swallowed hard and nodded once, stepping backward into the kitchen without another word.
May you like
I turned back to my mother, who was trembling by the mop bucket, looking at me as if I were a terrifying stranger who had fallen from the sky.
"Come on, Mom," I said gently, taking her water-scalded hand despite her attempt to pull away. "We're going to find out where my one point two million dollars went."
